This week in the WRITERSDETECTIVE Q&A forum on Facebook had some great questions and discussion that I wanted to expand upon:
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• STORY SCIENCE: Serology
  Dan asked a great question about blood on clothing, and whether modern Forensic Science could determine how long the droplet of blood had been there. Terri quickly found a link on chemistryviews.org that revealed researchers have developed a laser-based technology, called Raman Spectroscopy, that can determine Time Since Deposit (TSD) if the blood stain is less than two years old. This is a pretty exciting and promising technology. The most important passage in this article is in paragraph four, "At the moment, crime scene investigators have no single validated approach to determine when a blood stain might have been deposited."
  
  I would take that to mean it will be possible to use in Court in the very near future. The term Forensic Science literally means Science applied to Law. So while the technology is here (or nearly here), we have to wait for the Courts/Attorneys to argue its acceptance into law. This is what delays its admissibility in Court.
  
  So if you want to include Raman Spectroscopy into your own story, your investigators should realize that this cutting edge technology can point them in the right direction, but it will be a hard fought battle in Court to prove the science behind it admissible.
  
  This study of TSD has been pursued for a while now. I found this article from 2011 about TSD on WritersForensicsBlog.com, which is another site you should definitely bookmark for all things CSI-writing related!
  
  As I suggested to Dan in the Q&A: Whenever you find a particular research area you want to delve into, especially emerging sciences, don't be afraid to send an email to the scientists behind these discoveries. Many people in science are happy to share knowledge when someone outside of the science community shows an interest...especially when it may end up in a book!
  
  
• STORY SCIENCE: Serology Part II
  As I was researching Dan's question, I also discovered other emerging serology techniques that will soon help crack whodunnit cases wide open. Researchers at the University at Albany have, in addition to determining TSD, been able to determine the approximate age of the blood's originator using the alkaline phosphatase (ALP) as a marker. These researchers are working on creating a real-time CSI kit that will one day provide approximate suspect age, and even gender, without the need for a Crime Lab!
  
  I also discovered that researchers at the Department of Pharmacy and Forensic Science at King's College London have used machine learning via artificial neural networks to crunch DNA data (I am WAY oversimplifying here), to improve age estimations of DNA originators. These researchers have been able to estimate the age of a person, based on their DNA sample, to within a 3.8 year accuracy!
  
  
• STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES: LINING UP YOUR CLUES
  Heather posted a comment about the troubles of lining up and following the clues within her story. Here’s what I had to say:
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I wish I had writing advice for you, but alas, that is not my expertise. I can, however, offer some advice on how we really work cases...which may help you fill in the outline of your story.

We all obviously understand that the goal of your investigator (likely your protagonist) is to find the truth of the matter: what exactly occurred (determine the crimes), who was responsible (who to arrest and prosecute), why it happened (motive), etc.

HOW a Detective goes about that is by forming a timeline of what happened, based on the totality of the knowledge at hand. This means every interview, every piece of evidence discovered and analyzed, the data dumps from cell phone search warrants, the time stamp on video surveillance, -all of it- is plotted on a giant time line. I mean this literally.

We have a "war-room" (a conference room with a lockable door) in our Detective Bureau that we use during active homicide investigations, where a time-line is drawn on a white-board. (There is also a task-list that shows what task each detective has been assigned and whether it's been completed.) As new facts are discovered, they are plotted on the timeline board for everyone working the case to see at a glance. Obviously, this dry-erase board drawing isn't the formal document - all of that is done via the written word in dozens or even hundreds of reports and a Crime Analyst will likely create a formal visualization of the timeline as a document. But you get the idea.

That timeline often starts with the first 9-1-1 call that notified us of the crime. My goal, as a Detective, is to fill that timeline in. By doing so, it will paint the full picture of the crime and not only point to who is responsible, it will also show alibi factors for other suspects/conspirators/accessories/witnesses at a glance. It will also help us spot inconsistencies in stories quickly.

