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10 Fun Facts About Detective Jo Wyatt

A reader once described Jo as “smart enough to know her limitations, confident enough to trust her gut, and determined enough to unravel the threads in any case.” That’s Jo to a T. But underneath all that professionalism is a woman who you’d enjoy sharing a drink with. Here’s a list of fun facts about Detective Jo Wyatt that readers may not know about her—including her favorite cocktail.

Jo was born on New Year’s Eve. Her father was hoping she’d be the first baby of the new year, but she was born too early for any notoriety.
The flaming gold that crowns the Aspen trees in autumn is Jo’s favorite color.
She eats M&M’s by color—starting with brown and ending with green.
Jo earned a scholarship at Western Colorado University in Gunnison. She majored in criminal justice with a minor in literature—which comes in handy whenever Doc Ingersleben, the Echo Valley coroner, shows up on a call. He ritually starts every encounter with a quote and a challenge to name the source.
She has an on-and-off relationship with God, but finds enormous comfort in the nave of the All Saints in the Valley Episcopal Church. She routinely walks the outdoor Labyrinth when she’s chewing on a problem.
The quickest way to cheer her up is to take her hiking, biking, or bouldering.
She was an only child. Although throughout her childhood, she spent so much time with her best friend, Aiden Teague, that his father threatened to claim her as a dependent.
The worst injury she’s sustained on duty was the night a drunk driver broke her nose after he decided she wasn’t going to take him to jail. He was wrong. The worst injury she sustained growing up was when she and Aiden raced for an Easter egg and she took a header into a rock that required six stitches above her left eyebrow. She got the egg, but only because he came to help her the moment he realized she’d fallen.
Her favorite drink is Dr Pepper. Her favorite cocktail is a DP and Jameson. This does not sit well with Sully, the owner of Finnegan’s Irish Pub, who serves her the ingredients in separate glasses along with a lecture about how Irish whiskey should be consumed. Every. Single. Time.
Occasionally she orders it just to mess with him.

10 Things I’ve Learned About Writing

1. Writing 90,000 words is easy, it’s putting them in the proper order that’s challenging.

Occasionally, I unearth some of my earliest writing… and cringe. But those early words serve as affirmation that attending classes, joining a critique group, studying craft books, and reading award-winning and popular books—which by the way, don’t always share the same titles—has definitely upped my game. When I first started writing, structure was something that had a door. Thankfully, I’ve expanded my thinking since those early words. Aristotle recognized that stories had a beginning, middle, and an end. The best storytellers sense the cadence of a tale: they control the rise and fall of the action. Perhaps most importantly, the best writers learn the rules and capitalize on opportunities to break them.

2. You can’t edit a blank page.

The quote is attributed to Jodi Piccoult, and it’s true. You can’t edit a blank page. Staring at it won’t help. Trust me I’ve tried. An empty page is intimidating and it’s psyched a lot of writers out. But at some point, you’ve got to commit. Give yourself permission to spew codswallop across the page. It’s okay, because…

3. Revision is your friend.

One of the things I love about writing is that I can take as many whacks at getting it right as I need. Unlike, say, brain surgery. You definitely want your surgeon to get that right the first time.

4. Writing drunk only works in movies.

However, tea (or your caffeine delivery system of choice), is crucial. Without tea, I would never have moved beyond lesson #2—not because I couldn’t formulate the words, but because I’d lack the energy to type them. What you do after you achieve your word count is up to you. Personally, I’m partial to a French 75. I like the bubbles.

5. Procrasti-baking is a real thing.

When I get stuck, I bake.* My closets get cleaned, the baseboards get wiped. But here’s the thing. If you’ve ever read the short story “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen, you know the most mundane tasks often reveal the most profound insight. Clean grout is a just a bonus.

6. Read—and not just the things you like.

The Great Gatsby was my albatross—I didn’t care for it in high school, and it left me cold as an adult—heretical, right? Well, at the suggestion of a writing instructor, I revisited the novel. Only this time I re-read the story armed with a pencil—and I came away with a far different impression.

Fitzgerald was a master of compression. In 181 pages, he told a story of love, betrayal, murder, broken dreams, and the hazards of chasing what one wants at the expense of what one needs.

Perhaps it’s poetry that leaves you cold. I’d argue that no one knows the value of exactly the right word more than a poet. You want the right words.

7. Write.

I know, this seems obvious. Yet how much time have you frittered away talking about writing instead of actually putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard? How adept are you at ignoring social media? And don’t forget to play. Experiment with point of view, tone, genre. I like to try new things in short stories, but regardless of the length or genre, be fearless in your word choice. Discover your voice. Why? Because as we’ve discussed, you can’t revise an empty page, and practice truly does makes perfect.

