Never Forget: A Personal Essay by Kristi Belcamino

Note: The following is a piece written by author Kristi Belcamino in conjunction with her release this Tuesday, May 9th, of her novel City of Angels.  It is a biographical essay, and I'm sure those of you who have already read her spectacular new novel will recognize some marked similarities between Kristi's reminisces and Nikki's story.  And now, you know just what a special story City of Angels is and why it had to be told. 

Don’t Ever Forget

   By Kristi Belcamino

Most of the homeless people were still asleep, heads propped on folded cardboard boxes pushed up against buildings, bodies swaddled in blankets or rags.

The shadowy streets were chilly, not yet touched by the sun to the west. The downtown Los Angeles streets would remain gray for hours until mid-day when long shafts of sunlight would penetrate the skyscraper fortress.

I walked and walked. My waitressing shift at Little Pedro’s on the border of East L.A. didn’t start until three.  I would have to steel myself to cart beer and sizzling tortilla chips to drunken off-duty LAPD officers. Or put up with finger-snapping businessmen. The only ones who treated me with any respect were the East L.A. gangbangers – none over sixteen, dressed identically in black slacks, pressed white tee-shirts, and dripping diamonds. Served free refills on their sodas by order of the manager.

Far to the north, some eight hours away, I had grown up in a secluded pine-tree filled town overlooking the fertile California valley. Crime was nearly nonexistent. Nobody in Paradise was really rich and nobody was really poor. The popular boys in my high school drove souped-up Mustangs. I don’t remember once seeing a homeless person or a beggar. Definitely didn’t see any gangbangers with diamond rings.

So, when I moved down to L.A. when I was 17, it didn’t take long before I ditched my pink and turquoise-colored clothes and began wearing Doc Marten boots. Combined with dyed black hair and a motorcycle jacket, I didn’t look like anybody’s victim as I trod the streets of L.A.

My home was a ten-by-ten empty box on the fourth-floor of the American Hotel, above a punk rock bar called Al’s Bar that had hosted Nirvana and Jane’s Addiction and Charles Bukowski.

My Los Angeles neighborhood was also the homeless population on Skid Row, the smells, the filth, the litter. The down-and-out artists in the warehouse district. The mentally ill population begging for money in Little Tokyo. The homeless city under the fourth-street bridge.

It was sirens and police and robberies and muggings and break ins. Stolen car radios. Stolen car batteries. After my care was broken into and I couldn’t afford to replace the window in my car, a homeless guy decided to make the backseat of my Dodge hatchback his bed. And then asked me for change when I kicked him out.

Life in downtown Los Angeles was Real Life. With a capital R and capital L. It was a far cry from my college life in Long Beach where I rode on the back of a friend’s Vespa scooter to barhop at beachside cafes.

In downtown L.A., the rose-colored glasses had been broken under my black Doc Marten boot.

As I walked through L.A. in the mornings, I was gathering material. Even then, I was a writer. I would go back to my studio and write about what I saw in downtown L.A. on my portable Brother word processor, the one with the green screen that only showed three lines at a time.

I would write and smoke cigarettes and count my change so I could afford a coffee at the café downstairs and I would tell myself:

“Don’t ever forget this. This is real. This is how life is for many people around the world. Don’t ever forget and don’t ever forget them.”

I would tell myself:

“Don’t allow yourself to grow up and become so comfy and cozy and complacent as you live in your little safe suburban house one day. Don’t allow yourself to become desensitized to this: Real Life.”

And then the city exploded.

The L.A. riots came straight to my front door. National guard members in full body armor marched down my street. They dug trenches in nearby empty dirt lots and turned parking lots into military-style camps. Buildings burned, people died, and the smoke turned the sunset blood red.

My neighbors on the fourth-floor of the hotel patrolled the roof with Uzi’s and pistols to defend our building against rioters. Real Life had turned into a Third World Country.

Shortly after, I graduated from college and my boyfriend was discharged from the military. On the heels of the riots and a 7.3 magnitude earthquake that had my brick home rocking, we left L.A., heading for Seattle to chase the grunge scene like so many of our L.A. friends were doing.

Twenty-some years later, I live in a cute little house in Minneapolis. We’re not rich by any means: we drive used cars and are very careful with our money, but compared to the rest of the world, we are extremely wealthy.

It’s easier now to forget, but in the back of my mind I try to remember what Real Life is like for many people.

It is 2012. I have written my first book and my agent is trying to sell it to a publisher. It’s not selling. At least not right away. Instead of writing more books in the Gabriella Giovanni series, she tells me to write something completely different.

