Last time I left you with overweight/obesity data on a few world countries. For those who felt left out:

Mexico—around 70–75% of adults in Mexico are overweight or obes[CP1] e.

South America:

• Brazil: adult obesity prevalence is about 25%, while overweight adults are ~50%.

• Argentina: adult obesity is about 35–39%, but BMI-based data suggest roughly 70–75% of adults are overweight/obese.

• Chile: adult obesity is around 34–42% and about 80–83% of adults are overweight/obese.

Central America: Regional Latin America/Caribbean estimates about 44–68% adult excess weight depending on country.

Africa (continent-wide overview): Adult obesity in Africa was about 12.8% but overweight percentages are rising rapidly. So for “Africa” as a whole, a conservative statement is: “roughly 25–30% of adults are overweight (including obesity) with regional differences.

Russia: Around 60% of adults in Russia are overweight, with roughly 20% obese.

Japan: ~ 25–30% of Japanese adults are overweight or obese, with < 5% in the obese range.

Southeast Asia: Some of the lowest overweight/obesity prevalence globally, but rates are rising quickly! About one in five adults in the South-East Asia Region are currently overweight.

I think the U.S. is #1!

And let’s look at the consequences of all that extra weight …

Our bodies don’t store protein. Our bodies store only enough carbohydrates (in the form of glycogen in muscles and the liver) for ~36 hours. What our bodies store extremely well is fat.

Why? Evolutionarily, fat storage was a hedge for survival. The ability to store excess calories as a dense energy reserve ensured survival, supported our massive, energy-hungry brains, and fueled successful pregnancies and lactation.

Except it’s only been a few millennia since humans had to deal with “feast or famine” during their lifetimes, which is NOT enough time for our genetics to adapt to the “feast” and sedentary world we live in today—for most nations, anyway.

The problem is, carrying extra fat on the body is not just a matter of storage. It changes how many systems in the body work, and xanthine oxidoreductase (XOR), molybdenum, and uric acid are part of that story (see part 1). In people with obesity/metabolic syndrome, studies find that higher activity of XOR in the blood tends to parallel higher uric acid, abnormal levels of blood fats (triacylglycerides), insulin resistance, and lead to a greater risk of high blood pressure and heart disease.

In other words, when XOR is more active, you often see a full clusterfark of metabolic problems. Drugs that block XOR can lower uric acid and often improve signs of oxidative stress and blood vessel function more than you would expect from the uric acid change alone. This suggests that the reactive oxygen species produced by XOR itself are an important part of the damage caused by being overweight.

Body Positivity

Modern “body positivity” has brought something valuable. It pushes back against shame and stigma, and it reminds us that people of all sizes deserve respect and good medical care.

What it can sometimes blur, however, is the difference between accepting people and pretending that excess visceral fat is harmless.

Large, long‑term studies are very clear that carrying a lot of extra fat around the abdomen is linked with higher rates of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attacks, strokes, and certain cancers, even when blood tests look okay. Metabolically, “fat is fine” is only true up to a point. Beyond that, fat tissue itself becomes an active, stressed organ that increases inflammation and sends out chemical signals that change how the rest of the body handles sugar and fats.

When fat tissue “grows,” especially deep belly fat, its tiny blood vessels can’t keep up. Parts of the depot slip into low‑oxygen hypoxia, and cells there switch into stress mode, making extra reactive oxygen species and inflammatory signals.

Over time, that stressed fat behaves like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In its Dr. Jekyll role, healthy fat stores extra calories safely, releases fuel between meals, and tells the brain and muscles how full the tank is (hungry or satisfied).

In its Mr. Hyde state—too big, poorly supplied with oxygen, and bathed in ROS and inflammatory chemicals—the depot leaks fatty acids into the blood, interferes with insulin, and keeps the rest of the body slightly inflamed. XOR and its molybdenum core sit inside that loop: higher XOR activity makes more uric acid and ROS → those further irritate fat tissue and blood vessels → irritated tissues send signals that keep metabolic stress switched on.

No single piece is the lone villain, but together they show why long‑term excess fat is not just cosmetic—it quietly reshapes body chemistry in ways that make chronic disease more likely.

If all of this sounds a little personal, it is. This is not a lecture aimed at “those people over there.” It is a biochemical mirror held up for anyone—this writer included—who is aging, carrying extra weight, battling high blood pressure and cholesterol, and wondering how much of this is inevitable.

The chemistry doesn’t care how we feel about it. But understanding how metals like molybdenum, enzymes like XOR, and tissues like fat fit together can make it easier to take our own risks seriously without shame.

Here are a few practical take‑home points to carry away:

• Healthy weight is not just about appearance. Extra visceral fat changes chemistry in ways that raise blood pressure, blood sugar, and long‑term disease risk.

• Uric acid is not only about gout. Chronically high levels can damage blood vessels, kidneys, and fat tissue, especially when XOR is very active.

• Oxidative stress and low‑grade inflammation are useful in short bursts, but when they stay switched on, they quietly wear down arteries and organs over time.

• What and how we eat matters. Excess calories, added sugars (especially fructose), and frequent purine‑heavy meals (large portions of red, game, or organ meat) give XOR more work to do.

• Regular physical activity improves blood flow, nitric oxide availability, and insulin sensitivity, and can lighten the load on fat tissue and XOR.

• Aging makes the system less forgiving—ugh. The older we get, the more important it becomes to nudge weight, blood pressure, and uric acid in the right direction instead of hoping they will behave on their own.

Wanting to change is often easier when it’s tied to someone we love. For many of us, that someone is a grandchild (or three). It’s one thing to read about uric acid, oxidative stress, and molybdenum in enzymes. It’s another to kneel on the floor to build a block tower, get back up without wincing, or take them to Disneyland for the day.

In that setting, strength and a little less weight aren’t abstract “health goals.” They’re what let you lift a sleepy child into a car seat, climb bleachers for a school band concert, or sit cross‑legged on the carpet for a board game.

Looking at the biochemistry is just one way of saying these choices matter—not only for blood vessels and joints, but for the ordinary, joyful moments with grandchildren that we want to be fully present for.

Shattered: A De-Extinct Zoo Mystery, Book 4 … SOON!

It’s BACK from my professional editor—and I was pleasantly surprised that everything she found was super easy to “fix”. The proofreader is next, then I will release it September 1, 2026!

BE SURE TO PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY ON AMAZON

SHATTERED

If you prefer other retailers, I’ll have links for B&N, Kobo, and Draft2Digital at release time or before. There will also be a print edition.

I think I’ve shown you images of what I picture as Luther Nikolai and Milly Smith. I love the one of Luther. Milly at the gala, not as so much because her “living” dress is not quite like I pictured it in my head. It needs much more color and light—but it still works.

Here is an EXCITING excerpt of Shattered

This was a nice surprise.

Dear Carol Potenza-

I’m happily writing to let you know that Sacred Ghosts (Book 4 in the Nicky Matthews Mystery series) has been selected as a finalist for the 2026 Claymore Award for Best Literary.

That’s all for this newsletter. Thanks for getting down this far.

Shattered: A De-Extinct Zoo Mystery, Book 4 — so close …

Shattered: Pre-Order NOW

The two quotes below embody the revision of Shattered and outlining the final De‑Extinct Zoo book in Milly’s story, Hunted, book 5:

On the surface, they contradict each other. Shakespeare gives us a world that’s too big for any single philosophy, too strange for tidy explanations. The second quote shrugs and says, “Relax. We’ve seen all this before.” Those two ideas sit right at the heart of the De-Extinct Zoo series.

SHATTERED Pre-Order NOW

I—ahem—borrowed the “bones” from a lot of other stories when I built the Pleistocene BioPark world, some you might recognize, some you might not. I’ve already written about that scene in The Poseidon Adventure (1972) I echoed in Ambushed, Book 3. Hunted will parallel another scene from the movie. What I still need to expand on is the ethical unease of The Boys from Brazil (1978), with its cloned boys and questions about nature versus nurture (all books in the De-Extinct series). There’s also a huge nod to the devastating deaths and desperation in Dean Koontz’s Nameless series—they were the model for this “shorter” interconnected series. In “real life,” Koko the gorilla and great ape sign language played a huge role in Signs, Book 2, as did Douglas Preston’s Jennie (1994), itself inspired by Meshie the chimp—that’s a difficult read, believe me.

None of these ideas is “new under the sun.” They’ve all been done, examined, and reviewed, and they all had a huge impact on me in weaving my stories.

But then you add something our grandparents absolutely did not see coming. Companies like Colossal Biosciences are actively working on de‑extinction—editing genomes, resurrecting traits from dire wolves, mammoths, dodos, and thylacines, and talking openly about rewilding ecosystems with animals that have been gone for thousands of years. That’s Horatio territory. His philosophy didn’t have CRISPR or venture‑funded startups pitching resurrected megafauna as climate tools.

Put all of that into a near‑future New Mexico Pleistocene BioPark, add resurrected mammoths and woolly rhinos, fold in oligarchs and succession games, and old tropes start behaving differently. Disaster set‑pieces, weaponized animals, engineered children and androids (Blade Runner, 1982 anyone?), plus transferred consciousness—classic story parts—wake up in a new “ecosystem” where de‑extinction science isn’t just speculative, it’s on the front page. The questions twist, too. Are we responsible for the animals we drag back from extinction because we can? (Hello, Jurassic Park, 1993). Are we responsible for the people we design because we chose their DNA? How much of ourselves is nature, nurture, or somebody else’s experiment?

So yes, there’s nothing new under the sun. I’m building Shattered and its siblings (heh) out of scavenged parts: classic disaster movies, ethical thrillers, ape-language research, and old myths about clones and monsters. At the same time, there are more things in Heaven and Earth than any one of those source stories could imagine. De‑extinction startups, AI, oligarch funding, re-wilded wilderness—our current reality gives my fictional BioPark teeth—and fur and scaled and claws ...

The De‑Extinct Zoo series lives where those two quotes overlap. I wanted these books to emerge from a place where the characters keep doing the same human things—grief, ambition, cruelty, love—inside worlds and inhabiting bodies that earlier stories never thought possible. And all the while, real scientists quietly work on giving my mammoths and rhinos a plausible path out of extinction and into our very messy future.

Shattered: Pre-Order NOW

Publishing September 1, 2026

WORD of MOUTH: Camber

I love ancient history and prehistory and read whatever I can get my hands on. That’s how Eilmer of Malmesbury flew into Word of Mouth. This guy—with his own Wikipedia page, no less—was a medieval monk who strapped wings to himself, climbed the tower at Malmesbury Abbey around the year 1005 A.D. or so, and jumped.

William of Malmesbury wrote about Eilmer’s flight 100 years after the event:

‘In his early youth had hazarded an attempt of singular temerity: he had by some contrivance fastened to his hands and feet in order that he might fly as Daedalus … but agitated by the violence of the wind and a current of air, as well as the consciousness of his rash attempt’ …

… Eilmer “flew” about a furlong—roughly 200 meters—before crashing, breaking both legs, and blaming his failure on forgetting one crucial element: he forgot a tail.

But a word came up that I’d heard only in passing and never really thought about: camber. In aerodynamics, camber is the curvature or asymmetry between the upper and lower surfaces of a wing. A positively cambered wing has a more convex upper surface than lower—that means it “flies”.

This curve is one reason a properly shaped wing generates lift instead of just slicing the air. Who knows if Eilmer accidentally built any camber into his wings—probably not, since he didn’t exactly take off so much as glide until the ground, uh, intruded.

We can start thinking about human flight with the Greek myth of Icarus and Daedalus, but there’s also Archytas’s mechanical ‘pigeon’ in 4th‑century BCE Greece, which was said to fly 200 meters on steam. And there was Abbas ibn Firnas’s 9th‑century glider attempt in al-Andalus, and Leonardo’s 15th‑century wing sketches.

I myself once used a small Mary Poppins umbrella and a four-foot bank to try to fly. I was about 5 years old.

Yeah … It didn’t work.

Dump the next boring bestseller

Try a New Author

THE ALIBI CLUB by A.R. Northam

When a powerbroker is murdered in his penthouse, every suspect has a flawless alibi—and the proof to back it up. Detective Nora Flynn knows one thing: perfect alibis don’t exist. Someone at The Alibi Club is lying, and she’s going to tear their world apart to prove it.

The Alibi Club FREE

MYSTERY AT MONROVIA CASTLE by Valerie Brandy

Dumped, fired, and rescued by a dream job in a storybook kingdom, Rebecca Orange thinks Monrovia—and its brooding duke—might be her fresh start. Then the castle’s architect turns up dead, and her best new friend is suspect number one. Fairy-tale life? Meet murder, secrets, and one very determined heroine.

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PATINA AND POISON by Riley Hayes

Grand opening, new life … and a dead developer on the floor of her antique shop. Penny Goodwyn can read the emotional echoes on objects—and what she sees on a silver tray screams murder. In a town full of eccentrics and secrets, she’ll have to catch a killer before they catch her.

Patina and Poison FREE

ECHOES THROUGH ETERNITY: THE LIVING BLOOD by Daniel Eroom

On the very spot where the last Templar Grand Master burned, a Vatican diplomat is found murdered—staged like a medieval execution, a Latin curse pinned to his body. Historian Gabriel Voss discovers the killings are tied to his own family and a secret Templar brotherhood that’s waited 700 years to collect a blood debt.

Echoes Through Eternity FREE

We are all inundated with “content,” and it can become overwhelming. Thank you for choosing to open my newsletter, read it, and my books.

I’m heading toward the finish line with Shattered: A De-Extinct Zoo Mystery, Book 4. It’s currently with my professional editor, then off to the proofreader, with a release date of September 1, 2026.

BE SURE TO PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY ON AMAZON

SHATTERED

If you prefer other retailers, I’ll have links for B&N, Kobo, and Draft2Digital soon. There will also be a print edition.

