Urban Fiction: Living it Out - Day Six

Last night…do I even have to talk about last night? To be fair, I guess I should. To put it bluntly, I stunk. It’s not like I didn’t do some pretty good things, it’s just that I did one or two really stupid things. I made rookie mistakes…first year cop mistakes, not a twenty-two year veteran mistake. Thank God, no one got hurt and nothing was loss, but it just stunk that I messed up so badly.

What did I do? You would ask that. Well actually, I got lost in my own city. Here I was driving around going to answer a call when all of a sudden nothing was familiar. I mean it’s been almost ten years since I drove a black and white around the city. And at night…well that just made it worse. Thankfully, the call was not an emergency, but I still stunk up the place.

The good news is that tonight I did much better. Yes, I took bad guys to jail, but this time it was bitter sweet. Sometimes it is. Here I was placing big brother into cuffs while little brother sat in the passenger side seat crying. Yes, big brother needed to go to jail…and he did, but it was just a little sad to watch a teenage boy cry because his brother is getting arrested.

I think about my character, Nate Richards, and all the adjustments he makes as he faces the various situations in the course of a story; how many lives he comes in contact with. That’s what I’m trying to bring to my readers, to help my fans understand what it is really like to be on this side of the badge. Sometimes the arrest is a big hurrah and at others times not so much. It’s just the way life goes. Just saying.