Ami Maxine

Resolutions

We’re now a few weeks into the new year – and most people have already abandoned their resolutions. If that’s you, no worries. If you’re still kicking yourself for not meeting last year’s resolution, let yourself off the hook. While we changed out calendars with new ones, January first is just the next day. There’s still time to finish, to revise, and to be kinder to ourselves.

This is also a gentle reminder that if you are someone who makes resolutions, you can make fun ones, too. Maybe resolve to jump in puddles. Maybe resolve to try any new fruit you come across. Maybe resolve to learn how many licks it actually takes to get to the center of a Tootsie-Pop. You can make the serious resolutions, too – but try a fun one to keep you motivated. Learn about and celebrate a holiday from a culture that is different from your own. Learn to say hello is twenty other languages. Pick a different genre of music to listen to (that you don’t already) for each month (bonus points if they are genres from other countries). Commit to visiting a brand new location every month – it can be a town nearby you’ve never set foot in or an establishment in your own town/city you’ve not yet been to. Commit to buying something from a local artist or small business each month (doesn’t have to be anything big – keep your budget in mind). Find a “Best of 2024” list – and complete it. Best movies? Books? (Remember that your local library has both these things.) Swap one of your streaming services for one from another country – and watch their shows.

Whatever you choose, just make sure it’s something you’re excited about – otherwise, you’ll reach the end of 2025 with another resolution unfulfilled. (As I teach my students in study skills, also make sure your goal is SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. This will help make sure you aren’t setting yourself up to fail. A vague goal like “I will be kinder” is difficult to measure, and therefore difficult to achieve. “I will commit one random act of kindness every week” is specific and measurable – so we can tell for sure when we’ve completed it.)

I’m not really one for new years resolutions. I am, however, a goal setter. They just don’t usually line up with the yearly calendar. This last year, however, I did have a rather big, year-long goal. A friend of mine gave me the idea – a one million pound challenge. She and I are both part of the same workout group, and it was something she was considering. It sound like fun (though, I’ll admit, it felt unattainable), so I said why not.

There were several points this year where I didn’t think this would happen – and, as indicated by the graph in the image below, there were a few stretches where I didn’t lift at all. BUT – on Dec 30, I finally tipped over that one million mark. It felt good. (Well, my hamstrings would currently beg to differ.)

Part of completing a goal is tracking it. There are a plethora of tracking apps and sheets and planners out there – you just need to find the one that best fits you. I opted for the free version of the Strides app (after trying a couple).

I am in no way affiliated with or receive any funding whatsoever from them. I merely tried a few dozen apps before landing on this one. (I also tried mapping in my paper planner, and it just didn’t work for me.) I appreciate this one because it can connect and auto-track to from other apps. You can also input data manually. I specifically liked this one because I could input how many ‘sessions’ I would do a week, and it let me know how many pounds I’d have to do for each log – as well as whether or not I was on track to meet my goal. Both those things turned out to be rather motivating.

Are you a resolution kind of person? What was the most fun resolution you ever made? What are you hoping to accomplish this year?

Books of 2024

I mentioned last year that I never do the ’52 books in a year’ challenge. I love reading, but it’s difficult to make it a priority when there’s a semester in session because there’s always so much that HAS to get done. So reading falls off the to do list. My StoryGraph* from 2023 did a good job demonstrating this:

I only managed to read 42 books because I read almost all of them during breaks. (That ‘only’ isn’t meant to imply that 42 is a small number of books to read in a year. I mean it in ‘this was the only possible path to that number’ way.)

I wanted to find a way to make reading a priority. In other words, a way to give myself permission to make it a priority (and no, noone needs permission to do so – it’s just how my brain works when I’m teaching). So I joined a book club. When that one turned out to be a complete mess, I joined a different one – June of ’23, the SciFi/Fantasy book club at my local bookshop was about the read Andy Weir’s Hail Mary Project – seemed like a perfect time to join. And then I joined a second one two months later. Fast forward to July of this last year, and I joined a third one…which might just be masochistic of me. 🤣 Three books a month when I’m mid-semester has turned out to be a lot – but I managed to keep my head above water so far. If anything, this has at least allowed me to spread out my books throughout the year:

While I only read two more books than last year, they were apparently longer – I read 4,526 more pages than last year – and that feels like I achieved my overall goal.

