Writers Police Academy
Want to see what goes on at a Writers Police Academy? Organizer Lee Lofland gives you a taste on his Graveyard Shift blog
here . If you scan down to the first day of pictures, you'll see a familiar face second in line in the building searches exercise. Equipped with rubber guns and gun belts, we conducted a search of a suspected drug house. Unfortunately, "bad guy" CJ Lyons was laying in wait and when my partner and I entered an "empty" kitchen pantry, she got both of us!! Subsequent attempts went much better!!!
Below are a few of my own pictures. First, from the "jaws of life" demonstration. These guys took a car apart in about twelve minutes!! Amazing...
Next time, a real time demonstration of a high speed chase and apprehension. Unfortunately, the blog only allows so many pics so I have to do this in increments.
Anyway, one last pic-- Lee Childs was the guest speaker at Saturday night's banquet. He's as nice as Jack Reacher is nasty.
I filled the critique group in on some of the great things we got to experience--talks with real life undercover ops about street and outlaw motorcycle gangs, the realities of cold cases, live demonstrations by Police K9 SWAT, bomb teams and robots, underwater evidence recovery, handcuffing and arrest techniques, jail searches, police gunfighting. All fodder for the writing mill. I'd recommend this academy to anyone who wants to get the details right in their books. Next year, I'm hoping we'll all go. There's much too much to take in one year. When the website opens for 2013, I'll let you know.
Another benefit was hanging out with pals Jaye Wells, CJ Lyons, Jenna Black, Rick Gustafson (hometown boy from CO), and a bunch of other great writers. We had some interesting talks. Seems most are in agreement--the publishing business is changing radically and the end is not in sight. CJ Lyons shared she hit the million mark in July-- she has sold a MILLION books. It boggles the mind, doesn't it?