by Jamie Freveletti
With the advent of television shows like CSI and others, those writing detective novels and crime scene investigators are under increased pressure to write details about crime detection. Which is not to say that CSI depicts in any way the actual steps that go into an investigation. I've been to many seminars put forth by forensic scientists and all roll their eyes at some of the more incredible plot lines in the television show. Likewise, many thrillers stretch the truth and the abilities of the tools out there for crime detection. In fact, there are some tools that simply don't exist, but have become embedded into the collective unconsciousness to such an extent that audiences believe they do.
I ran into this latter problem when writing my first, Running from the Devil. In that novel, my protagonist, Emma Caldridge, is on an airplane that's downed in the Colombian jungle. The paramilitary group that downed the plane arrange to take away the airplane's flight recorder and then bomb the remains, making it difficult for investigators to find the wreckage. Early manuscript readers, though, didn't believe that a plane's wreckage would be difficult to find. All seemed to think that a simple google earth search would reveal its exact location quickly.
Not so. In fact, there are hundreds of airplanes that crash and are never recovered or found. Most are in the Pacific Northwest in America, where the wooded areas and mountainous regions do not lend themselves to easy access, and others in countries with areas like the jungle, where dense foliage block any chance of finding it. In order to deal with the readers' lack of credulity about a fact that was actually true, I wrote in an official of the US organization in charge of finding downed planes and had him recite the actual statistics to an (equally incredulous) main character. Problem solved.
Luckily for most authors, there are now classes and workshops arranged by trusted sources that will teach you all you need to know about crime scene detection and give it to you straight. Not only are these classes informative, but they're a lot of fun. The trick to finding them is to scan the events pages of associations like the International Thriller Writers (ITW) or the museums in your area. I recently received a link from the Natural History Museum in London that is putting on a terrific forensic investigation evening on June 24th. In this evening, one can view a crime scene and learn how to determine date and time of death by insect collection (complete with maggots! Love these creatures and used them in Running from the Devil) as well as tips on how to identify sex and height of skeletal remains. I wish I lived in London. If I did, I'd attend this one for sure.
But wherever you live, if you're writing crime you'll eventually have to learn the basics of crime scene detection. Gruesome as it sounds, it's actually quite interesting.
Whatever you do, try your best to get it right or you will receive emails setting you straight. Just about every writer has had a mistake or two surface in their manuscripts and there are whole websites devoted to the continuity mistakes in movies. I guess that's reassuring. Even Hollywood gets it wrong sometimes.
Showing posts with label forensic science technicians. Show all posts
Showing posts with label forensic science technicians. Show all posts
Monday, May 30, 2011
Monday, July 26, 2010
Customer satisfaction...
by Michael Dymmoch
...for a change.
In the last few months I've spent a lot of time listening to writers who've put their out-of-print books on Kindle and Smashwords. Some have even gone to self-publishing their dropped series as e-books. You can check out Joe Konrath's bog, A Newbie's Guide To Publishing, if you're interested in pursuing the subject.
My reason for bringing it up is that my first book, The Man Who Understood Cats, came out so long ago that my current computer couldn't read the electronic copy. I don't even have a drive that could handle the floppy disks. I tried having two different computer gurus scan them for me and got back files of gibberish. (Something like this: Sunseô waó onlù á reprieve¬ ninå houró tï rest¬ tï recover¬ � buô onlù á temporarù postponemneô oæ thå momenô mù opponenô � woulä deliveò thå coup®.)
You have to have a clean, recent-release-version-of-Word copy or an HTML version of your novel to publish electronically. And I wasn't up for retyping a 244 page novel. So I started asking around for a company to scan the novel for me. Found Blue Leaf Book Scanning. The company offers "a non-destructive scanning process [that] converts virtually any size book or document to any file format, including searchable PDF, eBook (Kindle, Nook, Sony...), audiobook (mp3), and editable text-based formats such as Word, RTF, and TXT." If you're willing to sacrifice a copy of the book to be scanned, they charge less.
On June 20 I paid on line (through PayPal) to have Blue Leaf scan my book. I got an email receipt immediately.
June 21, I sent a (3rd printing) copy of the novel (media mail with tracking) to Blue Leaf.
On July 7, I received a Zip file containing: copies of the novel in Kindle format, HTML, PDF, and formatted (for commercial printers) and unformatted Word versions. All for under fifty bucks!
Another scanning company I contacted quoted $199 for fewer formats.
That makes me a very satisfied customer.
On another note...