I'd suggest Authors try working this process BACKWARD. Since you're the omnicient storyteller (sorry, Pantsers...this may be tough if you can't stand planning out your stories), I'd start with creating the entire timeline of the events leading up to the crime, the commission of the crime, and then what happens after the crime in chronological order. This is all reference material for you to use as you create the story. Your story, most likely, won't start at the beginning of your Omnicient Timeline. It will probably start with the inciting incident of either the commission of the crime, or the discovery of the crime. From there, your story will be about the order in which the earlier bits of the timeline are discovered by the Detective.

Does the Coroner/ME provide a time of death window? Plot it on the time-line. When was the victim last seen alive? Plot it. When was the last phone call made by the victim? Plot it. When was the last ATM/Credit Card use by the victim? Plot it. Sooner or later, the window of unknowns on the timeline starts to narrow...allowing your Detectives to gain some insight into where the case is heading.

Obviously, take this advice with a grain of salt...being as I have not been in your chair as the author (tip of the hat in respect, BTW). However, I hope some explanation of how real investigations happen may help you form your own way of having characters discover the clues/events in your own story.

• WRITING TOOLS: Scrivener 3*
  My favorite writing software got a long awaited update today! I know many of you already use Scrivener to compile your research, characters, scenes, and drafts. Today, Literature & Latte released Scrivener 3!*  The look is still very much what you are used to seeing in Scrivener 2, but updated with more modern appearance, and they have added some great new functionality. Best of all, if you are upgrading from Scrivener 2, you will get a $20 discount (making Scrivener 3 only $25.) As always, L&L still offers a 30-day trial of Scrivener...and that's an actual 30-days of use, not thirty calendar days.
  
  IMPORTANT NOTE: If you purchased Scrivener 2 through Apple's Mac App Store (instead of the Literature & Latte website), you need to send a copy of your App Store proof of purchase to: updates@literatureandlatte.com If you are even considering upgrading to Scrivener 3 and you bought v2 from the App Store, send your discount request in NOW. They are sending out Discount Codes in the order they are received. I sent my receipt in early (yesterday, before the v3 release today) and I received my discount code mid-afternoon today. I forwarded the email I received from iTunes when I purchased v2 back in 2015. If you are better at clearing out your inbox than I am, you may have to request a copy of your receipt from Apple by going to: https://support.apple.com/contact
  
  

• WRITING TOOLS: Free Training for Scrivener 3*
  Gwen Hernandez at ScrivenerClasses.com offers online courses for learning Scrivener. She just created a FREE mini course for those of us upgrading from Scrivener 2 to Scrivener 3. It's called Jump into Scrivener 3: Your transition guide for Mac. Even if you just want to see a few videos on what the new version looks like, it's worth checking out. You don't need to provide any info to view the mini course.

 

I want to start by thanking those of you that offered such kind words of encouragement and understanding during my bereavement hiatus from the APB emails. I apologize for not replying to your emails...I was overwhelmed by how many thoughtful messages I received, but please know that I appreciate you greatly and that helped immensely. I have been overwhelmed by how kind, caring, and understanding my followers are. Thank you!!!

Now, I am happy to announce that I am ready to get back to our regularly scheduled programming...and just in time for NaNoWriMo! I hope the time change allowed you to sneak an extra hour of writing time in, even if you aren't participating in National Novel Writing Month.

• CHARACTER: OLD SCHOOL BEAT COPS
  The LA Times ran an article yesterday on a pair of LAPD Officers that have been partners for an unbelievable twenty-nine years! The guys seem to be right out of a Joseph Wambaugh novel. Like any good marriage, the key to their resiliency is that they operate like a well tuned machine. Each partner has his own strengths (and I'm sure weaknesses as well) and they know which part to play and when. If you are writing a Cop/Buddy Story, you will enjoy this article.
  
  
• WRITING TIP OF THE WEEK: LEVEL UP YOUR DIALOGUE
  I am a fan of both Reddit and Quora. If you've been living under a boulder of old AOL Installation CDs, they are websites every author should add to his or her research toolbox. While Reddit and Quora are quite different sites, they are both great places to learn about nearly any topic you can dream up. This week, I was reading the Quora thread: What one tip changed your writing forever? Christopher Kingery shared a tip for writing dialogue that is a must-read. It is so simple and it's something that all of my favorite authors do...yet I never really thought about it. (Are you a Redditor or Quora User? Add me as a friend on Reddit and Quora!)

