Dear Reader…
When I started writing my first mystery, I could not have
guessed that murder would soon become all too real in my own life.
As a forensic handwriting examiner with thousands of cases
over more than thirty-five years of practice, I had collected some interesting
tales. And, as someone who wanted to write a mystery since reading Enid
Blyton’s The Sea of Adventure, which
I received on my eighth birthday, finally, in 1997, I sat down to do it. It
started with a title, Poison Pen, and
bits of a story about a colleague who died, an apparent suicide, at 37. I wrote
a few chapters, realized that I didn’t know what I was doing, got discouraged
and put the manuscript aside.
Fast forward to the morning of February 19, 2000 and the phone
call that changed everything. It came from a detective with the Orange County (California)
Sheriff’s office. After introducing himself, he said, “I’m sorry to tell you,
your daughter has been murdered.” Yep, just like that.
After staring at the phone for a long moment before handing
it to my then-husband, I learned that Jennifer was the victim in a murder-suicide
by Tom Schnaible, the man who was living with her. Tom was a federal agent who
worked for the INS—what is now known as the Department of Homeland Security. He
shot her eight times as she ran from him, then put the gun in his own mouth and
pulled the trigger. Jen had planned to leave him the next day.
Nine or ten months earlier when they first met, Tom gave me
a sample of his handwriting to analyze. The red flags I saw in it made me shudder.
The three of us talked about the problems they might face in a relationship,
including his need for absolute control and Jen’s absolute refusal to be
controlled. She was 27 and as her mother, I had always found it a challenge to
get her to do…well, anything I wanted her to. And as usual, she did not listen
to the warning.
There are no words to describe the experience of burying
one’s child. Seeing her lying in a casket—her, but not her—watching that wooden
box lowered into the ground; going home after the funeral knowing there would
be no more phone calls, no lunches out, no family dinners with my only daughter.
Trying to help my two sons understand that there was nothing they could have
done to save their older sister, for whom they grieved deeply. Catching myself
in a store in the following months, seeing a cookbook she would have liked,
thinking, “I should buy this for Jen…Oh.”
As the weeks went by and it became necessary to get back to
“real life,” I picked up the Poison Pen
manuscript again. A good distraction. I started working on it with a friend I had
known only as a psychic—he’d given me loads of readings. But I discovered that he
had published a dozen mysteries with Random House in the early ‘80s, and he was
willing to teach me the basics of mystery writing. So, every couple of weeks I drove
the sixty miles to his home and spent a couple of hours reading aloud my latest
pages. He was enthusiastic when my writing worked and when it was crap, he
pulled no punches. So, Poison Pen eventually
got finished, won third place in a competition by the Southwest Writers organization…and
took another seven years to get published. But that’s another story.
Suffice it to say, Dear Reader, seventeen years later I continue
to work at honing my craft, and now, the seventh book in my Forensic
Handwriting Mysteries, Written Off,
is ready for its November 14, 2017 release. It’s about a female serial killer
in prison in Maine, and the murdered professor who was writing a book about
her. While searching for the manuscript in the professor’s two-hundred-year-old
mansion, handwriting expert Claudia Rose uncovers explosive research about some
trouble university students who are dubbed “Maynard’s Maniacs” by their
classmates. The professor’s academic success and personal fortune made her the envy
of fellow faculty members, and the University anticipates being the beneficiary
of her estate. But a charming stranger shows up brandishing a new will, and all
bets are off. After answering the local police chief’s call to examine the
will, Claudia rushes back to the professor’s isolated mansion and becomes
trapped in a blizzard. With a killer.
I hope you will give Written
Off a try.
Love,
Sheila Lowe, author
Find out more on Amazon
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