The Women of Smuggler's Return
Today women are empowered all over America. My book features strong women characters who drive the story and makes this one sexy Miami comic crime story. These are quotes directly from the book.
ALICIA page 59
“Not
beautiful in the movie star sense, she had the strong features and smooth
unblemished skin of a model. She was sexy the way intelligent women are sexy,
middle age empowering her looks by removing the frivolity of youth and
replacing it with the regal appearance of a woman used to getting her way.
Slender and tall and in excellent shape from years of exercise and diet, she
looked great, like she had lots of money and spent it on her sense of style and
poise.”
Alicia is
Rooster’s ex-wife, who ran off with his attorney while he was incarcerated. The
attorney, Sheldon, is the man Johnny Fallon is after to collect a half-million
dollars. Rooster and Alicia have a teenage son Chris who is a club soccer
player and smart young man. Alicia will be a major player in the climax of the
story.
“Arriving passengers came down the walkway toward them. They both stopped to look at a beautiful young woman with long straight dark brown hair pushing a lightweight stroller where a toddler sat waving a plastic bag of cookies at everyone. She wore a tan suede skirt and boots and a black pullover light sweater that showed her figure. She waved at Rooster, smiling, talking to the baby.”
p.99-----“He
turned out the light and saw her silhouetted against the faint light from the
balcony window, saw her open the verticals to let the moonlight shine in. When
she pulled the tee shirt off up over her head he caught his breath, overwhelmed
by her reckless nudity. She came and lay down and he touched her nakedness,
felt the electricity surge through his body. His hand ran down her back to the
curve of her buttock and he felt the weight of her, this fine full woman, and
her lips were on his and wet, a delicious mouth ripe with need. He kissed her
mouth and neck and breasts, he heard her heart pound like his, her breathing
deep like his as the y rolled, and he could not touch, could not taste enough
of her.”
Paula is
the grown daughter of a woman Rooster had married knowing she was dying of
cancer and had no one to help her. Away at Grad School during that brief
marriage, Paula only met Rooster at the end of her mother’s life. Rooster and
Paula immediately hit it off, though not in a romantic way. In a trusting way:
Paula’s father had molested her when she was younger and she did not trust many
men at all. But when Paula’s handsome playboy husband Robbie ran off with his
secretary, Paula headed to Miami to stay with Rooster and get some sensitive
love and loving.
10 Questions for Neil Crabtree
Q: Your latest book Smuggler's Return bears the subtitle
"A Miami 2000 Novel" on the front cover. Why?
A: The story is about two friends who smuggled marijuana from Colombia in the 1980 time period and by the year 2000, they've gone their separate ways. But even the year 2000 is a different era from what we live through in 2024. There was no Uber, for example. Cellphones had limited range and roaming charges. There were still retail computer stores, and Amazon was more of a rumor than anything else. No medical marijuana dispensaries, no legal pot anywhere. Yet we all lived through it, with pretty much the same hopes and dreams as today.
Q: The main character Rooster is working hard to stay straight but carries his past with him everyday. His old partner Johnny Fallon shows up though he is supposed to be in prison. There are two rogue federal agents running Fallon to steal thousands of dollars from drug traffickers who thought they'd safely retired. Fallon wants Rooster to work with him collecting money but Rooster tells him NO. Why is Rooster unwilling to help his old partner?
A: Rooster himself had been busted. While in prison, his rich wife Alicia divorced him and married his trial lawyer Sheldon Teller. Alicia and Sheldon have raised Rooster's son and given him all the best things in life. Now a teenager, Chris still loves his father but understands that Rooster gave up custody while incarcerated. Rooster works everyday running a computer business to set a good example and to show that The Business (as smuggling was known in those days) was no longer part of his life.
Q: Rooster has two different love interests, his ex-wife Alicia, and the married daughter of his second wife Miriam, Paula. Both are strong characters and important to the story. How did that come about?
A: Love is the driving influence in all our lives. For Rooster, his first marriage to Alicia was strongly influenced by his role as a smuggler. The Jimmy Buffett song "A Pirate Looks At Forty" would be a perfect theme for Rooster and Johnny Fallon. "Made enough money to buy Miami, but pissed it away so fast" is a line Buffett came up with because he knew guys like Rooster and Johnny Fallon. After the money is gone each has to find a way to live. Fallon needs to find more money. Rooster needs to find something better.
Q: How did you come up with the idea of the smugglers and their affairs?
A; In the late 1970's, the best pot in the world was Colombian Gold. Florida was its main port of entry. Before the Cocaine Cowboys and Miami Vice, running reefer was the new version of Rum Running. Every beach bar on either coast had locals with stories of pot smuggling on their fishing boats, shrimpers, yachts and small plane. On a dare I went to Barranquilla Colombia looking for adventure. I found plenty, and lots of smuggler stories, and came to love the world of the marimberos. I met my wife Doris there and we have been together ever since.
