GOOD COP BAD COP & Giveaway

Good Cop Bad Cop

by Sallie Moppert

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GENRE:   Mystery

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BLURB:

When his mother is beaten to death by his alcoholic stepfather, fourteen-year-old Samuel Marlowe is rescued from seeking revenge against him by a chance meeting with Officer Edwin Hill. The veteran policeman takes Sam under his wing and even becomes the boy’s foster father.

Sam becomes a cop and works alongside his beloved mentor until Edwin is killed in a shooting. Hailed as a hero for his actions in the case, Sam feels like anything but. He begins a dark descent away from the stand-up policeman he once was, turning to drugs and alcohol to numb his pain and his PTSD.

The police captain assigns Sam a partner hoping to salvage what is left of him by forcing him to become a good role model for the young recruit. Needless to say, Sam is not pleased with the arrangement, protesting it up until the moment Junior Detective Dahlia Bennett enters his life.

Will he try to shake her loose? Does her by-the-book ideals and strong moral code rub off on him? Will his relaxed attitude and views on true justice start to influence her?  What will ultimately lead to the two becoming a solid team? When Dahlia declares she wants to reopen some cases believing that the wrong person was sent to prison, Sam tells her straight out that in doing so, she would be putting her life at risk. As Dahlia persists, Sam is faced with the ultimate decision: let Dahlia reopen the cases and discover his crimes, or kill her to keep her from learning the truth.

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Excerpt:

From Inner Demons:

“Yeah, I had no idea what to say when I found out what all the hubbub was about either. I completely forgot about Scott after he was sent to prison for what he did at the party. Guess he didn’t forget about me, though.”

“It seems that way, but you didn’t answer my question. What really happened between the two of you right before SWAT and I entered the gym?”

“You really want to know?” Sam asked, an eyebrow raised.

He could see the shudder that shot through his partner from his tone of voice.

“Yes,” Dahlia said, looking her partner straight in the eye.

“I took the gun from him,” Sam said. “He didn’t think I’d do anything like that, so I plucked it right out of his hand. I pointed the gun at him and, boom, I shot him. He had his hands up. He didn’t want me to, but I had to. I had to put him down.”

Sam watched with interest as Dahlia processed what he told her. She was silent for a few minutes.

“Thank you for telling me,” was all she said before turning and walking away.

Sam kept his eyes on Dahlia as she headed down the hallway away from him. He stuffed his hands into his pants pockets.

I’ve told you the truth, Bennett. The ball’s in your court now.

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Amazing just how well this book is written!  The so real like feel of the story will steal you away for the night.  The book is really thought out with the story line as well as the characters.  


Once you start this book it really easy to find yourself lost from reality reading this book.  But I will say that for some this could be a "trigger",  

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

A New York native, Sallie has a Master’s degree in Criminal Justice, with a Specialization in Forensic Science. A lifelong mystery fan, she has combined her love and passion for writing with her interests in criminal justice, law, and forensic science.

Sallie currently resides in New York with her family and her “zoo,” which includes two dogs, two guinea pigs, a betta fish and a leopard gecko. She works as a freelance writer/editor and a legal assistant.

WEBSITE: https://salliemoppert.wixsite.com/mysite

AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Good-Cop-Bad-Sallie-Moppert

ZIMBELL HOUSE: http://zimbellhousepublishing.com/product/good-cop-bad-cop/

FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/GoodCopBadCopNovel

GOODREADS: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/66482800-sallie

“Sculpting Stories”

I have been studying martial arts since I was twelve years old. I also taught it for some time. If you’ve never studied martial arts in any form, there is a lot of wisdom and knowledge that can be gleaned from the practice. One of the best analogies I heard from one of my masters can also apply to writing. As teachers, we are responsible for sculpting our students. We start with a full, untouched block and slowly begin chipping away, starting with big pieces and then working on the finer details little by little. 

Working on a story is the same way. The untouched block is the idea. Once you have it, you can set to work, breaking off chunk after chunk with characters, settings, plot points, etc., and that will be followed by ironing out the finer details when editing, sentence structure, word choice, and so on. 

