It’s probably not a good idea to chase an armed burglar. But, in my husband’s defense, he didn’t know the man fleeing our house had a gun. At least not at first.

Then the young man stopped, pulled a semi-automatic, aimed it at Danny’s head, and threatened to kill him. When the burglar continued down our street, my husband figured he couldn’t fire while running and so pursued him. A couple of blocks later, the thief brandished the weapon again and dumped stolen items from his backpack.

Crazy or brave, my husband’s actions resulted in the recovery of most of our stolen property, and the police had a good description of the suspect as well as his direction of travel. They apprehended the burglar a short time later, but not before he’d ditched the gun.

The significance of the weapon soon became apparent. In California, a non-violent burglary often receives a slap on the wrist, but keeping someone’s property through intimidation or force changes a burglary into a robbery, a more serious offense. Also, at the time of our burglary, a gun enhancement charge added a potential ten years to a sentence.

The gun added big stakes for both the victim—wanting justice for the real threat—and the perpetrator—hoping to avoid all those additional prison years. This tension crept into what would become my suspense novel One Gun.

But the question that propelled my writing was: What happened to the gun? In spite of an intensive search by law enforcement, the firearm was never located. My imagination was unleashed to answer that question, to create a fictional narrative. The story of the gun, where it travels and the lives it impacts, emerged as a thread to stitch together diverse characters living in the same central California coastal community.

Claire Johnson, a fellow Level Best Books author (Fog City), put it this way in her review: “a gun becomes an inert, silent protagonist on a fateful journey that profoundly affects several lives. No one is the same once the gun’s journey comes to a close. Although there are many characters in this novel, the voice of each character is distinct and finely drawn, rooting the reader in their role of the gun’s journey.”

I like to think the novel One Gun is a good thing that came from this event in our lives. The burglary became grist for the mill, and my writing became a way to process the trauma. Writing requires a person to back away from what has happened, to view it as “material,” and to gain perspective.

That does not mean One Gun is “true.” Quite the opposite. Writing fiction allows us to seize control of the narrative, to transform our life experiences into whatever we want. That’s why writing is so powerful, not just for the reader, but for ourselves, the writers. It brings order to chaos.

The first chapter of One Gun is titled “The Burglary.” It resembles the break-in of our home, but in the end, One Gun is completely fiction. Most of the events never happened, and those bits that did, happened differently than depicted. Shaping the story is not only empowering, but also necessary to create a successful work of fiction. Real life—no matter how dramatic and stressful—lacks structure and contains many boring parts. It doesn’t systematically build suspense. Taking charge of the raw material of our life and shaping it to our will is both cathartic and transformative.

The result, as in One Gun, is a story more captivating than the real-life occurrence. I hope you will give the book a read.

A modern-day tale of suspense, One Gun posits, “How much havoc can one gun wreak?”

After the Russos interrupt a burglary, they race to find the thief’s tossed handgun before his cohorts do; when two tweeners discover it first, the characters are placed on a collision course with tragic consequences

Buy Links:  Level Best Books

Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/pdjxb3dh

Bookshop Santa Cruz: 

Ingram’s: https://www.ingramcontent.com/retailers/ordering

 

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