A quick background story about Shattered: last year, when I finally sat down to write it (my stories tend to brew in my head for a while), I needed a very specific answer—how would someone kidnap a rhino from a zoo? In this case, a woolly rhino.

AI was just starting to become widely available, so I naively typed the question into ChatGPT.

How would I kidnap a rhino from a zoo?

🤯 It did not go well.

Not only would it not answer the question, but it also made it very clear that the question itself was illegal, immoral, and ill-advised. I half expected the zoo police to show up at my door 🐼.

As it turned out, I didn’t need the answer. I had already set everything in motion in the earlier books—I just hadn’t realized it yet.

I already have the opening of the final book in Milly’s pentology in my head, along with the ending of Book 5: Hunted: A De-Extinct Zoo Mystery. FINALLY, woolly mammoths 🦣. Here are a few taglines that might work—maybe.

• When the prey becomes the predator…

• The hunters made one mistake: they chose a predator as their prey.

• They hunt her for sport. She’ll hunt them to extinction.

• De-extinction made her prey. Survival made her a predator.

I’m still brewing …

SHATTERED

Molybdenum

Molybdenum (Mo) is one of those elements that doesn’t draw much attention on the periodic table before it quietly sneaks up on you. It is a silvery transition metal, atomic number 42, with a relatively high atomic mass (~95.95) and an exceptionally high melting point around 2620–2625 °C (~4753 °F). It is not rare in Earth’s crust, but you will never find it as a free metal, because it tends to occur bound in minerals such as molybdenite (MoS₂) or molybdena (see below).

The element was first correctly identified as a new metal by Swedish chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele in 1778 (who also discovered oxygen and identified tungsten, barium, nitrogen, and chlorine). In 1781, Peter Jacob Hjelm first isolated molybdenum metal, firmly separating it from other heavy metals being studied at the time.

The name “molybdenum” comes from the Greek molybdos (μόλυβδος), meaning “lead” or “lead‑like.” Early miners and alchemists often confused molybdenite with lead minerals like galena because both are soft, dark, and streak easily, so the ore was lumped in with “lead” minerals. When chemists eventually realized it was a distinct element, they kept the historical root and Latinized it as molybdenum—essentially (I think this is hilarious), “this one used to be mistaken for lead.”

Molybdenum is valued because it forms hard, stable carbides—compounds where carbon atoms tuck into the metal’s crystal lattice and create hard, wear‑resistant spots that reinforce the metal and help it keep its shape under stress. In steel, molybdenum carbides act like microscopic rebar. They raise strength and improve resistance to high‑temperature softening, or “creep.” As a result, molybdenum‑strengthened steel and superalloys are used to make electrodes for high‑temperature glass furnaces and to improve the corrosion resistance of stainless steels and pipelines in “aggressive” (very acidic or very basic) chemical environments.

Historically, molybdenum‑alloyed steels were used in heavy artillery such as the World War I “Big Bertha” guns, whose barrels had to withstand extreme temperatures and pressures during rapid firing that could cause ordinary carbon steel to erode and deform.

An Essential Trace Mineral—Humans Need Molybdenum

In the body, molybdenum is buried at the heart of a tiny molecular “tool” called the molybdenum cofactor, or Moco. Several important enzymes depend on this cofactor to function. One of the most important for this story is xanthine oxidoreductase (XOR). XOR sits at the end of the pathway that breaks down purines—the building blocks in DNA and in many foods—and turns them into uric acid.

XOR can run in two modes. In one mode (xanthine dehydrogenase), it passes electrons safely to another important cofactor, NAD⁺. In a second mode (xanthine oxidase), it passes them to oxygen instead to make superoxide—an oxygen molecule carrying an extra electron. The molybdenum atom inside XOR is part of the machinery that produces uric acid and helps generate these reactive oxygen by‑products.

Generally, two electrons make up one molecular bond or connection between two atoms. Reactive oxygen species are dangerous because they steal electrons. They pull electrons away from the molecules that make up cells, and in doing so they damage those molecules in ways the cell cannot always repair. Superoxide often starts chains of reactions that generate other oxidants such as hydrogen peroxide (bad) and, in the presence of certain metals, hydroxyl radicals (really bad). That chain reaction is why superoxide matters. Even if it is not always the most aggressive oxidant, it is a key starting point for the chemical cascade that damages many different targets.

Inside cells, reactive oxygen species can attack DNA, fats, and proteins. When DNA is hit, its bases can be modified or broken, leading to mutations or strand breaks that, if not repaired, interfere with accurate copying of genetic information or trigger cell‑death programs.

When the fatty components of membranes are oxidized, they can become leaky or lose their flexibility, disrupting the careful control of what goes in and out of the cell and its internal compartments.

Proteins can have their side chains oxidized or cross‑linked, which can change their shape and disable their function, or make them clump together in ways the cell’s quality‑control systems struggle to manage.

Over time, if enough of these components are damaged at once or the damage happens repeatedly, the cell’s repair systems are overwhelmed, and the cell may either function poorly, enter a half‑alive or senescent state, or die. That cumulative, multi‑target cellular damage is why oxidative stress is a contributor to chronic disease.

Uric Acid: Defender and Trouble‑Maker

Uric acid—the other product of XOR—is a bit of a double‑agent. At normal levels, uric acid dissolves in the blood, travels to the kidneys, and is passed out in urine. Before it’s eliminated, uric acid can actually react with and “soak up” harmful reactive oxygen species in the blood, so it adds to the body’s overall antioxidant defenses. In that sense, the molybdenum in XOR helps create a modest defender.

When uric acid levels stay too high for too long, it doesn’t dissolve as well in water and can form sharp crystals in joints and tissues. The crystals irritate the joints and signal immune cells, which creates the painful swelling we know as gout. High uric acid concentrations are also linked with kidney stones and kidney damage. So, the same molybdenum‑containing enzyme (XOR) that quietly processed purines now sits upstream of a list of problems because …

HIGH Uric Acid –> HIGHER Reactive Oxygen Species –> Oxidative stress —> MORE Cellular Damage –> Metabolic disease

High uric acid inside cells usually means XOR is working overtime. XOR working overtime means more reactive oxygen species are created.

1. These reactive oxygen species can damage the lining of blood vessels, make them stiffer and less able to relax, and stir up ongoing, low‑grade inflammation. Chronically, that constant irritation can damage arteries, make blood pressure harder to control (high blood pressure), and make it harder for the body to handle sugar properly (diabetes).

Nitric oxide (NO) is a gas that blood vessels produce to signal the vessel wall to relax. It helps keep blood vessels healthy, and it is very sensitive to reactive oxygen species. When nitric oxide is available, blood vessels can open up when needed, blood flows more smoothly, and platelets are less likely to clump and form clots.

2. When oxidative stress is high and uric acid is elevated, nitric oxide is made in smaller amounts and gets destroyed faster. With less nitric oxide, vessels stay tighter, blood pressure tends to rise, and the inner surface of the arteries becomes more sticky and inflamed.

Remember, oxidative stress and inflammation are not always bad.

In small bursts, they are part of how the body fights infections and repairs damage. The problem comes when this response is turned on all the time, as can happen when uric acid and reactive oxygen species stay high and when enzymes like XOR are overactive. Then, instead of brief, useful spot reactions, you get a long, slow burn that gradually damages tissues, including blood vessels, kidneys, and fat tissue.

This is where molybdenum and XOR step out of the biochemistry textbook and into everyday health. The molybdenum in XOR allows the enzyme to do its job converting purines into uric acid—but when XOR shifts toward its oxidase mode and runs hot, the same metal center is part of a machine that produces both extra uric acid and extra reactive oxygen species. In that sense, molybdenum in XOR has its own Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde role: in a balanced system it helps clear out old molecules.

But in an overloaded, low‑oxygen, inflamed system, it helps feed the very oxidative stress that pushes the system further out of balance.

And when could that happen? In our well‑fed cultures, with plenty of high‑calorie food available and jobs that lack any type of physical work (like tapping on a keyboard for Periodic Table of Death and Mystery articles), it happens when you carry extra fat on the body. In other words: being overweight or obese.

In the U.S., about 72% of adults are considered overweight or obese. In Great Britain, it is roughly 64–70% and rising. In the European Union, nearly 60% of people are considered overweight or obese. Canada is around 68%. Australia, about 66% and New Zealand, about 64%. And while the U.S. “wins,” India and China are also in the top three.

So what is the prize for winning?

Extra body fat –> chronic reactive oxygen species –> chronic diseases. Ugh.

And we can link part of that to molybdenum and XOR.

Next Time: Molybdenum, the Quiet Chemistry of Obesity, and the Periodic Table of Death and Mystery, Part 2

That’s all for this newsletter. Thanks for getting down this far.

SHATTERED up for Pre-Order!

Shattered: A De-Extinct Zoo Mystery, book 4, is up for Pre-order on Amazon. I will continue with other digital platforms in the coming days. Publication release date is September 1, 2026. Check it out by clicking below.

Pre-Order SHATTERED

It will be available in eBook (initially) and paperback format (eventually).

Here is the blurb I finally settled on with all the Amazon metadata algorithm bells and whistles. I’d love your feedback.

Shattered (A De‑Extinct Zoo Mystery Book 4)

An opening‑night spectacle. A vanished woolly rhino. A demand to trade one life for two.

Word of Mouth: Ad hoc

We use Latin inserted in our English all the time, like verbal birdseed thrown at a wedding. Most of us (like me) only half-know what we’re saying. When we get it right, we sound relatively smart (IMO). When we get it wrong, we sound totally cringe.

Here’s a quick, ad hoc refresher.

Ad hoc was the original word-of-mouth for this post. I found it used in Operation Pineapple Express by Lt. Col. Scott Mann. I read it for the next Nicky Matthews mystery, Sacred Ghosts—remember, Franco Martinez is an Army vet, who’d been deployed to Afghanistan. In Operation Pineapple Express, they created ad hoc committees targeting the extraction of former comrades and their families targeted by the Taliban. This non-fiction story is both heartbreaking and uplifting.

But what does ad hoc actually mean?

“Ad hoc” translates to “for this.” It’s “something” created for a single, specific purpose—like that committee thrown together to deal with this crisis or this problem and its specifics. It’s not permanent. It’s the “duct tape” of Latin, the bandage that you eventually rip off. It’s not something that is usually meant to last.

So the next time you see this Latin phrase, you’ll know exactly what it’s doing. And if you want to be extra fancy, you can always create an ad hoc excuse to use it.

Op. cit. Books and the Taos Mystery Book Club

I traveled up to Taos, New Mexico, for the Taos Mystery Book Club and a lively chat about The Third Warrior: A Nicky Matthews Mystery, book 2.

They bought me lunch (Blue corn chicken enchiladas, Christmas—red and green chile) at the Martyr’s Steakhouse, and in exchange, I answered great questions about the book, the story, and some of the elements, like the Native American Pueblo (fictional) and the language (Keres—non-fictional).

If you are interested in the languages spoken by Native Americans in New Mexico—including Keres—here’s a great place to start: The El Morro Vocabulary.

Thank you, Betty and op. cit. Books, for the invitation.

Speaking of Latin: op. cit. is the abbreviation for opere citato or in the work cited.

Books in Santa Fe: Just a Reminder …

May 30th (12-4 pm): Books in Santa Fe. I will be signing/selling my books beside 40+ authors with an excellent mix of genres. Admission is FREE, so come and say hello at the Drury Plaza Hotel.

Have you wanted to read one of my books but worried about Feeding the Beast 🧌 (Amazon)?

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I’m going to paste in their mission because I can’t say what they do for local bookstores any better.

Bookshop.org has raised over $40 million for independent bookstores

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Dump the next boring 😴 bestseller

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THE BILLIONAIRE AND THE EX: THE MAGUIRE BROTHERS, Book 2 by Cindy Ireland

The Billionaire and the Ex

THE PILGRIM by Thomas A. Burns

The Pilgrim

DEATH ROLL by Robert Blain

Death Roll

FRONTIER OUTLAWS: A COOGAN MYSTERY (Frontier Series Book 2) by Michael Cardwell

FREE Frontier Outlaws

Thank you for getting this far!

Jurassic Park (1990; Michael Crichton) was the first pick for comps for Shattered (2026). Of course. I would have also added Extinction (2024) by Douglas Preston.

Just FYI, Preston and his writing partner Lincoln Child are my writing idols for science-based thrillers. But I published my De-Extinction series first—Unmasked, 2023. BTW, the eBook is free on pretty much every online platform except Amazon 🙄.

Unmasked eBook is FREE

Recursion is a sci-fi thriller that explores the loss of memory in Alzheimer’s and the creation of a chair (a dedicated scientist) to map those memories and allow the Alzheimer's sufferer to re-experience what was lost.

The inventor, though, can’t fulfill this promise within the input of money, and is visited by a backer who promises financial support, because he knows the potential of these memories: stored memories can transport a person to the past. Or, at least, a new branch of the past.

This allows the traveler a redo for a tragic mistake or to become rich beyond the dreams of avarice, because they retain those other, future memories—so buy Apple at 10 and become a billionaire in 15 years.

The problem is the original scientist doesn’t see those history-bending implications until too late.

A second protagonist (a New York City cop) is still dealing with the grief of his daughter’s death ten years earlier and the dissolution of his marriage because of it. He begins to look into a phenomenon called False Memory Syndrome and finds out about the chair and the ability to relive the past and stop things like the tragic death of his daughter.

The problem is, creating a new branch in the past sort of messes with EVERYONE’S past, and suicides skyrocket.

But it gets worse, and worse, and worse. Groundhog Day (1993) is a sweet movie about making yourself a better person because the main character has to relive that one day over and over. Reliving the past over and over in Recursion becomes Apocalyptic.

Much of the story/plot is about trying to stop the chair from being created, but then the bad guy just goes back in time and recreates it, and everything still falls apart.

I recommend the book, but the middle slows considerably. The beginning might be slow for some, but I love the sciency stuff, so I was good. The end? I couldn’t put the book down. I read for two straight hours to finish it.

