Creative Deductions: Home Run

Detective Nick Chasm is obsessed with his profession, even outside his Chicago city jurisdiction. Bringing down bad guys ranks second only to his love for his 82--year-old mother.When she insists he come home to Eden Gorge to investigate the vehicular homicide of her male companion, he's prepared to ride up on his Harley and bring her comfort despite hellish memories of his police officer father.Soon after arrival, Nick learns there was a related suicide the same night.It won't be a day trip after all. Mike Pickard's writing serves as the bridge between his professional work in technology and his passion for the creative arts.Several of Pickard's short stories have been published, including Hardwired, which won a Ray Bradbury Creative Writing Prize in 2005.Pickard's first major work was The Gerfnit Chronicles, a science fiction mystery/adventure and his first novel. The story began as a series of letters to his daughter who spent several summers at overnight camp. Pickard's extensive backgroud working with cutting edge technology has proved helpful for imagining fictive universes and societies. Strong satire keeps readers grounded and laughing.Pickard has studied writing at the University of Chicago, the University of Wisconsin at Madison, Northeastern Illinois University and at the Science Fiction Novel Workshop at the University of Kansas. He has also been a member of several writers groups over the last 14 years, and is currently both a member and the webmaster at the Chicago area-based "The Writers of Glencoe."Pickard's "day job" for the last 45 years has been in Information Technology (IT). Here, too, his "inner writer" played a role. In addition to countless technical reports and position papers, Pickard penned dozens of articles as lead columnist for a microcomputer newsletter.Among his other creative exploits: amateur theater, playwriting, paper mache sculpture and inventing a board game. A failed drug bust propels Police Detective Nick Chasm to his home town of Eden Gorge, Illinois, Las Vegas, Nevada, and back to Chicago. Along the way, his efforts to deliver justice are aided by a series of sidekicks and thwarted by a growing cast of murderers, drug dealers, kidnappers, and larcenists.