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The Chinatown Murders Cover Photo

2/23/2017

Seattle's Chinatown Gate

Work is moving along on The Chinatown Murders. At the time of this writing, I only have nine scenes left to write on the first draft. Of course, in the second draft I’m likely to add things (I can already think of two scenes that are missing) and take stuff out, but it’s a good start. I expect to complete the first draft this week.

Which brings me to you, dear friend. It’s time to put some effort into the book’s cover. I am publishing six photos here and would like your input about which you think would make the best book cover.

Which picture do you think matches the theme of the book best? I’d love to hear your opinions. Please drop me a note at www.pennwallace.com to vote on your favorite by sending me the photo number.

To give you an idea of what the book is about (in case you’ve been living in a cave for the last few months), here’s the first draft of the book cover description:

Catrina Flaherty is up to her ears in rape and murder.

Someone is raping women working at message parlors in China Town. He selects his victims because they are undocumented aliens. They can’t go to the police or they risk deportation.

Now he has escalated to murder.

What do you do when you can’t go to the police?

You call Cat Flaherty.

But Cat is also in love. Has she finally found her perfect match?

Chris has his hands full with his first murder case. Ted’s little brother, Carlito, has been framed by an old nemesis and Chris must find the truth.

With a shock ending that you’ll never predict, the latest Cartrina Flaherty novel is a page burner.

Last week I wrote about how difficult it is to get inside the mind of a serial killer. In The Chinatown Murders I write the killer's scenes from his point of view. I'm scared to say that I’m getting into it and his scenes are becoming easier and easier to write.

Members of my writers group seem to be enjoying this perspective. They say he’s easy to hate, that he’s a truly bizarre character. I haven’t read too many books from the villain’s perspective (I know that James Patterson has done this), so this is going to be unique.

In the meantime I have to make an appointment with my shrink to get him out of my head.

As I get close to finishing the first draft, it will soon be time to call for beta readers. I ask a dozen or so true believers to read the second draft of the book and send me their comments. I want to know if the characters and technology are believable. Does the plot move along at a good pace. What slows it down? Am I missing any information? Am I telling you too much?
This kind of feedback is invaluable to making the best book possible and enhance the readers enjoyment. If you’re interested in being a beta reader, I’ll put the call out next week. But be sure to respond quickly. I usually have more volunteers than I can accommodate.

Thanks for all of your help. It truly takes a village to raise a book.

In case you’re wondering what’s around the bend as I get close to finishing the first draft of The Chinatown Murders, you’re in luck. Next up on my list is a new Ted Higuera book. I don’t even have a working title yet, but it’s about an ISIS cyber attack on America. (By the way, this plot was suggested by a reader. Be sure to send me your ideas and see if they make it into a book.)

The Islamic radicals stop pacemakers, hack into cars, erase bank information and shut down power grids. The authorities are seemingly helpless to stop these attacks. But the terrorist didn’t count on one thing.

Ted Higuera.

Ted goes to war with ISIS trying to shut down the cyber attacks and put’s his life on the line in service of his country.

I don’t know exactly how the story is going to roll out yet, but I’ve been doing research in my spare time. You’re gonna love it.

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Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer

2/12/2017

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A good night for a mystery.

I’m working hard on my new book, The Chinatown Murders. I’m making good progress, exceeding my goal of two thousand words almost every day.

This book is about a true case that happened in Seattle. I can’t give you too many details about what happened because I don’t want to give away the plot. Let me just say that a serial rapist worked Chinatown for over two years. He was free to spread his reign of terror because his victims were undocumented aliens and afraid to go to the police. It seemed like a perfect case for Catrina Flaherty.

All of my books are based on true crimes. I insert my cast of players and sometimes invent facts here and there to enhance the story line, but basically, I can’t make this stuff up.

In The Chinatown Murders our rapist escalates. He accidently kills one of his victims and gets the biggest thrill of his life. It feels so good that he does it again. When Asian girls start dying, a friend goes to Cat. Catrina runs a parallel investigation to the one run by detective sergeant Tom Bremen, Catrina’s former lover. Needless to say, neither is eager to work with the other.
In the meantime, Cat’s relationship with Harvey Bernstein heats up. Could Catrina have finally met a man she can settle down with?