The one thing that gets to me, though, is that with three book clubs, there is no time during the semester to read anything just for me. I’ve tried reading ahead, but then by the time the meeting occurs, I’ve read so many other things that I’ve forgotten the book we’re about the discuss (I did start taking notes using the Trello app, though – that helps a bit).

One thing I really like about tracking apps is the ability to easily look back at what I read the previous year. My favorites from nonfiction (17/44) were the memoir Solito by Javier Zamora and the research-driven Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Evolution by Cat Bohannon. Both of these should be required reading – especially for anyone in public office. My favorite fiction (27/44) was Babel by R.F. Kuang.

What did your year of reading look like?

*If you’re on Goodreads but looking for a non-@m@zon alternative, check out StoryGraph. You can even transfer your Goodreads records over to StoryGraph – so no lost information and no wasted time trying to add every book you’ve ever read.

First Friday Rec: The Sum of Us

Title: The Sum of Us
Author: Heather McGee
Genre: Nonfiction, Politics, Race
Pages: 464
Publication Date: February 8, 2022
StoryGraph* Moods: Informative, Reflective, Hopeful
How I Stumbled Upon This Book: Armchair Expert podcast interview
Other Books by McGhee: The Sum of Us (Adapted for Young Readers)
*StoryGraph also offers content warnings.

Description: McGee explores the concept and disadvantages of zero sum thinking: the idea that progress for some must come at the expense of others (in other words, there is a set amount of success available, and if someone else achieves some, that leaves less for the rest of us). McGee instead argues for the Solidarity Dividend: “the benefits we gain when people come together across race to accomplish what we simply can’t do on our own.”

Why I recommend this book:

To be clear, I go beyond recommending this book – I think it should be required reading (especially for anyone who wants to serve a political office). Through the use of economic data, McGee demonstrates that discriminatory laws and practices aimed at Black folks actually go on to negatively impact everyone. While I wish we lived in a world where non-Black folks could care about these issues without it having to also affect themselves, that’s not reality – so hopefully this angle will help people to care.

Each chapter focuses on race intersecting with another topic – integration, public education and healthcare, homeownership, unionization, the founding of the U.S., segregated living, climate change and the environment, colorblindness, and the benefit of diversity. McGee creates her arguments with intelligence and compassion, and supports it with scholarship (a quarter of the book is her resource list), as well as story and examples – all while making the entire thing readable to even the most general audience. As Sheela Clary of The Berkshire Edge puts it, this is “a book that articulates our problems with compassion and kindness, and inspires me to dig deep and seek out difficult conversations. … Life will be better for all of us if we live as though we’re actually, truly in this together.”

Racism is a systemic construct – not a personal failing. We fail when we try to pretend it’s not there. We fail when we pass off “I don’t see race” as a positive (because it’s not – it erases the lived experience of people of color). We fail when we are out only for ourselves.

Like I said at the start – this should be required reading.

“I’m fundamentally a hopeful person, because I know that decisions made the world as it is and that better decisions can change it. Nothing about our situation is inevitable or immutable, but you can’t solve a problem with the consciousness that created it.” Heather McGee

Chocolate

I get personally offended when someone calls white confections ‘white chocolate.’

I don’t mean this in a serious way. But enough so that whenever someone says this in my presence, my friends will look me in the eye and recite, “It’s not chocolate.”

Yes, white ‘chocolate’ uses cocoa butter, thereby ‘technically’ qualifying it as such (please do excuse all my air quotes), whereas white confection uses vegetable oil and sugar – but for me, the key ingredient is missing: cocoa powder. (White ‘chocolate’ uses milk powder.) For me, it’s not chocolate if there’s no cocoa powder. (Or if it’s filled with all kinds of ‘extra stuff’ like PGRP, or polyglycerol polyricinoleate, an emulsifier made from glycerol and fatty acids. Or butyric acid, which means ‘the acid of butter’ because they first discovered it on rancid butter – and is known for causing a very unpleasant ordor. But yes – put these in my chocolate…?). Some well-known brands contain as little as 11% cocoa powder and a lot of unneeded ‘stuff’ that makes it taste waxy and gross… These things are added to make it cheap and to give it a longer shelf life.

Chocolate requires cocoa solids (the seeds/nibs, which are fermented, dried, roasted, then ground – the ration of cocoa powder to the rest of the ingredients is the ‘darkness’), cocoa butter (which stabilizes it and keeps it from melting at room temp), and sugar to sweeten it (plain cocoa powder is rather bitter). It’s that simple. And so tasty.

