An Execution in Bed-Stuy

It’s five a.m. as I write this. I gave up sleeping several hours ago as I have wrestled with this and the nausea that has gripped me since I first heard the reports of the execution of the two NYPD police officers in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn yesterday.

The NYPD lost two brave, young men whose only crime was that they had the audacity to choose to put on the uniform of the finest police department in the world. Last night, a 3rd officer in the Bronx was spared a similar fate when a man pointed a gun at him at point blank range and pulled the trigger.  Fortunately, the gun didn’t fire and they were able to disarm him.

This was all precipitated by an incident at one of the peaceful protest marches. A professor from Baruch College in NYC was arrested after he attempted to throw a metal garbage can off the upper level of the Brooklyn Bridge onto NYPD officers on the roadway below. While attempting to arrest him, other protesters intervened and two NYPD Lieutenants were assaulted.  They were knocked to the ground where they were punched and kicked in their faces by numerous people who also attempted to steal their portable radios so they could not summon assistance.

It was during the same period of protests where chants of “What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want it? Now!” where heard emanating from the assembled throng.

Over the weeks and months I have watched as a parade of politicians, activists, news pundits and protesters have bashed law enforcement unmercifully. In many instances these peaceful protests have been nothing more than a cover for criminal activity. Where people, acting in a completely debased and savage manner, assaulted, pillaged, burned and called for the deaths of racist police officers.

Yesterday they got exactly what they were looking for.

Of course there will be screams and condemnations. They will claim that this isn’t what they really wanted. That they only want peaceful protests to bring to light their perceived injustices and allegations of racism.

You want to see real racism? Look at the bodies of the two dead officers and understand that they were killed simply because of the color of their uniforms.

Everyone, from the President of the United States to the Mayor of New York City; from the media talking heads to the charlatan community activists, are complicit in the deaths of these two officers. You cannot stand before crowds of people, egging them on, and then, when something happens, pretend you didn’t ask for it. Your actions are like those of a man, handing out free gasoline to arsonists, who then acts shocked when they use it.

To all you celebrities and athletes who had the nerve to walk around with your hands up, or wear shirts, all I can say to you is that you are an utter disgrace.

Here is the truth: Both Michael Brown and Eric Garner were both engaged in criminal behavior at the time of their deaths. That is undisputed fact.

Immediately prior to the shooting, Michael Brown had committed a robbery. When he was stopped by the officer he engaged in a physical confrontation and assaulted the officer. He also tried to disarm the officer and was shot. Michael Brown then began to flee and was pursued by the officer. Officers are charged with upholding the law and he did not have the option to simply let Brown flee. Brown stopped and turned around and by witness accounts he rushed back toward the officers in an offensive manner and was shot fatally. Toxicology reports confirmed he had marijuana in his system.

Michael Brown was 6’4” and 290+ pounds. To put that in perspective, he was bigger than then the average weight of an NFL Defensive Lineman.

The problem with the protest chant: ‘Hand’s Up, Don’t Shoot,’ which became the clarion call of the protesters, was based on a lie. Michael Brown never had his hands up. If he did, he would still be alive.

Prior to the attempted arrest of Eric Garner, the man was engaged in selling loose cigarettes. While many would claim this to be a ‘minor’ charge, the issue is that the police were acting on a history of prior complaints. The fact is that initially, the officers had simply instructed Garner to leave. It was Garner that elevated the incident.  Garner’s own admissions of “every time you see me, you want to mess with me. I'm tired of it. It stops today” indicated that he was drawing a line. Unfortunately, the police enforce the law. We don’t say “oh, you’re breaking the law, but you want me to leave you alone, okay.”

The truth is Eric Garner had an extensive arrest history dating back to 1980, including assault, resisting arrest, and grand larceny. In addition to those charges, there were multiple arrests for selling unlicensed cigarettes. Eric Garner was not simply standing on a street corner, innocently minding his own business. He was breaking the law, perhaps a minor one, but a law that police officers are required to enforce nonetheless.