 

• SOME OTHER COP'S BLOG: The Salty Sarge
  I discovered thesaltysarge.com blog this week and the post "Why Cops Retire Before You" is absolutely spot on. To gain even more insight into the lives of cops in the later stages or their careers, scroll through the comments at the bottom of the post. This is good background on the mentality of any Mentor type characters you might write about.

Good luck hitting your NaNoWriMo word counts and remember that any questions you have can be posted in the WRITERSDETECTIVE Q&A group on Facebook...even if you aren't a NaNo'er. It's a very supportive group and I try to answer your questions as quickly as I can.

Thank you for continuing to open my emails, even though it's been awhile.

I buried my best friend today. He was only 46.

Last month, I lost my uncle.

A few weeks before that, my beloved 12-year old German Shepherd passed away peacefully with his head resting on my foot.

The month before that, my Mentor died in a car wreck.

Right now, I am grieving.

But I will get through this. I will be back to publishing my weekly APBs soon.

Thank you for your understanding and support. In the meantime, keep writing and do not hesitate to email me with any crime-writing questions you think I can help you with.

Write well and love one another,
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Adam

It's been a rough weekend. One of my mentors died in a car crash this weekend. He was incredibly sharp and an A-Type through-and-through. He always demanded the best work out of his detectives, but he also made sure we had fun on and off duty. I blame him for my love of Rum & Cokes. Regrettably, we lost touch after his retirement a few years ago. Rest in Peace.

If there is one writing-related thing I can share about this, its the way cops have a tendency to detach using an out-of-sight-out-of-mind coping mechanism. It's not that we don't care or that we aren't thinking about our former Brothers and Sisters in Blue; we just spend our emotional effort on those that we are working with (and watching the backs of) currently. We are also notoriously bad at acknowledging and dealing with negative emotions, other than to lock them away for another day.

It starts at the beginning. When a Recruit is fired from the Police Academy, the Academy Class does not get to say goodbye. The Recruit is called to the office and that's the last you see or hear of the Recruit. When the class comes back into the classroom after PT or a defensive tactics course, the fired Recruit's belongings are gone and his name placard has been removed from his seat and pinned upside down to the wall at the back of the classroom (along with the name placards of other former classmates.)

The lesson is clear: You're either in or out. The work still goes on.
That persists through the rest of a cop's career. There is a saying "SWAT-OR-NOT." Many officers will be part of a SWAT team at some point in their career. SWAT is for the young and motivated. Which means there are a ton of former-SWAT operators full of "When I was on the Team..." war stories. SWAT-or-NOT means if you aren't on the team now, you aren't SWAT anymore (so shut it.) In or out.
So when an officer retires from the Department, it can feel like going through an amicable divorce. Sure, we all say we'll still be friends and keep in touch...but only your closest friends will actually follow through. It's a weird and sad phenomena. So if your characters are "ex-cops" that have turned into a P.I., expect that they may be forgotten rather quickly no matter how awesome they were. In or out.

• CHARACTER: THE SPOUSE
  There is no tougher rock than the spouse of a cop. "10 Tips for a Police Spouse" was written by the wife of an Australian Police Officer. Every single bullet point translates to police work anywhere in the world. This brief glimpse into a Police Family's life is worth the read, as it may give you insight into an often overlooked character in your story. It may also offer you a chance to skew the way your detective character is viewed and/or add additional conflict and chaos to the detective's life. Regardless of whether the cop catches the murderer or saves the kidnap victim, the spouse may be seeing that same cop as the absentee-parent or an aloof workaholic who fails to prioritize his or her marriage.

• STORY: CASE COORDINATION?
  If your Detective is undercover as an arms dealer trying to lure in potential lone-wolf terrorists, how will s/he make sure the "clients" aren't also undercover cops trying to run their own arms-dealing investigation? Or drug dealing? Or murder-for-hire? The answer is to have a deconfliction clearinghouse. RISS.net is exactly that. Each area of the U.S. has a RISS Clearinghouse. If I am on a surveillance (or some other sort of covert op, like buying drugs or guns), I will call my local clearinghouse and be "put on the war board" so any other police agencies working covert operations (that also call into the clearinghouse) will be made aware of what we're doing.
  
