Chapter 2

Craig Randall was sitting on his couch watching the countdown on his television to welcome in the New Year. He was mindful of the good things that had happened this past year and he had the hopes that more good things would be happening in this coming year.

Thinking if he was asked why he wasn’t celebrating the coming of this New Year, he would say it was amateur night. He was at home as he wanted to play it safe because of all the drunk drivers that were out on the road. The real reason he was at home was that he didn’t have a lady friend that he could ask out tonight. Finding a female companion was one of the good things he was hoping would be happening this coming year.

Craig was thirty-one years old. He was fairly good-looking and was recently employed as a television weatherman at Channel Four in Austin, Texas. He reminisced on how his present employment came about.

He had graduated from Texas Tech University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Geological Sciences. He earned his Meteorology Certification from Mississippi State University. Craig’s goal for a long time was to become a television weatherman. He accomplished that by being hired at a television station in Waco, Texas. He had progressed now to being that television station’s main weatherman for six years. Overall, he enjoyed functioning as a television weatherman and had become comfortable doing it as well as developing his style of discussing the weather.

While he had achieved his goal of becoming a television weatherman, it didn’t take him long to realize that he wasn’t going to become wealthy by being one. In Waco, he wasn’t in what could be called a major television market and wondered if the pay would be that much more if he was in a major television market.

After giving it considerable thought, he realized he needed to do something to supplement his income. Whatever that was he didn’t know, but it would need to be something that didn’t distract from his present position. He did enjoy reading novels. When he was in college, he had taken an elective course on creative writing and did well. He thought he would try in his spare time to write a novel. If he used a pen name, no one would know that a television weatherman was the novel’s author.

In thinking more about it wasn’t that difficult to come up with a character to write about. It was readily apparent to Craig that the Navy detective programs on television as JAG and NCIS with their spinoffs, were popular shows. The Army, which was almost twice the size of the Navy, had its Criminal Investigative Department, CID. To Craig’s knowledge, little was done to develop fictional dramas or stories that involved this Army component. He was aware of a novel that was turned into a movie, “The General’s Daughter” that featured the CID investigators. There now was the “Reacher” book series about an ex-MP that was popular, but there was little being written involving the CID.

The more he thought about it, the more he decided that a CID investigator was what he would write about. His main character would be Ric Nolan who is a Chief Warrant Officer for the CID. This CWO would be physically fit and be able to take care of himself if the need arose. He would be a no-nonsense investigator who is not afraid to step on a few toes in doing his job, sort of a Dirty Harry type. The storyline for this novel would be of Ric receiving notice that an older civilian relative of his was murdered. Ric would take some leave time to investigate why that happened. In investigating the death, he will become involved with a female police officer, deal with a corrupt police chief, and a prominent Washington politician’s son who are involved in drug smuggling over a wide open southern border.

With those thoughts in mind, Craig in his spare time started to write his novel. Initially, he was somewhat disorganized in writing this novel as it took him time to learn how to properly dictate to his PC. The extensions he downloaded to his PC were a big help to him in editing this story. He thought he had somewhat of a gift in that he could picture the scene of what was happening in his mind and could reduce what he pictured into writing.

Since he was only writing this novel when he had the time or the urge to do it, it took him close to a year to write this novel which he titled, “Truth Be Told.”

Having written his novel, the challenge became of how to go about having it published. Hanging on to the coattails of an already published author by asking that author to be a co-author of his novel was something Craig considered doing. Giving it more thought, he discarded the idea of trying to have his novel published that way. Instead, Craig wrote a letter to a literary agent he found on the web giving the agent a synopsis of the story. He also said that he would like his identity to be hidden by using the pen name of S. Carpenter and explained the reasons why. The agent responded by expressing interest. One thing led to another with the result being that the agent submitted this novel to a publisher who liked the novel and published it.

To promote sales of his novel, Craig sent copies of his novel to a few television and radio talk hosts as well as two newspaper columnists. He did this in the hopes they would give his novel some publicity by mentioning it. Paul Conners mentioned it in his syndicated column. His doing it gave it a shot in the arm to book sales. The royalties Craig received from writing this novel came close to matching his yearly salary for doing the weather on television. Because of that success, he knew he would be writing another novel with this same character.

A major change in Craig’s life occurred this past year when he received a phone call from Burt Radisson who was the news editor for the Channel Four television station in Austin, Texas. Burt said he was calling as their weekend weatherman had given notice that he was leaving at the end of the month. Burt said they were looking for a replacement and thought Craig would be an excellent replacement.

“Why would you think I would leave where I am the main weekday weatherman to become a weekend weatherman?” asked Craig.

“The main reason would be that this position pays as much you are presently making working five days a week when you can get this same pay for working two days a week,” said Burt.

That without a doubt was a good reason thought Craig. He said he would come to Austin in two days and discuss this job offer.

Early one morning Craig drove down to Austin and met Burt along with Dan Fagan the television station’s manager.

Burt said, “We have made changes in wanting our new weekday news team to be the highest-rated news team in this area. We want to complement that news team with a highly-rated weekend news team. We have watched some videos of you doing your weather broadcasts and we think you could be part of what we want to do. You have a somewhat irreverent way of doing the weather because of the comments you make in doing it.”