Never Say Never

Five years ago, I sat in the office of one of my bosses and told a story about a serial killer that stalked children in the city where I grew up in Michigan. I started with the abduction of Mark Stebbins in February 1976 and ended with Tim King’s death in March 22, 1977.  Tim was the youngest brother of a friend of mine and he was one of my own brother-in-law’s best friends.  

The monster that became known as the Oakland County Child Killer scarred the lives of all the people who lived in Oakland County, Michigan from those at “ground zero” to those who watched these horrors unfold on tv.  The killer was never found.

As I told this story out loud from the abductions to the theories, possible suspects and my own personal involvement, my boss leaned back in his chair and said, “I see a great piece of fiction to be written.”  I scoffed.  I was MAD.  No way, I said, could I ever turn this disturbing time of so many lives into fiction.  

Well, a few days ago, I published my next book, “No Such Thing”, a fictional story about child abduction and murder.  While not about the real killer or murders, it employs many of the same events and theories, weaving a story of what could have happened.  The real story takes remarkable twists and turns.  The book streamlines many of those twists into one story.

I would never attempt to diminish the lives of Mark Stebbins, Jill Robinson, Kristine Mihelich or Tim King; their lives were far more important.  Their deaths forever changed my life.  

With the blessing of Tim’s sister and brother, I wrote and published this novel and hope that when it finds its audience, it keeps these kids in the public eye until the real killer has been caught.

Currently available on Kindle and Nook and in paperback through my site www.judicoltman.com.  

More information available on the Resources page of my website.

Run Along!

About a week ago, my Boston BFF called me.  Thanks to caller ID, I answered the phone, dismissing the traditional ‘Hello” and simply asking, “What’s up?”  Without feeling the need to identify herself, she replied, “So, I hear you are running these days.”  I pondered the statement.  Running.  I guess that’s the term although, I really think “shuffling” or even “tripping” is a much better descriptor.  

The truth is, I have spent the last 9 weeks following the Couch to 5K program.  It is a completely do-able program in that it only asks for 3 days a week and ups the running time in teeny tiny increments.  

I began the program on a lonely, quiet road where very few people could see me, figuring if I failed only a few people would take notice.  Much to my own shock, I didn’t fail.  In fact, I haven’t missed a day.  So, in this second day of my 9th week, I just “ran” for 30 straight minutes.  Ideally this is supposed to be approximately 5K.  Yeaaahhhh.  For me it is almost exactly 2 miles.  That’s right, I shuffle a 15 minute mile.  Just call me Flash.  

Moreover, my running form, or lack thereof, is comical.  I know it and I expect people to laugh.  I laugh.  My shadow, which often passes me out of shear frustration, is fairly honest with the round belly in front and the butt waddling dutifully behind.  I am sure that young people who see me run are dumbfounded at the sight and purists have burned their retinas watching me run by.  

I’m ok with that.  After 3 surgeries on my right foot and knee, I never thought running would be an option.  But it is, and I am doing it.  I feel pretty good about that.  If you see a blue or gray mass stumbling by. . . it’s me.  I still can’t call myself a runner and keep a straight face, but that is my goal!

And You Thought The GPS Was For Following

It’s an old joke, men and their refusal to ask directions, their insistence that they know a “shortcut’ and the inevitable time lost in the process of saving time.  Then, along came the GPS.  I really thought the macho bravado of driving would change with an electronic toy doing the hard work.  How dumb am I?

Our GPS does not have a pleasantly accented male or female voice to guide us.  Our GPS has Lois, a no nonsense kinda gal.  She gives the direction and expects you to follow. . .I think Lois was once a third grade teacher.  She does not hide her disdain when announcing that she is “recalculating” in response to something my man, Moondoggy, has done.

It wasn’t until this summer while driving to the east coast that I realized the love/hate relationship that exists between Moondoggy and Lois.  All packed up, we hopped in the car and pulled out of the driveway when Moondoogy announces, ‘I think I’m going to skip her direction to take I-90 and take I-88 instead.”  Not even out of the driveway, he thinks Lois is wrong and she is pissed off. . .you can hear it in her voice.  Luckily there aren’t many options for getting to our stop for the night so she recalculated and the tension eased.  Lois knows how to pick her battles.

