As an author, one of the best compliments you can receive from a reader is they really appreciated the way you “Got into the heads” of the characters, especially the criminals. Since I write thrillers and procedurals, there’s no shortage of bad guys doing bad things. The follow up question is usually something like, where did that familiarity with the criminal mind come from? While I point to my nearly thirty years immersed in that world, I know, deep down, that my understanding of the criminal world comes from something much darker…

I was a criminal

Sort of. Let me explain.

One position I held in my prison career was outside the walls in a regular office building in downtown Sacramento. During the respite from the cellblock without the chance of having urine tossed at you when you walked down the tier, I joined a commuter vanpool to make the…