Completing my first crime fiction trilogy, the Tom Stone Detective Stories, has been a challenge and reward that follows decades of writing in different forms and working despite years of chaos based on the family that my wife and I chose to raise.
We became foster parents to our four children (three emotionally traumatized), adopted them and became guardians to two boys who came to us in their teen years, also with deep emotional scars.
My career has spanned decades of writing in various forms for radio journalism, nonprofit marketing, online journalism and content writing. I wrote fiction during my undergraduate years at the University of Pittsburgh and picked it up again in 2009 when I was in personal crisis over my family’s turmoil.
Although I had envisioned myself in my 20s as a news broadcaster and eventually an author with a family, my career spun out of control in my early 40s like a race car flying into a wall and spinning wildly to a stop, leaving me often disoriented, bewildered, and hating the question, “What do you do?”
My meek answer, “I’m a writer,” even left me wondering what I meant.
To Cope with Family Turmoil, I Turned to Writing Fiction
My wife and I became foster parents in Los Angeles County shortly after we married in 1988 and within several years had adopted our four—two boys and two girls of different races who arrived at different ages and with needs as great as reactive attachment disorder. We also took in two teen boys as their guardians—one had failed both sixth and seventh grade when he came to us.
Going to therapy with the children became part of our lifestyle. I worked several years for a grass-roots nonprofit that recruited and served adoptive and foster families, creating their brochures and displays while managing the program.
By the time our children were reaching their late teens and early twenties, fights breaking out in the home were routine. During one year, the Sheriffs were called to our house on 10 different occasions and we eventually took our own daughter to court over custody of our granddaughter.
I began writing fiction, almost reflexively, and told no one, not even my wife. It was a world I could pour myself in to while chaos raged around me.
How Changing My Eating and Exercise Habits Made Writing Easier
Going to counseling on four separate occasions starting in 2010 gave me someone to speak with and process my own confusion and pain.
After gaining permanent guardianship of our granddaughter when she was five years old, I began the parenting cycle again and wondered why the time seemed to fly faster now than when our own children were small.
The stress of the previous decade left me emotionally exhausted and I had gained more weight than ever—dashing to the freezer and taking comfort in bowls of ice cream and leftovers late at night when the house went quiet.
I was caught in a miserable cycle and couldn’t think. A friend who was doing network marketing gave me a high quality fish oil and vitamin-B supplement and I began working out regularly. I had run competitively in high school and part of my college years and I found that the physical exercise and a change to eating more vegetables and small portions of lean meat made writing much easier.
While Trying to Make Money with Writing, I Hit a Dry Spell in My Fiction
In 2013, while publishing romantic fiction through a small press, I decided to return to my journalistic roots and continue writing online news stories to a “content mill.” PR agencies contacted me and I interviewed their clients and saw an opportunity for businesses to gain exposure.
So now I was writing fiction, interviews with entrepreneurs, and I landed an assignment writing a once-a-week blog post for a trade association focused on robotics.
I was definitely a writer, but I struggled how I could segment what I did. I wanted to land more blog writing assignments so I began business networking for referrals. It was painful because I couldn’t make a pitch as to why blogs were important for businesses. Trying to make more money from my online news stories was puzzling and I hit a dry spell in writing fiction.
How Counseling Helped Me Get Clear on My Career Choices
In 2014, with a relative in his own crisis living in a room off our garage, I went back to counseling for a seven-month stretch. The weekly one-hour sessions with a graduate student earning her clinical hours shed light on my personal relationships and understanding my career choices.
Faith had always been important to me, but several years earlier I felt like God had completely left me—like he had vanished and just walked away. Processing helped me regain glimpses of my former spiritual life.
My writing focused primarily on the automation blogs and during my weekly business networking, I became better at explaining the value of content writing. This led to non-fiction books—one for a chiropractor and another one I self-published on the story of an entrepreneur in Southern California.
Gaining Visibility Through Blog Writing
I’ve read how many writers who were mothers began authoring novels and short stories once their children left home. Since we raise our granddaughter, and homeschool her, we’ve never been empty nesters. Quite the opposite. We were a home where people who had various degrees of mental and emotional needs came to live.
In early 2015, my fiction-writing partner Lon came to me and asked if I’d turn one of his scripts into a novel. He had some success as a screenwriter and optioned some. I chose his detective story and began writing one chapter after another.
Meanwhile, a PR agency who had a British actress as a client contacted me and my interview with her sparked a long-simmering idea for a website focusing on Southern California, Where We Live, Work and Play, which I launched as well.
I was gaining occasional work writing blogs and articles for clients and I’d put those on my Live, Work, and Play site to help them gain visibility.
Interruptions Killed My Writing Time—Scheduling Helped
That summer, we became a host family to two Chinese high school students since the local school needed more families. The stipend was attractive and yet it continued the work of having several people routinely living in our home.
Frustration set in as I took the students to and from school and then back and forth from the local mall on weekends since shopping was their reason for existing. I went back to counseling in October 2015, this time with another graduate student who was also helpful.
During our first sessions, I would often sit and simply cry and wonder why I was exhausted. She helped me process and I broke down my schedule by the day. Each day was filled with significant interruptions every two to three hours.
I had no more than 20 to 25 hours a week available for the work I envisioned; yet the scope of my vision required 50 hours per week.
I continued writing and was well into writing and revising the detective story. The characters took shape and the story began flowing. Tom Stone: Nitty Gritty Christmas was coming alive and I didn’t want to let it go. It took us until August 2016 to release it and it served as a foundation for our next two novels Tom Stone: Sweltering Summer Nights in 2017 and Tom Stone: Day of the Dead, released July 2018.