Remember the end of The Cartel Strikes Back? We left Ted’s little brother, Carlito, in quite a bind. He was arrested for a gangland killing.

In The Chinatown Murders attorney Chris Hardwick, Ted’s best friend, takes on Carlito’s case and fights corruption in the District Attorney’s office. The case takes a few twists and turns and we get to sit in the gallery and watch the two attorneys’ battle it out.

I have to give a big thanks to my friends Ron Ramey and Mike Gibbs. Ron is a retired attorney in Huston. He provides me with incredible insights into legal matters. I lay out the case for him and he tears it apart, showing me the weaknesses and pointing out new paths the case could take.

Mike is a veteran of more than thirty years on the San Diego Police Department. For several years now, he has read and corrected all of my “cop scenes.” He’s given me wonderful insight into how an officer’s mind works and corrected many inaccuracies in my fight scenes.

I owe them both a debt of gratitude.

Looking into Elliot Bay

I’m loving writing The Chinatown murders, but it’s creeping me out. The book opens inside the mind of the serial killer as he makes his first kill. We continue to see the world through his depraved eyes As the book continues, we go back and forth between the killer and Catrina in their intricate game of cat and mouse.

I am not demented killer, but I have to think like one when I write his scenes. I somehow get lost in his head as I write, but when I stop and read what I’ve just written, I’m shocked at the state of his depravity. Last night I dreamed about a lost bear cub finding a home with us and a new baby in our lives. Maybe my subconscious mind is cleansing itself of the horrible things I’ve been thinking while I sleep.

Whatever my mental state, I think you’re going to like this book. It’s set in Seattle and if you live there, you will recognize the scenes, places and some of the people. If you’ve never been to Seattle, you will come away feeling like you know the town.

I had never been to New York, but Connie and I watched so much Law and Order I felt like I knew the town. After a Christmastime visit in 2003, we came home and every time we watched Law and Order we said “I know that place. Remember when …”

I hope that after you’ve read the book, you will take a trip to Seattle (in the summer when it’s not raining) and feel the same way.

As always, I have a twist at the ending that you won’t see coming. I ask readers to write me if they figure out the ending. I even put up a prize for my beta readers who guessed the ending to The Cartel Strikes Back. I didn’t get a single person write me to say they got it before the reveal.

The Chinatown murders has a similar ending. If you guess it before I reveal the ending, please drop me a line.

In the meantime, if you haven’t yet read The Cartel Strikes Back, you should get it right away. Not just because it’s a rousing good tale, but because it is the prelude to so much that happens in The Chinatown Murders.

In The Cartel Strikes Back, Ted and crew are back in Mexico. After the world’s most wanted drug lord, El Posolero, makes a daring escape from prison, he vows revenge on the man who sent him there, Ted Higuera. I don’t want to give away too much of the story, but several of the plot lines in The Chinatown Murders start in The Cartel Strikes Back.

Click here to get your copy.

Stay tuned and I’ll keep you posted on my progress. It won’t be too long now until I make my call for beta readers. In the meantime, have a great week.

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Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 22

2/3/2017

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Commercial Message:

I hate selling and I hate commercials, but I've been told that you have to make your sales pitch twice on each blog page, so here's my low-key attempt at shameless self-promotion.

In The Cartel Strikes Back, Ted proposed to Maria, but isn't ready for her answer. He follows her to Mexico where things go south in a hurry.

Calling on his circle of friends, Ted and company are engaged in a full-scale war with the Baja Cartel and it's ruthless leader, El Posolero, the most wanted man in the world.

Get your copy today at https://www.amazon.com/Cartel-Strikes-Back-Higuera-Book-ebook/dp/B01MEEA0IK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486148746&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Cartel+Strikes+Back.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

Panama's oldest church - In need of slight repair

The Flight Home

Dawn and I decided to spend a few days in Panama City before returning home. I found a lovely colonial style hotel in Casco Viejo, the old town. It was originally built in the nineteenth century as a mansion for a French planter. The place was like something out of a Bogey and Bacall movie.

Painted light blue with white trim, it had a turret on the corner of the top floor. The lobby was filled with antiques and the place looked frozen in the Thirties.