In 2015, I had the opportunity to be assistant director for a study abroad trip to Costa Rica, and we took the students on a chocolate tour. If possible, I was even more excited than the students to learn all about this process. That process starts here

with the cocoa fruit – where the magic exists. The fruit contains the cocoa seeds and the white substance cocoa butter (which actually had an almost mango taste to it):

We learned all about the process of harvesting the fruit, the seven days it takes for the seeds to ferment, two to dry, and then how they go about roasting it (pan roast versus fire). Yep, we’re over a week into the process, and it has yet to look anything like a proper chocolate bar. (Remember this the next time you balk at the price of a good bar of chocolate.)

Part of the tour involved a demonstration where the students were given the opportunity to hand grind the seeds (this was originally done with a slab of volcanic rock and a warmed rolling pin made of the same rock) and remove the husks (involves allowing the nibs and husks to cascade from one dish to another while blowing against the stream – the lighter husks will blow away while the heavier nibs continue to fall. (There are, of course, more modern ways this is done now. But it was fun to watch the students at work.)

After the demonstration, we were given the opportunity to sample the freshest chocolate I’ve ever had in my life – straight from the seed with a bit of raw sugar and cinnamon added. They also melted some down for us to drink as cocoa (and provided things like spices and sea salt to add to our liking).

Even before this experience, I preferred ‘good’ chocolate – meaning on the darker side and without the stuff they add that can also be used in things like making plastics (for things like the faces of signs, goggles, and screw driver handles), used in perfumes, herbicides, and as a leather tanning agent, and as a sweetening agent in gasoline… (not sure why gasoline needs a sweetening agent?)

I grew up on Fannie May (no, not the one associate with the mortgage crisis) and Seroogy’s. These days, my go-to is Alter Eco – they keep it simple. And delicious. (Check out their Brown Butter bar…) Lots of people default to the ‘cheap stuff’ – because yes, bars like Alter Eco cost more. But because it is so delicious, it takes less to satisfy and lasts longer. (And no, I am in no way affiliate with any of these companies. I was just looking for blog ideas, and a friend said – you know how you roll your eyes every time someone says the phrase ‘white chocolate’? 🤣¯\_(ツ)_/¯ )

Do you have a favorite chocolate? Do you also get irked when people misuse the word ‘chocolate’?

(By the way, this was the Rainforest Chocolate Tour in San Carlos, Costa Rica. I’m in no way affiliated with them, either – just a good time if you ever find yourself in the area.)

Seventeen

If you are thinking of self-publishing and therefore utilizing some print-on-demand options, let me tell you about a recently learned lesson I’ve had: returns.

When I first set up my Ingr@mSp@rk (IS) account and started publishing, I set my returns to ‘yes’ and ‘return’ – because many sources said bookshops would be less likely to buy if they couldn’t return, and I’d rather get the book back and try to sell the copy again than have it destroyed (especially since THE WRITER still gets charged for it either way).

I went almost a year and a half without a single return. And then I had a flood of seventeen within a couple weeks. Seventeen. I started poking around.

IS was no help – they repeatedly responded with the same answer despite my pointing out that the numbers didn’t add up. I asked for help in figuring out what the issue was, and they kept saying that the return information is ‘proprietary.’ In other words, they were absolutely no help, and now I owe them money, and they won’t tell me why. (My writing bestie had a similar flood, though not quite as extensive, from a book he launched over two years ago.)

I posted in a couple groups – one on F@cebook and the community board with the Authors Guild. Through this, I learned that MANY other folks have been receiving a sudden influx of returns from IS, which to me is problematic. Especially since IS refuses to be of any help in getting to the bottom of what is going on.

A month later, I still don’t have answers. But I did get some insight from a couple folks in that FB group. The culprit might actually be Am@zon. When a pre-order for paperback is set up through IS, it will push out to platforms (if you set it up to be distributed). Then, when your book goes live on Am@zon, the IS is removed. However, if there is a number of pre-orders submitted, Am@zon might order more copies than were purchased to have on hand for more sales; apparently, they might also buy copies from IS if their printers are backlogged.

Two things can happen from there if the extra inventory hangs around. Am@zon might discount the book (so if you see the price drop, they are trying to move the inventory) or they might return it. (Even when I try to go around this platform, they still find a way to screw me over as an indie writer…)

But because IS refuses to let us know where copies are coming from, I have no way of knowing if this is indeed the case or if something fishy is going on. I think it’s crap that IS is allowed to insulate themselves like this.