Q: What is the DooMee Device and how does it play into the story?
A; I came up with a device that combined Virtual Reality with America's obsession with sex and image. Traditional crime novels have a formula that I can't tolerate. I wanted to say that there isn't a lot of difference between wanting to get high and get laid, and wanting to get pumped and get laid. The DooMee is technology's answer to Viagra. I put it in as a product Rooster's computer company signs up to distribute, though Rooster dislikes everything about it. The marketing campaign in the book for DooMee is a backdrop for the crime story of Fallon desperately trying to get rich again. Two get-rich schemes as crazy as can be.
Q: What kind of readers do you look for?
A: There are millions of us Baby Boomers who lived through Woodstock and Vietnam and friends getting busted for pot, who became Deadheads or Parrotheads and went to some of the most incredible rock'n'roll concerts that ever happened. We know that time has come and gone, but it is alive in our hearts. Smuggler's Return was written in that spirit.
Q: How long have you been working on Smuggler's Return?
A: I've written two complete versions of this novel. One I published as The Barricades of Heaven. I published, I Unpublished. It's wonderful to have the freedom to do that, the control of what goes out under my name. But the book has been through at least thirty proof-readers and I have had terrific editorial help. To say I have twelve years invested in this novel is an understatement.
Q: Do you have another novel in the works?
A: I have been working on another Miami based novel for years and am now in the fifth draft. That's the thing. No matter how you publish, a serious writer knows the real story is in the revisions, the edits, the feedback from other writers. Not Dead Yet will open with a closed door murder, follow a family fighting for control of its empire, and feature a smuggler's ghost come to tell of his murder. Like Hamlet. By the end of the year I'll be ready.
Q: There's also a short story collection, right?
A: My story collection is called Believable Lies and is being revised currently for Kindle and paperback sales. The stories appeared in different eZines like VerbSap, Bewildering Stories, Denver Syntax, and American Fiction Vol. 11. The stories cover twentieth century life through several different points of view. Some stories are still on line. Look at "LIVE BAND TONIGHT". It still pops up.
Q: Any advice for those starting their literary careers?
A: Find a good indie bookstore and go to every Author Reading you can. Look at your local colleges and universities for MFA programs and associated writers groups. Read a lot, but not formula bestsellers, unless that is your goal. Read read read. Write write write. And then get people to read what you write and give honest feedback. That works.
10
Questions for Ramesh Nyberg,
author of Badge, Tie, and Gun: A Memoir
Q: Tell us about your family and
growing up in Miami. Eliot Kleinberg said he went to high school with you in
Pine Crest. How did you come to be there?
My parents first settled
in the Grove in the late 1950’s, and in 1962 moved to a house in South Miami,
near the Hospital. In 1969, (when I was 11) they bought a house in what was
then known as “Suniland,” just a block from Suniland Park. They paid a whopping
$29,000 for it. That meant I would go to school at Palmetto Junior High and
later, Palmetto Sr., where I met Eliot. Suniland wasn’t an “elite” place to
live, as Pinecrest is considered now. The house my parents bought for $29,000
in 1969 is now valued just under $850,000.
That would be around 1977.
I was a music major at Miami-Dade College, but my focus suddenly shifted to law
enforcement after a I had a near-mystical encounter with a police scanner. That
story is detailed in my book.
Q: Tell us
a brief synopsis of your book. It’s subtitled “Life and Death Journeys of a
Miami Homicide Detective” which is a real attention-getter.
I’m glad it is. I wanted
readers to know that this isn’t just a compilation of police stories side by
side. This is also about my growing up with Miami (not just “in” it),
and how certain events in my childhood re-merged in significant and meaningful
ways in my law enforcement career. Yes, the book is filled with many police
stories, but I wanted to convey to the reader how life lessons you learn in
your youth often surface and hopefully help you understand situations on a
deeper level. There is rich detail about death investigation, but there is also
a lot about life, and how I navigated it—sometimes unwittingly—because of my
experiences as a youngster.
Additionally, the Miami I
grew up in was a fairly quiet, innocent place until the late 1970’s. There is
some irony—and hopefully, meaning—in the fact that I turned 18 in 1977, and
entered the police academy in 1979. Miami and I grew up together; it’s safe to
say we also both lost our innocence together.
Q: When
did you decide to become a writer, and why?