8. The universal is found in the specific.

Consider the axiom: War is hell. Intellectually we all know that, but it isn’t until we follow the plight of a soldier as portrayed in Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried, or witness Scarlet O’Hara shake her fist at the sky and vow she’ll never be hungry again that we care.

9. Show don’t tell is a common writing trope for a reason.

Entire lectures have been dedicated to the topic, and it doesn’t always apply (because well, rules are meant to be broken), but Anton Checkhov put it best; “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

And finally?

10. There are a lot more than 10 things to learn.

Be humble, be gracious, be tenacious. Writing is solitary, but it can’t be accomplished in isolation. Join Sisters in Crime (shoutout to the Guppy Chapter!), or Mystery Writers of America, or the group at your local library. They’ve all got great resources and classes. I’ve found the writing community to be incredibly warm and welcoming. But as a writer you will be rejected, a lot—and from a multitude of sources: agents, editors, reviewers, award-judges, and readers may all at some point decide your writing is not for them. That’s okay. Think about your taste in music or art. There are styles you gravitate towards and those you avoid. The same is true of any creative endeavor. But you cannot—MUST NOT—reject yourself.

*These delightful cookies were courtesy of my wonderful author friend, Mandy Mikulencak, who also subscribes to procrasti-baking–and she is a far better baker than I am.

The Importance of Rituals

Authors are frequently asked about their writing rituals, and I’ve never owned up to any. I mean, sure, most mornings I find my way to my desk, open the document du jour and see what new damage I can inflict upon it—or in the case of revision, how I can patch it up and send it on its way. But I don’t write every day, I don’t have a mandatory word count, I don’t outline. Honestly, looking at this, I’m not sure how I’ve managed to publish anything at all.

I sip my tea and fret that I’m undisciplined. That, of course, makes me question my time management skills and I take a quick peek at my calendar, with its hourly segments and prioritizing processes that incorporate Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits. The well-worn leather binder and my lack of focus serve as evidence that a Franklin Planner does not magically make one a highly effective person. That makes me wonder if I need to buy a timer in the shape of a tomato, and dole my time out in twenty-five-minute increments. After all, the five-minute break that follows each sprint would be perfectly timed to brew a fresh cup of tea.

To forestall the verdict that my lack of rituals places me beyond redemption as a writer, I must confess my good intentions. I am a member of Ramona’s Sprint Club, a Facebook group started by author Ramona DeFelice Long—a name dear to many in the writing community. She was a talented writer, accomplished editor, and mentor to many. The reason it’s a sprint club is because she admitted to “…an attention span of one hour at a time.” It was a length of time that she turned into marvelous prose. Upon Ramona’s passing in October 2020, fellow author Wende Dikec, who writes as Abigail Drake, took up the mantle of wrangling and inspiring the group.

One “Mug Shot Monday,” Wende posted a photo of her collection of Wonder Woman mugs as a quiet reminder that inspiration is all around us if we remain open to it. I glanced at the mug on my desk. For a woman with no writing ritual, I am a creature of habit when it comes to my morning tea and the mug that contains it.

The mug was made in France, and I purchased it from Williams Sonoma. The hand-thrown pottery was an extravagance for a twenty-something, and yet if I calculate the price per use, it comes out to a fraction of a penny per day. It matches nothing else in my cabinet. Which makes it peculiar. Kind of like a former cop whose favorite brew derives from leaves rather than beans. I’m okay with it.

While my choice of tea changes by the day, I’ve been using the same mug for over thirty years. It is the color of an autumn forest and fits my hand just so. I can—and do—sometimes use other mugs (especially on the occasions I do switch up my game to coffee), but every morning, this mug—filled with tea—accompanies me to my office.

The tasks that accompany a book launch are myriad and stretch over several months. Mercy Creek, the second Jo Wyatt Mystery launched October 12th. It’s my fourth book and follows on the heels of Shadow Ridge. But on that Monday in July when I checked in with Ramona’s Sprint Group, I sipped my tea, thought about my work in progress, and realized I had a writing ritual after all.

Originally posted on Jungle Red Writers

My Book~Shadow Ridge

One night during my career as a police officer, a man with a grudge invaded a woman’s home bent on punishing her for a transgression that occurred more than five years earlier. Her fiancé escaped and alerted police. SWAT officers surrounded the house. Hostage negotiators manned the phone. The call went straight to the woman’s answering machine and the message echoed throughout the house. The suspect never picked up the phone, instead he reached for his shotgun and with a single blast, killed himself and the woman.

I was one of the negotiators.