The next morning, Moondoggy announces with pride, “I think I’m going to follow her directions today and see where she takes us.  According to Lois, our drive time is going to be 8 hours with an arrival time of 5:15 p.m.” Me?  No comment.  And, here’s why.   Not twenty minutes later, Moondoggy says, “She is taking us through Breezewood which will take us around DC.  The traffic will be hell.  I’m not doing that.”  And with the intrepidity of Magellan and a slight smug sneer, Moondoggy deviates from Lois’ prescribed route.  We followed some very hilly country road that meandered through Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia and Virginia.  I admit, it was beautiful and there was very little traffic, but the 2 hours we spent listening to an increasingly irritated Lois as she tried to guide us back onto the interstate was beyond livable.  But, does he turn it off?  No.  Why?  Because now he is WINNING and he is going to challenge her to find a way to our destination from this new path.  He’s on a roll and the game is on.

She wants us to be on I-95.  We are taking 17.  She wants us to get on I-64 in Richmond.  We stayed on 17.  She wants us to get off on Indian River Blvd.  We got off on Independence Rd.  The whole way Lois is recalculating and Moondoggy is snickering. . .he is winning.  

Finally, we took the now familiar route to the beach house. . . arriving in the driveway at exactly, you guessed it. . ..

5:15 p.m.   

So, who won?

On another note. . .

My next book has just gone to the editor.  I am aiming for a December release. The cover art is ready though.

When a Trip Down Memory Lane Ends at a Cul de Sac

Part II

And so, our 16 year old selves grabbed us by the hand and begged us to embark on our annual trip down Memory Lane.  Usually under the safety of a car, this year we used the provided golf cart as our vehicle of choice.  I drove.

The ritual involves pointing out certain houses we have stayed in over the years, recalling funny stories, memories that have become characters of their own that punctuate the vacation each year.

Eight Bells, our first house. . .we pretended we were horses romping over the dunes.  Yeah, we did that.

Euphoria, the house where we proudly proclaimed meeting 26 boys (count em, 26).  It must have been like flies to honey back then and I didn’t even realize it.  It was the year we met The Boys, and therefore, an important stop.  Gosh, we were cute, our 16 year old selves comment from the back seat.

The Elvis House, name for the year Elvis died.  We were there that very week.  It was a stone's throw from The Boy’s house and we had big plans until Stephanie’s Pittsburgh boyfriend hitchhiked down and threw a monkey wrench into our week.  

Passing the houses, I teasingly  told Steph we were going to stop by The Boy’s house and she laughed.  “You’re kidding, right?”  Hells yeah, I was kidding.  We were wearing lounge wear, the equivalent of pajamas, but I was going to go down another street to see his other beach houses.  So, I bypassed his street and headed down the next, stopping in front of one of the homes that had a sign bearing the name of The Boy’s company.  A moment of pride and then, onward to the next house.  

The golf cart lurched forward when I realized there was a new white pick-up truck sitting in front of the next house and I had to swerve to avoid it.  Stephanie grabbed my arm, gasping, “Oh My God! Holy Crap!  That’s Him!” she turned her head toward me as we passed the man in the truck.  I glanced at the license plate, a vanity plate, and knew she was right.  I kept driving.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.  

My 16 year self was saying, “Well Duh, turn around and go say hi,” but she was also battling with 53 year old Stephanie who took one look at herself in the suddenly very large sideview mirror of the golf cart and caught a glimpse of herself in her jammies, hair pulled back after a day at the beach and no make-up and she hollered, “Just drive!”  And I did.  I drove the full length of the road at full golf cart speed until it ended at a cul de sac.  

I stopped and looked at Steph who was hyperventilating, “Now what?” I inquired.  

Without hesitation she says, “We run!”  but stopped short of escaping through the sand.  She rethought,resigned, “I guess we head back the way we came.”  

Never one to go willy nilly without a plan, I said, “We should stop and say hi.”

“Have you looked at us lately?” She pointed to the telltale mirrors and I saw my reflection.  She as right.  We weren’t 16, we no longer have long flowing hair or cute little belly buttons.  In fact, we were so well disguised in our 50+ fat suits there was no way I was going to stop and say hi.  Not like this.

