The Plot's Boiling for Greg McKenzie

One question readers are forever asking is where do your ideas for books come from? I've tackled it a few times in blogs, where I discussed various novels from the past. But I thought I'd bring the subject up to date with a look at where my newest creation is coming from.

I've spent the past couple of months working on revisions of the first two manuscripts I turned out back in the early nineties with the intent of publishing them as ebooks if nothing else. Now it's time to get back to my bread-and-butter series starring that indefatigable former Air Force OSI agent, Greg McKenzie. I decided to hit a couple of new points about his background that hadn't been explored before.

We learned in earlier books that both of Greg's parents (his father was a native Scot, that's the McKenzie tartan at left) died in an airplane accident on the way to his graduation from the University of Michigan. After that he worked a few years as a deputy sheriff in St Louis County, Missouri. His uncle was Chef of Deputies. In the novel whose plot is currently stewing about in the soupy gray part of my brain, we meet the son of Greg's first cousin, a young man who lost a foot in Iraq and is at loose ends after coming out of rehab.

With all his wanderings about the world during and after his Air Force career, Greg had little contact with his uncle and cousins in St. Louis. Then the young man turns up in Nashville, charged with murder. As Greg frets over what to do, the case summons long-repressed memories of events from years ago. What happens and how it will turn out is your guess as much as mine. That's about all the background I need to get the old fingers tapping and see where the characters take the story.

A couple of other points I see through the fictional fog: a small cadre of militia characters and an involvement in drugs. That's all I can tell you for now. But keep watching these pages (bloggarly speaking) and I'll give some commentary as the project progresses.

Meanwhile, if you haven't read any of the books draped down the right side of the page, click on a cover to get more information, like plots, reviews, opening chapters, where to buy paperback or ebook. Enjoy!