And the ending is a redemption that’s truly earned.

Like Jurassic Park (1993)—the movie this time—Recursion, and my De-Extinct Zoo series, it all comes down to that quote by Ian Malcolm:

The De-Extinct Zoo Mystery series:

“Smart, twisty, science‑driven suspense.”

Eagle feathers—or turkey feathers dyed to look like eagle feathers—play a pivotal part in the plot of The Third Warrior, book 2 in the Nicky Matthews Mystery series.

Here’s the gist of why they are important in the book: It is illegal to possess any raptor feather in the U.S. without the proper paperwork. And I mean, you can get into a lot of trouble.

If you find a bald or golden eagle feather on a hike, or see a bird hit by the side of a road or highway, or lying below a powerline, etc., the law says leave it where it lies.

Under the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act, possessing an eagle feather—yes, even one you “just found”—can mean fines up to tens of thousands of dollars and even jail time for repeat offenses.

Eagles are protected at the federal level, and their feathers are treated like the birds themselves. Seriously, you can’t take, keep, sell, or trade them without authorization.

“But,” you say, astonished, “I see them all the time on the side-of-the-road Trading Posts, Native American art, or Native American-shaped art.” Nope. Those are usually turkey feathers dyed to look like eagle feathers.

There is one crucial exception—and it isn’t for tourists, collectors, or costume designers. Enrolled members of federally recognized tribes can apply for permits to receive eagle feathers and parts for religious and cultural use, usually through the National Eagle Repository near Denver.

Federal agencies send in eagles that die from natural causes, power lines, collisions, and other non‑poaching sources; those birds are cataloged, stored, and eventually distributed to Native applicants for use in ceremonies like healings, marriages, funerals, and daily prayer.

It’s a strange intersection of wildlife law and religious freedom. The same feather that could land a non‑Native in court can, in the right hands, become a sacred object, passed down through generations.

Click below to pick up The Third Warrior to read, or request that your local library carry it.

The Third Warrior

In January 1965, a Dutch medical student, Bart Huges, turned his bathroom into an operating room so he could operate on … himself. He used a hypodermic syringe full of a numbing agent on his own forehead, took a surgical knife, cut down to his own skull, then pressed an electric drill bit against the bone.

This reads like the start of a horror movie, but it’s true.

After a few minutes, he’d done what Stone Age healers, battlefield surgeons, and modern surgeons and medical specialists usually did on other subjects and patients. He’d performed a self‑trepanation (trephination), boring a five‑millimeter hole through his own head.

And get this. A few weeks later, when he had to go to the hospital, he was confined to the psychiatric ward, but they had to release him because none of the tests showed he had any mental illness. He had voluntarily and with purpose cut a literal hole in his head.

And, going forward, he convinced several other people to do the same thing. At the time (1960s), they called his followers a Trepanation Cult.

Glad there was no TikTok at the time. Forget Tide Pods—can you imagine?

Behind the horror‑movie facade, Huges believed he was doing precision work on human consciousness itself. His theory—“brainbloodvolume” (he wrote books about it)—argued that when humans stood upright, gravity stole blood from the brain, starving it of oxygen and glucose, and walling off the full, expansive awareness our ancestors once enjoyed.

He tried everything to reverse what he believed we’d lost. He:

• Stood on his head for hours.

• Experimented with LSD (That could explain A LOT).

• Chased any state that made his skull feel less like a clamp.

But he became convinced that only a permanent physical change would work. By drilling a hole in his skull, he thought he was reopening the “expansion possibilities” of the cranium so each heartbeat could fully pulse into the brain again—no restrictions. He would be restoring a lost Eden of “subjective experience”. He would create … Homo sapiens correctus.

Huges saw himself as a pioneer—one cranial borehole away from unlocking the true potential of the human mind. But instead of a Nobel prize, he got a psychiatric hold.

All kidding aside, a generation earlier, other men with shattered skulls had put their lives in the hands of surgeons who were doing something just as radical—but with very different goals.

During World War II, military neurosurgeons were overwhelmed by head wounds from bullets, blast fragments, and helmets driven into bone. Unlike Huges, their patients hadn’t volunteered for a consciousness experiment. They were just young soldiers missing hand‑sized pieces of their skulls.

Saving them was only the first hurdle. Protecting their exposed brains for the decades they might live afterward was sometimes harder.

They needed a material to cover the healed wound that could:

• be shaped quickly in an operating tent or a hospital surgical suite,

• hold its form once implanted,

• resist rust and corrosion in blood and cerebrospinal fluid,

• and sit inside a human skull for years without provoking the immune system.

Enter tantalum—a dense, blue‑gray metal that had spent most of its existence as more of a chemical curiosity than a medical material. Tantalum (Ta), atomic number 73, atomic weight 180.95, is a Group 5, Period 5 transition metal. It’s malleable enough to be hammered into thin curved plates, strong and tough enough to resist deformation, and covered in a stable oxide (Ta₂O₅) that makes it remarkably corrosion resistant and highly inert in the human body.

Let’s chat about that before we proceed.

If you’re going to put a metal inside someone’s skull and leave it there for decades, you want something that behaves itself. Enter tantalum, named after one of the worst sons of Zeus in Greek mythology—Tantalus. Ugh. This guy.

Tantalus made every bad choice available to him. A stole the gods’ food, ambrosia. He betrayed their secrets. In one of the ugliest versions of his story, he killed his own son and served him to the Olympians as a test.

When the other gods caught him, they locked Tantalus up in the creative way only Greek gods can. After they resurrected the boy, they sentenced Tantalus not to death, but to be hungry and thirsty forever. He had to stand in water that vanished when he tried to drink, and under trees hanging with ripe fruit that lifted away when he reached. Surrounded by what he needed, eternally unable to touch it. Tantalized.

When Swedish chemist Anders Gustaf Ekeberg (who obviously had a Classical Greek education) isolated a new metal in 1802, he noticed its oxide refused to dissolve in the standard acids of the day—they swirled around it, but nothing “bit.” The element just sat there in the beaker like Tantalus in his pool—immersed, but unreachable. Ekeberg named it tantalum in honor of that punishment.

That immersed but unreachable turned out to be a blessing in the operating room. The same oxide layer that made tantalum so hard to dissolve in a lab made it almost impossible to corrode inside a human body. In World War II, when surgeons needed something to replace missing skull and just remain—quiet, inert, unreactive. Tantalum seemed the perfect choice.

Besides the lack of corrosion and low probability of an immune response, Tantalum also shows up clearly on X‑rays (it’s radioactive but in a good way), which, at the time, counted as a feature. Its half-life is 45 million billion years. The estimated age of the universe is ~14 billion years.

Wartime surgeons began shaping tantalum sheets into custom skull plates right on the table. They’d debride the wound, clear away bone and shrapnel, then lay a thin, curved tantalum plate over the defect and wire or screw it to the remaining bone margins.

The technique allowed one operation—cosmetic and protective repair—to save a life and shield a pulsing, vulnerable brain. Tantalum quickly became the preferred material for cranioplasty in both military and civilian settings, with more than a thousand such procedures performed during the war alone.

For a decade or so, if you survived a catastrophic head wound in that era, there was a good chance you went home with Tantalus’s metal hidden under your scalp, which stayed chemically unchanged as the rest of your body aged.

Huges drilled a hole in his skull chasing a subjective “high.” Wartime neurosurgeons cut bone away and slid tantalum into place, chasing something far more practical.

The chance for a damaged brain to keep on doing the quiet work of staying alive.

Biology and the continuation of the horror theme … 🦂

In New Mexico, scorpions are a feature AND a bug. We have small, almost transparent ones—probably the Striped Bark Scorpion (Centruroides vittatus)—that sneak into the house. And they are easy to step on—that’s why I wear shoes at all times.

The sting is a weird electric buzz, and the delivery method of its toxin is via a scimitar-curved tail barb. And a recently published paper has given us more details about the stinger: they are reinforced by METAL.

Which sounds like something out of a science fiction nightmare. Weaponized bugs.

Stingers tend to layer high amounts of zinc (Z) in their needle-sharp, curved tips, followed by a layer of manganese (Mn). But don’t forget the pincers! In the movable portion known as the tarsus, the research team found either zinc or a combination of zinc and iron (Fe) along the claw’s cutting edge.

Oh, Periodic table of elements! Is there nothing you can’t do?

Now, Roman antiquity and a great artifact for a horror story: The Mouth of Truth

Rome’s Mouth of Truth or Bocca della Verità is a massive round marble disk carved with a bearded face whose eyes, nose, and mouth are cut through. Today it sits in the portico of the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, not far from the ancient cattle market at the Forum Boarium.

The Mouth of Truth name and legend—put your hand in its mouth, and it’ll bite off the hand of a liar—show up in the late Middle Ages around 1485, when travelers started reporting it as a kind of public honesty test, especially for suspected adulterous wives. Why is it always wives? I know, but still.

Its origins probably date back to the 1st century AD or BC, where the 2,900-pound marble mask was used as a drain cover in the Temple of Hercules Victor (for sacrifices of cattle), or possibly a manhole. Or a ceremonial well or fountain cover tied to water or river deities like Oceanus. The open mouth would have let water—or air—pass through, which is less glamorous than magically exposing liars but more useful in a city obsessed with drainage.

Oh. It was also used in Roman Holiday (1953) because the Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck characters were lying to each other all the way through the movie. Click on the movie title to watch it. It’s a great scene.

No hidden blade, no divine judgment—which is too bad because THAT would make a great horror story.

Thanks for getting all the way down!

Sacred Ghosts is not an easy book to write—not because the words won’t come, but because of the difficult themes I need to weave through it.

There are a lot of threads, one of which is tied into the culture and traditions of the fictional pueblo where my protagonist works, her feelings on justice and equality, and how they collide.

It’s a balance to show both sides of a much larger argument about past history, how it intersects with the present, and how to carry that burden through to the future.

The premise of the book is this (and it could change): A non‑Native tribal cop who loves her adopted community must investigate a series of crimes rooted in stolen history and political betrayal, and ultimately choose between keeping her badge or staying true to her own sense of justice.

So let’s metaphor this out in clay because I have some beautifully painted Native American pottery sitting in my home.

The past is like fired clay.

The shape is set, the surface hardened. It would be nice to change it—but you can’t.

What you can change is what the past means in your life.

Every regret, every mistake, every loss is raw material you don’t get to discard, but you can repurpose it. You can’t rewrite what happened, but you can decide whether it becomes a weight that drags you down or a base you build on. The same event can be a wound you keep poking at, keep making bleed, or a scar that teaches you where your limits are and how far you’ve come.

That’s what “working with what you have” really is.

It’s NOT passive acceptance, but active craftsmanship. You take your current self—your history, your skills, your damage, your loves, your sorrows, your regrets—and you ask, “Given all of this, what can I do next?” Not “What should I have done then?” but “What will I do now?”

The future, unlike the past, is still soft clay.

When you focus on shaping your next decision, your next conversation, your next small act of bravery (like hitting “publish”) or kindness, you’re quietly changing the only part of time that ever responds to pressure.

Over and over, those choices accumulate into a life that, if not free of regret, is at least not ruled by it. Deep, huh?

You don’t get a different past. You do get an evolving present, and a future that’s constantly being shaped out of it. The work is to stop arguing with the vessel you’ve already fired and start learning what you can still make with the soft clay that’s left in your hands.

Word of Mouth: Nocebo

I immediately thought of ‘noseeums’, which is an incredibly tiny biting midge/fly (Ceratopogonidae), and if you’ve ever visited Gulf Shores, Alabama, in the summer and stayed for a week in a beach house of stilts, you know EXACTLY what I’m talking about.

Nocebo actually has to do with medicine, science, and patient experience. It’s considered the opposite of placebo, which is a sham treatment given to a patient that causes a beneficial health improvement based only on patient expectations—like the old sugar pills my granddaddy’s fishing buddy, Dr. Shipp, used to give out. Placebo = I will please.

The nocebo effect occurs when the patient takes the sham treatment and experiences negative health effects and worsening symptoms—the Evil Twin of placebo. Nocebo = I will harm.

Both placebo and nocebo effects are real and influenced by expectations and previous experience, and both are all about the brain’s anticipation of a particular result.

In fact, up to 25% of patients in clinical trials receiving the control treatment will drop out of the study due to the nocebo effect.

Voodoo Death

In researching nocebo, another fascinating term came up: Voodoo death.

It’s also called psychogenic death, and it’s a person who essentially wills themselves to die. Voodoo death occurs when someone believes they are cursed to die … and they do.

BTW, I use the Evil Twin Trope in the De-Extinct Zoo series—you’ll meet the villain who triggered it in Shattered, A De-Extinct Zoo Mystery book 4.

In the meantime, I’m going to watch the voodoo doll I bought in New Orleans very closely …

Writing Updates

Calendar

May 20th: I’m heading to a Mystery Bookclub at op. cit. books in Taos, New Mexico, to discuss The Third Warrior, A Nicky Matthews Mystery.

May 30th: Books in Santa Fe. I will be signing/selling my books beside 40+ authors with an excellent mix of genres. Admission is FREE.

It’s TIC Season

I’m deep in edits on Shattered, and my writing tics are stinging me like noseeums at the beach.

I had an awful AP review of Hearts of the Missing when it was published that focused on my penchant for using the word “heart” in various and sundry ways. “Heart” (apparently) acted like a bat to the head, and the reviewer wrote a book review almost as snarky as this post.

It still smarts, so I do extensive editing passes on tics (overused words) and what I think of as “franchised phrasing”—those familiar, prefab lines that go down easy but don’t actually “feed” the story. They’re fine as small bites, but too many and the reader starts craving something with real substance.