Policing offers a master’s course in humanity. Over the course of my twenty-two-year career, I witnessed horrors and heroism. It made a profound impression on me and I started writing.

I believe crime fiction is ultimately about redemption, which to attain requires unflinching emotional honesty. I naively expected the transition from cop to writer to be fairly straightforward. But police reports are a recitation of facts while the incidents they describe are populated with people who bleed, and suffer, and sometimes die. As a rookie author, I wanted to exert a level of control over my stories that was impossible to achieve in policing. I relied on what I knew, but sidestepped the muddled emotions I was afraid to confront.

My first two attempts at crafting a police procedural resulted in manuscripts that read more like textbooks than mysteries. Undaunted, I began dissecting books by authors I admired, sussing out the authorial tricks they’d used to breathe life into their prose, and contrasted that against what had killed my own. Then, I did the unthinkable. I created an amateur sleuth.

My debut novel earned an Agatha Award nomination for Best First Novel. Along the way, I learned I had to let my knowledge of law enforcement inform my writing, not overwhelm it. It took two books before I gained the courage to return to my police roots. That book is Shadow Ridge.

Detective Jo Wyatt inhabits a world I know: life is messy, plans sometimes fail, and cops don’t always know the answers. She’s a conscientious officer with ambition. Her foil is Quinn Kirkwood, a female gamer with personal baggage and big problems. I stumbled across this aspect of the story after reading an article describing the misogynistic subculture that thinks nothing of waging terror campaigns against women who embrace video gaming. Quinn finds herself in those crosshairs, but how she arrived there is murky.

Alice Walsenberg is a grieving mother and philanthropist who’s married to the District Attorney. Together, Jo, Quinn, and Alice comprise a triumvirate of driven, intelligent, and flawed women.

Decades later, the woman I couldn’t save occasionally still whispers in my ear. I imagine she exhorts me to be better. Justice is a nebulous concept. It can’t bring a person back, and even when it prevails—as it does in Shadow Ridge—it doesn’t guarantee redemption. Those are the emotional truths crime fiction demands. It too, is non-negotiable.

~Originally published in the Winter 2020 edition of Mystery Scene Magazine.

A Sense of Place

Silverton Colorado draped in fog. Image by DL Bender

Setting is the bedrock of a story and Detective Jo Wyatt and Echo Valley are inextricably linked in Shadow Ridge.

At its most basic, setting grounds a reader in time and place. But setting also hints at mood, reinforces theme, presents physical and emotional obstacles, provides motivation, and may even offer an explanation as to why a detective such as Jo Wyatt would take an oath to protect it—regardless of the personal cost.

San Juan Mountains first snow. Image by DL Bender

For Jo, Echo Valley is home. In a place that defined its locals by the depth of their roots, she’s a native child. Located in southwest Colorado, Echo Valley is urban enough for a craft brewery, but rural enough that bears rummage through the trash at night.

While you won’t find Echo Valley on any map, the inspiration for the setting of Shadow Ridge derives from an area in Southwest Colorado. The San Juan Mountains make up the southernmost portion of the Rocky Mountains and their current beauty belies the brutality of their birth: volcanic explosions, repeated floods, ice fields, and earthquakes.

The Animas River cuts through the heart of Echo Valley in much the same way the river wends its way through the real City of Durango. And like Durango, Echo Valley shares a history of mining, a traditional street grid with a historic downtown corridor, and several other aspects common to small jurisdictions scattered across the state. But Echo Valley is not Durango—it is smaller, less populous, and a bit more isolated. But if you squint, you can imagine what Echo Valley will look like when it grows up.

Footbridge over the Animas River in Durango, CO. Image by DL Bender

While I don’t live in Durango any longer, the area still has my heart. Many of my friends keep the area alive for me—including my critique partner. I’m fortunate that I can show you Echo Valley through Jo’s eyes. But the photos themselves were taken by one of my former colleagues, DL Bender. He continues to feed me a steady diet of photos depicting the area, the seasons, and the details of a landscape that on the page reads as Echo Valley. As a former member of the La Plata County Sheriff and their Search and Rescue team, his knowledge of the backcountry is impressive. That he is never without his camera is a bonus. I’m even more fortunate that he graciously allows me to share his photographs.

Until Shadow Ridge launches on October 6, I will be posting an image each Thursday on Instagram. Please stop by and see for yourself why Jo and I both find this part of the country inspirational.

The Decision-Making Process in Police Organizations

Decision-making in law enforcement is as dynamic as the profession and there is no single process that will work in all situations. The course of action undertaken by an officer involved in a critical incident must be made quickly, under pressure, and often in isolation.