If this is indeed what is happening, then the differences in my pre-orders between my two books makes more sense. I had assumed that the second had fewer because it was a different genre. But when I went in to change my return options on both to no (because this is ridiculous), I noticed that for my second book, I had apparently set it to no from the start, thereby preventing Am@zon from doing this. Perhaps my pre-order on the first was inflated by Am@zon

So yeah. No answers. Just a heads up in case this is something you are considering for your own writing journey. I don’t think I was prepared for just how many ways the writer is set up for frustrations like this – and this is one I definitely did not need. (I don’t mean to be a downer. But the process can be difficult.)

Dear Reader: I’m Sorry

I did a thing this week that I’ve never done before. I knowingly kept a library book past its due date. 😬

The book in question is one I was tasked with reading for my SciFi/Fantasy book club. It clocked in at 618 pages. And I had already renewed it twice without issue (as I hadn’t started it yet since I was trying to finish other books for other book clubs). I had intended to renew it again – but this time, someone had placed a hold. A hold that didn’t exist when I had been in my account just one day prior. I checked all my other library sources – and every copy/version of it elsewhere had a long list of holds. And since my library allows a book to be checked out for three weeks, there was no way that I’d be able to return it, get it back, and finish it in time.

So I kept it. And I’ve felt incredibly guilty ever since.

‘Ever since’ meaning the whole day and a half I held it after it was due (not to mention some pre-guilt in the days leading up to the due date knowing I would have to hold on to it). This is how my mind works – thinking of that poor reader believing they were about to receive the book they were excited to read only to see it hadn’t been returned on time. Which has happened to me a couple times when I was waiting for a book club book, and they kept it so long that I couldn’t get it in time to read it.

Which is why I spent every waking free moment since I saw I couldn’t renew it again reading, trying to finish it as fast as possible. Which is why I spent the entire day yesterday reading to finish it. My poor eyeballs, y’all.

So now I’m off to return the book, pay my fifty cents in late fees, and send my apology into the ether to the reader who is waiting for it.

First Friday Rec: Horse

Title: Horse
Author: Geraldine Brooks
Genre: Literary Historical Fiction
Pages: 464
Publication Date: January 16, 2024
StoryGraph* Moods: Emotional, Informative, Reflective
How I Stumbled Upon This Book: Assigned for book club
Other Books by Brooks: Fiction – Year of Wonders, March, The Secret Chord, People of the Book, Caleb’s Crossing. Nonfiction – Foreign Correspondence, Memorial Days (Memoir), Nine Parts of Desire: The Hidden World of Islamic Women.
*StoryGraph also offers content warnings.

Description: A story told in three time periods that braid together around a central figure – a record-breaking thoroughbred horse named Lexington (who was a real horse). Each chapter starts off with a title and a year so that the reader knows exactly where they are in time and whose head they will be inside: in the 1850s with enslaved groom and trainer Jarret (who works with the horse starting from the day the foal is born); 1954 with gallery owner Martha Jackson who has a painting of Lexington fall into her lap, which sets her off on the trail of discovering everything she can about this horse; and in 2019 with either Jess, a scientist with the Smithsonian, or Theo, an art historian – whose paths cross as they, too, work to learn more about this mysterious horse (Jess through his bones; Theo through finding a painting his neighbor was throwing out).

Why I recommend this book:

First, the writing is incredible. (I mean, Brooks has a Pulitzer, so no shock there.) Also, the historical aspects are so well-written – she puts you right there in that time in such a beautiful way. She doesn’t shy away from the realities of the 1850s, which considering one of the narrators is an enslaved person was important. She allows for the realities while also allowing Jarret to have his authentic reaction. (There are a few instances in the present day chapters where the conversation about racism feels a bit forced. They are still necessary, but they didn’t feel as seamless as in Jarret’s chapters.)

I also love the idea of Brooks learning about this horse and needing to write a story about it – just in the way all her characters learn about this horse and find a similar need to know more. The idea of something unexpected connecting people across time is so lovely.

Something missing?

Not really anything missing, just a couple things that bugged me. One is that after Darley and Jarret are sold, the new owners rename the horse to Lexington – and in the exposition, Brooks began referring to him this way, even in Jarret’s POV, who still calls him Darley (at least initially). As the narrative continues, she goes back and forth with it. As someone who cheered on Jarret and Darley together, I wished she had stuck to this name at least in Jarret’s POV.