I can’t do that, I think. I don’t know how to write another book.

But then I do. Sitting at a sidewalk cafe in downtown Minneapolis, I’m back on city streets, back in a world that once was my life. I remember those many years ago when I reminded myself not to forget. And in that small kernel of inspiration, I realize I have a story to tell. It’s not wholly my story. There are parts of it that I lived and parts of it that I never could have lived, but it is a story I can tell.

So, I sat down and wrote City of Angels. It is the second book I ever wrote and the fifth traditionally published book with my name on it.

It isn’t always an easy book to read, but like all my books, there is always a strong undercurrent of hope. And it deals with real life.

Silent Rain by Karin Salvalaggio: Reading Room Review

One of the best new crime/mystery series to come out in the past few years is Karin Salvalaggio’s police procedural Macy Greeley.  Macy is a Montana State Detective who travels to other communities beyond her base in Helena to help solve murders, which are often outside the realm of experience in smaller police departments.  Along with her invaluable crime scene investigator, Ryan Marshall, the reader is privy to how an investigation is conducted, from the interviews to the infield exploring and scrutinizing of crime scenes.  Salvalaggio makes every step fascinating and filled with the human drama inherent in murder and deceit.  The character of Macy Greeley is a smart, engaging, flawed, purposeful one.  Her personal transformation from the first book in the series to this fourth book has been fraught with turmoil, but as in her investigations, Macy’s resolve is indefatigable, and in her mid-thirties, Macy is beginning to see some light.

It’s Halloween, and it has been a menacingly dark one in the town of Bolton, Montana.  A college town, where people don’t usually bother to lock their doors, crime arrives with a heavy hand on the night of dress-up and treats.  With a bar stabbing, several small fires, and a major fire with deaths, Macy is called in to help with the larger problem of the house fire and two dead bodies, a suspected arson.  The owner of the house is Peter Granger, a famous writer, assumed to be one of the two dead found, and his wife is likely the other body.  Arriving on the scene, Macy and Ryan are delayed entry to the crime scene, as the remaining structure must be stabilized.  While waiting for positive identification, Macy soon discovers that there are many people who had grievances against the famous novelist, including a young college student whom Macy had first encountered in a previous, sordid case (Bone Dust White, Macy Greeley #1).

Grace Adams has a past of which nightmares are made, and it has only been a little over three years since her uncle was discovered to be a player in a slave trade enterprise.  Raised by a religious aunt and her innocence destroyed by an uncle she loved, Grace had sought to start a new life in Bolton, where she changed her name and attends college as an art student.  Talented and focused, her art is a salvation of sorts, but Peter Gallagher had intervened in her recovery, crushing her trust once again in a man she admired.  Grace had confided in Peter about her past, and Peter was determined to exploit that confidentiality in a new book.  But, Grace wouldn’t agree to sign a waiver for it, and she is now a person with a motive for murder. 

In a short amount of time, Karin Salvalaggio has established herself as a consistent source of talent, creating a series that never disappoints.  Her brilliance lies in taking a complexly layered story and letting the reader see its unfolding through the eyes of Macy Greeley, enabling a relatability of being there with the detective in her investigation.  It’s an inclusive feel for the reader that only the best storytellers can achieve. 

I received an ARC of Silent Rain from the publisher, which in no way influenced this review.  With a series this good, I always buy a finished copy, too. 

Executive Order by Max Allan Collins with Matthew V. Clemens: Reading Room Review

Ready! Set! Action!   One of the best measures of a book being a great read is that you simply cannot put it down.  Executive Order engages the reader on the first page and doesn’t let go until the last page.  Political thriller, murder mystery, crime story.  This third and final Reeder and Rogers book has it all, and Max Allan Collins and Matthew Clemens tell it so well that I knew I was in the presence of great storytellers.  Before reading this series, starting with Supreme Justice and followed by State of the Union and Executive Order, I would have argued that political stories were just not my cup of tea.  Of course, the Reeder and Rogers series taught me a thing or two about making such predictions ever again. 

When four CIA operatives are killed in the Eastern European country of Azbekistan as the Russians invade that country, the President of the United States enlists the aid of Joe Reeder, an ex-Secret Service agent and currently the owner of an international security company.  The President had given orders that no agents were to be sent to that area and needs to find out who sent them and why.  Reeder has proven his usefulness and brilliant investigative skills in prior situations of national security. 