I'm a world class procrastinator. Which is why I'm just getting around to mentioning a great (for crime writers) website I first heard about in January. Carolyn Friedman blogs on The Forensic Science Technician. Besides her own article, 8 Body Parts Forensic Scientists Use to ID a Body, the site contains links to other intriguing topics:
• About The Skully Wannabe Blog
• Top 50 Homeland Security Blogs
• Getting to the Bare Bones of the Gormogon Killer
• Top 50 Forensic Scientist Blogs
• It ain’t CSI: What It’s Really Like to Be a Forensic Scientist
• The 50 Best Safety and Security Blogs
• The Top 50 Self Defense Blogs
• 100 Online Brainstorming Tools to Help You Think Outside the Box
• 50 Fascinating Online Psychology Tests
• DIY CSI: 20 Awesome Forensics Gizmos and Gadgets You Can Buy
• Top 20 Free Tools to ‘Hacker Proof’ Your Inbox
• Six Files the US Government Keeps on You, and How to Obtain a Copy
• 8 Body Parts Forensic Scientists Use to ID a Body
• 50 Germiest Places in the World
• 30 Scary Food facts you need to Know
• Top 100 Blogs for NFL Fans
• 50 Fascinating Documentaries for Forensics Science Junkies
• 15 Ingredients in Cosmetics you should Know About
• 100 Fun Twitter Feeds for Serious SciFi Geeks
• 100 Best Websites for Science Teachers
• 100 Blogs Every Science Student Should Subscribe To
• 50 Best Ecology Blogs
Check it out.
...for a change.
In the last few months I've spent a lot of time listening to writers who've put their out-of-print books on Kindle and Smashwords. Some have even gone to self-publishing their dropped series as e-books. You can check out Joe Konrath's bog, A Newbie's Guide To Publishing, if you're interested in pursuing the subject.
My reason for bringing it up is that my first book, The Man Who Understood Cats, came out so long ago that my current computer couldn't read the electronic copy. I don't even have a drive that could handle the floppy disks. I tried having two different computer gurus scan them for me and got back files of gibberish. (Something like this: Sunseô waó onlù á reprieve¬ ninå houró tï rest¬ tï recover¬ � buô onlù á temporarù postponemneô oæ thå momenô mù opponenô � woulä deliveò thå coup®.)
You have to have a clean, recent-release-version-of-Word copy or an HTML version of your novel to publish electronically. And I wasn't up for retyping a 244 page novel. So I started asking around for a company to scan the novel for me. Found Blue Leaf Book Scanning. The company offers "a non-destructive scanning process [that] converts virtually any size book or document to any file format, including searchable PDF, eBook (Kindle, Nook, Sony...), audiobook (mp3), and editable text-based formats such as Word, RTF, and TXT." If you're willing to sacrifice a copy of the book to be scanned, they charge less.
On June 20 I paid on line (through PayPal) to have Blue Leaf scan my book. I got an email receipt immediately.
June 21, I sent a (3rd printing) copy of the novel (media mail with tracking) to Blue Leaf.
On July 7, I received a Zip file containing: copies of the novel in Kindle format, HTML, PDF, and formatted (for commercial printers) and unformatted Word versions. All for under fifty bucks!
Another scanning company I contacted quoted $199 for fewer formats.
That makes me a very satisfied customer.
On another note...
I'm a world class procrastinator. Which is why I'm just getting around to mentioning a great (for crime writers) website I first heard about in January. Carolyn Friedman blogs on The Forensic Science Technician. Besides her own article, 8 Body Parts Forensic Scientists Use to ID a Body, the site contains links to other intriguing topics:
• About The Skully Wannabe Blog
• Top 50 Homeland Security Blogs
• Getting to the Bare Bones of the Gormogon Killer
• Top 50 Forensic Scientist Blogs
• It ain’t CSI: What It’s Really Like to Be a Forensic Scientist
• The 50 Best Safety and Security Blogs
• The Top 50 Self Defense Blogs
• 100 Online Brainstorming Tools to Help You Think Outside the Box
• 50 Fascinating Online Psychology Tests
• DIY CSI: 20 Awesome Forensics Gizmos and Gadgets You Can Buy
• Top 20 Free Tools to ‘Hacker Proof’ Your Inbox
• Six Files the US Government Keeps on You, and How to Obtain a Copy
• 8 Body Parts Forensic Scientists Use to ID a Body
• 50 Germiest Places in the World
• 30 Scary Food facts you need to Know
• Top 100 Blogs for NFL Fans
• 50 Fascinating Documentaries for Forensics Science Junkies
• 15 Ingredients in Cosmetics you should Know About
• 100 Fun Twitter Feeds for Serious SciFi Geeks
• 100 Best Websites for Science Teachers
• 100 Blogs Every Science Student Should Subscribe To
• 50 Best Ecology Blogs
Check it out.
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