Understanding the Role of Suffering and Redemption Helped Renew My Faith in My Writing Career
This could be a whole essay or book, which I should write, but understanding the role of suffering and redemption helped me recover, cope, and renew my faith and cling to my career.
I enjoy history and grew up in western Pennsylvania with the reminders of the French and Indian War and Colonial America all around me. Men lived to fight and die. Their suffering and hardship—along with those after them who battled in one war after another–paved the way for the luxuries we enjoy today.
We’re seeing our adult children now finding their own successes despite their own struggles. It’s encouraging.
My Creativity is Fueled by the World Around Me
Although I’ve been writing for a few decades in one form or another, my creativity is fueled by how I see the world around me. Everything and everyone is of interest and I want to capture their stories in real life articles or fiction.
My own writing has improved immensely, like my understanding of pacing and story structure. It’s only taken me about thirty years.
It’s Tough When Your New Book Results in Slow Sales
Launching a book and then seeing few sales occur is a disheartening experience. But I’ve been blessed with just enough persistence to get past the discouragement and learn how to market more effectively, while keeping my main focus on writing better and better stories.
I do feel like Book 3 of the Tom Stone series, Tom Stone: Day of the Dead, is my best work as a fiction author. Lon and I were able to freely tell the story from multiple points of view and create sub-plots that gives a complete experience.
It’s as though all of my previous experiences came to bear. Being invested so well in the characters, knowing them intimately, gave us that freedom.
I see the pain I’ve experienced as something to work further and more deeply into my fiction work. I’m also now able to segment how I approach content writing for clients, journalism, and fiction. Each one has a structure and an important role to play. I even wrote a LinkedIn article on each style and the purpose behind each.
I let the domain expire to my website, Where We Live, Work and Play and eventually my goal is to revive it but with others contributing.
One of the reasons I’ve kept writing is that I know I can do it—elements of it, anyway, from developing characters to writing true-to-life dialogue.
Advice for a Young Writer: Decide What “Writing” Means to You
For those who want to become writers, don’t think about it very long. Do a little self-assessment and do it. Take small steps if you need to by writing brief essays and short stories or brief articles.
Since “writing” or “writer” is such a sweeping term, define what it means to you. Do you excel in science or business, yet want to write a novel or essays about your profession? Read in your genre, begin writing and join a writer’s group to get input and critiques.
Learning is a continual process of reading, writing and taking input. Read, write, revise is another way to consider the profession. Accept deferred gratitude as a consequence and then forge ahead, sharing your voice as a writer while building your audience from a few fans into hopefully many more.
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Don Simkovich received his Masters in Communication Management from USC, and is the co-author along with Lon Casler Bixby of the Tom Stone detective series: Tom Stone Nitty Gritty Christmas; Tom Stone Sweltering Summer Nights; and Tom Stone Day of the Dead. He has also authored non-fiction ebooks for clients and a guide for blogging for real estate agents. He lives in Southern California with his family and enjoys hiking and occasional trips to the beach.
For more information on Don and his work, please see his website, or connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
Tom Stone Nitty Gritty Christmas: A window shattered by a single bullet. Cocaine-laced candy. A foster child in a group home ODs. It’s just another Christmas in LA, until Detective Tom Stone takes action.
Cocaine stuffed into candy bars are appearing throughout Los Angeles. A child’s overdose at Christmas pulls Detective Tom Stone and his partner Jake Sharp into the seedy, underground world of drug smuggling. The duo races to stop whoever’s responsible before another innocent life is lost.
They piece together clues and close in on the criminals until Stone finds himself trapped, facing certain death at the very hands of the men he was hunting.
Available at Amazon, Kobo, and iTunes.
Tom Stone Sweltering Summer Nights: It’s just another sweltering summer night in LA, until Detective Tom Stone takes action. Two murders and a cocaine trail threaten dreams of riches for Anthony Angelino, owner of the High Tide marijuana dispensary in East Hollywood. Once arrested by Detective Tom Stone on suspicion of smuggling cocaine, the courts set Angelino free and offer a second chance.
But the drug cartel that he tried to double cross has a different idea, and when Stone’s high school-age daughter is found browsing in the High Tide, Stone starts tracking Angelino and uncovers the ruthlessness of betrayal.
As Stone fights for justice and confronts Angelino’s attorney, he finds himself enamored with her strength and beauty—and admires her principles of right and wrong. Healing his fractured family and keeping Los Angeles safe makes for a long, hot summer.
Available at Amazon.
Tom Stone Day of the Dead: Multiple murders with one grisly connection have Detectives Tom Stone and Jake Sharpe pursuing every lead. Their main suspect, Anthony Angelino, fresh out of prison, dreams of building a new empire, but his past quickly catches up to him and once again he is on the run from the police, and the drug cartel that tried to ruin him.
The head of the cartel, Frank DeVito, using his vast resources puts a tail on Stone hoping the Detective’s investigation will flush out Angelino. Then he can exact his revenge and claim what he says Angelino has stolen – a large shipment of pure cocaine.
Angelino’s girlfriend, Sara, caught between right and wrong, pleads for him to escape the deadly lifestyle. As the body count rises, Stone, grappling with his own questions and answers, confronts the challenges in his relationship with Alisha Davidson, Angelino’s defense attorney.
Halloween dramatically twists into Day of the Dead celebrations on Santa Monica pier as cocaine’s promised riches weave a tale of bloody betrayal, shattered friendships, and loves both lost—and won.
Available at Amazon.