Eric Garner was 6’3” and 350+ pounds. To put that in perspective, he was bigger than then the average weight of an NFL Offensive Lineman.

The protest shirts: ‘I Can’t Breathe’ became the new catch phrase of the protesters. But the reality is that if Eric Garner had simply put his hands behind his back when instructed, and not made the conscientious decision to physically resist arrest, he would still be alive.

There was no illegal choke hold applied. You only have to look at the video to see that. Garner was subdued and held down because he had been resisting arrest. To all of those who got their police training by watching re-runs of Law and Order, I challenge you to try and take a 350lb man into custody who doesn’t want to comply. When you get him on the ground, you keep him there so he doesn’t get back up and fight you again. Maybe Garner should have thought about the ramifications before he made the choice to resist.

Despite the claims and inferences, by those who seek to fan the flames of racial discord in this country for personal gain, neither man died as a result of police racism. They died as a direct result of their criminal activities.

No, the two men who died as a result of racism, borne out of the false rhetoric callously spewed out by the perennial rabble-rousers, were Police Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu. They were killed simply because they were blue.

The media will now wring their hands with feigned remorse, ignoring the fact that those same hands had just recently been used to fan the flames. The politicians and activists will attempt to back track their positions, saying it really isn’t their fault, and scamper back into the darkness.

And just before Christmas, two families, including a young, 13 year old boy, will bury their heroes, all because of the color of their uniforms.

Fidelis Ad Mortem

Note: In 2014, as of this writing, the number of officers killed in the line of duty stands at 112, up 10% from 2013. That averages to about one line of duty death every three days. Where are the protest marches for the war on police officers?

Interviewed at Authors to Watch

I had the opportunity recently to be interviewed by the wonderful Tricia over at the book review website: Authors to Watch.

It was a great time and I hope that you will book mark the site and use it as a resource to check out new books by emerging authors.

http://www.authorstowatch.com/2014/10/interview-with-andrew-nelson.html

Introduction to MS (When your world gets turned upside down)

MS - Multiple Sclerosis 

The very words send a shiver down your spine, and makes you want to change the subject to something more pleasant.

But what happens when you cannot change the subject? What happens when the subject picks you? Worse yet, what happens when the subject picks your child?

Welcome to our new world.

Last September we received the diagnosis no parent wants to hear, our son Luke has MS. We had taken him to the ER because he was physically unable to walk. He'd been previously treated (and misdiagnosed) as having severe vertigo. However, upon examination, the ER doctor immediately diagnosed him as a severe fall risk, admitted him and sent him for an MRI which showed the scarring on his brain. He subsequently lost sight in one eye, although that has partially returned.

The disease usually affects those between the age of 20-50 and is two times more likely to affect females. He's 23 and male, guess he just got lucky.

There is no cure for MS and the current course of treatments only serve to improve function after an attack, or attempt to prevent new ones. Each attack does its damage, which is irreparable. 

I'm proud of my son. He had a choice. He could either bitch and moan about how unfair life was, or he could chose to fight back. He chose the latter. 

In retrospect the illness began most likely in May, but might have been even earlier. There were small tells with his walking, which we just passed off as being clumsy. Either way, nothing we could have done would have prevented this. We must all now learn to cope with it.

Sadly, it is not the disease which is proving to be so formidable, but the system. At 23, unable to work, and living in central Illinois, there is no assistance available to him. He lost his unemployment, because of the illness, and is not ill enough to merit disability as of now. 

We have been trying to help him as best we can, but it is an uphill battle. My wife has set-up a fund, to try and help him get out of the immediate financial hole that the disease has caused him. I would be extremely grateful if you would take the time to visit it, and perhaps share it with friends and family.

http://www.gofundme.com/Lukes_MS_Fund

Every donation helps.

I'm a writer, and I get to create characters and the worlds they live in. If it were up to me, this is one story I would never have chosen to write.

Thank you and God bless !!

