I’ve
worked in a variety of settings, including a steel fabrication plant, a
fiberglass manufacturing facility, correctional institutions and alternative
schools. In my writing, I try to give a voice to some of the people I’ve known
who struggle to live on the fringes of society. Protagonists in popular fiction
are the beautiful people, and often the villains are those who never had a good
chance at a middle class life or who made mistakes early on and will pay for
them for the rest of their lives.
Sendoff
for a Snitch,
released in e-book by Musa Publishing on August 22, is the fourth in the Jesse
Damon Crime Novel series. After nearly twenty years in prison on a murder
conviction picked up when he was sixteen, Jesse Damon has been released, a home
detention monitor strapped to his ankle. Determined to make it and mindful of
his parole restrictions, he struggles with life outside prison. He finds a
basement apartment, a job on the overnight shift at a steel fabrication plant
and a few people who treat him like anybody else. With a murder conviction
already under his belt, Jesse is a natural suspect whenever a crime is uncovered
anywhere around him.
Jesse
is a fictional character, but he is based on prison inmates who were on my work
crew when I was employed at a large state prison. Many of them were convicted as
adults at ages 14 through 17, and worked hard in an attempt to become decent
people and have a future when they are released. The deck is stacked against
them, especially if they have no family or support system when they are
released, and just earning a living is an uphill battle.
In Sendoff
for a Snitch, Jesse's trying to make it, but nothing comes easy. He's always
broke and the police figure he's a natural suspect for almost anything, even
without his coworker Aaron trying to set him up.
Jesse can't catch a
break. His forklift at work is wrecked. His sometimes-girlfriend is furious with
him. Heavy rains and snow melt have flooded the rustbelt riverfront city. His
basement apartment has a few feet of water in it. And it's still
raining.
Wait until his parole officer finds out he's been caught driving
Aaron's pickup truck. Without a license. That alone might violate his parole and
send him back to prison. Then when Aaron's body is found floating in the flooded
stairwell of his apartment, prison looks like a foregone conclusion, unless
Jesse can manage to steer the police in another direction.
Jesse
is first introduced in Steeled for Murder, when a forklift driver at the
steel fabrication plant where he works is found dead in the warehouse, and he is
the first suspect. In Fostering Death, he goes to a funeral home to pay
his last respects to his foster mother, only to discover she has been murdered
and the police think he had something to do with it. His sometimes-girlfriend
Kelly is assaulted in Buried Biker, and he has to convince Kelly's father's
outlaw bike club that he was not the rapist, then, when the real culprit is
found dead, everyone is sure he is responsible.
In
Brothers in Crime, the police tell Jesse he has been caught on video
surveillance committing crimes he did not do, including breaking into an ATM and
killing a man Kelly has grown close to. It is due to be released in spring of
2014.
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KM Rockwood
draws on a varied background for stories, among them working as a laborer in a
steel fabrication plant, operating glass melters and related equipment in a
fiberglass manufacturing facility, and supervising an inmate work crew in a
large medium security state prison. These jobs, as well as work as a special
education teacher in an alternative high school and a GED teacher in county
detention facilities, provide most of the background for novels and short
stories.
And that’s all for now. I’ve got packing to do, I’m off to Bouchercon in Albany in the morning, but I wanted to get this to you first.
