The Liam Campbell Novels

#thiswritinglife

People always ask writers where we get our ideas. Usually I say “the idea fairy” and leave it at that. Ideas come from any and everywhere, something I read or a story I heard or a headline in the media. Once it was my father watching a Cessna on floats taking off from Lake Hood…

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How I Spent My Summer Vacation.

[from “Missing, Presumed…” a Liam Campbell short story] ELI SYLVESTER HORRELL, fisher , husband, father, went overboard halfway between Dutch Harbor and the Pribilof Islands. Weather conditions that day in January included fifteen-knot winds and twelve-foot swells. The crew of the JERI A. had seen Horrell go in. In spite of an intensive search by…

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There’s been a shooting.

[from “On the Evidence,” a Liam Campbell short story] THE PHONE RANG right next to Liam’s ear. He snatched it up before it could ring again. “It’s supposed to be my day off.” “Yes, sir,” Corporal Prince replied amiably, ignoring the snarl in her superior officer’s voice. Next to him, Wy muttered and burrowed beneath…

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Unless they were guilty of idolatry, heresy and sodomy as charged.

The Knights Templar began in 1113 when Frankish knight Hugues de Payen volunteered his and nine (unless it was thirty) other knights’ services to King Baldwin of Jerusalem to guard the safety of pilgrims traveling from where they landed on the coast to the Holy Sepulcher. Unless they were founded in Easter of 1119, when…

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He screamed, a high-pitched sound of pure terror.

Someone besides Moses had gotten to the jukebox and Santana was telling everyone within hearing to make it real or else forget about it.  On the tiny excuse for a dance floor, Mark Walker was showing Cindi Guttierez how to do a natural underarm turn, only he missed her hand.  She, an enthusiastic if uncoordinated partner, spun…

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