Is snow a blessing

 by Steve Pease writing as Michael Chandos

     My To-Do list is huge. I have house tasks, cars, lawn, filing, all the stuff that occupies life. The weather is bad. What to do, what to do.

     My Writing To-Do list is also huge. I'm a former intelligence officer and private investigator. I like facts, analysis, photos, and articles on subjects that "one-day" might be relevant. I have videos from Youtube about point of view, plotting, pace, marketing, idea generation, various plot structures, and the Hero Cycle. Since I also write hard-ish science fiction, I have articles on warp theories, dark energy, gravity, and trajectories to Mars. I have materials on the courts, the police and Private Eyes. You can never tell when that article about hollowing out asteroids to use as a generation ship might suggest a story.

     I have terabytes of photos of gnarly urban buildings and alleys, futuristic cities and alleys. and Spaceships. The astro engineer in me loves spaceships. Photos of interesting faces. men with the scars of life written in every line, women with piercing eyes, clothing, transportation, house and office interiors, airports and spaceports.

     I saved many photos from the online archives of the now-defunct Herald Examiner newspaper in LA. The murder mystery novel I'm working on takes place in 1963. The archives are full of photos from the newspaper from the 50s and 60s. The Examiner never shied away from a lurid story, a nasty murder, a dock worker riot, or Zoot Suiters. I captured hundreds. My 1963 novel, "Shade of Brown", is located in real places with, I hope, genuine descriptions of 1963 LA, thanks to these photographs.

     One of my best resources are my ten years of private investigation case files. Rest assured I don't use real names and places. People treat each other horribly. If you like the noir films post-WW2, you'll appreciate these real-life happenings. Obsessives, liars, cheaters, back-stabbers. A 70 yo woman in obsessive love with a guy in jail in Kansas who is selling her home to bail him out of jail. My research showed him to be a multiple-State felon, a liar and cheater since he was twelve, convicted of robbery in two States, convicted on a confidence game in Texas with open warrants there still. Her grown children were in a panic. I gave them his background papers. She didn't believe them, sold the house, disappeared. 

     That's what I'm doing this week. Organizing, filing, and changing file names to reflect the actual content. This stuff is all gold, IF I can find it when I need it. It is 16 degrees out, 6 inches of snow today, a week of high 30s to come. No open story deadlines. No better time to straighten out a few things.