Tag Archives: Thriller

HAPPY NEW YEAR AND WHAT’S UP WITH GARRY RODGERS’ WRITING FOR 2020

Wow! How fast did two decades fly by? Seems like yesterday we were freaking over the new millennia’s Y2K impending doom of driving a dastardly internet chain reaction filled with devastating quirks and quarks through the hearts of our hard drives. Well, that never happened. As Trump says, it was fake news – all lies – a terrible, terrible hoax. Fortunately, it gave me twenty new years to polish my craft and plot my course. So, here’s what’s up with Garry Rodgers’ writing for 2020.

2019 was a productive year in the writing room. I penned and shipped about fifty feature articles for my daughter’s agency. None changed the world but they helped pay the bills. I also managed to scrape together personal blog posts for every second Saturday morning on DyingWords.net. Some pieces took a lot of research and I learned new things. That’s part of the many happy returns from blogging.

As well, I completed two full-length book manuscripts. One is a historical non-fiction work titled Sun Dance – Why Custer Really Lost the Battle of the Little Bighorn. It’s now with an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, and we’ll see where that goes. The other is a based-on-true-crime story called From The Shadows. I was going to release it on Amazon this month, but put things on hold till January as I didn’t want it getting smothered in the Christmas market.

I’m also two-thirds through writing Beside The Road. It’s another based-on-true crime read in the same series as From The Shadows, Under The Ground and In The Attic. These formats have worked well in reader reviews and the sales department. So, if it ain’t broke, I’m not gonna fix it. I have more plots planned which follow true crime stories that I was either directly involved in or have decent personal knowledge of the case facts. Working titles for those are On The Floor, Beneath The Deck, By The Book, and Behind The Badge. I also have sights on writing The Mother From Hell which is based on a crazy case of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy that I unfortunately investigated and got sued over.

My website at DyingWords.net continues to gain traction. I installed a web tracker in April and am pleasantly surprised to see I’ve had over 137,000 visitors during the last eight months. The most popular posts are true stories I’ve dissected like JonBenet Ramsey, Natalie Wood, Marilyn Monroe, Charles Manson and Elvis Presley. One post really surprising me is The Guy on the Greyhound Bus which gets twenty or more reads a day. That’s the case where a deranged passenger stabbed, beheaded and cannibalized a fellow rider on a public bus. Go figure.

But, a story getting a lot of attention doesn’t surprise me. That’s the high-profile and unsolved Lindsay Buziak Murder that happened at Victoria, British Columbia in 2008. I took on the task of researching Lindsay’s tragic circumstances, and it swirled me down a rabbit hole I couldn’t have imagined. I’ve met many of Lindsay’s family and friends as well as several suspects. One prime person-of-interest laid a criminal harassment complaint against me as a ruse to get me off her back. The cops said it was a civil matter, and I told her to sue me as I’d love to get her under oath and on the witness stand.

When I started privately investigating Lindsay’s murder, I was unprepared for her bizarre father. He’s been the drive to keep Lindsay’s memory alive by narcissistically placing himself front and center media-wise including his recent appearance on the Dr. Phil TV show. I was pathologically lied to and then personally attacked online by the dad. I had a real hard time coming to grip with how intentionally misleading he’s been in the years since his daughter was killed. It’s a sad and strange story on its own.

What I can say about Lindsay Buziak’s murder is that I may not be able to truthfully write the public story as the circumstances now sit. I have a lot of information about this awful mess, the motive for the crime and, with probable certainty, who the conspirators are. If I publish what I’ve learned and what people close to the story have candidly told me – to tell the truthful and accurate story – I might compromise an active police investigation and that can not happen.

What I can say about Lindsay’s case is she was a totally innocent victim of an elaborate conspiracy to frame her as a police agent. That was to cover up and protect a real police informant who double-crossed an arm of the Sinaloa Drug Cartel in a multi-million dollar cocaine loss. Yes, the story is that involved and complicated. I will also say, with probable certainty, the two people directly involved in stabbing Lindsay to death are a Mexican brother and sister pair who are now long gone from Canada. However, the co-conspirators who fed Lindsay to the killers are still active in the Victoria area. One of them checks my blog daily.

Moving on to other writing, I’ve spent the past few months digging into nerd-stuff like chemistry, biology and physics. I’ve also been snooping into philosophy, psychology, astronomy and anatomy. No, this is not some sort of weird enlightenment or cautious coming-out. It’s a serious look at the human condition centering on consciousness.