Andrew

Author Interview - Wayne Zurl

I had an opportunity to sit down and talk to mystery author, Wayne Zurl, awhile back and finally had the time to put it all together. Like me, Wayne spent his formative years as a police officer back east. He worked for the Suffolk County Police Department for twenty years and also served with the United States Army. I hope you enjoy the interview.

Me: You’re a pretty prolific writer, with something like twenty books under your belt.  As I understand, they all center around a main protagonist named Sam Jenkins. So for the uninitiated, describe your debut novel, A New Prospect, for my readers in 25 words or less.

Wayne Zurl (WZ): How about 28? What it would be like if Andy Sipowitz was hired as sheriff in Mayberry? A NEW PROSPECT is like an episode of NYPD Blue in the Smoky Mountains.

Me: Like me, you’re a former cop from New York. So how on earth did you ever get dragged into the seedy world of being a professional writer?

WZ: After I retired and left Long island, I volunteered at a Tennessee state park. One of my jobs was to help the rangers keep the French & Indian War re-enactors from bayoneting each other during the battle scenarios, but more often, I wrote publicity for the living history program. That led to selling non-fiction magazine articles—twenty-six in ten years. I thought getting paid to write was cool, but when I couldn’t dream up anything new and thrilling to say about 18th century Tennessee, I hung up my spurs. Then I needed a creative outlet and I decided to try fiction. How difficult could it be? Ha! That leads me to the next question.

Me: So Sam Jenkins made the move from New York to Tennessee, where did the idea come from to have him fight crime in the not so sleepy little town of Prospect, Tennessee?

WZ: Around the time I was contemplating a foray into the world of fiction—or making model airplanes or oil paintings—I read Robert B. Parker’s NIGHT PASSAGE, his first Jesse Stone novel. I liked the premise. Stone was a former LAPD detective who took a chief’s job in a small Massachusetts town. I asked myself: Why couldn’t I write about a retired New York detective who began a second career as the chief of a small Tennessee department? I’d been a cop and Parker wasn’t. I knew all the technicalities and details and would simply recycle old cases that I investigated or supervised and transplant them from NY to the fictional small city of Prospect. (Just for clarification and comparison, some cities in Tennessee are smaller than incorporated villages in New York.) At that time I knew nothing about the publishing business, but I was enthused, so I grabbed a pen and pad and started to write. 

Me: As a fellow policeman turned writer, I know how hard it is to accurately portray the day to day ops of a department. How did you capture the small town department environment?  Did you have any inside help from local guys when you were creating the background story?

WZ: On Long Island, we had a few small town and village departments that we assisted (especially with felonies) occasionally. I had a basic idea about the differences between large PDs with many specialized bureaus and sections and the small departments that were basically uniformed service providers. But with my protagonist coming from a big place to a small one, I’d give him an ego just slightly smaller than South Dakota and let him insist on doing his own felony investigations. In Tennessee that’s not done, so I need a little suspension of disbelief here. Prospect PD is typical of the area, twelve officers and the chief with no detectives. In my last command, when we were busy and up to strength, I had twenty-eight detectives, two secretaries, and a community service aide to work with. I wanted Sam to share this background and with his move, share in my culture shock. When I need an injection of local atmosphere or procedure, I call on a friend who works as a crime scene investigator for the county sheriff. He also provides up to date scientific and forensic information that I relay to my dinosaur friend at prospect PD.

Me: Mystery writers are an odd bunch. Alcoholic beverages aside, what, or who, would you say has influenced your work the most?

WZ: I’ve got a few favorites who I take inspiration from. Robert B. Parker for his spare and snappy minimalist style and easy going dialogue. James Lee Burke as inspiration in descriptions of people, places, and events that he often turns into sheer poetry. Joseph Wambaugh, the reigning king of police procedurals, for his style of taking seemingly unrelated police incidents and eventually meld them into a coherent storyline with a common ending. And that other guy from Long Island who writes mysteries, Nelson DeMille, who seems to have an endless supply of quality smartass dialogue coming from his protagonist, retired Detective John Corey.

