“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”
― Ernest Hemingway
I’m sure some writers still prefer the typewriter. I have an old Smith-Corona manual sitting in my office that once belonged to my grandfather. It works, although I’m not sure where to get a ribbon, it doesn’t have an erase feature and, because of its size, it is inappropriate to hang on the wall with the other artifacts of my writing career.
One of the many advantages I have as a writer is immediate access to things I’ve written, but for one reason or another set aside. The miracle of zeros and ones (admittedly a great title for a book, huh?) lets me find the file, bring it back to life and press on as if it hadn’t been sitting for years.
Such is the life of “Amy2.” Why that title? It’s not actually the title, but it helps keep the manuscript straight – not a Karen novel, not a Cici novel, but the second of the Amy novels.
Before I go on, a few things to get out on the table. First, having retired about seven months ago from a police career lasting thirty-five years (and spanning nearly forty-one) I am extremely proud of the men and women working in law enforcement. I’ve seen the ebb flow of “love you/hate you” that seems to be the stock-in-trade of the loudest voices. The irony here – officers are unanimous in their revulsion over the death of George Floyd – is apparently not relevant to the bigger picture.
Also not relevant is the influx of individuals who are using the protests to service their own agendas. Be they simple common street thugs/gangs seeing an opportunity to ply their trade, virtue signalists getting ahead of the crowd (and thereby pretending leadership), or the virtual equestrians astride their usual saddle-weary hobby horse. They are roughly akin to the bicycle salesman in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, taking advantage of Sheriff Kenneth Marrs’s attempts to round up a posse.
The voices worth hearing are those who not only recognize that legitimate reforms within the criminal justice system in general, law enforcement in particular, are always welcome, now they are timely. Good people explore change not out of a sense of boredom, but out of the realization that their voices will now be listened to, not merely acknowledged.
Which brings me to Amy2. I started this book realizing that it is easy for good police departments to go astray. No matter how carefully an organization recruits, selects, trains and manages their workforce, human beings have a way of drifting. There are any numbers of reasons for this, aside from the various frailties and fallibilities people bring with them to every endeavor.
It is virtually assured, for example, that some officers who begin their careers dedicated to ethical performance will abandon some previously held values when faced with criminals having few, if any, scruples. It is often the most idealistic men and women, those who want to “help people,” who are must susceptible to disillusion. What happens next?
Disinterest, or its mirror image, an aggressive distaste for regular citizens who represent an annoyance, an interruption. They are the “One Percent” who give cops a bad name.
But, in the United States there are 800,000 law enforcement officers. That one percent is roughly eight thousand cops, which, unsurprisingly, are not evenly distributed. What kind of mischief can they create?
That’s what Amy2 was about when I got started twelve years ago. That’s what it’s about, now. That’s what you’ll read when the book comes out in early August (fingers crossed). It’s isn’t an indictment of law enforcement. Far from it. Amy Painter will confront something every police department confronts, in her usual Amy Painter way.
Which is to say, with a bit of attitude and immutable character.