I’m preparing a paper with the working title Interconnect – Finding Your Place in a Conscious Universe which is more for my own curiosity than anything else. I’ll share it on an upcoming blog post as a PDF download as it looks like it’s going to be fairly lengthy – probably 20-30K words. It’s kind of a “What’s the Meaning and Purpose of Life” which has been sixty years in the making. I was hoping to wrap it soon, but I got three new books for Christmas – Origin Story (A Big History of Everything), When The Earth Had Two Moons and Lonely Planet’s The Universe Travel Guide.

I also want to share ongoing successes of my writer friends. First and foremost is Sue Coletta. If you regularly follow DyingWords.net, no doubt you’ll know Sue. We’ve collaborated on a few things, and I’ve watched Sue’s progression from her first book to her rise as a sought-after source for an upcoming true crime story commissioned by a major traditional publisher. In my opinion, Sue Coletta is one of the most talented and promising writers out there today.

Rachel Amphlett is another super-talent in the crime writing business. I had the pleasure of co-hosting an indie-publishing seminar with Rachel, and I have to say how impressed I am with her work not to mention her business savvy and drive. Rachel’s main stories are her Detective Kay Hunter series and her Dan Taylor espionage series. Rachel also writes stand-alone books in the crime thriller genre.

I’ve developed an online friendship with Caroline Mitchell. Caroline and I have something in common besides writing. She’s a retired detective from a UK police force who recommissioned herself as a crime writer. A really good and successful crime writer, I must say. Caroline has her DI Amy Winter books like The Secret Child and Truth and Lies which have been optioned for TV productions. Her stories Witness and Silent Victim also proved to be top bestsellers.

John Ellsworth is another writer I’ve got to know over the net. John is a recovering lawyer who writes legal thrillers. He tells me he set out to supplement his retirement income by a few hundred a month. Well, that took off on him. John is now one of the leading indie authors making Amazon money with his Thaddeus Murfee character.

While I’m name-dropping, have you heard of Adam Croft? Here’s a guy who’s done well for himself in the crime thriller world. Adam and I cross-blogged back in the old days when he wasn’t famous and I had hair – well before Adam became the number one book seller on all of Amazon with Her Last Tomorrow. Now Adam has sold nearly two million books and his list keeps growing.

And then there’s Joe Broadmeadow. Funny how old cops attract. Joe’s a retired captain from the East Providence, Rhode Island, detective division. He’s found his stride with true crime books like Choices – You Make ‘Em, You Own ‘Em and It’s Just The Way It Was. Joe’s also penned thrillers like Collision Course, Silenced Justice and A Change Of Hate.

I have a few more writing projects planned for 2020. One is an article for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Quarterly publication. An editor at the Quarterly is an former colleague of mine, and he asked me to contribute a piece on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) about how I personally coped after The Teslin Lake Incident where my close friend and partner, Mike Buday, was murdered beside me and I was nearly shot as well. This is part of a series the Quarterly is doing on modern approaches to managing operational stress injuries (OSI).

I’m also guesting a post on what detectives and writers have in common. This is for a very high-profile website catering to writers, not detectives. The site has been recognized as one of the top ten influencers in the writing business, and you’ll have to wait for April to see who this is.

On the writing business side, this coming year I plan to expand from publishing solely on Amazon. (Going Wide) You’ll soon find my indie works on Kobo, Nook, B&N, Apple and Google as eBooks. I’m also planning to offer most in print form and maybe a test on audio.

Speaking of audio, I want to run this by you. I’ve been mulling the idea of taking my most popular blog posts and turning them into podcasts. Some of these posts have had thousands of reads and hundreds of shares. Podcasting seems to be a hit with folks who don’t want to spend the time reading but are ripe for listening while driving, walking or whatever. What do you think? Would you tune in to a DyingWords podcast?

Anyway, that’s what’s happening  with Garry Rodgers’ writing for 2020. I hope you have a safe, healthy, happy, purposeful and prosperous new year. And thank you – thank you so much – for supporting my stuff!  ~Garry

AMAZON FREE E-BOOK NEW YEARS PROMOTION — NO LIFE UNTIL DEATH BY GARRY RODGERS

Happy 2019 everyone from Garry Rodgers & DyingWords.net. To start things off right, here’s a special New Years promotion. My psychological crime thriller No Life Until Death is a FREE Amazon Kindle e-Book for the New Year season only. By-pass the party hats, noisy horns and morning headache by staying up late reading something that’ll really ring in. Get your FREE digital copy of No Life Until Death by downloading it here. You can also read it on Kindle Unlimited or email me for an ePub or PDF copy at garry.rodgers@shaw.ca.