“Alright.  But what if he has recognized us and he stops us?  I have to stop, Steph.”  

She bit her lip.  “He isn’t expecting to see us so he probably won’t, but IF he does, we stop. . .I guess.  Just drive as fast as you can.”

I hit the accelerator as we headed back down the road reaching a sluggish top speed of 16 miles an hour.  Tearing down the road at 16 mph, we steeled ourselves for the possibility that at that speed, we may indeed be forced to make eye contact.  Heck, at that speed, we could make eye contact and conduct a full conversation with the guy in the time it took to drive by.  Our stomachs were knotting, we were nervous, but thankfully, the white truck pulled away in front of us and drove off.  We both sighed an audible breathe saved from an awkward moment and I punched it to get back to our place.

Giddy, it was hard to delineate between our 16 year old selves giggles and our 50+ selves giggles.  That Boy still made us smile somehow.

Pulling back into our driveway, Steph looks at me and huffs, “I’m a little offended he didn’t recognize us, I mean we were right in front of him!”

Maybe next year, Jimmy.

A Drive Down Memory Lane

An entire genre of music has been created in it's honor.  Movies have been made about it.  Books have been penned in its name.  A boy, a girl and a vacation location (mine is the beach. . .see my book).  In one week’s time, during the freedom of the summer, a teen aged girl could live out an entire lifetime of love from Saturday to Saturday.   It is the summer love and the beauty of it was, it only really lasted a week until the next year.  In our case, there were two very special boys, that Steph and I spent time with every year from the time I was 13 until 17.  The years when we were particularly cute, thin and young.  

Last year, I had the good fortune to get in contact with one of the boys (Steph’s “love”) and was pleased to find out he was married with children and still lived at the beach.  Well, ok.  I already knew he still lived at the beach. You see, Stephie and I have stalked him year after year, driving by his house, looking to make sure the name was still on the mailbox, daring one another to go to the door and say hello.  We never follow through. And so it was, this year that we hopped in an electric golf cart and traveled back down Memory Lane once again.

It was my intention to show Stephie how successful her Boy had become.  He now owns several houses at the beach, many of them back up to a freshwater lake once called The Pits.  

We met The Boys in 1972, at the Pits actually, when one of them road his bike down the dirt path and into the lake - stark naked.  Had we been any younger we might have needed therapy to get beyond the incident, but hormones had already kicked in and it didn’t take long for us to get to know The Boys.  We were young, bikini'd, and barefoot . We squeezed lemon juice into our hair to give it highlights and bathed in baby oil to enhance our tans.  And for a whole week, we didn’t wear shoes.  The Boys were long haired, deeply tanned and they surfed.  We thought they were gorgeous. The parents nicknamed them The Munchkins - which was better than Snort and Grunt (the back-up beach boyfriends).

Our first official date a was homemade dinner.  My boy enlisted his Italian father to cook us an authentic Italian lasagna and set us up with a little candle lit table.  Stephie was so nervous that she could not eat.  I never had that problem.  After the dinner, they drove us down to the public beach at the very south end and we caught ghost crabs, walked on the beach and kissed.  We kissed a lot.

My father always believed that The Boys had a different set of girlfriends every week.  We always believed WE were the only girls they saw and that their summer wasn’t complete until we arrived. Perhaps we were delusional, but we have elevated those hormonal memories to historic proportions, creating epic stories from what amounted to no more than six weeks from our collective lives.  Those Boys are icons in our lexicon, archetypes in our stories and legends in our own minds.  

So what happens when a drive down Memory Lane brings traffic you weren’t expecting?

To Be Continued. . . 

Even This is a Partisan Issue. . .I think

Pretty much everything has been divided lately into a Republican or Democrat  issue.  As an independent, I believe I am open to the best solutions on either side (and this just irritates the snot out of  the dyed in wool partisans.)  I have found an issue, though, that I simply cannot remain staunchly in the middle.  I have just come back from a favorite vacation spot of mine and although I had a great week, I find that I must comment on a sad, sad state of affairs -- the compliance of Beach Etiquette.