Me: Most people pick up a book and don’t realize just how much WORK actually goes into writing. What would you say was the hardest part in writing?

WZ: When I have the inspiration and the ideas are flowing, writing is fun. It’s after the last word is on paper, after you finish what you consider your final edit and you’re happy with the end product that the hard work begins. If you have no idea who might want your story or book, plan on a time consuming search for a publisher. I was lucky to have tied up with a couple of publishers who handled my full-length novels and the shorter novelettes. So, for a few years, I haven’t had to worry about selling what I wrote.

That brings me to a job I detest—the post-publication marketing and promotions. I had envisioned getting published and then my only other obligation would be show up at some local bookshop, smile for the customers, and sign a few books, with the publisher’s marketing people doing what they know best, and about which I am mostly ignorant. Another misconception. The last time I worked on computers, (1967) they were seven-feet tall. Today, I’m about a step above clueless with my PC. I didn’t know a blogspot from a sunspot and Twitter was another word for a stupid person. Out of necessity, I learned and I persevere—almost daily, and under protest.

Me: When you wrote A New Prospect, did you envision it being a onetime deal, or did you have an idea that you were going to do a series of books?

WZ: I was naive when I envisioned Sam’s career at Prospect PD. I not only wanted a bunch of books, but a long running TV series or a bunch of annual TV movies. Just kidding.

Like any cop who worked a crowded and busy area, I retired with a large collection of war stories. I wanted to chronicle them all and that would call for numerous books. I ended up compositing two or more actual incidents which, with a minimum of manipulation, fit together in a more readable and interesting story. This has worked for four novels and more than twenty novelettes.

We all know that police work is not always a thrill a minute, so fictionalizing and embellishing the real stuff takes them from potentially mundane semi-autobiographical sketches that might sound like a police report to what I hope comes across as good fiction.

Me: When I was writing my first novel, I had this vision of ‘and they lived happily ever after’ playing out in my mind. That didn’t work out quite so well. Did your original idea for the ending actually survive until the end or did you alter it along the way?

WZ: When I finished my first draft of A NEW PROSPECT, I hired a “book doctor” to evaluate the manuscript. He gave me good news and bad news. He liked my style and voice. He liked the characters and natural dialogue. Then he said, “In 1985 this would have been a quick sell. In 2006, it won’t fly.” He went on to explain what 21st century publishers (and readers) want to see.

So, I jumped through hoops to turn the story inside out—bury the backstory—start off with a shocker—adapt an “arrive late, leave early” style for the scenes and chapters. By the time I held what I considered a finished product, I had read and revised that thing so many times, I hated the sight of it. Then I sent it back for a second opinion. And he drew my attention to another area of seemingly necessary alteration.

In fictionalizing these actual incidents and having no obligation to remain absolutely truthful, I thought it was a great opportunity to take all the little things that didn’t go right and fix them—all the points I missed, things that could have quickly cleared the case, could be seen after Jenkins gets divine enlightenment from who knows what. He could say all the clever things I didn’t think of until after I walked away from the scene and sat drinking coffee in my car or the office. In short, I’d make Sam’s cases pieces of investigative artwork—the kind of fiction I’d like to read. Book Doctor helped me come down from “cloud nine” with a simple statement, “Perfect is boring.” He suggested a somewhat flawed character; someone who doesn’t always do the right thing; someone who might cause a reader to say, “Oh, Sam, you’re a good cop, you know better.” So, I revised yet again.

Eventually, I found a publisher willing to take a chance on Sam and me. In the end, all that work was worth it. The book won two awards and came in as a finalist in two more contests

Me: Your latest book, Pigeon River Blues, just came out last May. Are you planning any new releases before the end of the year?