It was never a conscious
decision. I started writing when I was about nine years old, starting with a
poem I wrote in school. I also was a big football fan at that time, and after I
went to my first pro football game, I was enthralled with the way a reporter in
the Miami Herald wrote about the game. I started writing similar articles about
our softball games at South Miami Elementary School; no one asked me to, and we
didn’t have a school newspaper. It was just something I enjoyed doing. From
that point on, I wrote about any memorable life experience I had. Once I
entered police work, I wrote about the many strange and memorable calls I went
on as a uniform officer, and later, as a detective. It wasn’t until right about
the time I retired that I started thinking seriously about putting it all
together in a book.
Q: Did you
get any help when writing your book? If so, from whom?
I definitely got feedback
and encouragement. Two very close friends of mine became beta readers, of
sorts, so I considered that help. The content of Badge, Tie, and Gun is deeply
personal, however, so no one could really help me with how I wanted to express
the stories and emotions involved in police work.
Q: Is
there a second book you are working on?
Yes—a second and a third,
in fact. When I finished BTG, I sent it to an agent who had agreed to represent
me, and I immediatley went to work on a novel called “The Flyboys,” a police
procedural set in 1986 Miami. After I finished that, I wrote “Dear Chief,”
another police procedural set in modern-day central Florida. After a year with
no luck selling BTG, I decided to self-publish it, and right now I am working
on the second draft of “Dear Chief.” I will seek agency representation for the
novels. I want to try and go the conventional route with the novels.
Q: Where
can people reach on social media? Do you work at posting new information?
Yes, I’m moderately active
on Facebook (just search up Ramesh Nyberg—I am the only one) - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61557234681168
I’m on Twitter:
@NybergPI and TikTok (@MiamiAuthor). I’ve just learned TikTok and found it easy to put together simple, short messages
to promote the book. It seems to be gaining some traction. I try to do one
every day, usually a teaser to get people to search for BTG.
Q: Who do
you read and admire?
For non-fiction, I’m a big
fan of TJ English (who wrote me a terrific review for BTG, by the way), and
David Grann. Mark Bowden is also a fine writer and wrote an excellent book
about Pablo Escobar (“Killing Pablo”). I’m a fan of sea exploration and history,
so I greatly enjoyed “South” by Sir Earnest Shackleton, and “Over the Edge of
the World” (the story of Magellan’s voyage) by Lawrence Bergreen. Bruce
Catton’s works of the Civil War are terrific, as is Colonel Joshua
Chamberlain’s first-person memoir, “The Passing of the Armies.”
Where fiction is
concerned, I hold in high regard the works of Nelson DeMille, Larry McMurtry,
John Irving, Joseph Wambaugh, and John Grisham. I’m also a big fan of Carl
Hiaasen and Scott Turow.
Q: Where
can readers purchase your books? Please provide links to those sites.
“Badge, Tie, and Gun” can
be found on Amazon, BarnesandNoble.com, and several other online book outlets.
You can also find a link to it on my website, rameshnybergauthor.com
Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CTQQKQTV
Q: Do you
read popular police procedural novels and stories?
I’m guilty of not reading
enough of them. The problem I have had over the decades is that most of them
fall miserably short when trying to describe procedures and realistic detail.
It’s a curse of sorts, due to my having been a homicide investigator for twenty-two
years. Even some of the most famous police procedural novelists such as Michael
Connelly get some things so badly wrong that it ruins my enjoyment and I often
end up putting many books down. I should mention that Connelly gets a lot of it
right, and for not having a background in law enforcement, I’ll give him credit
there. But a note to writers of crime stories: if you’re not sure of a detail,
ask someone who knows, otherwise, you’ll be causing many criminal investigators
and even lawyers to close the book and move on.
I promise to keep giving
new voices in police procedurals a chance, and I’m trying to be less critical
with the details. (But for heaven’s sake, make the effort and get it right!)
When I’m not writing, I
teach—I’m a teacher at Coral Reef Senior High in Miami, in their Academy of
Legal and Public Affairs, teaching Crimina Justice classes and heading up our
Mock Trial Club. We recently won our District competition and went to Orlando
to compete for the state championship. We didn’t win, but to watch these young
people embrace the practice of law with such enthusiasm is truly thrilling.
I’m also a law enforcement
instructor and through Training Force USA, I teach police officers in the
subjects of Homicide Investigation, Interview Techniques, and Trial Prep and
Testimony. I’ve done both in-person and Zoom classes.
My wife and I enjoy
finding good things to watch on Netflix and Max, and we love travel. I would
welcome a way to survive on 2-3 hours of sleep. It’s a very busy life, and I’m
enjoying myself. I do, however, look forward to a day when I can write for a living
and spend more time traveling and spending time with my grandchildren.
My novel Smuggler's Return is coming soon
This is the art for the front cover
If you are interested in the craft of writing, Steve Almond 's book is a must-have. Written with sincerity and verve and a sense of hum...