The only bad thing I have to say about the Magnolia Inn was that we had to climb four flights of stairs to get to our room. With my bad knees, that was a problem.

The second and third floors of the hotel is a youth hostel. Groups of young people filled the place with an excitement and energy you don’t find in a five-star hotel.

I went all-out for our last nights in Panama. I got a top-floor suite for around a hundred dollars (US) a night. We had a queen sized bed, a little mini-kitchen area and a private bathroom. It was a nice room, but by no stretch of the imagination a “suite.”

The Casco Viejo district was great fun. Many of the building are from the colonial era and have been lovingly restored. Shops and restaurants flourish at street-level and apartments and condos fill the upper floors.

The neighborhood is also a haven for small but wonderful restaurants. During our time in Bocas, I was convinced that there was no good food in Panama. Once we were in Panama City, it didn’t take long to convince me otherwise.

I still don’t know much about Panamanian cuisine because the Panamanian restaurants all seemed to be seafood places. I’m okay with seafood, but wouldn’t go out of my way to find it.
However, there were good Italian, tapas, Mexican and French restaurants. Our last dinner in Panama was at a little French bistro across the street from the French Embassy. It was delightful.

Balboa's soldiers making the streets safe for democracy

Casco Viejo is party central. There are plenty of roof-top bars that party early into the morning. Dawn and I checked one out about a block from our hotel.

We had dinner downstairs in the restaurant, then rode the elevator to the roof. There was a long bar against a wall and a corrugated iron roof over the open-air lounge. When we stepped off the elevator, we were met by a hostess. The bar was full. They were having some sort of special promotion sponsored by a beer company.

The hostess sized us up and asked us to follow her. She led us through the bar, opened a velvet rope and ushered us into the VIP section. I don’t know if we got the treatment because we were Gringos (there were lots of Gringos that didn’t get into the VIP section) or because we were old or because we just looked important.

We sat at the bar, had free tapas (if we weren’t already full from dinner) and took in the sights and sounds.

All of this when people lined up at the elevator on the first floor, waiting for someone to leave so they could go up.

Now that I think about it, they probably put us in the VIP section because we’re so damned good looking.

We never left Casco Viejo while we were there. We did tons of walking, visited historic sites, old churches etc. One day we could see some sort of celebration going on in the park from our window. We walked down, cruised the stalls, I got a hot dog and Dawn joined a professional dance troupe as they danced in the plaza.

We spent a whole day at the Panama Canal. Most of the people there oohed and aahed, but having been through the Ballard Locks in Seattle dozens of times, it was impressive but not overwhelming.

There is a wonderful museum at the locks. I’m the kind of guy that reads every plaque (and I’m a slow reader) and views every display. Dawn’s attention span is not quite up to going to a museum with me. She soon disappeared.

I caught up to her in the last room and we went looking for the overview to the locks. We found a little café, had a cup of coffee and rested my weary knees.

The Miraflores Locks

It was a slow morning and we didn’t see even one ship locking through. I’m told that at times they have ships lined up like rush hour traffic, but not that day.

We took a shuttle from our hotel and too soon he was loading up again. We took the scenic route back to the hotel and drove over and along the canal for some time. We were rewarded with seeing some ships that had already locked through taking the Canal towards the Atlantic side.

when it was built, it was some feat of engineering, especially when you consider that it had never been done before. The largest ships in the world, aircraft carriers, super tankers and now super cruise ships were not able to use the Canal because they were too big.

At the time the locks were built a huge ship was three hundred feet long. Now, with these Goliaths up to a thousand feet long, the locks are obsolete.

Being an enterprising country, Panama solved the problem. In April of 2016, shortly before we got there, they opened a new system of locks that could handle the big boys.

There has been lots of talk about building a second canal, through Nicaragua’s Lake Nicaragua, but political events pretty much shut down that project. With the new locks, the Panama Canal is well positioned to handle Twenty-First Century needs.

Panama is truly the crossroads of the world. Everything being transported between Europe and the East Coast to Asia and the West Coast must travel through the Canal.

I would have loved to stay a few more days in Panama City to explore, but San Diego waited for us. We had to catch a cab to the airport on our fourth morning to head home.

After a long day at the Locks

Now comes the horrible flight home. After the painful trip to Panama, we were prepared for an equally uncomfortable flight back to San Diego.