A non-exhaustive list (which is sad in itself) of offenders I screen for includes:

1. The “quick hit” emotional shows:

   1. hearts stuttering/thudding/pounding

   2. stomachs dipping/clenching/flipping

   3. breaths catching/hitching/stalling

2. The gaze parade:

   1. eyes locking/meeting/flicking/cutting

3. The physical flinches:

   1. shoulders tightening

   2. jaws clenching

   3. hands curling into fists

   4. lips thinning

4. And the ever-popular sentence tic:

   1. “For a heartbeat…”

   2. “Something in her chest…”

   3. “A flicker of something raw…”

Individually, none of these is terrible. But pile them up, and they turn into a kind of emotional wallpaper—same colors, same pattern, in every. single. room. They don’t break the plot, but they absolutely add sand to the gears of cadence and flow. Once you start reading the same five actions/reactions on repeat, they turn into potholes that can break the fictive dream.

So right now my life is:

1. Tic hunt

   1. Run a search on a suspect word or phrase.

   2. Stare in horror at the number of hits—I used “something” 62 times(!)

   3. Decide which ones earn their keep and which ones get the axe or a more specific, character‑true replacement.

2. Cadence triage

   1. After the tic purge, I have to make sure I haven’t flattened the rhythm—or my voice—by over-sanitizing.

   2. That’s where the read‑aloud pass comes in.

Enter Speechify

I load the chapter, hit play, and sit there while a disembodied voice reads my book back to me. Every repeated tic, clunky cadence, and word echo stands out like an unmowed blade of grass. It is tedious. It is backbreaking. I sit in a chair for hours, pausing, tweaking, replaying—over and over. It always takes longer than I think it will.

And it’s absolutely worth it—because all that obsessing over tics and rhythm is in service of one thing: a smooth, immersive read for you.

You’re welcome 😜

Have you wanted to read one of my books but worried about costs?

Libraries

Do you know that a lot of authors are available in online libraries for free or a fraction of the cost of books on online booksellers? With the rising price of both ebooks and hold-in-your-hand paper and hardbacks, libraries become a very cost-effective option for readers.

For example: Sting of Lies is available at Hoopla and Palace Marketplace, two online libraries, or go to your local library and request it.

Click the button below, then go to one of the online libraries that carry SoL. Check it out.

Get Sting of Lies

Dump the next boring bestseller. Try a New Author.

FRONTIER JUSTICE by Michael Cardwell

Wounded in a Montana blizzard by a friend’s bullet, rookie game warden and Afghanistan vet Danny Coogan is dragged into a lethal tangle of cartel gunrunners, tribal politics, and frontier justice—where the only way to stop the killing on the Dead Horse Reservation may break every law he swore to uphold.

GET Frontier Justice

I KNOW WHEN YOU’RE ASLEEP by Jessica Blade

When anonymous “pranks” at her high school start killing her friends, Mandy Wright receives a note naming her as the next target. To survive, she must untangle the killer’s twisted game, uncover who’s behind the rigged “accidents,” and outsmart a murderer who keeps changing the rules.

GET I Know When You're Asleep

THE NIGHT YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT by Elara Voss

Private driver Morris Hale thinks he’s the one observing—until enigmatic heiress Elara Quinn turns the tables. In a world of underground chess games and unspoken rules, one misread silence becomes a sentence. The Night You Should Have Left reveals how a man learns he was never the player, only the piece.

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We are all inundated with “content,” and it can become overwhelming. Thank you for choosing to open my newsletter, read it, and my books.

The digital hand on the cover of Signs: A De-Extinct Zoo Mystery (book 2 in the series) was specifically placed because Elizabeth, the alpha female of the Gigantopithicus blacki troop at the Pleistocene BioPark, has been taught American Sign Language (ASL).

Here’s the first scene with Elizabeth, the heroine protagonist, and Milly Smith, the senior resident veterinarian at the BioPark (slightly abridged):

“Good morning, Elizabeth Barrett,” Milly said and signed, arms and hands moving carefully through the greeting.

Grape morning, Milly Smush. Elizabeth’s huge hand flashed through the greeting, accompanied by a low musical hooting that sounded suspiciously like laughter.

Milly propped her hands on her hips, frowning a mock-stern expression at Elizabeth’s purposefully jumbled welcome. “Not morning apple?” She said apple but signed melon instead.

Silly Milly Milly silly. Elizabeth bounced on her seat, hooting louder, enjoying the joke. When she stopped, she signed apple and waited until Milly repeated the motion.

“Apple.” Milly pushed the knuckle of her index finger into her cheek and twisted her hand. “Thank you, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth laid her hand against the plexiglass, and Milly pressed hers over it as though they were touching. The pinkish-gray skin of the giganto’s palm dwarfed hers, four times larger in all directions.

Slowly, Elizabeth slid her hand up the glass. Milly’s hand followed. Up went the ape’s hand and up went Milly’s until she stretched onto her tip toes.

Elizabeth hooted and stood to her full three-meter height, hand pressed on the plexiglass high above Milly’s head. She stared down at Milly, eyebrows raised, creating half a dozen deep curving creases on her forehead.

Upside-down smiles.

The hands part is something I “borrowed” from one of my FAVORITE romantic comedies, Return to Me (2000). Yes, I love this movie, and I wish I’d thought of the story, and I was touched that an ASL signing ape—Sydney—drove the story.

In the movie, the press of the ape’s hand with the human’s hand through the glass becomes an amazing connection between what was lost and what is gained, as well as a symbol of what we as humans share with the animals on our planet.

Deep, huh?

I think you’d better get and read this book …

SIGNS: GET IT NOW

I want to offer you a different direction: As You Wish writing.

Those three words from The Princess Bride (1987) don’t explain love. They embody it. They work because the entire story has been carefully built to pour meaning into them. When the grandfather says “As you wish” at the end, the line lands like a punch, leaving you gasping and fighting back tears (I’m a crier—a complete mess after I watch movies like Coco (2017))—not because of flowery phrasing, but because the movie has already done the heavy lifting.

Your scenes can do the same.

What Is “As You Wish” Writing?

“As You Wish” writing is when the scene itself—the situation, the physical actions, the environment, the pauses, the specific words chosen—carries the emotional weight, so you don’t have to paste feelings on top.

Instead of telling us, “She was heartbroken to leave him,” you show the way her hand lingers on the doorframe, the joke she doesn’t quite finish, the single chore she chooses not to do because they both know she won’t be back. The reader reads those choices and feels the heartbreak without you announcing it.

Your job isn’t to tell the reader what to feel. Your job is to build a scene so rich and—I love this word—intentional that the reader can’t help but feel it.

Companion Dialogue and Action

Most clunky “tells” happen when dialogue and action are treated as parallel channels, never crossing or combining. The words say one thing, and then the narrative voice runs in afterward with a big emotional label. How many times have you read a scene you’ve written and decided it’s not “landing” quite right, so you’ve added extra “frosting” trying to tell the reader what they should be feeling?

And don’t get me wrong, I love extra frosting, but it’s only empty calories that end up leaving you hungry for something more substantial.

“As You Wish” writing braids dialogue and action together.

• The dialogue becomes companion dialogue—it doesn’t explain emotion, it resonates with it.

• The action and setting become companion cues—they are chosen specifically to echo the emotional state.

• Dialogue tags and beats are used sparingly, but when they appear, they’re loaded. A hand that doesn’t quite touch, a glass put down a little too carefully, a rose left on a pillow.

You want the reader to deduce, to come to their own conclusion, not yours. Oh, he’s terrified. Oh, no. She’s furious. Oh, my goodness, they love each other too much to say it out loud.

“As you wish” writing carries its meaning because the story has quietly defined it for us. Your simple lines can carry that kind of weight, too, if the surrounding scene earns it.

Why You Can’t Just Strip Out the Tells

A common revision mistake:

Step 1: Recognize there’s too much telling—aak!
Step 2: Go through the scene and delete every “she felt,” “he was sad,” “they were upset,” etc.
Step 3: Realize the scene is now weirdly hollow.

I literally did this with one of my manuscripts and got called out by a trusted beta reader. It was so embarrassing, and one reason I wanted to write this post. You can’t retrofit to “As You Wish” writing by just erasing the emotional “stamps” you’ve layered on your pages. If you don’t build the scene to carry the emotion in the first place, pulling the “tells” only exposes the emptiness underneath.

You have two options:

1. Rewrite the scene as an “As You Wish” scene: rebuild the beats, dialogue, and actions so they embody the emotion.

2. Transform the existing scene into an “As You Wish” scene. Keep the core moment, but change what happens, what’s said, and what’s noticed so the emotion is in the fabric of the scene—not embellishments and furbelows.

From frosting and fabric to architecture metaphors

Think of “tells” as scaffolding. They help you throw up a first draft quickly. But in revision, what you’ve “built” has to stand on its own. You don’t just rip away the scaffolding and hope for the best. You reinforce the structure so it no longer needs the extra support.

Example time

A “Slathered-On Tells” Goodbye Scene

Let’s look at a farewell scene between an adult child and an aged parent, written with heavy tells and little contextual support. Notice how the emotion is explained rather than earned.

Version 1: The She feels sad goodbye

Cheryl sat beside her father’s hospital bed, feeling miserable. She knew he was going to die soon, and that thought made her heart break. “I don’t want you to go,” she said tearfully. The grief was overwhelming. She couldn’t stop crying.

“I’m not afraid,” her father said bravely. She knew he’d made his peace with his death. “You need to be strong now. I know you’re scared and devastated, but you’ll move on.”

His words made her cry even harder, exploding the guilt she felt into needle sharp fragments. She should have visited him more often. She felt like a horrible daughter who had failed him in his final years.

“You’re my eldest. I’ve loved you since the first time I held you in my arms,” he said emotionally. “Even when you disappointed me, I still loved you with all my heart.”

His statement made her feel even worse, because she knew she’d made so many mistakes. “I’m so sorry for everything,” she sobbed, filled with regret and shame.

He looked at her with loving eyes. He felt very emotional and nostalgic, thinking about her childhood and all the memories they shared. “I forgive you,” he said. “I’ll always watch over you from heaven.”

She cried because she was so wretched and scared to lose him. She wasn’t sure she could forgive herself after he was gone.

Everything here is explained: wretched, scared, guilty, devastated. We’re told about bravery, forgiveness, and nostalgia. The scene doesn’t give the reader anything to process, to make their own. It forces the generic emotional stamps and labels on the reader and “tells” them to accept it.

There’s no “As you wish” moment because the scene doesn’t trust the reader to feel without being bottle-fed.

TRUST YOUR READER. It’s one of my ten commandments of writing.

An “As You Wish” Goodbye Scene

Let’s rebuild the scene using the same basic situation of an aged parent, an adult child, and a final goodbye. But this time, I’ll let context, simple lines, and specific details carry the emotion. It’s harder to write sometimes, and longer, maybe. But—I hope—it gives the reader something to process through their own mind and heart, allowing them to decide what to feel and how to feel it.

Version 2: Context-driven and simple goodbye

The monitors hummed and clicked, steady as a metronome, though everyone had already agreed they meant nothing now. The nurse had dimmed the lights “for comfort,” then slipped out, leaving the door almost closed. The room smelled like warm plastic and old flowers.

Cheryl rolled the visitor’s chair closer until her knees touched the rail of the bed.

“You picked a nice place,” she said, nodding toward the narrow window and its view of the parking lot. “Prime real estate. Lots of minivans.”

Her father huffed something that might have been a laugh. His chest rose, fell, with a little catch on the end. “Always did know how to live it up,” he whispered.

She reached for the plastic cup on the tray, swirled the melted ice, then set it back down without offering it. His hands lay on the blanket, the skin thin and spotted, knuckles still square, still stubborn. She’d seen those hands turn steaks on the grill, sign permission slips after reading them carefully, build a rabbit hutch for a “found” pet bunny.

“You remember the truck?” she asked. “The brown one. The door that wouldn’t shut unless you kicked it.”

His eyelids lifted just enough. “You kicked it,” he said. “I told you not to, you did anyway, and it shut. Been your way ever since.”

“I was ten,” she said.

“You’re still ten, half the time.” A faint smile pulled at one corner of his mouth. “Don’t tell your boss.”

“I’m retired.” She folded her hands together so he wouldn’t see the tremor. Her thumbnail dug into her palm. “I, uh … I cleaned out your fridge.”

“About time,” he murmured. “That mustard’s older than Matt.”

“He’s thirty … uh … thirty-six this year.” She smiled. “I had to count back.”

“Mm.” He let his eyes close again. “Thirty-six. Kids of his own—grandma.”

The monitors clicked on. A cart squeaked somewhere down the hall. Cheryl watched his chest for a long moment, counted the breaths, the pauses. She’d thought, stupidly, that the room would feel more important somehow. Holier. Not this square of scuffed linoleum, not this faded print on the wall.

“You don’t have to stay,” he said. The words slid out on a slow exhale. “I know you hate hospitals.”

“I don’t hate hospitals,” she said. “I hate the food. And the coffee.”

“Same thing.”

She leaned in, forearms on the mattress, careful her weight didn’t jostle him. Up close, she could see where he’d missed a strip shaving last week, the white stubble along his jaw. “I switched your mail,” she said. “Everything comes to me now. No more late charges.”

“That so?”

“Yep. And I paid the water bill.”

“Show-off,” he whispered.

They stayed like that for a while. The silence between them was the same kind of quiet that used to fill the cab of the camper—him driving, her toes curled on the passenger dash, window cracked so the wind tickled her cheek and hair, absorbing the outside world flashing by.

When the nurse cracked the door again, her father didn’t look over. “Five minutes,” the nurse said softly. “Okay?”

Cheryl nodded without turning. “Okay.”

After the door shut, her father moved his fingers, slow, as if remembering how. He found the edge of her sleeve and pinched the cotton between his thumb and forefinger.

“Cherrie.”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll … keep the plants alive?”

Her throat tightened. It took a few seconds to answer. “You mean mom’s plants. I already watered them.”

“She loved those stupid plants.” He let out a breath that was almost a sigh, almost a laugh. “Knew I could count on you to kick the door.”

“Yes. I’ll take care of them,” she said.