For the last 45+ years, I have vacationed at Sandbridge Beach, VA.  A private community, most of the homes are summer rentals and although we have been "owners" in the past, we currently rent a house for our annual gathering.  Whether one owns or rents, there are certain rules of beaching that should be respected and, sadly, they seem to be going by the wayside.  This past week I witnessed all of the following faux pas and while I did not openly sneer (it isn't polite), my level of pissed offedness has been churning ever since.  So, listen up!

1) If you smoke on the beach, pick up your butts.  No one wants to dig in the sand only to find a cache of nasty filters filling up their sand pail.

2) If you eat on the beach, it is NOT funny to feed the sea gulls.  They are rats. . .with wings.  While they will grab the food from your hand, they will also continue to dive bomb anyone in the vicinity believing everyone is as stupid as you are to offer food.

3) Bringing your baby to the beach may seem like a great idea, for about 3 minutes.  Sand irritates the baby's bum. Salt water makes it burn and the crying annoys everyone else.

4) And 15 minutes after you should have left, do not suddenly shake out your beach blanket allowing sand to fly into the eyes of those around you because you realize you need to get the baby back to the house NOW.

5) If you see some child toiling away on a sandcastle, it does not mean he wants help from YOUR child.  Don't suggest it because I am not babysitting your kid, too.

6) Finally, and this is the biggy, the one that sends me over the edge every single time. . .

When you bring your family, friends, toys, coolers, surf boards, etc. to the beach DO NOT PARK YOUR STUFF RIGHT NEXT TO SOMEONE ELSE.  Seriously.  Spread the heck out.  There is plenty of room.  You do not have to set your chair right next to mine with the arms touching.  This isn't New Jersey.

And to the lady who thought trying to fly a kite in the 4 foot spot between my chair and your camp was a good idea.  It didn't end well did it.


I love my beach.  I covet my space.  I do not feel obligated to share it with anyone else.  Guess that makes me a republican.

I Must Be Easy. . .or am I Just a Cheap Date?

Summer Splash Blog Hop, Day. . . .Something.  I am giving away signed copies of my book along with a necklace and the last copy of Beach Feasts; a recipe collection.  You can enter every day.  Just follow the Rafflecopter directions at right.  See other authors doing giveaways.  I will post their links below.

I Must Be Easy. . .Or Am I Just a Cheap Date?

I slept in as late as I could on the day of my colonoscopy.  What was the point of getting up if I couldn't enjoy my coffee with half 'n half or my toast and fruit?  They tell you not to arrive more than 15 minutes ahead of your appointment saying there is no point because you will just wait.  I think it's because they only have one restroom in the waiting area.  Let's face it, everyone who arrives there is either forcing out the last of the laxative or worried they will.  One restroom for all of those people is a cruel joke.  Lucky for me, I was clean as a whistle before I got there.

They happily guided me back to my gurney and asked if I was currently pregnant.  Uh, no.  Have I completed menopause?  Uh, no.  "Then," she says, "I need to do a pregnancy test on you.  Can you give me a urine sample?" Let me just remind you that I have spent the better part of the last 24 hours eliminating any excess matter, solid and liquid, that lurked in my body and she tells me we can't proceed until she runs a pregnancy test.  Sheesh.

Here's where the good part comes in.  They give you some drugs, really nice drugs.  Drugs like you have a great buzz and just love everybody drugs.  The last thing I remember is the nurse coming in to tell me I wasn't pregnant.  Oh Glory be. . .now we can do the colonoscopy.  So they wheel me down the hall to a dimly lit room and the Dr. comes in to introduce himself - appropriate given how intimate we are about to become.  He asks if I have any questions and the only thing I can think to say is, "I feel like you should, at least, buy me dinner first."  I'll bet her never hears that.

That must be when they cranked up the IV because I do not remember anything after that until Moondoggy came in and asked if I was ever tempted to go toward the light.  So, I'm good for another 10 years and can now give the knowing nod and wink when other newly 50 people realize it's time for their colonoscopy.

Hop over to these authors' blogs.

Diana Layne
Mike Faricy
Victoria Adams
Jason G. Anderson
S.L. Wallace
Charles Sheehan-Miles
M.J. Holmes
Lynn Hubbard
Jordan T. Maxwell
Jillian Dodd
Chrystalla Thoma
Elle Chardou
Dana Sitar
Troy McCombs