No Life Until Death is a sequel to No Witnesses To Nothing. It’s the second in a series featuring Inspector Sharlene Bate and the perils she finds. This is the first time No Life Until Death has been released as a Kindle Freebie so take advantage of this thrilling crime story while you have time. Here’s the jacket blurb to give you an idea what’s inside No Life Until Death and why it’s sure to keep you turning pages long after Auld Lang Syne.

*** Desperate People Do Desperate Things ***

 No Life Until Death is a terrifying, psychological crime thriller by retired homicide detective, forensic coroner, now Amazon Bestselling author, Garry Rodgers.

Outwardly, Inspector Sharlene Bate of I-HIT, Vancouver’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, has her life back on track. Shining career. About to remarry. And a healthy, thirteen-year-old daughter named Emma.

Inwardly? Sharlene Bate knows different.

In Palo Alto, California, Abra and Darren Playfair’s middle-class world is imploding. Their thirteen-year-old daughter, Molly, is dying from Atypical Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome—aHUS—now in end-stage renal failure. Her kidneys must be replaced.

Molly Playfair and Emma Bate have something else in common besides age—an AB Positive blood-type—one of the rarest on earth. Only matching organs will save Molly’s life, forcing the Playfairs to hire unscrupulous scalpels in the Philippines and buy her a transplant through the underground world of human organ trafficking.

When Inspector Bate investigates a body found butchered and robbed of its organs, she’s dragged into a ring of black-market harvesters operating in Vancouver and shipping parts to Manila—internationally targeting those with rare blood. Oblivious to desperate people doing desperate things, Sharlene Bate battles personal blackness while the traffickers stalk Emma.

Time runs out for Molly and Emma as Sharlene Bate and the Playfairs desperately fight to keep their daughters alive. One must die so the other can live. For the girls…there’s no life until death.

How far would you go to save your child?

*** Desperate People Do Desperate Things ***

What readers say about No Life Until Death

“This “cranked-up” second book following on the heels of the novel, No Witnesses to Nothing; finds Inspector Sharlene Bate of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, involved in the most gruesome, dire, and terrifying case of her career. The author skillfully navigates you through a gamut of emotions. I found myself holding my breath, cussing, and even weeping. The dialogue is realistic, the story – alarming (I look at people sideways now), and the action – gripping. Do NOT pass up this book – you will be shocked at the lengths people will go to in the name of greed, love, and camaraderie.”

“As a fan of police procedural stories about murder, kidnapping, and serial killers, No Life Until Death kept me reading non-stop. This book is so real you’d never know it was crime fiction.”
“I think Garry Rodgers is slated to be one of the best crime writers of our time. No Life Until Death proves it.”
“Rodgers weaves his experiences as a police officer, his skills as a storyteller, and his commitment to his craft as a writer into a compelling and frightening story. His writing talent opens the door into the unseen brutality visited by humans on their fellow beings.” 
“I. Could. Not. Put. It. Down.” 

No Life Until Death – Desperate People Do Desperate Things.

Get Your FREE Amazon Kindle e-Book by Garry Rodgers. Download No Life Until Death here.

MERRY CHRISTMAS & WHATSUP FOR 2019 WITH GARRY RODGERS’ WRITING

First off, a very Merry Christmas to each and every one of you. And if you’re offended by the “C” word, I’m not sorry. I’m actually offended by the politically and culturally correct crowd who can’t say Christmas. Having worked in different levels of government, I’ve experienced these onion skins. I don’t know what makes these twits tick, but how anyone gets upset by hearing “Christmas” seriously baffles me. For example, some idiot city councilor in Victoria, British Columbia near my home recently got his knickers knotted because somebody gave him a potted poinsettia and he made a big deal because that was too close to Christianity for him. “F” him, I say.

Enough of that rant. So, 2018 was a busy writing year for me, though you wouldn’t know it by the sheer number of books I didn’t publish. This was a swing time where I did an enormous amount of research for forthcoming projects. I also wrote a pile of commercial website content pieces for my daughter’s writing agency. And, from time to time, I managed to pen a few blog posts. But most of this year was prepping for whatsup in 2019. Here’s what’s about to happen with Garry Rodgers and the DyingWords brand in the coming year.