  NOTE: In my own experience, Federal Agencies are notoriously HORRIBLE at notifying RISS of their operations. So if you want some part of your investigation to go awry or for Federal Feathers to get ruffled, this is a real-life way of it happening. The Feds definitely use RISS, they just tend to enter their info after the fact.
  
  Each RISS affiliated Clearinghouse has it's own name, often a bland acronym that we turn into a weird sounding word. For example, in California we have WSIN (Western States Information Network) which everyone pronounces as Whizzin' and the Clearinghouse for the greater Los Angeles Metropolitan Area is creatively named LAClear. Or how about MAGLOCLEN? Yep. Just like it sounds, Maglow-Clen. Sounds like the Glow in the Dark brother of Kylo Ren to me.
  
  In addition to deconflicting covert operations in the field, RISS also deconflicts entire investigations. If I am working a homicide and I've identified a suspect or person of interest, I will call WSIN and run that suspect's name in their database. If that name is a match for being related to another investigation (say a drug investigation), the Clearinghouse will put the detectives in contact with each other. Wouldn't it be nice to know that your homicide suspect was also identified by the DEA as a member of a drug cartel? This is often how those investigative links are made.
  
  The RISS Clearinghouses also offer other support as well, which are mentioned after the 3:28 minute mark in this video. If there is one thing I've discovered in government work, the more bland the title or description, the more important and bad-ass the work they actually do.

• Story: Dialogue - "Know Your Why" - Self Publishing Podcast Last year, the amazing folks at Sterling & Stone were crazy enough to feature me on an episode of their Self Publishing Podcast. (I’d like to offer a huge shout out and thank you to fellow Tribe Writer, Christine Niles, for making the podcast happen! Y'all are even nuttier for including me in the 2016 Year in Review episode.) On the podcast, I spoke about writing Interview & Interrogation dialogue and how “knowing the why” of each character will shape what is said...and [PUN ALERT] why it’s a cop out to use a suspect interrogation to summarize the investigation for the reader. So, what would a Detective actually say in an interview or interrogation? One of the most successful (and sometimes controversial) interview and interrogation methods is called The Reid Technique. This link to John E. Reid’s website includes some worthwhile presentations covering the stages of interview and interrogation. The Reid Investigator Tip page has a drop-down list of I&I questions that may help you craft dialog for your own interrogation scenes. If you pay attention to the way most Reid questions are formatted, you’ll notice that they are designed to elicit expository answers, not just a Yes/No response...which always help keep the dialogue and story moving!

• PLOT: “All the pieces matter.” –Det. Lester Freamon, The Wire Your investigation is stalled. You can’t identify your victim, or maybe you only have part of a victim. Perhaps there is a signature to this killing and you want to see if any other homicide investigations have a similar trademark. ViCAP (the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program) is an FBI administered database dedicated to accomplishing exactly that. It was created in the early 1980s, but has since morphed into a secure web-based database that all US law enforcement agencies can access. If your serial killer uses a specific technique or you are looking to identify a Jane/John Doe, then ViCAP is likely the database where the analytical linking to other homicide, kidnapping, or missing person cases will occur. Click here to see the Public's version of current investigations currently seeking leads or information.

 

• WHAT I’M READING THIS WEEK*: "DRIVE: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us" I know. "Writing is hard." Many traditionally published authors argue that writing Is even harder once you’ve obtained that ever elusive “Publishing Contract.” This book, Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us* sheds light on the illogical human tendency to lose motivation whenever something that was implicitly rewarding (like writing for the love of it) becomes something you’re compensated for (a Big 5 Publishing contract perhaps.) This book is a interesting read and the author does a great job making the scientific evidence an easy read. It is definitely thought provoking. I am still in the middle of the book, so I will update you on whether there are any motivation hacks worth pursuing. ;)