OI usually write the blog posts on Wednesdays in order for them to be published on Fridays, so this is being written on Wednesday, October 26. It is also the last day I\u2019ll be seventy-one. Tomorrow the age page turns over to 72 not only for me, but also for your friend and mine, J.P. Beaumont.<\/p>\n
As an author, it\u2019s my job to remember not only the details of my living\/breathing relatives and friends, I have to do the same thing for all kinds of imaginary folks. With more than fifty books under my belt, that turns into a lot of remembering. For characters, I need to keep ages, car details, and weaponry all straight. Let\u2019s say I\u2019m SUPPOSED to keep those straight. For those of you who have sent me e-mails about Joanna Brady\u2019s height varying from five-foot-one to five-four depending on the various book in question, you know I\u2019m not one hundred percent infallible. (Bill said I should tell people that she was very young when I started writing about her and that she went through a late \u2018growth-spurt. The truth, plain and simple, is that I screwed up.)<\/p>\n
There was the mysterious case of Joanna Brady\u2019s dog, Tigger, who walked off stage in one book and failed to reappear in the next until fans wrote to ask me why he was AWOL.<\/p>\n
And then there was the one off-hand remark in Beaumont #9, Payment in Kind, where he says something to the effect of his not having served in Vietnam which turns out to be dead wrong, given the story that plays out Second Watch.<\/p>\n
So there you have it. When I\u2019m wrong, I’m wrong, no two ways about it! And for the guy who recently wrote to point out that what I called \u201caltitude\u201d in Downfall should really have been referred to as \u201celevation?\u201d Well, you\u2019ve got me there, too.<\/p>\n
As for the really annoying thing about those pesky mistakes? They are all still around, right there in black and white, where people can see them and let me know, even years later, where I\u2019ve missed the mark.<\/p>\n
Many books ago, as a device to help me remember J.P. Beaumont\u2019s evolving character, I decided\u2014on a whim\u2014to set his fictional birthdate on my real birthdate\u2014October 27, 1944. I don\u2019t recall exactly which book where that occurred. I believe it may have been in Minor in Possession when Ralph Ames took him for a birthday dinner at Vincent\u2019s on Camelback where Beau indulged in the duck tamales. (They are delicious, by the way!)<\/p>\n
I have no doubt that a whole bunch of you have just stopped reading the blog, gone straight to your bookshelves, and grabbed a copy of MIP so you could check that detail out for yourselves. I could probably do my own fact check from here, but let\u2019s be fair. Comments and e-mails telling me that I\u2019m wrong again will be proof positive that people are actually READING these pieces and PAYING ATTENTION! As one of our current crop of political candidates likes to say, \u201cfact check away\u201d to your heart\u2019s content!<\/p>\n
Beau and I have been together as author and character since 1982. I\u2019m not altogether sure what he’s been up to in the last year or so because I\u2019ve been busy paying attention to the doings of Ali Reynolds and Joanna Brady. While I\u2019ve spent the last year and a half losing seventy-plus pounds and walking four to five miles a day, I\u2019m not so sure about Beau. I know he has a pair of new knees, and I suspect that his knee-replacement experience is every bit as successful as my husband\u2019s was and is, but J.P. has never been a physical fitness buff. I could be wrong about this, but I believe at one point he told someone that his favorite form of exercise was jumping to conclusions.<\/p>\n
I know that just prior to his cameo appearance in Dance of the Bones his job came to an abrupt end with the shuttering of the Special Homicide Investigation Team. (S.H.I.T.) I also know that he and Mel were in the process of remodeling a house in the Bellingham area where she is the newly appointed chief of police, but as far as how my retired homicide cop has been adjusting to his enforced retirement? I have no idea.<\/p>\n
The good news is–I\u2019m about to find out. Once I send this blog to my IT Gal, I will be calling up a new folder on my computer and starting a new book\u2014Beaumont # 22. Surprisingly enough, the book already has a name\u2014Proof of Life. Judging by the title, it must have something to do with a kidnapping, but I have no idea who the victim is or the bad guy, either, for that matter. However, for those of you who have been waiting for a new Beau book? Here it comes.<\/p>\n
Happy Birthday, J.P.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s time for both of us to go to work.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,50,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-j-p-beaumont","category-writing"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-kB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1277"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1279,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277\/revisions\/1279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}