Today is my turn on the blog tour for Death Before Coffee by Desmond P Ryan, today I share my spot with Susan from Books From Dusk Til Dawn.
The Blurb
By 2:27 on a Thursday afternoon, the one-legged man from Room 8 at 147 Loxitor Avenue has been beaten to death with a lead pipe. Twenty-eight minutes later, Detective Mike O’Shea is testifying in a stuffy courtroom, unaware that, within an hour, he will be standing in an alleyway littered with beer cans and condoms while his new partner—the man who saved his life thirteen years ago—flicks bugs off of a battered corpse with a ballpoint pen. When a rogue undercover copper prematurely hauls in the prime suspect, Mike blows a fuse, resulting in an unlikely rapport developing between him and the lead homicide detective sergeant, a woman known for her stilettos and razor sharp investigative skills. At the end of his seventy-two-hour shift, three men are dead and Mike O’Shea is floating in and out of consciousness in an emergency room hallway, two women by his side. Death Before Coffee, the second book in the Mike O’Shea Crime Fiction Series, weaves a homicide investigation through the life of an inner-city police detective intent on balancing his responsibilities as a son, brother, and newly single father with his sworn oath of duty. When faced with death, Mike is forced to make decisions that stir up old memories, compelling him to confront his demons while fighting the good fight.
Author Bio
For almost thirty years, Desmond P. Ryan began every day of his working life with either a victim waiting in a hospital emergency room, or a call to a street corner or a blood-soaked room where someone had been left for dead. Murder, assaults on a level that defied humanity, sexual violations intended to demean, shame, and haunt the individuals who were no more than objects to the offenders: all in a day's work.
It was exhilarating, exhausting, and often heartbreaking.
As a Detective with the Toronto Police Service, Desmond P. Ryan wrote thousands of reports detailing the people, places, and events that led up to the moment he came along. He investigated the crimes and wrote synopses for guilty pleas detailing the circumstances that brought the accused individuals before the Courts. He also wrote a number of files to have individuals deemed either Not Criminally Responsible due to mental incapacity, or Dangerous Offenders to be held in custody indefinitely.
Now, as a retired investigator with three decades of research opportunities under his belt, Desmond P. Ryan writes crime fiction.
Real Detective. Real Crime. Fiction.
Buy the book HERE
I have a we guest post for my stop today, enjoy xxx
A Day In the Life of Demond P. Ryan
You may think that writers lead romantic lives, filled with intellectual discussions amongst like-minded people over late-morning lattes in cafes all over the world followed by a couple of hours of writing and then numerous pints in pubs in equally exotic and/or cool locations.
Maybe it’s just me, but that’s not how it goes.
Most mornings/all mornings begin with our toddler welcoming the day as only toddlers can: with a scream that is either ear- or nerve-shattering in both volume and intensity.
My wife (said toddler’s mother) is a saint. I may say that a few times throughout this post and, if I don’t, I should.
And, while I am a retired police detective, I am hardly living the life of leisure. I teach criminal and court procedure courses at one of the colleges here in Toronto a couple of days a week and write/eat/life/sleep/be the rest of the time.
All that is to say: I am often stealing time away from any one of my other responsibilities to run up to the glorious office/writing space on the third floor.
Once there, the magic begins.
Writing a series is like visiting old friends. Regardless of where I am in the manuscript, or which book I’m working on, all I have to do is open the file, and there the characters are, their lives unfolding before me. It’s that simple. Sort of.
For each book, I start by writing a (very) brief outline on cue-cards and then shuffle them into place to make everything make sense, adding bits and pieces of thoughts and dialogue to the cards as I go. Once the cards are in place, I weave them together with dialogue first, and then go back over the manuscript and add the narrative. From there, I go over the manuscript another time to fill in the details and make sure everyone’s movements make sense (oddly enough, those Sunday night dinner scenes at Mary Margaret’s are often the most challenging!).
And then I type ‘the end’. For a day or so, I’m usually pretty convinced that I’ve absolutely nailed it. After that, I’m pretty convinced that I’ve just written the crappiest piece of garbage ever and should delete the whole thing.
After another read-through, I send it off to my editor. And wait. She knows I sit and wait, so she is quite vigilant about getting it back to me sooner than later. And then the real work begins.
I spend the next few days/weeks going over all of the comments, making additions and deletions as required, and then send the manuscript back to my editor for another round or two.
In the meantime, I send the unpolished manuscript to my cover artists so that she can get a sense of what the book will be about and start her process.
After numerous emails back and forth with my editor and cover artist, a book is born.
And then it gets published and I put it out to you, hoping you like it because, yes, I do write for you, my reader. Without you, there would be no Mike O’Shea or Julia Vendramini or Ron Roberts or Amanda Black or…beyond the screen on my computer.
So thank you for completing the writing cycle. I hope you enjoy Death Before Coffee. And now, perhaps, we’ll have that latte or pint together, shall we?