Another thing was that some chapters would switch perspective. For example, we might be in Jess’s chapter, but we get Theo’s thoughts at times. It took me out of the story for a moment because we had spent so many chapters strict to the perspective – so it would trip me up when I’d realize that was someone else’s thought, and I would need to skip back a couple sentences and reread.

The biggest bug would be a spoiler – but there is an event in the Theo/Jess timeline near the end that feels unnecessary – like she was trying to drive home a very specific point rather than serve what had been the natural arc of the story. You’ll know what I mean the second you get to it. It felt too much like the author trying to drive home a point. (That all being said, I still fully recommend the book.)

(Honestly, I would have taken an entire book focused only on Jarret’s story/time period.)

“I will not trade my horse for any that walks on four legs. When I sit astride him I soar, I am a hawk. He trots on air. The earth sings when he touches it.”
― Geraldine Brooks, Horse

Andy Grammer: One Man Show

Full disclosure, I don’t listen to the radio. I used to, when I didn’t really have a choice (I mean, the first ipod shuffle didn’t come out until 2005 – and even then, it was a few years and iterations before I owned one; I had a Walkman and then a portable CD player while growing up, but batteries didn’t grow on trees, y’know?). But now that I do have a choice, I just prefer not to. (In my car, it’s podcast time. At home, crank the showtunes or put on a record. And yes, that often means an actual record. On vinyl.)

I also don’t love the radio because they seem to play the same ten songs over and over and over. While I can listen to my fav song on repeat like the best of ’em, I want that choice/control.

Because of this, it can sometimes be tricky finding new artists to listen to. So I love when my bestie will say – I heard this new song, and I think you’d like it. She’s usually right.

One time, this occurred almost a decade ago. She was editing a video and looking for a song to play with it, and she had stumbled across “Honey I’m Good” by Andy Grammer while diving down the music rabbit hole. She sent me a link, and I did enjoy it. We’ve since seem him a handful of times whenever he tours nearby, and I have to say – this is where he shines. (The first time we saw him was at Waterfest in Oshkosh, WI – it might have been his first tour? He was just starting out, and he had a VIP meet and greet where he sang a few acoustic songs and then said hello and signed things.)

I’m sure I’ve said on this blog a few times now that I have a dad who was a musician in the ’60s and who raised my sister and me to appreciate live music. I think Grammer is a great example of why. Watching artists create is my favorite thing because of the joy – and the thing about an Andy Grammer show is that every single person on that stage is BURSTING with joy, clearly loving what they are doing. Even if you’re not a fan of his music, you would be hard pressed not to be moved by the performance.

As he’s become more successful, his shows have grown over the years, and after a recent one, my bestie and I noted how much more produced it had become (more lights and tricks and whatnot). The joy was still there, but as folks who like laid back shows in preferably small venues, we have a harder time engaging when things get large/overly produced. We still had a great time, but we missed the feel of those earlier shows.

So when Grammer announced his latest tour would be a one-man show, yes please.

This was not a traditional show where Grammer played song after song for a scheduled amount of time. This was…different. There were songs, of course (he played acoustic guitar, and he had a gentleman playing electric that sat in the background), but there was also spoken-word poetry and stories. Oh, there were stories. Which is my favorite part of a live show – sometimes even more than them playing the songs they are telling the stories about.

The through line here was grief and service. Near the start of the show, he quoted someone (whose name I didn’t catch and who I can’t find online) who said (and I’m summarizing here because I didn’t write it down) how deeds done in the names of those we’ve lost become presents to them in the afterlife. This started off the show with a series of examples where after losing his mother, he opened himself to deeds of service by way of writing songs for people who needed them (not in a money sense, but in an emotional/soul sense). He sang a few of them after he told the stories, imagining that these deeds were arriving at his mother’s door through Amazon’s Heaven division (note: you don’t need to religious to get something out of his shows or music; his faith is a large part of who he is, but he doesn’t make others feel excluded because of it).

