Genesis Of A Mystery Series, Part 1

Even though they may not look it or sound it, Denton Ward and Monty Crocetti were conceived in a remote airbase in Turkey, then born in 1984 at RAF Greenham Common, Newbury, Berkshire, England.

If you look on a map of Turkey, it would be difficult if not impossible to find the city of Malatya. When your population barely breaks 380,000 and your only claim to fame is apricots, it’s difficult to get the Rand McNally people to give you any respect.
A one hour drive away from Malatya is Erhac Air Base. One hour by truck, several hours by burro, and 30 minutes by insane Turkish taxi driver.
During the year from 1982 to 1983, I was stationed at Erhac Air Base. I spent most of my time drinking, sleeping, spying on the Russians via extremely antiquated teletype and cryptographic equipment, and most importantly reading.

There wasn’t much else to do, as we were out in the middle of nowhere. Erhac was a small Turkish Air Base, which as this would lead you to believe, was owned by the Turks. The American presence was limited to a small cluster of buildings near the main gate.
This place was so remote, so desolate, that it didn’t even have a fence around it.
You could get up on a step ladder and see someone coming from a mile away.
It was remote, quiet, isolated and perfect for learning about the art and craft of mystery writing.

Like most writers, I am a vociferous reader. I spent those 12 months reading one series. Rex Stout’s “Nero Wolfe” novels and short stories. If I remember correctly, there were about 48 books on the shelf of my small room, and I went through them all at least 2 or 3 times.
I didn’t take notes, but I know that my subconscious mind was learning important lessons.

Lessons that would come in handy when I arrived in England in 1983.
I was 23 years old and knew that I wanted to be a novelist. I knew that I had something to offer but really wasn’t sure what. The vision was still blurry, as if Vaseline had been smeared over the lens of my inner camera.

I needed help crystallizing that vision and I found my accomplice, my first teacher in Gerald N. Williamson. J.N. Williamson was a horror writer, and a good one, but it was his expertise as a horror editor that Jerry solidified his impact on the horror genre forever.
And it was those skills as an editor that he brought to his role as my instructor in the Writer’s Digest Short Story school.
Yes, I have taken a correspondence course in short story writing. This was in the days before email, before the internet, before Writer’s Digest even had a novel writing course. Hungry for knowledge and guidance, I took what I could get and luckily for me, the Gods brought me Jerry Williamson.

He was a short, grey-haired, bespectacled gnome of a man that I always called Obi-Wan. When I deserved praise, he gave it, but when I started coloring outside the lines as I was wont to do, he was quick to pull in the reins and show me, in blue ink, scrawled over my manuscripts, the error of my ways.
Error in dialogue. Error in plot. Error in characterization. Jerry caught them all and for that I am forever grateful. It brings me great sorrow that I recently learned that Jerry had passed away several years ago. He always promised me that he would find a place in one of his Masques’ collections for a story of mine.
That never came to pass, as I had moved out of the strict horror genre and taken up residence in the mystery genre. But the things I learned from him – pacing, suspense, tension – essential elements of both horror and the mystery genres, I will never forget.

So every time that I make you turn the page, make you jump in your seat, make you exclaim “What the hell?” at some plot twist or turn, please take a moment and say thanks for Jerry Williamson.

After passing the Writer’s Digest Course (I think I still have the certificate that Jerry mailed to me), I spent the midnight shift (11pm to 7am) in the Communications Center hunting and pecking on an old IBM Selectric. The round Times New Roman font ball whacking the typing paper before me. Letters group together to become words, words join others in sentences, become characters, become worlds.

In 1984, William Gibson and his seminal novel “Neuromancer” brought a new type of writing into the world. It was called cyberpunk, and it was the Hot New Thing. I was still reading a great deal of science fiction at the time and loved the book. I loved the dark, dystopian world that Gibson had created, but I really didn’t have the world building capability that it took.

But I could create the attitude, the characters, the gestalt of the sub-genre.

I decided to create a cyberpunk mystery series.