The biggest news—by far—is that Adam Croft is taking me on as a personal understudy. If you don’t know who Adam is, he’s one of the world’s top-selling crime & psychological thriller writers. At one point in 2018, Adam Croft held the #1 best-selling spot on all of Amazon, right ahead of JK Rowling. Adam will work with me on all parts of my indie writing business from craft to marketing. This will take my writing career to an entirely new level, and I am absolutely honored to be one of five select students Adam will tutor.

Another interesting venture is entering the CBC Books 2019 Short Story Competition. My piece is The Old Stone Butter Church. It’s inspired by an epiphany experienced inside an abandoned 140-year-old stone church on southern Vancouver Island. The first prize is 6-grand in cash plus a 2-week writing residency at the prestigious Banff Center for Fine Arts. Wish me luck. The coin will help offset Adam’s fee for tolerating me.

The Lindsay Buziak murder is one of Canada’s highest-profile unsolved homicides. It’s also one of the most solvable, given the circumstances. Someone knows something and they’ll eventually talk – as long as the suspect tree shakes. Eleven years ago, Lindsay was a vibrant 24-year-old Victoria, B.C. real estate agent stabbed to death while showing a vacant high-end house. There is no doubt Lindsay Buziak’s death was a planned killing and the case is as murky as a pail of used engine oil. The suspect list reaches from her beefcake boyfriend at the scene, his mother, one of Lindsay’s closest friends, into an international organized crime cartel, and upward to the highest levels of a corrupt government scandal. This year I’m helping to shake the suspect tree with a proposed book on the case facts called Someone Knows Something – The Shocking Story of Lindsay Buziak’s Unsolved Murder.

I’m almost finished the manuscript for Sun Dance – Why Custer Really Lost the Battle of the Little Bighorn. This started 2 years ago with a root cause analysis for a blog post. I found an angle to one of the most researched and written-about North American historical events that no one seems to have dug into. That’s the psychological impact Chief Sitting Bull’s sun dance ceremony had on psyching his warriors to annihilate the U.S. 7th Cavalry in 1876. It covers the events leading to, during, and the fallout after this famous event. I’m out of the rabbit hole now and will shop Sun Dance to traditional publishers.

Continuing on my based-on-true crime books like In The Attic and Under The Ground, I’m 2/3 of the way through the manuscript for From The Shadows. It’s about a family of 6 — 3 generations — who were savagely murdered with their bodies concealed. It resulted in one of Canada’s most-encompassing homicide investigations. From The Shadows should be ready for indie publishing in the spring of 2019. If anyone’s interested in a free advanced reading copy (ARC) in digital form, give me a shout.

Next up for 2019 are two more based-on-true crime books where I was involved in the investigations. One is On The Floor which is about the most cold-blooded execution murders I ever saw. The husband and wife owners of a gun store were robbed of a horde of assault weapons and handguns, then laid on the floor and shot in the back of their heads. On The Floor follows the investigation through the biker world and the Asian drug triads before ending in an extraordinary gunfight with the perpetrators. Watch for On The Floor in the summer of 2019.

Beside The Road is next in line. It should be ready in 2019’s fall. Carrying on in the based-on-true crime theme, this story captures a bizarre case where we found a decomposing body down a bank beside a road. This case ticked off all the forensic investigative aid boxes before identifying who it was and the one-in-a-million cause of death. Beside The Road is the weirdest homicide I ever experienced.

If there’s time left, I have a bunch of working titles on the list. There’s no material shortage out there and it makes for great based-on-true crime stories like By The Book, At The Cottage, Behind The Badge, Off The Grid, and Through The Ice. Realistically, these are 2020 or 2021 undertakings because of another previous project taking shape from a 2018 effort.

This year I developed an outline for a screenplay. It’s suitable for a 10-part series, and it’s based on an emotion-evoking true crime investigation I headed. The working title is The Battered Woman. It follows the path of a battered wife’s fight against “the system” after she repeatedly shot her passed-out husband and evoked the battered woman syndrome defense. We’ll see where this goes.

That’s a wrap on an ambitious agenda. I still plan on doing a blog post every second Saturday morning and will keep experimenting with topics. It seems my pieces on analyzing high-profile events are the most popular. However, I have a few interesting guests in the lineup for interviews. Stay tuned to find out who.

Merry Christmas, everyone! May you have more Christmas eats and drinks than humanly healthy. May you have good Christmas times with great friends around you. And may my books make you sleep with one eye open—at 3 am on Christmas morning—when Billy Ray slips down from your attic with his ax.

~Garry