The show continued on, and there was even some audience participation. Before the show, he had everyone in the audience fill out these cards that had three prompts on them – someone you lost who you miss, an act of service you had recently done, and the name of someone who saved your life. The ushers collected these right before the show, and when Grammer came onto the stage, he was holding a large box of them. At three times during the show, he grabbed a handful of cards from the box. He started with the third prompt – he’d call out the name and invited the audience member to tell the story of how this person saved their life (it was optional, but everyone took him up on it). The second time, he merely read a number of acts of service to help inspire people to act. The last time he did this, he read off the person they missed. He called them up and offered four prompts – they had to finish the sentence. “I feel you would be most proud of me for…” “I feel your presence most when…” (and two more that I can’t remember off the top of my head).

Here’s the trick to it. Not everyone was called up, of course. but when he was listing off those prompts, you know everyone in the audience was answering them silently to themselves. At the end, he answered his own prompts about his mother, who he lost in 2009.

UW Madison Arboretum

I spent my entire life with no idea that the city of Madison was home to a 1,200 acre arboretum (with an addition 513 acres in outlying properties). It shouldn’t surprise me, given most cities have large parks and my own UW campus houses an arboretum, as well. I’d just never stumbled upon it – and you’d think 1,200 acres would be hard to miss.

But then my friend started working there, and little by little, he taught me about it. Like how the goal, from the beginning, has been to re-establish historical Wisconsin landscapes and offer a refuge from the city. Or how there is a species of cactus that is native to Wisconsin (whaaaat?). And when I checked to see if he was around because I was coming to the city, he asked about my reason for heading his way, and I quietly noted that I was coming to Madison for research for my murder mystery WIP and was looking for places to ‘drop bodies’ – he taught me about the Lost City Forest. (Um, the what now?)

The Lake Forest Community of the 1920s promised a neighborhood equipped with a thousand lots, street-car service, playgrounds, utilities, and a school – but the land had other ideas. Building began, and then began to sink. The plan was abandoned, and some of the land became part of the arboretum – who left the city alone. Nature’s gonna Nature, after all.

Today, the remains of this idea are known as the Lost City Forest. Walk along the paths, and you can see cracked foundations beneath the dirt and leaves. There are still glass bottles and rusted utensils strewn about some of the remains. But trees have long since grown back, and moss covers just about everything in sight.

He was right – this would be an excellent spot to drop a fictional body.

Hello, Detective

If you’ve read past posts about my books, then you will know how much thought and time I put into naming my characters. I like the names to mean something – to tell a little bit more about the person they’re given to.

When I started writing my murder mystery, I decided to take a bit of a different route – this time paying homage to my favorite characters on the many detective procedurals that I’ve watched over the years. And re-watched. Often. Aside from the friends who did the Kickstarter ‘add on’ to have a character named after them in this story, all characters pay tribute to these favs.

My main character is Alia Maselli, nicknamed Moz by her younger sister. While her given name isn’t an homage, her nickname is – in honor of the great Willie Garson who played Mozzie on White Collar. He is, easily, one of my favorite characters across all forms of storytelling. He is smart, loyal, and quirky. And I can’t imagine anyone else in that role. (A number of smaller character names also come from this show, thanks to the plethora of aliases that Neal has.)

Moz’s partner is Jane Acierno – a play on Jane Rizzoli, my favorite badass detective from Rizzoli &Isles. She’s both feminine and vulnerable, but can also kick butt and take names. It’s those moments when her soft side breaks through that I enjoy the most because it demonstrates how complex she really is. So when it came time to ‘casting’ Moz’s partner, it was a no-brainer. (In addition, my friend Brady’s character is modeled after Vince Korsack, who was Jane’s original partner on the show who retires and buys the bar they all hang out at.)

Ella Wolfe is named for Ella Lopez on Lucifer. She’s another of those characters that contains contradictions, which I love. She is both lightness and darkness. She is bright and bubbly, but she’s got a past that becomes present in the most inopportune times. In the story, my Ella is also a Forensics Tech and helps on a number of the cases that Moz works on. (And no, I don’t have a devil in this story. No magic realism this time around.)

Lt. Sean Jokala’s name honors two people. The first is Sean Murray, who plays my fav NCIS character, Tim McGee (he’s a bit nerdy and always trying to do his best). The second is Lt. Jokala, from the Madison police department (who was kind enough to answer some questions related to police work in the Madison district). (I also borrowed a bit of David McCallum’s Ducky for my own ME.)

In addition to taking an Introduction to Investigation course at the college where I teach, I’ve studied at the feet of so many of these shows (plus Bones and Brooklyn Nine-Nine and others that I’m unable to think of in the moment). I suppose it was only a matter of time before I created my own story. 🙂