He didn’t reply right away. His hand stayed on her sleeve, lighter now. “Good girl,” he murmured. “That’s my figlia mia numera una.”

He hadn’t called her that for years. She covered his hand with both of hers, feeling the bones, the little tremor running through them.

“Get some sleep,” she said. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”

His eyes opened one more time, dark and focused on her with a clarity that knocked the breath out of her.

“As you wish,” he said.

He’d only ever said that once before. When she’d handed him his first grandchild and warned him not to drop the baby or else. She felt it land now, the same as it had then—a simple, stubborn promise. I love you before and after. Especially now.

She nodded and held on until his fingers finally loosened, and the monitors’ humming rhythm shifted into a new, thin, continuous tone.

Notice what was never said outright:

• There were no “she was devastated,” “he was afraid,” “she felt guilty,” or “he loved her.”

• Instead, I used shared history (the truck/camper, the fridge, the plants), mundane specifics (parking lot, mustard, shaving stubble), and a small, loaded line (“As you wish”) that’s been defined by their relationship.

The emotion isn’t in the adjectives or adverbs or telling. It’s in the choices around those things.

How to Build Your Own “As You Wish” Scenes

When you revise, don’t start by deleting the tells. Start by asking:

• What is your characters’ shared language of love or conflict? Jokes, errands, insults, favors, rituals, remember when?

• What object, place, or phrase means more to your characters than it appears to?

• What would be the simplest possible thing your character could say—and how can the scene make that simple thing devastating or joyful?

• Make whatever you choose SPECIFIC to your characters—unswappable to another manuscript or story.

Then rewrite the scene so that:

• The surrounding details echo the emotional state.

• The dialogue skates around the feelings rather than naming them. Don’t Hallmark card the emotions. Just don’t.

• One small line, gesture, or object is allowed to carry more weight because you’ve set it up through the story (one of my favorite ways to convey connection).

“As You Wish” writing isn’t about stripping emotion down to nothing. It’s about building so much meaning into your scenes that three little words—or one tiny action—can break your reader’s heart without a single “she felt” in sight.

Poisons

About me …

I give a lot of presentations to writers on poison. Apparently, if you have a biochemistry background and a slightly unsettling enthusiasm for symptoms and cellular damage, people assume you’re the go‑to for how to add poison to your plots. As you might suspect, this side hustle grew out of the Periodic Table of DEATH and Mystery. I’ve already done a couple of talks this year for different writing groups and am always open to more.

One was about Mad Honey—made with nectar from rhododendron flowers loaded with grayanotoxins, a neurotoxin that can drop your blood pressure and scramble your brain in record time. There’s some great history tied to Mad Honey that nicely parallels the cliché If it looks too good to be true … Kind of the original definition of “Honey Trap.” (see: Roman Empire—What NOT to do).

I just did an “Ask the Expert” session for the Kiss of Death writing group, where the questions were disturbingly specific in a way that warmed my heart. I’m also putting together a talk for the Romance Writers of America conference this summer in Albuquerque about using poison in romance—because, if you actually peruse the genre, people are poisoning each other for love (or lack thereof) uncomfortably more than you’d think. Nothing says “happily ever after” like checking your coffee for arsenic.

Is it wrong of me to enjoy this subject so much? It is? Let’s go out for a cup of coffee and discuss ….

Word of Mouth: Ostracon (plural: ostraca)

Ostraca were pieces of broken pottery reused to write little notes or draw or paint pictures—kind of like the way we use the back of discarded printer paper. The interesting thing about these ostraca in ancient times is that they weren’t “formal.” It was the everyday writing about whatever—Simon was here, Vote for Prometheus, Bring home a quart of goat milk. It gives archaeologists insight into the lives of everyday people, not just the elites.

I found this word of mouth while researching the history behind the streaming show, House of David (Amazon Prime, I think). It brought up questions that let me rabbit-hole, one of my favorite forms of internet exercise. There is practically no archaeological evidence that the Biblical David existed (the Tel Dan stele?)—but check out this ostracon from Khirbet Qeiyafa.

Writing Updates:

Shattered

I am 53.74% through revision of Shattered: A De-Extinct Mystery, book 4—give or take. The second half of the manuscript is more difficult to revise because I have to knot the threads from the first half to a satisfying conclusion. It’s really shaping up, and the ending is SHOCKING! *shiver*

Sacred Ghosts

I’ve re-read and finished a fairly heavy revision on the first (of 4) act (24k words) of Sacred Ghosts: A Nick Matthews Mystery, also book 4 in its series. I wrote ~2/3rds of the book a few years ago and put it aside for other projects (Sting of Lies, Echo of Lies, Signs and Ambushed, Author Survival Guide).

Confession: I think I was reluctant to finish it because—at the time—this was the last book in this series, and it made me sad. Maybe that’s why some authors write TOO MANY books in certain series. They just don’t want to let their characters go when it’s time.

Like the Harvey Dent quote from Batman: The Dark Knight

"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

Maybe not a villain exactly, but sometimes it feels like your hero ultimately ends up shaking their fist and yelling incoherently at the sky. Now that’s sad.

Then late last year, I came up with a fifth book plot and outlined it and LOVED it. So the sadness about SG turned happy, and I’m chugging along, changing complicated to complex, and highlighting themes and subplots.

For example:

The Pre-Columbian dogs subplot and Howard’s story (girlfriend for real): “They’re after the dogs—the real sacred ghosts of this mesa. I’m on guard. I’m supposed to protect them.”

Does Pep Katina betray and turn Nicky in because of a stolen artifact? (red herring?) Pep’s mouth pinched. “Leave it be, Sarge.”

Stay tuned for more possible hints and spoilers!

Iodine, Murder in a World War I Field Hospital, and the Periodic Table of DEATH and Mystery, Part II

Spring, 1920

London

III. Chemistry and Courage

‘The next afternoon, while he was in surgery, I examined Ward C’s tincture of iodine supplies. The bottles looked ordinary enough—amber glass, glass stopper, the usual military label: TINCT. IOD. 5% IN ALCOHOL.

‘I opened it. The iodine reek made my eyes sting. The color was dark, almost blood red, where it clung to the glass.

‘You gentlemen will know that our standard tincture is weaker than its label suggests—about two percent iodine with a little iodide in alcohol. Strong enough to kill bacteria, not so strong as to poison a man through intact skin.

‘I had learned to judge concentration by color and smell, by how a drop blooms in water. Every bottle I tested behaved as it should.

‘To be sure, I took a small, secret sample in a clean vial. Later that night, in the tiny dispensary room where we mix poultices and powders, I did what I could without a laboratory. I diluted it, compared its color against the standard bottle, and dabbed a drop on my own forearm. The sting and stain were ordinary. This iodine would sear germs, not souls.’

“Sister, what are you doing?” the night nurse asked, stepping in.

“Testing a batch from pharmacy,” I said lightly. “I was worried it may be too strong.”

“Too strong? Oh, not this.” She smiled. “The Major keeps the stronger batch in his quarters.”

“He does?” I said. “Why?”

“For the boys who come in with bad sepsis. You didn’t know? He keeps logs of the outcomes. I—I’ve seen them.” She then blushed very red. “You won’t … you won’t tell him I said so?”

“Of course not,” I said. “Go on. I’ll finish here.”

‘When she had gone, I put the bottles back as they were. There was nothing in pharmacy I could condemn. The dangerous tincture, if it existed, was in Major Haviland’s sleeping quarters.

‘I had no right to enter a senior officer’s quarters. And I had every belief that the nurse who adored him—whose patients kept dying on her watch—would warn him of any woman who tried.’

“This night nurse—” one of the majors on the dais began.

‘Sister Evans, sir.’

“She was … close to Major Haviland, you say?”

Two other officers exchanged the faint, knowing smiles of men who forgive each other outside marriage dalliances.

The presiding officer furrowed his brow. “Why is she not before us as a supporting witness?”

‘Because she’s dead, Colonel.’

The sly smiles vanished.

‘She was transferred to a casualty clearing station nearer the line two days after I spoke with her. That station took a direct hit from artillery. There were no survivors.’

They weighed my words as if I were the one in the dock. So be it.

‘In the Bible, King David sent Uriah to the front to tidy away an inconvenience. I cannot prove Major Haviland had the same clarity of purpose. I can only note that the one person who could have confirmed his stronger tincture and his private outcome logs was removed to the most dangerous post available and was killed almost at once.’

IV. The “Septic” Soldier

‘The man who forced my hand was Sergeant Hugo Brandt. You have his file, I believe. Shell fragment to the shoulder. Large but clean wound, debrided promptly, no foreign material left inside the body. No signs of gas gangrene, no foul smell.

‘His face—if one were inclined to see evil in features—was rough. Heavy jaw, big nose, brows that hung low over his eyes. He had been a dock worker before the war, and his hands looked like he could crack walnuts between his thumb and forefinger. He also wrote poetry, which he recited shyly when the ward was quiet.

‘Haviland did not like him.’

“Troublemaker,” I heard him say to Captain Marsh. “Look at the forehead. The jaw. And he doesn’t make eye contact. These types rarely do.”

“He writes poems about his mother,” I said before I could stop myself. “Hardly the stuff of a troublemaker.”

Haviland turned slowly toward me. “You are very free with your opinions, Sister.”

“Chemistry teaches one to distinguish between cause and coincidence, sir,” I said, cheeks hot. “Four unexplained deaths in your ward seem to lean toward … cause.”

The silence between us was heavy as a Black Maria.

“I would be very careful,” he said softly, “not to suggest impropriety where none exists.”

‘That night, Brandt’s dressing was due for a change. I arranged the schedule so that I would be present, not because I distrusted the other nurses, but because I needed to see exactly what was done.

‘Haviland arrived with his usual unhurried stride, carrying a “special” bottle.’

“Evening rounds, Nurse,” he said. “Let us see how our poet is faring.”

Brandt smiled weakly. “Evenin’, Major.”

“Any pain?” Haviland asked.

“Only when the shell remembers me, sir,” Brandt said. “Otherwise, I feel fine.”

“Good,” Haviland said. “We’ll keep it that way.”

He removed the dressing himself. The wound was pink, with a thin yellowish film of normal healing exudate. No redness, no swelling beyond the expected. No foul odor.

“Very clean,” I said, deliberately neutral.

“Ah. Thank you for your … opinion, Nurse,” he said. “One must never be complacent. Microbes are invisible. Character, however…” He tilted his head, studying Brandt’s face. “Character shows itself.”

Brandt flushed and looked away.

Haviland uncorked the special bottle. The iodine fumes rushed out, acrid and overpowering.

“Let me prepare a diluted solution, sir,” I said, taking a step forward. “This seems particularly—”

“That won’t be necessary,” he interrupted. “Deep wounds require a strong hand.”

He poured the tincture liberally over the wound. Brandt gasped, teeth gritted, knuckles white on the sheet.

I looked down at my hands, fighting the burn in my eyes, the thickness in my throat.

‘I should have stopped him.’

But I am determined to be clear-eyed and professional, not to give the men on the dais any reason to write off my testimony as that of a hysterical female. I lift my chin and continue.

“Breathe, Sergeant,” I said, taking his free hand. “In and out. It will pass.”

I watched the iodine soak into the wound—too much, far too much, a brown-black tide.

‘After Haviland left, I remained by Brandt’s bed longer than duty strictly required. I counted his pulse every half hour. Seventy-two. Seventy-eight. Eighty-five. A little elevated from pain, perhaps, but nothing alarming. I so hoped …

‘At midnight, I was with Private O’Mara at the far end of the ward when I heard the rattle.’

“Brandt,” I said under my breath.

By the time I reached him, his body was shaking violently, and his skin was filmed with sweat. His heart had doubled its pace.

“Not again,” one of the orderlies whispered. “God, not again.”

“Fetch Captain Marsh,” I said. “Now.”

We checked his temperature. Ninety-eight point eight. His wound—still clean. But his pupils were wide, his hands fluttering, his breath shallow.

“Feels like my heart will burst,” he panted. “Sister—please—”

I gripped his hand harder, though my own fingers shook. “You’re not going anywhere, Sergeant Brandt. Do you hear me? You stay right here.”

Marsh arrived, glance already wary.

“Septic—” he began.

“Sepsis without fever?” I said sharply. “Without a discolored wound? Look at him. Listen to his heart. It’s like a bird trapped in a box.”

“We’ve seen this before, Sister,” Marsh said. “We must accept—”

“This is iodine intoxication, Captain,” I snapped. “I read a case description years ago—a man drank tincture in a suicide attempt. The symptoms were the same. Tachycardia. Tremors. Delirium. Cardiac collapse.”

“How could iodine through the skin—”

“Through a compromised wound surface. Through an overdose.”

Brandt cried out. His back arched. For a moment, I thought his ribs would shatter under the force of his heart. Then, suddenly, he sagged.

I knew that sag.

“No,” I whispered. “No, no—”

‘He was dead before Marsh could respond.’

V. The Courtroom

‘And so we come to why I stand before you today.

‘I reported my suspicions first to the matron, who clucked her tongue and told me I had a vivid imagination. Then to Captain Marsh, who looked afraid. Then, finally, to Colonel Beecham, commanding officer of the medical unit.

“These are serious accusations, Sister. Do you have proof?”

“I have patterns, sir,” I said. “I have seen a bottle of tincture used only by Major Haviland on men whose skulls and faces fit his theory of criminality. I have charts that show no fever, no infection, and sudden cardiovascular collapse following heavy topical application.”

“Patterns are not proof,” he said. “But they may warrant investigation.”

‘You gentlemen are that investigation.’

They sit at the long table, uniforms neat, pens ready. They thank me. I am excused. I move to a smaller table, my hands folded to hide their trembling.

Next, a clerk reads out the pharmacy requisitions. It took some time to find a copy, but only the Romans were more pedantic than we Brits about documentation: a request signed by Haviland for “concentrated iodine tincture for deeply contaminated wounds,” filled by a supply depot in England that had not yet updated to the safer, diluted formula. They murmur over that. Some of them nod.

