Here are a few of the most important points I’ve learned from being a PI and how they affect my writing:

There’s More Than One Side to Any Story – As a matter of fact, there are as many “sides” as there are people involved. Take a bar brawl, for example. Each combatant will have his or her own story, but everyone in the bar will have one, too. And the cops arriving on the scene might have a completely different idea about what is going on, because they’ve been told by the dispatcher, who was told by whoever called 911, what to expect when they arrive. Each person’s life experiences colors his or her opinion of who might be at fault; none of us is completely objective. It’s fascinating to interview all the different parties and try to separate perception from reality. This really helps me concentrate on characterization and point of view in my novels. If you are a writer, you can do this, too–just pretend you’re interviewing each character in a scene, and you’ll be amazed with what you discover.

I especially used this “multiple perception” idea in my novels ENDANGERED, BEAR BAIT, and SHAKEN.

Criminals Are People, Too – Like most upstanding citizens, I’d love to be able to identify a criminal on sight. In a few cases, we can, but that’s usually because those folks are severely mentally ill as well as criminals. The scary fact is that many criminals are charming individuals whose company we would enjoy until they do something unethical. I’ve interviewed their victims, whose stories inevitably start out like this: “I liked WhazHisFace right off the bat, and I liked him right up until he robbed me/stole my car/stabbed me with a kitchen knife.” And when I talk to these criminals (usually in jail, thank goodness), I find them charming, too, although they have really screwy logic. One such fellow told me he shouldn’t be charged with illegal possession of a weapon (he was already a felon) because he really, really needed all his guns to protect himself from the bad guys who wanted to steal the drugs he was selling. And, he added, he’d turned his life over to Jesus (again), so everyone really could trust him now.

Sometimes it’s hard to keep a straight face when talking to these folks.  But my point is that criminals can be loyal to their families and friends, love their dogs, be fine musicians or artists or accountants, whatever–they are people. So whenever I create a villain for my book, I try to make him or her as “human” as possible, too, because this is actually much more frightening than making them seem evil at first glance.

I especially tried to create a sympathetic but misguided antagonist–one that many Americans could identify with–in BEAR BAIT.

Law Enforcement Officers Are People, Too – Police/FBI/Border Patrol, etc–all LE personnel are just as individual as you and I. They can be good or bad at their jobs, well educated or not educated at all (that varies tremendously across the country), prejudiced against groups of people or political affiliations. So I always try to make my law enforcement characters real, too, by giving them flaws and families and individual belief systems.

So in my novel THE ONLY WITNESS, I tried my best to make Detective Matt Finn a real person, with a failed marriage that everyone’s talking about and a tough situation being the new big city guy in a small town where all eyes are on him to solve a baby’s disappearance.

People are often fascinated by the idea of being a private investigator, and they usually want to know what the requirements are and what the job is really like. So I finally put that all down in writing and created a little ebook that explains the skills you need and describes what the job is really like: SO YOU WANT TO BE A PI? If you’ve ever toyed with the idea of becoming a PI, or if you’re writing a book with a PI character, it might help you understand the realities of the investigation business.