What She Found (Tracy Crosswhite #9)(102)

Each novel I give myself a challenge. In the novel In Her Tracks, I wanted to create empathetic antagonists, three brothers who are living the pain of their father’s sickness. They were far from innocent, but I wanted the reader to have some empathy for them and the things they could not control. For this novel, I wanted to write the story from Tracy’s perspective. This was a challenge, but I succeeded. It also allowed me to tell the backstory of Del’s original investigation through an Amazon short story, “The Last Line.” This was a lot of fun, as well as challenging. I had to be sure the backstory in What She Found comported with the story “The Last Line.”

Luckily, I had a team to help me out.

As with all the novels in the Tracy Crosswhite series, I simply could not write this one without the help of Jennifer Southworth, Seattle Police Department, Violent Crimes Section. Jennifer has been invaluable, helping me to formulate interesting ideas and to learn daily police routine, as well as the specific tasks undertaken in the pursuit of a perpetrator of a crime. She recently retired, well deserved. I hope she is spending her time golfing, reading, and relaxing.

I also want to thank Alan Hardwick. Alan is a Renaissance man.

A talented musician, he is a member of the band One Love Bridge, whom I’ve seen play several times, as well as a writer. He was a Boise, Idaho, police detective and founded that department’s Criminal Intelligence Unit. In Edmonds, Washington, he served as a sergeant and acting assistant chief of police with the Edmonds Police Department. He was a member of the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Forces and the Washington Homicide Investigators Association. He now runs the Hardwick Consulting Group. I’m grateful for his assistance, and suggestion to . . . uh, write a better conclusion to the story, which I did!

I was saddened to learn of the passing of Dr. Kathy Taylor, forensic anthropologist for King County and the State of Washington.

Kathy was always willing to help me with forensic issues and was the inspiration for forensic anthropologist Kelly Rosa. May she rest in peace.

I want to thank Kevin Lohman, a friend, fellow golfer, and marine enthusiast. Kevin helped with all things nautical in the novel. I had a scene in which he was the lockmaster for the Hiram M. Chittenden (Ballard) Locks, but alas, most of the scene was cut, though I was able to sneak in his name.

To the extent there are any mistakes in the police aspects of this novel, or the nautical details, those mistakes are mine and mine alone. In the interests of telling a story, and keeping it entertaining, I have condensed certain timelines, such as the time it takes to have DNA analyzed.

Thanks to Meg Ruley, Rebecca Scherer, and the team at the Jane Rotrosen Agency. They are literary agents extraordinaire. They do just about everything to make my life easier, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Thank you to the team at Thomas & Mercer and Amazon Publishing. I’m losing count of the number of books I’ve written for them. People ask me how I’m putting out more than one novel a year. The simple answer is I work every day, at least eight hours, and due to COVID, there wasn’t much else to do but what I love—to create stories. I also get a lot of support from my writing team at the literary agency and at the publishing house. This is the ninth Tracy Crosswhite novel and my twelfth novel with Thomas & Mercer, as well as three short stories. Each time the team has made my novel better with their edits and suggestions. They have sold and promoted me and my novels all over the world, and I have had the pleasure of meeting the Amazon Publishing teams from the UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. These are hardworking people who somehow make hard work a lot of fun. What they do best is promote and sell my novels, and for that I am so very grateful. Most recently they took out a billboard in Times Square in New York City for The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell and then for The World Played Chess. Maybe you saw the photographs on social media. I had to post them. What an absolute hoot for me, a wannabe actor in my younger days, to see my name on Broadway. I was both shocked and thrilled. I only wish my dad had been alive to see it in person. I’m sure he saw it from heaven.

Thanks to Sarah Shaw, author relations. Thanks to Rachel Kuck, head of production; Lauren Grange, production manager; and art directors Adrienne Krogh and Michael Jantze. It’s getting redundant, I know, but I love the covers and the titles of each of my novels. Thanks to Dennelle Catlett, and congratulations on her promotion to head of publicity at Amazon Publishing. Dennelle is always there, always available when I call or send an email with a need or a request. She actively promotes me, helps me to give to worthwhile charitable organizations, and makes my travel easy.

Thanks to the marketing team: Kyla Pigoni, Andrew George, Erica Moriarty, Lindsey Bragg, and Erin Calligan Mooney, for all their dedicated work and incredible new ideas to help me build my author platform. Their energy and creativity are astonishing. They make each new idea a great experience. Thanks to Mikyla Bruder, head of Amazon Publishing, and publisher Hai-Yen Mura for creating a team dedicated to their jobs and allowing me to be a part of it. I am sincerely grateful, and even more amazed with each additional million readers we reach.

I am especially appreciative of Thomas & Mercer’s editorial director, Gracie Doyle. Gracie and I work closely together on my ideas from their initial formation to print. Beyond that, we have a lot of fun when we get together. Hopefully, again soon.

Thank you to Charlotte Herscher, developmental editor. All of my books with Amazon Publishing have been edited by Charlotte— from police procedurals to legal thrillers, espionage thrillers, and literary novels, and she never ceases to amaze me how quickly she picks up the story line and works to make it as good as it can possibly be. Thanks to Scott Calamar, copyeditor, whom I desperately need. Grammar has never been my strength, so there is usually a lot to do.