Haviland sits at the opposite table, composed and elegant, flanked by the officer assigned as his counsel. He watches me with mild interest, as if observing an insect.

When it is his turn, he rises smoothly.

“I am not ignorant of iodine toxicity, gentlemen,” he says. “I am not a barbarian. I requested stronger tincture because we deal with filthy shrapnel wounds. If we under-sterilize, men die of gas gangrene. If we over-sterilize … well, Sister O’Donnell has spun a fascinating tale about murder by antiseptic.”

There is a ripple of strained amusement.

“I will not deny that I have an interest in the emerging science of characterology,” he continues. “I have read Lombroso. I have spoken impolitic words about skull shapes and predispositions at mess tables. For that I apologize. But to leap from that to the accusation that I deliberately killed my own patients—our brave soldiers—is … extravagant.”

He spreads his hands. “What motive would I have? What benefit? These men were already under my care, already wounded. Why should I wish them dead?”

I could answer that. I could speak of the gleam in his eyes when he described preemptive justice, of the satisfaction of “pruning” the human tree. But that is speculation. And speculation is not enough.

“Sepsis presents in many ways,” he says. “The Sister herself admits we lack a full laboratory. We cannot culture organisms. We cannot see the invisible. To label these tragedies as ‘murder’ because they do not fit a textbook, and because a nurse with a chemistry hobby finds the smell of one tincture stronger than another …” He shakes his head. “I trust you will weigh her enthusiasm against my years of experience.”

You questioned me. Now, question him. Examine the requisitions, the sample bottle sent as evidence, the charts. Don’t take his word, I beg you.

Will you find Major Haviland guilty or not?

Read for The Verdict on my new website.

Iodine: The Verdict

This is a fictional story that uses history and iodine to narrate an elemental murder and mystery.

Thanks for reading down this far! I’d love comments and Questions.

Some of the best, most original books out there are independently published, so ...

1. They listen as scientists rather than as soldiers.

One of you, a colonel with a medical degree from Edinburgh, clears his throat.

“I have, in fact, read of iodine intoxication,” he says. “The Sister’s description is consistent. The lack of fever, the cardiovascular symptoms—it is not sepsis as we usually understand it.”

The panel of military judges examines the concentration more closely. A crude titration is performed using what chemicals their staff muster. The result confirms what I knew and testified to: the solution is indeed far stronger than standard tincture—strong enough that heavy application to open tissue could produce systemic effects.

When asked why he kept this bottle apart, Haviland’s answers fray.

“To ensure it was available when needed,” he says.

“Why only in Ward C?” they ask.

“Because that is where the worst cases—”

“Larkin and Brandt were not the worst cases,” I interject. “They were among the mildest. The worst cases were taken straight to surgery or to the gas gangrene tent.”

The judges go through the rosters again. They mark, perhaps because I put forward the suggestion, that the majority of the dead men in Ward C had been labeled “disciplinary problems” at some point in their service. Brawlers. Thieves. One man with a record of desertion. Others, like Brandt, had nothing worse than a rough appearance.

It fits neatly into my accusations.

“Major Haviland,” the presiding officer says, “did you at any point choose which patients would be assigned to Ward C?”

Haviland laughs, but no one joins him.

“I made recommendations,” he admits. “We try to keep the more … troublesome elements in one ward for ease of supervision.”

“So you admit you concentrated men you considered ‘troublesome’ in the same ward where you kept your strongest tincture.”

“A coincidence,” he says.

No one believes in coincidence any longer.

In the end, they find him guilty—not of premeditated murder, the word still tastes strange in a hospital—but of gross negligence and willful disregard for patient safety. They remove his rank and send him home in disgrace to face a civilian tribunal that will be far less forgiving.

When the verdict is read, I feel no triumph. Only a hollow weariness.

Outside the tent, Captain Marsh finds me.

“You were brave,” he says. “It cost you to stand up there.”

“My career,” I say. “Will any hospital take a nurse known for accusing surgeons?”

He smiles crookedly. “I hear there’s talk of opening medical colleges to women after the war. They won’t be able to deny you much longer, Sister O’Donnell. And when they do, I hope you’ll remember that your first diagnosis was stopping a killer.”

Years later, I stand in a small American Midwestern town, teaching local doctors about iodine deficiency and goiter, showing them how a pinch of iodized salt can prevent dull minds and misshapen throats. I remember Ward C. I remember Brandt’s wild, frightened eyes.

I protect these people from the lack of iodine. I once protected men from too much.

Justice was done.

2. They listen like soldiers and protect one of their own.

They are tired. They have seen too many men die to care, perhaps, about the finer distinctions between one kind of death and another. They look at Haviland and see a decorated officer with years of training. They look at me and see a woman in a nurse’s uniform, clever perhaps, earnest certainly, but unqualified in their minds to accuse.

“There is insufficient evidence,” the presiding officer announces. He won’t look at me. “We cannot prove intent. We cannot exclude atypical septic presentations or other unknown factors. Major Haviland will receive a formal reprimand for irregular procurement of supplies, but no further action will be taken.”

Haviland smiles that small, satisfied smile. He turns to me.

“No hard feelings, Nurse,” he says. “Your imagination outran your reason. War does that to all of us.”

I say nothing. If I open my mouth, I will scream.

Later, I pack my few belongings to move to another unit. Matron comes to see me.

“You’ve made it very difficult for yourself,” she says, not unkindly. “Surgeons talk. Your name will follow you.”

I have no reply because she is correct in her assessment.

She hesitates. “You were brave. And I think … not entirely wrong. But bravery is not always rewarded.”

“I know,” I say. “I have seen the cemeteries.”

After the war, as promised to no one but myself, I apply to every medical school that accepts women. Many reject me. One in Chicago does not.

In anatomy lectures, I run my fingers over real skulls. I trace brow ridges, occipital bumps. I listen as professors talk about Lombroso as a historical curiosity, a man wrong about nearly everything important. I raise my hand and ask whether any doctor who believes skulls predict criminality should be trusted with a scalpel.

They blink at me, then laugh. “No one believes that any longer, Miss O’Donnell,” they say. “Science has moved on.”

Science moves on. But some scientists—and people—do not.

In the Midwest of the United States, I encounter entire counties where children have goiters, where boys are dull and girls slow, where cretinism is called “the family curse.” I know, now, that it is not a curse at all but a simple lack. Iodine missing from soil and water, from salt and bread.

I help introduce iodized salt. I show local physicians how to recognize deficiency before it ruins a life. I watch as the next generation grows up straighter, sharper, their necks unburdened.

Sometimes, in the quiet of my own small house, I think of Ward C.

I imagine another brand of justice—not the formal kind with verdicts and courts, but the slow justice of lives saved. I could not convict Haviland. I could not stop him. But perhaps, because I failed there, I refused to fail here.

When I look into the bright eyes of a child whose neck is smooth and whose mind is keen, I think in some other world, some other ward, they would have been judged by the arbitrary shape of brow and chin.

In this world—my world—they will be judged by what they do. Perhaps this is a better ending than any verdict given in that tent.

THE END

Now it’s your turn. Which verdict do you think was the most historically plausible?

As an aside, this short story involving iodine, murder, and a tribunal of military officers as judges on a wooden dais is “based” on an outstanding trial movie, Breaker Morant (1980).

Spring, 1920

London

Testimony

“The first time I saw a man die from iodine overdose, he thanked the doctor with his last breath, gentlemen.

“You ask for my account of the deaths in Ward C of the -X- Field Hospital, and why I believe they were not septic shock. I will tell you everything I know, and everything I can prove—and then you may decide whether to believe a nurse with a chemistry degree she is not allowed to use, or an esteemed surgeon with medals on his chest—the man who murdered them.”

The courtroom exploded as if I’d thrown a live grenade. The clerk fumbled his pen, and two officers on the dais shifted to mutter in each other’s ears. The defense officer blustered, “So, you have already judged the Major guilty before we begin, have you, Sister? This is what we get when we put hysterical women in the witness chair.” Over him, the presiding officer snapped, “Sister, you will refrain from such language in this court and will withdraw that accusation at once.”

Good. If they were offended, they were listening. I folded my hands and straightened. These men needed to understand that what I was presenting was not negligence, but premeditation.

When the murmurings died down, the presiding officer pinned me with his eye. “The word ‘murder’ will not be used again unless this court finds it proven. Until then, you will confine yourself to facts, Sister. Continue.”

And yet he’d just repeated the word: Murder. I was satisfied for now.

Nodding my head in acknowledgment. When the scratch of the clerk’s pen stopped, I said,

“My name is Sister Susanna O’Donnell, V.A.D. nurse, previously of the Royal College of Science, dismissed with honors and regret when my professors informed me there were no posts for women in the laboratory. My consolation, they said, was that my knowledge of chemistry would make me a very fine nurse.

“They were right about one thing. My chemistry knowledge was key.”

I. The First Death

“The first man was Private Henry Larkin. Shrapnel wound, right thigh, superficial. The metal had missed his femoral artery by a finger’s width. Clean entry, minimal dirt. We irrigated with sterile saline, then tincture of iodine—standard procedure. The flesh hissed faintly under the iodine, but the edges stayed pink and healthy. No necrosis, no spreading redness.”

“Ah, Sister. While many of us know that this tincture concoction is a necessary part of the treatment of battlefield wounds, could you explain to us why it is necessary, if you know? Scientifically, of course, as you are a … chemist.”

I slid my gaze to the defense officer.

“Certainly … Colonel.”

As he did, I paused a heartbeat longer than courteous. I refused to look directly at the defendant, Dr. Haviland.

“Iodine is what we call a broad antiseptic. When we apply the tincture to broken skin, the elemental iodine in the solution penetrates the surface and attacks the organisms that would otherwise fester there—germs. It does not do this by magic or prayer, but by chemistry. It reacts with the substances of these infecting germs, unraveling them—spoiling their structure so they can no longer live or multiply. In plain terms, it kills them before they can kill the patient.”

“We use it in alcohol because the spirit carries the iodine into the tiny crevices of the wound and helps dry the surface. In the proper strength, a few percent, it destroys germs on contact while the body tolerates it well enough. The skin may sting and stain, but it heals. That is why it is necessary—but an excess is dangerous, even deadly. The same property that lets it poison a bacterium will, in sufficient dose, poison a man.”

I paused, giving him time to recognize he’d gambled and lost. Then I lifted an eyebrow and said,

“Thank you for the examination question, Colonel. I trust I’ve passed?”

His cheeks turned puce, and he jerked his eyes away to shuffle the pages on his table.

“An artful and succinct explanation, Sister,” the presiding officer said. “Please continue.”

I had made an enemy with my answer. Had I also formed an ally?

“Private Larkin’s temperature that evening was normal. His pulse, a steady seventy-eight. His color, poor but no worse than any man who had bled a little and then lain still.

“I noted his chart myself. I am meticulous, gentlemen. I was taught to be.

“He died at dawn.

“The night sister woke me because he had begun to shake. She believed rigors—the chills of an oncoming infection. By the time I reached his bed, he was drenched in sweat, bedding twisted around him. His eyes—dear God—his eyes protruded from their sockets as if some invisible hand was pushing them from behind.”

“What’s his temp?” I asked.

“Thirty-seven point four,” Night Sister said. She was breathless. “Barely raised.”

Not septic, then. Septic patients burn with fever. They dry out from the inside. Larkin was drowning. His tongue was thick. He could not swallow. His pulse climbed past one hundred and fifty, pounding itself into failure while I held his wrist and counted just to be certain.

“The wound. Is it hot? Red?” I asked.

We pulled away the dressing. The wound was clean, edges neat, no festering, no angry flush creeping up the thigh. It looked like a textbook example of healing. It looked like he should live.

“Heart,” I remember saying. “Something’s wrong with his heart. We sent for the duty physician.

“It was not Dr. Haviland that first night. It was young Lieutenant Marsh, newly arrived, still unsure of his authority. He examined Larkin, listened to his chest, observed the sweat beaded on his brow, and said words that would echo in Ward C for the next three months.”

“Septic shock,” he pronounced. “We must accept that not all infections present typically. There may be occult contamination.”

“Occult contamination. A nice phrase to cover ignorance.

“Larkin died less than an hour later, his heart exhausted.

“I wrote in my own notebook—not the official chart: No fever. Clean wound. Dilated pupils. Eyes bulging. Pulse 160+ before arrest. Cause not sepsis.

“I underlined the last part twice.”

II. The Pattern

“The second death was Corporal Weissman, five days later. Bayonet slash to the chest, stitched, iodined, bandaged. He joked with us as we worked, told a story about stealing eggs from a French farmer and being chased by her geese. “Worse than the Gerrys, those geese,” he said. Men who tell jokes are meant to live.”

My throat tightened. I pulled in a breath.

“He died at four in the morning in the same manner—tremors, racing heart, bulging eyes, breath coming in shallow, desperate gasps. Again, the wound was clean. Again, the temperature was barely raised. Again, the verdict: septic shock.

“It happened again, a week later. Then again.

“By the fourth such death, even the orderlies were whispering.”

“Must be something in the air of Ward C,” one murmured as we changed sheets. “A curse.”

“A curse, bad air, the stew—anything but intent. If God had looked away from Ward C, then some man had stepped in to do the devil’s work. This was a pattern.

“When I do not understand a pattern, I do not blame variables. I look for constants.

“And one common factor among all four deaths was iodine.”

“The iodine’s poisoned, Sister?” Eyes wide, a young nurse pressed a hand to her throat. “Shall we stop using it?”

“If it were the tincture from pharmacy,” I said, “every man we touched with it would be dead, not four out of forty.”

She shivered. “Then what is it?”

“At that time, I did not yet know. But when these deaths occurred, they always followed a visit from one man. Major Edward Haviland, Regimental Surgeon, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, decorated at Ypres, known among the nurses as “The Saint of the Scalpel”—the second common factor.