What does this process look like? It can look different for each person, but in this post, I will be breaking down pieces of my stories from Good Cop Bad Cop to give you a glimpse into the evolution of the story from its inception to the final product in the published work.

Let’s examine the first story in the collection, Second Chances. I’ll be picking apart the opening paragraph:

“Throwing open the door to his tattered apartment, Seth Tucker stumbled inside. He was drunk again, having consumed enough alcohol to put a frat boy party to shame, and wanted nothing more than to collapse on the lumpy sofa with the deflated cushions. Instead, he found Charlotte Marlowe seated there, directly in his spot. Arms folded across her chest, Prussian blue eyes glared sternly at him, shooting daggers of loathing across the room.”

The original was pretty different from the finished product:

“Throwing open the door leading into his ramshackle apartment, Seth Tucker stumbled inside. He was drunk-again-and planned to collapse on the lumpy, lopsided sofa but found he could not. Seth scowled at the woman seated on his couch. She stared back at him sternly with her Prussian blue eyes.”

I am fortunate that I get to work with a terrific editor through my publisher who helped me throughout the editing process to get all of the stories into the best shape possible before being released. Not everyone will have access to an editor right off the bat and that’s completely understandable. There are various services that can be found online through companies such as Writer’s Digest, as well as writing groups that, even if not professional editors, can assist in tweaking your work to improve it.

There were several suggestions for this paragraph alone and the number of revisions to the manuscript as a whole was quite extensive. Let’s break down some of the edits:

EDIT #1: Throwing open the door leading into his ramshackle apartment, Seth Tucker stumbled inside. He was drunk-again-and planned to collapse on the lumpy, lopsided sofa. but found he could not. Seth scowled at the Instead he found Charlotte woman seated on his couch. She stared back at him sternly with her Prussian blue eyes.

SUMMARY: There were a lot of extraneous words that were removed from the opening paragraph. Why say in 20 words what you can perhaps say in 10-15? Another edit made was to convey more of a sense of urgency with Seth’s desire to collapse on the couch upon returning to his apartment; instead of saying ‘planned to collapse,’ it was suggested to change the wording to something that would show how Seth wanting nothing more than to pass out on the couch would create tension and lead to an argument between Charlotte and himself in the following paragraphs. If he merely ‘planned’ on lying down on the sofa, Charlotte sitting there wouldn’t create much of an obstacle because Seth could sit on the armchair or just go straight to bed. The third major edit was the description of Charlotte’s emotions toward Seth when he returns to the apartment drunk. Simply staring at Seth doesn’t illustrate how angry and disgusted Charlotte is with him when he returns in an inebriated state and didn’t pick Sam up from hockey practice, forcing the teen to walk home in the pouring rain.

EDIT #2: Throwing open the door to his tattered apartment, Seth Tucker stumbled inside. He was drunk again, having consumed enough alcohol to put a frat boy party to shame, and wanted nothing more than to collapse on the lumpy, lopsided sofa with the limp, deflated cushions. Instead, he found Charlotte Marlowe seated there, directly in his spot. Arms folded across her chest, prussian blue eyes stared sternly at him, nearly shooting daggers of loathing across the room at him.

SUMMARY: Much like removing the big chunks of stone or clay or whatever medium a sculptor might be working in, the next step would be to start fine tuning the details. 

The biggest edit in the second round was the fact that there was an overabundance of synonyms used: lumpy, lopsided, limp and deflated. Only using one or two of these words, you still get the image that the couch has certainly seen better days and doesn’t look like it’s going to be found on display at a store. The next edit was to fix the description of Charlotte’s anger toward Seth. Instead of just saying she ‘stared sternly’ at him, it was suggested to change ‘stared’ to another word such as ‘glared’ and to use descriptions instead of the adverb ‘sternly.’ Saying ‘shooting daggers of loathing across the room at him’ gives far more description than before; the wording makes me imagine Charlotte’s eyes narrowing and her stare being unmoving and unblinking. 

Between the two edits, the final version of the opening paragraph began to take shape. It introduces a good deal of information that is essential to the story in only a few sentences, such as the conflict between Seth and Charlotte, Seth’s bad behaviors, the state of disrepair their apartment is in indicating their poverty-like status and more. 

What are some tips you find helpful when editing?

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