Reeder’s preferred partner in working difficult national situations is Patti Rogers, the leader of the FBI Special Situations Task Force.  Rogers and her team have just begun to investigate the death of the Secretary of the Interior from an allergic reaction to a delivered lunch.  Reeder, with his radar for reading people and uncanny hunches starts to suspect that the two events aren’t as unrelated as they first appear.  Reeder and Rogers start pooling their information, and it’s not long before others start to die and the unthinkable becomes the reality.  A well-hidden conspiracy must be rooted out and brought to light, but Reeder and Rogers become targets themselves in a fight where winner takes all. 

Collins and Clemens have given us a thriller with a storyline that is as timely as it is frightening.  Set in Washington, D.C. in the not too distant future, the world stage and the problems of the United States seem all too familiarly frightening, but with unseen enemies pulling strings that raises the level of concern to a frantic level.  The gripping aspect to this story is that it is plausible.    The characters, both major and minor play their parts well, and the dialogue is a witty success.  The authors started this trilogy with a bang, and they have ended it the same.  I’m sure to be one of many who wishes there were more Reeder and Rogers to come. 

The Day I Died by Lori Rader-Day: Reading Room Review

Reading Room Review:

The Day I Died by Lori Rader-Day

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


How to start the review of a book that is so special you held it to your bosom after finishing it. Well, luckily the brilliant author, unbeknownst to her, provided me with the perfect opening. Lori Rader-Day recently posted a previous piece she had written about repeatedly watching a Prince guitar performance and why she kept watching it. She stated,
“Mastery shows. Mastery is worth the effort. When an artist is in command of his or her form, you want to be a part of it.”
Yes, mastery does show, and The Day I Died shines with it from start to finish.

Anna Winger is a single mother of a teenage boy living in a small Indiana town. Sounds rather ordinary. Oh, but Anna is anything but ordinary, and her life with her son has been one on the run, from town to town, hiding in amongst the ordinary. Anna’s job is highly unusual, as she is a handwriting analyst. Not a parlor trick or a festival fundraiser, Anna is a skilled handwriting analyst hired by companies wanting to screen prospective employees and sometimes by people wanting to screen their love life partners. It’s a job that she can do from anywhere, so moving around hasn’t impaired her ability to make a living. However, it has impaired her ability to make meaningful connections with people other than her son, thirteen-year-old Joshua. But, Joshua is beginning to need more than a life of uncertain connections and unanswered questions.

Anna is struggling to keep her world contained in its no frills, minimum contact style when she is asked to examine a ransom note in a local missing child case. Arriving at the sheriff’s office to analyze the handwriting on the note, she first meets Sherry, the receptionist, and then Sheriff Russ Keller. She learns some about the missing boy and his family, and she is already more involved in a community’s problem than she ever intended. What started as a favor to her mentor/boss, who makes sure work comes her way, quickly becomes a slippery slope into emotions previously held in check and participation in a community where she had hoped to remain aloof. The missing toddler and his also missing mother triggers a protective response from Anna in what could easily be a dangerous family dynamic. The discovery of the child’s nanny dead and obviously murdered raises the stakes of the investigation, and Sheriff Keller, who had been dismissive of Anna’s skills, now turns to her as a resource.

As the usually reticent Anna becomes more immersed in the missing child case, her own secrets are getting harder to keep, especially from her son. Being on the run for thirteen years has taken its toll on both. Then, Joshua goes missing. Anna knows her attempts at a sequestered existence have fallen apart. Her search for her son will reveal Anna’s backstory of why she has spent her life running and afraid, and lives will be changed.

It’s too simplistic to say that Rader-Day’s novels are character driven, although the main character is undeniably expertly crafted. The ordinariness of the character reveals an extraordinary story, a life fought for and paid for with a high emotional price. Anna Winger is an extraordinary survivor disguised in an ordinary life. The job she works as a handwriting analyst is symbolic of her uncommon self. The author surrounds Anna with a cast of characters who are also called on to rise to the telling of the story and be more than they look on the surface. The characters are given great advantage to accomplish their work with a plot, pacing, and dialogue that are remarkable.

Lori Rader-Day has written a book that requires a warning label. “Do not read until you have a clear schedule.” I luckily could devote a day on my Hawaiian vacation, as well as a night, to reading The Day I Died. You will not want to leave it, so plan accordingly. From the enticing prologue, “On the day I died, I took the new oars down to the lake,” to the twist of an ending, Lori Rader-Day spins a tale whose mastery will make you want to read it again and again.

I received a copy from the author for review purposes.