“He was revered, the grey at his temples giving him a conveniently distinguished sheen. Soldiers trusted him. The young nurses and V.A.D.s received avuncular pats on the shoulder, the grave looks of concern, and a hand held at a deathbed. Always carefully composed, never visibly out of line.

“For all that, he never remembered a patient’s name—only ‘the fellow with the gangrenous foot,’ or ‘the man with the missing eye.’ Same with nurses. ‘The pretty one,’ ‘the dull one.’ For me, it was, ‘Miss—er—Nurse, the chemical one,’ or ‘the one with brains who frightens off potential husbands.’

“I had come to realize his careful façade hid …”

I stopped and let the gentlemen of the court supply their own word.

III. Slope of the Brow

“You will ask how I finally came to understand what he was doing. I will answer plainly. Because he could not resist talking about it.

“It was October, one month from Armistice, when he gave the lecture. The guns had been booming for three days without pause—the hospital tents shook from the concussion. Between cases, when the stretchers were momentarily less frequent, Haviland called the officers and senior staff together in the mess and spoke to them about ‘the future of medical science.’

“I was pouring tea. Invisible, as nurses often are.”

“You see,” he said, tapping a chalkboard where he had sketched a crude human profile, “the structure of the skull, the slope of the brow, the prominence of the jaw—these are not mere accidents. They are windows into character. The Italians have advanced this line of thinking admirably. Lombroso, for instance, demonstrated that criminals share certain common traits: asymmetrical faces, protruding jaws, small, shifty eyes, peculiar bumps and ridges.”

“Phrenology?” one captain scoffed. “Surely that’s out of fashion.”

“Out of favor with those who do not wish to face uncomfortable truths,” Haviland corrected. “Have you never looked at a man and known he was a bad seed before he spoke a word? The jaw tells. The temples. The occipital ridges at the back of the head. One day, we shall be able to identify potential criminals in childhood and intervene before they offend.”

Murmurs. Some skeptical, some intrigued.

“And what would you do with them, Major?” someone asked. “Lock them away forever?”

Haviland smiled—a little twist at the corner of his mouth I had not seen before. “Surely that is for the lawmakers to decide. We are merely the observers.”

He caught my eye then, purely by chance. I had paused with the teapot tilted, listening. For an instant, I saw something under the carefully cultivated veneer—impatience, perhaps, that I had overheard something not meant for me.

Then he smiled again, all warmth and gentility. “More tea, Nurse … Our little chemist, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. I poured him more tea.

“Later that night, I found him at the far end of Ward C, studying a sleeping soldier’s face by lantern light.”

“The heavy brow,” he murmured to himself.

When he saw me, he pulled his hand from his pocket and straightened.

“You needn’t concern yourself, Sister,” he said. “Just checking on the patients.”

“Of course, sir,” I replied.

“Except I did concern myself.”

This is a fictional story that uses history and iodine to narrate an elemental murder and mystery.

Look for Part 2 in April 2026

The Verdict is posted on:

Carol Potenza

Author, writer, and recovering scientist. I write mysteries you want to read and that will stay with you long after THE END. Plus, if you love science blended with true stories, dark history, and twisted fiction, dive in. You're in the right place.

I was just a kid when I first saw The Poseidon Adventure, and it made a HUGE impression. It was one of a bunch of excellent disaster-adventure films made in the early 70s, like The Towering Inferno (1974) and Airport (1970) (not to be confused with the spoof classic Airplane! 1980).

The cast of The Poseidon Adventure includes my favorite male movie star, Gene Hackman, Red Buttons, Jack Albertson (Grandpa Joe/the Man), Ernest Borgnine, and Shelley Winters as part of a tiny group (led by Gene Hackman) that has to climb their way up to the hull of the overturned ship in the middle of the ocean for rescue.

In one scene, Hackman swims through a flooded compartment with a rope, hoping to find a way to lead the group out of danger, but gets stuck. Shelley Winters’ character, Belle Rosen, was a world-class swimmer as a young woman (she’s a “cozy” grandmother now). She dives in and saves the day, only to have a heart attack and die on the other side, sacrificing herself for the others. That sacrifice—and the underwater threading with rope—stuck with me.

So I used it—or something along the same lines—in Ambushed. Only I added 25-foot de-extinct crocodiles in the flooded underground cavern AND the shadow of a scene from True Grit (1969) at the end.

But that’s for next time.

Get Ambushed Now

A cop's estranged mother holds the key to a deadly tribal secret—now killers are closing in, and time is running out in the frozen New Mexico wilderness.

Spirit Daughters follows police Sergeant Nicky Matthews as a non-Native “outsider” cop working on a fictional Native American Pueblo in New Mexico. The first two books—Hearts of the Missing and The Third Warrior—are the first two “acts” in a four-act (book) series. The fourth and final book in this part of the series, Sacred Ghosts, is coming out soon.

The book is, in a sense, about creation. Creation stories of Native American tribal people, the birth of a baby, and reconciliation, which is, in its own way, a change from the old way of thinking about someone to a new way.

And, in the Nicky Matthews mystery series, its “element” is water, associated with rebirth, right?

One of the things that I wanted to do with this series was to compare and contrast cultures in a meaningful way without disparaging EITHER SIDE. I’m not an expert by any means, but I had both non-Native police officers and Native cultural voices (sensitivity readers) to help me with these stories.

If I sound a little grumpy, it’s because I am. When Hearts of the Missing was published traditionally after winning ANOTHER contest (Tony Hillerman Prize), I was basically told that, as an outsider to Native culture, I had no right to tell a story as a non-Native American.

Do something else, write something different. Write about what you know.

That’s what I’d done. That’s what I do.

And that’s when I abandoned traditional publishing. I realized how they presented themselves was as a fantasy about bringing great stories to readers, when they were all about fearing cultural trends and backlash (see American Dirt, 2020; Shy Girl, 2026).

So remember, traditionally published books aren’t necessarily “better”, and Indie published books are not necessarily “less than.” Don’t judge a book by its cover—or its author’s affiliations. My advice?

Word of Mouth: Lazarus animals

I actually had a different definition in my mind when I started looking into Lazarus animals. I thought they were any animal revived from extinction, like in the De-Extinct Zoo Mystery series.

Not quite. They are animals found in the fossil record, then go extinct from the fossil record (sometimes after an extinction crisis, like the Eocene-Oligocene 34 ma), only to reappear later in the fossil record.

The most famous Lazarus animal is the coelacanth, an ancient fish that lived during the age of the dinosaurs but was discovered alive in 1938 off the coast of South Africa.

The fanciful image of the frog is actually inspired by the Lazarus Project that revived the Southern Gastric-Brooding Frog (Rheobatrachus silus), a frog that went extinct in 1983. But scientists had frozen samples and were able to extract DNA containing nuclei and inject them into another frog egg using somatic cell nuclear transplantation or cloning. It almost worked. FYI, Dolly the sheep was cloned using the same method.

Lazarus animals are named after Lazarus of Bethany, brother to Mary and Martha, and a close friend of Jesus, best known in the Bible for being miraculously raised from the dead by Jesus after being buried for four days.

One more FYI, and this is hilarious. Not only are there Lazarus animals, but there are also Elvis taxa: animals thought to have gone extinct and re-emerge in the fossil record, but aren’t the actual descendants of the extinct animal. Just a look-a-like or impersonator from convergent evolution!

Rather than continue the biblical tradition favored by Jablonski (for Lazarus taxa), we prefer a more topical approach and suggest that such taxa should be known as Elvis taxa, in recognition of the many Elvis impersonators who have appeared since the death of The King.

Thank you very much.

Writing updates

Sacred Ghosts, book 4 in the Nicky Matthews Mystery series

I polished and spit-shined (remember when your mom used to lick her thumb to smooth your eyebrows? Gross) the first 50 pages (Ch 1-6+) of SG and submitted it to the Killer Nashville Claymore contest this August for unpublished manuscripts. I’m going to the conference with an author friend and will present a workshop on structuring your novel, the latest hot topic in fiction writing.

Since I’m sharing it with the KN judges, I’d like to share the opening of Sacred Ghosts with you.

Yep. That’s Nicky, and she’s put herself in a sticky situation on top of a narrow sandstone fin bridging two mesas (one forbidden) in a sandstorm with a thousand-foot drop to the canyon floor.

Having fun with this one, and the action doesn’t stop. More to come!

Shattered, a De-Extinct Zoo Mystery, book 4

I promised you the cover, so …

I have the greatest cover artist of all time! She took the Woolly Rhino image (that’s Balder) I sent her and really delivered. She changed the eye to make it more intense. She added a “cut” to the face using red light. She added the glowing, flowing red fabric along the left side and the glass slipper hanging on the E (Yes, there is a gala ball, but remember the book title!)

As you can guess, things don’t run smoothly because rhinos like to throw their weight around—very dangerous—although Milly does get to waltz with Luther.

Unmasked: Book 1 — Signs: Book 2 — Ambushed: Book 3 — Shattered: Book 4

Woolly rhinos, mammoths, and Ice Age predators are back from extinction—but someone is weaponizing them for murder.

Please de-extinct this little guy …

The first time I visited my husband’s family in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he took me for a walk in the foothills, and a jackrabbit, Lepus callotis, exploded from some sage and bounded off.

In my excitement, I blurted, “Is that a jackalope?”

He’s never let that go 😑 and we’ve been married for decades. He’ll probably have it inscribed on my tombstone.

The little guy above is not a “jackalope”, but a Ceratogaulus rhinoceros. Those are real, permanent horns protruding from its skull (not antlers—antlers are shed annually and grow back). It went extinct 5 million years ago.

I wrote them into a scene in the De-Extinct Zoo Mystery, Signs. Milly Smith, my protagonist, gives everyone she meets a de-extinct animal designation:

I wish we could Lazarus-find this animal …

Dump the next boring bestseller. Try a New Author.

Quick note from the Author Universe

A big traditional publisher recently bought a self-published hit, hoping to skim some of the sweet indie cash after a repackage and republish. Then readers accused the book of being AI slop—not because it was conclusively proven, but because the writing, to say the least, was rough. After the backlash, the publisher cancelled the release. Boo.

Moral? Traditional publishers don’t always vet for quality, and indie authors aren’t automatically “less than.” Some of the best, most original books out there are independently published.

So give more indie books a shot. Your next lifelong favorite author might be one of them.

History kills

The Stockholm Secret: In a city of a thousand islands, journalist Luna Moreno investigates a brutal murder that mirrors a 300‑year‑old legend of five powerful families and vanished rivals. As she digs into buried secrets and billion‑krona interests, she discovers the old story isn’t just history—it kills.

Kindle Unlimited

The Western is back

Frontier Justice: New Montana game warden and Afghanistan vet Danny Coogan is shot and left for dead by a Native friend, then dragged into an FBI tangle of weapons dealers, tribal politics, and revenge. To stop more murders on the Dead Horse Reservation, he may have to choose frontier justice over the law.

Preview Sample FREE

A sweet tooth fix …

Black Forest Cake Murder: When a famous food critic is murdered after visiting Sinclair’s Sweets, the small-town bakery lands in the hot seat, and the owner becomes suspect number one. Now the three Sinclair sisters must unmask a killer amid rival bakers, buried grudges, and a simmering romance—before someone serves up a second helping of murder.

Kindle Unlimited

Thank you for reading and making it down this far! More updates on Sacred Ghosts and Shattered to come, as well as a new project I have in mind …

And now that I’m reminded of that time in my life, I don’t understand how I could’ve forgotten, unless those special days were just plain swamped out by everyday having to be up front in my mind: M-W-F, class starts at 9:00 am, get to work early to review lecture, by 8:10 am at least. Start dinner at 5:50 pm if you get home on time. and the kids have soccer/softball/band at …

Swamped. Time to clear your mind and think back.

Francie counted the year’s passing not by the days or months but by the holidays that came along. Her year started with the Fourth of July because it was the first holiday that came along after school closed …

The next holiday was Halloween. Neely blackened his face with soot, wore his cap backwards and his coat inside out …

Francie, in company with other little girls, roamed the streets carrying a bit of white chalk. She went around drawing a large, quick cross on the back of each coated figure that came by. The children performed the ritual without meaning. The symbol was remembered but the reason forgotten.

—Ch 24, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1943)

Sacred Ghosts

That lost meaning of rituals comes into the science and history I’m weaving into a book I’m writing now, Sacred Ghosts.

Some of the early European immigrants (from Spain and Portugal) who settled in New Mexico brought Jewish rituals with them that had to be hidden because of the Inquisition. Recent generations recall some of those rituals, but, at the time, didn’t realize their roots. We call these Spanish settlers and their descendants Crypto-Jews or conversos.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was my mother’s favorite book growing up. I’m finding it’s one of mine now, too.

In part one of the beryllium (Be) story, you learned that four atomic cores were created for the Manhattan Project, but only three were detonated.

The fourth atomic bomb, made up of plutonium and gallium (Pu/Ga) and originally nicknamed Rufus, was moved back to Los Alamos, New Mexico, for further research. In short order, it acquired a new name—the Demon Core—when two scientists who used it to examine criticality would end up dead. The scientist linked to beryllium, Louis Slotin, exhibited a reckless carelessness that could have wiped out Los Alamos and its surrounds from an atomic explosion. Carelessness he rectified by sacrificing himself.

But first, a little about beryllium. With the atomic number 4, it’s the fourth element of the periodic table, group 2, period 2. In pure form, it’s a lightweight, brittle silvery metal with a high melting point (2468°C, 4474°F). Beryllium tastes sweet if licked, which is kind of a weird property, and its discoverer, Nicholas Louis Vauquelin (1763-1829), originally wanted to name it glaucinium (glykys is Greek for sweet). Instead, it was named for the gemstone, beryl, which contains beryllium.

Now that you know beryllium tastes sweet, you might be curious to lick it yourself. Don’t. Beryllium is toxic to humans in pure form if ingested or inhaled.