We were fooling ourselves.

We had tickets on Spirit Airlines. We got to the airport on time (around six am), flew through security and sat and waited at our boarding gate. And waited. And waited. There was an announcement that our flight was delayed. The woman at the boarding gate asked all passengers transferring to another flight to please come and talk to her.

We had two options. We could postpone our flight until tomorrow and fly on our regular schedule.

The other option was that we could fly out as scheduled but this left us with a nine hour layover in Tampa. The airline would put us up in a hotel, she told us, until the seven thirty flight to the West Coast. We just had to check in with the boarding agent in Tampa, she said, and they would arrange everything.

We already checked out of our hotel and I didn’t want to pay for another night’s stay so we took the second option. When the plane finally loaded, we crammed ourselves into the uncomfortable seats and settled in for three hours of torture.

The flight home was every bit as unpleasant as our flight to Panama, but we bucked up and took it. We arrived in Tampa, went through customs and headed for Sprit Airlines check-in desk.

In keeping with the general lack of service at this airline, the boarding agent told us that the woman in Panama was wrong. We didn’t qualify for a hotel room.

Since our layover was during the day, the airline would not provide the promised hotel room, although we could use the meal vouchers.

I exploded. After the situation in Panama and three hours of cramped, uncomfortable travel, I went postal. I demanded to see the supervisor.

She came out and explained to me, again, why we didn’t qualify for a room. I told her what the agent in Panama told us and she said the Panamanian agent was wrong. She had no right to promise us a room.

I showed her our vouchers for a room and demanded that they keep their promise. The supervisor started back pedaling. Dawn says that she gets embarrassed when I get so assertive, but I wasn’t going to back down. The supervisor was not a happy puppy.

Finally the supervisor advised us to go have breakfast. She would call the hotels and see if she could find us a room.

We followed her advice and found a café close by the boarding gate. I ordered, but Dawn was so upset that she just sat catatonically and waited.

The food was what you would expect from airport fare and the prices accordingly high. Our voucher covered about half the cost.

After our meal, we sat and had coffee while we waited. The supervisor showed up at our table and informed us that she had found a room. She was all apologetic and humble. None of the braggadocio that she showed at the counter.

We accepted her apology and took the room voucher. After catching a shuttle to the hotel we checked in. As was par for our travel, the hotel lobby was under construction and we couldn’t find the check-in desk.

Finally, we got to our room and climbed into bed for a nice nap.

Refreshed, we took the shuttle back to the airport and were on our way. We arrived in San Diego about twelve hours late, grabbed a cab and rode back to the marina. The cab driver was some sort of African and couldn’t believe that we lived on a boat. Here we were coming back from spending four months in the Panamanian jungle and all he could think about was us living on a boat. It was outside his sphere of credibility.

Walking down the dock with a ton of baggage in our hands, I was a little nervous. Our neighbor Tom kept an eye on the boat and sent a couple of emails letting us know that she was okay, but I had to see with my own eyes. Four months is a long time to be away from your floating home.

As we walked down the dock, we could see her masts standing tall and proud above the other masts on our dock. At least she was still floating.

We climbed aboard and began putting her back together. We had stripped her down when we left so we needed to turn on the refer and freezer, make the beds and generally get her ready for life aboard again.

We were so tired that we did the bare minimum and saved the unpacking for the next day.

But all’s well that ends well. We were home. We had an incredible adventure, seen amazing things and met wonderful people. Perhaps best of all, I got the plot for another book.

Keep your eyes on my website. When the Panama book comes out, it will be about Catrina hunting down a serial killer on Bocas del Toro.

For the meantime, I return to more local events. A lot has happened since we’ve been home and I need to catch you up.

The first staircase (of four) in our hotel

I hope you enjoyed this post. If you like my little missives, please help me keep them coming.

Pick up a copy of The Cartel Strikes Back at https://www.amazon.com/Cartel-Strikes-Back-Higuera-Book-ebook/dp/B01MEEA0IK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1486148746&sr=8-1&keywords=The+Cartel+Strikes+Back

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The Chinatown Murders Cover Photo

Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer

Dawn & Penn's Panamanian Adventure - Part 22

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