The Journey

It was somewhere around mid-1978 (times are sometimes like places, aren't they?) and I was sitting in my parents' living room in a southern suburb of Miami. The two of them were looking at me in a state of shock. I had just announced to them that I was going to be a police officer. They all but begged me not to. "You are a writer," they insisted. "We are planning to send you to journalism school." I don't remember exactly what I said to counter their argument, but my mind was set, and nothing was going to untrack me from my new heading. After all, I was 20 years old and knew everything, right? My parents had every right to believe that I was going to be a writer. I began writing at age nine. This was not by anyone's encouragement or influence, mind you. My Dad was a sculptor and sailboat builder, my Mother a musician, music teacher, and later, a public school administrator. My paternal grandfather had been a professional musician, playing several instruments and touring the world with various bands and orchestras. The fine arts gene was alive and well in my DNA. I wrote about anything: music, sports, even poetic passages about dreams I had. My parents' fears--and tears--that 1978 day came from confusion, sorrow, and worry. They were well justified. "Your writing is going to come back to you," they said with the certainty of a parent. "You'll see." Hah. Silly parents. They loved me, but really, what did they know? I was soaring inexorably into a future of challenge and excitement that only the protection of my community could provide; writing be damned. I entered the police academy in June of 1979 and policed the streets of Opa-Locka, North Miami, and Metro's South District in uniform until 1985, when I was transferred to Metro Police's Homicide Section as an investigator. From the moment I graduated the academy to my retirement day in 2006, I never stopped writing. Police work offered a cornucopia of stories, unique experiences, and engagements with people from all walks of life, engaged in situations I could never have imagined. Police work didn't stop me from writing, it only drove me to write more. I saw that the police union (the Police Benevolent Association) had a monthly newspaper called HEAT. There was a lot of useful information in HEAT, but it lacked some humor and fun. So, I started writing a satire column that made light of some of the more ridiculous rules and policies of the police department. I called it, "And Nothing But the Truth." There was no pay involved, but I enjoyed it and got a lot of positive feedback from the article, which ran in every issue for twenty years. In the same spirit, I sent some police satire/commentary material to took Police and Security News and got my first piece published in their magazine in 1987. It became a feature column, and I continue to write "And Nothing But the Truth" for PSN today. The column has appeared in every issue for the last thirty-six years. The stories and experiences I accumulated in my police career ended up being a meandering conglomeration of notes and segments--many of them handwritten on legal pads--which I eventually began to compile into recognizable chapters. It took a good six to seven years, but this jumble of notes and memories ultimately became a memoir of my life and law enforcement career in Miami (including many poignant and meaningful instances in my childhood): Badge, Tie, and Gun: Life and Death Journeys of a Miami Detective (BTG for short). This book is currently with my agent, Cricket Freeman, and we are in the process of submitting it to book editors for publication. That's where we are now--fingers crossed, and waiting. In the meantime, I am headlong into The Flyboys, a novel I am writing set in 1986 Miami. There was a book before BTG - a sort of "how-to" guide that I wrote for beginning investigators. I self-published that one. Why am I going traditional for BTG and Flyboys? Let's save that for the next blog post. (And, yes, you are correct: Mom and Dad were right.)