I recently ran across several short stories about Sheriff Earl McCoy, who is the Goodguy in Dead In Dutcher's Mountain. Then a funny thing happened to my plan for The Man from Xopec, it got shoved to the back burner. I wrote the short stories mostly because Earl McCoy is another of several man I can't ignore, and he's real.
Earl McCoy (pardon me if I've told you this before) is modeled on a real sheriff I once reported on when I was a journalist. The guy was good-looking, mid-thirties, single, fun, smart, and held the two most high-end degrees in two of the most difficult fields known to man: a Ph.D. in criminal justice and an M.D. as a doctor.
Now, this was in a tiny town in an underpopulated county whose most well-known citizen was Bigfoot. Unemployment was criminally high. Blacks and tree-huggers were chased away at the end of a gun. Deadly family feuds lasted for generations and were still current.
Me, I was fresh from Hollywood; cocktail parties attended by casting directors; voomy cars with license plates that said "13 wks" which meant the driver was an actor with a good contract. "What are you doing here?" I asked the sheriff when I learned his qualifications. "What are you?" he answered.
So I tried to guess his reasons when I wrote that novel, and it turns out I was right; he was a home-town boy, an overqualified, big-minded hero. So I'm putting those stories about him into an anthology, and it'll be available as an e-book in a week or two. Watch for it: McCoy, Sheriff.
The cover sports a photo of my fun, smart, good-looking, heroic son. Sosume.
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