In criticality research on the atomic bomb cores, beryllium was used to create tampers—half dome-shaped bowls similar to those metal cloches that cover room-service food at fancy hotels. The tamper’s beryllium composition was very important because the element beryllium reflected neutrons back into the Pu/Ga core. They were used experimentally to assess the core’s neutron multiplication rate.

The caveat? If the core ever became completely surrounded by the beryllium tampers, too many neutrons would be reflected back to it, start a super-critical chain-reaction, and—nuclear detonation, which would be Bad.

A gap was left between the two encasing tampers so some of the neutrons could escape. During criticality experiments, the bottom half of the spherical Pu/Ga core was nestled inside the first tamper. The second tamper was used to cover the top half of the core and was manually controlled by the scientist conducting experiments.

You heard that right. Manually controlled.

The scientist raised and lowered the top beryllium tamper using a thumb hole. To maintain a gap for neutron escape, protocols dictated that shims be placed between the two beryllium tampers such that the core was NEVER completely covered.

Louis Slotin ignored protocol. Instead of shims, he used a flat-head screwdriver to control the size of the gap between the two tampers. He was known to be a bit of a show-off and photos of him at Los Alamos saw him dressed in blue jeans, cowboy boots, and aviator shades. The Cool Physicist.

He was adept at “tickling the Dragon’s Tail,” which these criticality experiments had been labeled because they were extremely dangerous.

Slotin and seven other lab personnel, from technicians to scientists, to a military guard, were present on May 21, 1946. Slotin was demonstrating his method of measuring criticality using the beryllium tamper and his screwdriver. This time, the screwdriver slipped. The beryllium tamper slammed down, completely covering the core.

Instantly, the room filled with a blinding flash of blue light and a wave of burning heat. The core turned supercritical, releasing a burst of radiation. A nuclear explosion was imminent.

With a twist of his wrist, Slotin flipped the beryllium tamper to the floor and stopped the chain-reaction build-up and blast.

But it was too late for Slotin. His position over the supercritical core shielded the other men in the room but caused him to receive a lethal dose of radiation. He died of acute radiation poisoning nine days later.

You know what the saddest part was? Louis Slotin was leaving Los Alamos for a teaching position at the University of Chicago. His last interaction with the Demon Core was atraining demonstration for his replacement. Knowing he would die, Louis called his parents, who were flown to his side to be with him in his final hours.

After Louis Slotin’s death, Los Alamos ended hands-on work with the nuclear bomb cores.

I’ve flipped the PToDM newsletter this month to start with the periodic table element. There’s a lot of good stuff after it, including the mating habits of Neanderthal men, a sneak peek at the new Shattered cover, and one of my books that complements Women’s History Month. —Carol

Iodine, Murder in a World War I Field Hospital, and the Periodic Table of DEATH and Mystery, Part I

Spring, 1920

London

Testimony

“The first time I saw a man die from iodine overdose, he thanked the doctor with his last breath, gentlemen.

“You ask for my account of the deaths in Ward C of the -X- Field Hospital, and why I believe they were not septic shock. I will tell you everything I know, and everything I can prove—and then you may decide whether to believe a nurse with a chemistry degree she is not allowed to use, or an esteemed surgeon with medals on his chest—the man who murdered them.”

The courtroom exploded as if I’d thrown a live grenade. The clerk fumbled his pen, and two officers on the dais shifted to mutter in each other’s ears. The defense officer blustered, “So, you have already judged the Major guilty before we begin, have you, Sister? This is what we get when we put hysterical women in the witness chair.” Over him, the presiding officer snapped, “Sister, you will refrain from such language in this court and will withdraw that accusation at once.”

Good. If they were offended, they were listening. I folded my hands and straightened. These men needed to understand that what I was presenting was not negligence, but premeditation.

When the murmurings died down, the presiding officer pinned me with his eye. “The word ‘murder’ will not be used again unless this court finds it proven. Until then, you will confine yourself to facts, Sister. Continue.”

And yet he’d just repeated the word: Murder. I was satisfied for now.

Nodding my head in acknowledgment. When the scratch of the clerk’s pen stopped, I said,

“My name is Sister Susanna O’Donnell, V.A.D. nurse, previously of the Royal College of Science, dismissed with honors and regret when my professors informed me there were no posts for women in the laboratory. My consolation, they said, was that my knowledge of chemistry would make me a very fine nurse.

“They were right about one thing. My chemistry knowledge was key.”

I. The First Death

“The first man was Private Henry Larkin. Shrapnel wound, right thigh, superficial. The metal had missed his femoral artery by a finger’s width. Clean entry, minimal dirt. We irrigated with sterile saline, then tincture of iodine—standard procedure. The flesh hissed faintly under the iodine, but the edges stayed pink and healthy. No necrosis, no spreading redness.”

“Ah, Sister. While many of us know that this tincture concoction is a necessary part of the treatment of battlefield wounds, could you explain to us why it is necessary, if you know? Scientifically, of course, as you are a … chemist.”

I slid my gaze to the defense officer.

“Certainly … Colonel.”

As he did, I paused a heartbeat longer than courteous. I refused to look directly at the defendant, Dr. Haviland.

“Iodine is what we call a broad antiseptic. When we apply the tincture to broken skin, the elemental iodine in the solution penetrates the surface and attacks the organisms that would otherwise fester there—germs. It does not do this by magic or prayer, but by chemistry. It reacts with the substances of these infecting germs, unraveling them—spoiling their structure so they can no longer live or multiply. In plain terms, it kills them before they can kill the patient.”

“We use it in alcohol because the spirit carries the iodine into the tiny crevices of the wound and helps dry the surface. In the proper strength, a few percent, it destroys germs on contact while the body tolerates it well enough. The skin may sting and stain, but it heals. That is why it is necessary—but an excess is dangerous, even deadly. The same property that lets it poison a bacterium will, in sufficient dose, poison a man.”

I paused, giving him time to recognize he’d gambled and lost. Then I lifted an eyebrow and said,

“Thank you for the examination question, Colonel. I trust I’ve passed?”

His cheeks turned puce, and he jerked his eyes away to shuffle the pages on his table.

“An artful and succinct explanation, Sister,” the presiding officer said. “Please continue.”

I had made an enemy with my answer. Had I also formed an ally?

“Private Larkin’s temperature that evening was normal. His pulse, a steady seventy-eight. His color, poor but no worse than any man who had bled a little and then lain still.

“I noted his chart myself. I am meticulous, gentlemen. I was taught to be.

“He died at dawn.

“The night sister woke me because he had begun to shake. She believed rigors—the chills of an oncoming infection. By the time I reached his bed, he was drenched in sweat, bedding twisted around him. His eyes—dear God—his eyes protruded from their sockets as if some invisible hand was pushing them from behind.”

“What’s his temp?” I asked.

“Thirty-seven point four,” Night Sister said. She was breathless. “Barely raised.”

Not septic, then. Septic patients burn with fever. They dry out from the inside. Larkin was drowning. His tongue was thick. He could not swallow. His pulse climbed past one hundred and fifty, pounding itself into failure while I held his wrist and counted just to be certain.

“The wound. Is it hot? Red?” I asked.

We pulled away the dressing. The wound was clean, edges neat, no festering, no angry flush creeping up the thigh. It looked like a textbook example of healing. It looked like he should live.

“Heart,” I remember saying. “Something’s wrong with his heart. We sent for the duty physician.

“It was not Dr. Haviland that first night. It was young Lieutenant Marsh, newly arrived, still unsure of his authority. He examined Larkin, listened to his chest, observed the sweat beaded on his brow, and said words that would echo in Ward C for the next three months.”

“Septic shock,” he pronounced. “We must accept that not all infections present typically. There may be occult contamination.”

“Occult contamination. A nice phrase to cover ignorance.

“Larkin died less than an hour later, his heart exhausted.

“I wrote in my own notebook—not the official chart: No fever. Clean wound. Dilated pupils. Eyes bulging. Pulse 160+ before arrest. Cause not sepsis.

“I underlined the last part twice.”

II. The Pattern

“The second death was Corporal Weissman, five days later. Bayonet slash to the chest, stitched, iodined, bandaged. He joked with us as we worked, told a story about stealing eggs from a French farmer and being chased by her geese. “Worse than the Gerrys, those geese,” he said. Men who tell jokes are meant to live.”

My throat tightened. I pulled in a breath.

“He died at four in the morning in the same manner—tremors, racing heart, bulging eyes, breath coming in shallow, desperate gasps. Again, the wound was clean. Again, the temperature was barely raised. Again, the verdict: septic shock.

“It happened again, a week later. Then again.

“By the fourth such death, even the orderlies were whispering.”

“Must be something in the air of Ward C,” one murmured as we changed sheets. “A curse.”

“A curse, bad air, the stew—anything but intent. If God had looked away from Ward C, then some man had stepped in to do the devil’s work. This was a pattern.

“When I do not understand a pattern, I do not blame variables. I look for constants.

“And one common factor among all four deaths was iodine.”

“The iodine’s poisoned, Sister?” Eyes wide, a young nurse pressed a hand to her throat. “Shall we stop using it?”

“If it were the tincture from pharmacy,” I said, “every man we touched with it would be dead, not four out of forty.”

She shivered. “Then what is it?”

“At that time, I did not yet know. But when these deaths occurred, they always followed a visit from one man. Major Edward Haviland, Regimental Surgeon, Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, decorated at Ypres, known among the nurses as “The Saint of the Scalpel”—the second common factor.

“He was revered, the grey at his temples giving him a conveniently distinguished sheen. Soldiers trusted him. The young nurses and V.A.D.s received avuncular pats on the shoulder, the grave looks of concern, and a hand held at a deathbed. Always carefully composed, never visibly out of line.

“For all that, he never remembered a patient’s name—only ‘the fellow with the gangrenous foot,’ or ‘the man with the missing eye.’ Same with nurses. ‘The pretty one,’ ‘the dull one.’ For me, it was, ‘Miss—er—Nurse, the chemical one,’ or ‘the one with brains who frightens off potential husbands.’

“I had come to realize his careful façade hid …”

I stopped and let the gentlemen of the court supply their own word.

III. Slope of the Brow

“You will ask how I finally came to understand what he was doing. I will answer plainly. Because he could not resist talking about it.

“It was October, one month from Armistice, when he gave the lecture. The guns had been booming for three days without pause—the hospital tents shook from the concussion. Between cases, when the stretchers were momentarily less frequent, Haviland called the officers and senior staff together in the mess and spoke to them about ‘the future of medical science.’

“I was pouring tea. Invisible, as nurses often are.”

“You see,” he said, tapping a chalkboard where he had sketched a crude human profile, “the structure of the skull, the slope of the brow, the prominence of the jaw—these are not mere accidents. They are windows into character. The Italians have advanced this line of thinking admirably. Lombroso, for instance, demonstrated that criminals share certain common traits: asymmetrical faces, protruding jaws, small, shifty eyes, peculiar bumps and ridges.”

“Phrenology?” one captain scoffed. “Surely that’s out of fashion.”

“Out of favor with those who do not wish to face uncomfortable truths,” Haviland corrected. “Have you never looked at a man and known he was a bad seed before he spoke a word? The jaw tells. The temples. The occipital ridges at the back of the head. One day, we shall be able to identify potential criminals in childhood and intervene before they offend.”

Murmurs. Some skeptical, some intrigued.

“And what would you do with them, Major?” someone asked. “Lock them away forever?”

Haviland smiled—a little twist at the corner of his mouth I had not seen before. “Surely that is for the lawmakers to decide. We are merely the observers.”

He caught my eye then, purely by chance. I had paused with the teapot tilted, listening. For an instant, I saw something under the carefully cultivated veneer—impatience, perhaps, that I had overheard something not meant for me.

Then he smiled again, all warmth and gentility. “More tea, Nurse … Our little chemist, isn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” I said. I poured him more tea.

“Later that night, I found him at the far end of Ward C, studying a sleeping soldier’s face by lantern light.”

“The heavy brow,” he murmured to himself.

When he saw me, he pulled his hand from his pocket and straightened.

“You needn’t concern yourself, Sister,” he said. “Just checking on the patients.”

“Of course, sir,” I replied.

“Except I did concern myself.”

This is a fictional story that uses history and iodine to narrate an elemental murder and mystery.

Look for Part 2 in April 2026

Who’s Sleeping in My Bed? 🛌

If you are from a genetic population outside of Sub-Saharan Africa, 1-4% of your DNA could have originated from a Neanderthal ancestor. And those Neanderthal genes from this interspecies coupling were retained by natural selection because they helped Homo sapiens adapt better to their environment.

They include: immune system genes to help us fight off viral infection, skin and hair genes that protect us from UV light, genes regulating how fast calories are burned, which may have been beneficial for survival but are now linked to weight gain and obesity (I think I have a bunch of these).

These Neanderthal genes are scattered across our chromosomes but are noticeably absent from the human X chromosome, one of two sex chromosomes—X and Y. Why? Studies suggest this was caused by biased mating patterns between Neanderthal males and human females.

To commemorate this finding …

I’ve always wanted to create my own meme.

SNEAK PEEK COVER: Shattered: A De-Extinct Zoo Mystery, Book 4

Some monsters are engineered. Some are rich. Some share your DNA.

At the Pleistocene BioPark, woolly rhinos, mammoths, and Ice Age predators are back from extinction—and someone is weaponizing them. When a fatal incident shatters the opening gala, Dr. Milly Smith has to protect her animals, her friends, and a pop star who might be her sister.

And For Women’s History Month: Echo of Lies

Women’s History Month fiction with ray guns, quantum ciphers, and a young woman’s resilience.

Francie Cortez, who loves Einstein more than etiquette, becomes the key to stopping a time‑bending conspiracy that has already killed one woman in her family and threatens millions more. To solve it, Francie has to treat everyone as a suspect, including the man who might be her best chance at the truth.

A PG sci-fi mystery historical romance about a woman’s resolve, you’ll want to read and pass on to your daughters and granddaughters.

READ NOW

Thanks for reading down this far!