WZ: After the release of PIGEON RIVER BLUES, my publisher announced that he was going out of the traditional publishing business. That left me sitting with two finished novels and no one to publish them. I had intended to participate in a couple of virtual book tours for PIGEON RIVER BLUES and then get serious about finding a new press, but as fate would have it, someone introduced me to a pair of agents who liked the first fifty pages of A TOUCH OF MORNING CALM, a story about Korean organize crime. When the agents requested the full manuscript, I spent time sprucing up the draft.  After reading it, they asked if I had anything else completed so they could try and sell a publisher on a two or three book contract deal. I just finished my final edits on A CAN OF WORMS, in which I composite two old cases and tell the story of a police officer being accused of a prior rape. I’ve got my fingers crossed, hoping they have success when the acquisitions editors return from their traditional August vacations.

Earlier this summer I signed a contract with a publisher who wants to take five previously unpublished novelettes and create an anthology in print and eBook called FROM NEW YORK TO THE SMOKIES: A Collection of Sam Jenkins Mysteries. These stories, of about 10,000 words each, span a time frame from 1963 to 2010. It’s expected out in April or May of 2015

Me: Do you ever get writers block? And if so, how do you deal with it?

WZ: Sure, there are times when I can’t dream up a nifty connection or a believable red herring to save my life. To get past that, I usually uncork a better than average bottle of wine, grab two glasses, and invite my wife to help solve my problem. She’s pretty good.  

Me: Where do you get your ideas for your books? Are they ripped from the Smoky Mountain headlines, or are you like me and let your head conjure up some truly nefarious ideas?

WZ: As I mentioned in question 3, I use actual cases and incidents and people as a basis for the stories I embellish. More recently, just like an episode of Law & Order, I’ve ripped a few local headlines apart and integrated them with my cast of regular characters and associated vignettes from the old days. I’m always honest and admit I have more of a memory than an imagination. I only have to get creative when it comes to manipulating these stories from the northeast to the mid-south. Sometimes I have to alter the dialect from NU Yawk to Tenn-uh-see.

Me: Is there anything else you’d like to share with the readers?

WZ: I’d like to thank you for inviting me to your blog and giving me an opportunity to meet your fans. I’m glad to meet more living proof that there is life after the PD. I wish you good luck with all your books.

Me: Wayne, thank you for taking the time to participate in this interview. If you’re a fan of mystery / suspense genre, then I recommend you check out all of Wayne’s books. You can find them and more about the author at the links below.

Links to connect with Wayne Zurl:

Author website:  http://www.waynezurlbooks.net 

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/#!/waynezurl 

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/waynezurl

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4158372.Wayne_Zurl

Google +:  https://plus.google.com/109594006376039428353#109594006376039428353/posts

Amazon author page: http://www.amazon.com/author/waynezurl 

B&N author page: http://barnesandnoble.com/s/wayne-zurl

Mind Wings Audio author page: http://mindwingsaudio.com/?s=wayne+zurl

Independent Author Network page: http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/wayne-zurl.html

Small Town Secrets (Print Version)

Just wanted to let everyone know that the print version of Small Town Secrets is now available. You can obtain it, along with all my other books, directly through Createspace

Beach Bound Books - Interview

I had the distinct pleasure of being interviewed by Stacie Theis, over at her blog: Beach Bound Books.

I thought I would share the link for you to go and read it: Beach Bound Books - Author Interview: Andrew G. Nelson

If you are a reader, I am sure you will enjoy spending some time over there. Stacie does a lot of interviews of a diverse field of authors.

Small Town Secrets (Now available on Amazon Kindle)

Well, I am happy to announce that my latest book, Small Town Secrets, is now available as an e-book on the Amazon Kindle platform.

This book introduces a new main character, Alex Taylor, who watched as the bottle eagerly consumed both a career and a chance at love.

Now the former NYPD sergeant has a shot at redemption in the idyllic small town of Penobscot, New Hampshire.

But when the body of a young woman is discovered, the clues threaten to rip the façade off the town, and expose its seedier side.

Alex soon finds that murder might be an option to protect small town secrets.

The print version should be available in the next few weeks.

For my fans of the James Maguire series, do not despair. The next book in that series will be out this fall.