Some story behind the story””January Gets Her Gunn

This was intended to be the start of a number of tales that were the joint efforts of my late husband Jim and me. Sadly he passed away unexpectedly and the rest will probably never see the light of day now. This one was not done but there was enough of it completed for me to work with and I knew where we were going with it. For some months I could not bring myself to do that work but eventually I wanted to make it happen so I cleaned up the timeline that had gone through a lot of changes and added the last few chapters to complete the story. Needless to say it is one of my favorites and gives a very accurate glimpse of police procedures while also revealing a romance, again one that certainly could be real!

The character of January Farrell was mostly Jim’s vision and based on a young woman who was a deputy sheriff in the central California county where we lived for a time in the 1970-80s. She was a fine peace officer and we both admired her a great deal. Thad Gunn is kind of a composite but there is a lot of one of the authors in him  although the plot differs greatly from any reality there. Many of the incidents are based on real experiences Jim had during many years as a ‘cop’ in various Arizona venues. If I were to pick an actress to play January in a film version it would be the gal who plays Kate Becket on Castle!! An actor to do Gunn would be more challenging… A younger Sam Elliot comes to mind but not quite right–maybe Sean Connery's voice!!

I need to give a shout out to the members of The Compass Rose, a critique group we worked with on this book that had been established under the auspices of the Outreach Chapter of RWA’s Network-by-mail program and to a dear friend, Sue Ellen Welfonder, who also critiqued with us for awhile. All their input was very helpful and improved the final result.

I have done other police procedural tales to include the first two books in an intended series or trilogy called The Copper Stars of Cochise. They are all set in Cochise County, AZ and involve the CCSD and Bisbee, AZ police departments. Yep, J.A. Jance probably does it better but mine are not too bad!! Penny’s Luck and Mollie’s McGuire are now out of print but I am revising them, working on Jessie’s Legacy, the third story, and intend to self-publish them thru Amazon or elsewhere in the next year or so.

 Ooops, I forgot to mention that I'm Gwynn Morgan, author of several romantic adventure tales and a book of poetry. You can visit my web site www.gwynnmorgan.com for some more info!