Today's Mystery Author Guest: Colleen Collins

As promised yesterday, fellow mystery author Colleen Collins is visiting my blog today. To read her bio and see her photo, please page down to yesterday's post. Also, Colleen is running a contest for a free electronic copy of her latest book, Secrets of a Real-Life Female Private Eye, the cover art for which appears above. Colleen will select TWO winners tomorrow evening from among those who leave a comment today or tomorrow and will announce the names in a comment on this post.

Secrets of a Real-Life Female Private Eye is a part-memoir, part-reference nonfiction book based on the experiences of a professional private investigator and writer. Audiences: researchers, writers, detective-fiction fans, armchair detectives and anyone curious about the real world of private investigators!

"As an experienced private detective and a skilled storyteller, Colleen Collins is the perfect person to offer a glimpse into the lives of real female P.I.s."
~ Kim Green, managing editor of Pursuit Magazine: The Magazine of Professional Investigators

Sounds like a great read for anyone interested in learning more about what P.Is do! Below is Colleen's guest article.

Paranormal Investigations: Do Ghost Hunters Really Find Ghosts?

by Colleen Collins

Besides being a writer, I co-owned a private investigations for a decade in Denver, Colorado. In my last two guest posts at Beth’s blog, I’ve written about the work of a legal investigator and the importance of “MOM”--motive, opportunity and means--in a criminal proceeding. This time I’m talking about something lighter…so light that some people swear they can see right through this subject, if at all.

I’m talking about ghosts.

More specifically, ghost hunting or paranormal investigations. I write about paranormal investigations, among many other investigative topics, in my new nonfiction ebook, Secrets of a Real-Life Female Private Eye.

Now let’s kick off our discussion with a definition.

What Is a Paranormal Investigator?

Most paranormal investigators are people who are certified in parapsychology, or who have studied paranormal investigations. Their goal is to help people in need, and often paranormal investigators do not accept money for their services (although they may accept donations for travel, lodging and expenses). Some paranormal investigators make money through writing books, conducting "ghost tours," giving workshops, or even starring in TV reality shows about ghost hunters.

At my agency, we specialized in legal investigations, and occasionally other types of case work, such as background checks and infidelity investigations. A few times people called, asking if we could investigate a ghost.  We’d tell them no, we didn’t, and offer some tips before hiring one.

Tips for Hiring a Paranormal Investigator

Look up an established paranormal investigations organization in the area. For example, the National and International ParaHaunt Paranormal Family Network gives referrals to paranormal investigators throughout the U.S. and the world.

Check the background of the paranormal organization or investigator before you retain their services. Contact the Better Business Bureau, research the organization/person on the Internet for news stories and client referrals, review their website and contact any former clients for recommendations, or hire a private investigator to double-check the paranormal investigator's background (especially if you’re inviting this person into your home).

Personally, I don’t believe in ghosts.  On the other hand, I’d become a believer if I captured evidence of one. Which I tried to do a few years back…

My Informal Investigations at Three Haunted Hotels

Several years ago, I visited the Stanley Hotel here in my state of Colorado and took its Ghost Tour. The "Stanley" is known for its Room #217, where Stephen King first began writing his book The Shining, later made into a movie starring Jack Nicholson.

My Digital Photos Caught “Orbs”

I took photos during this Ghost Tour with my digital camera, and others in the group (including the tour guide) said I had captured orbs, which supposedly indicated the presence of spirits.  The Paranormal Encyclopedia says that "both skeptics, and many ghost hunters, agree that photographic orbs are most often, if not always, caused by natural elements such as dust, pollen, or water vapor."  I don't know what caused the orbs, but if I'd seen, oh, a spectral figure in the photo…well, then I'd believe I'd captured evidence of a ghost.

Claims of Ghosts, But When I Visited...

I've visited other supposedly haunted hotels and buildings around Denver, Colorado, starting with the “Brown.”

The Brown Palace Hotel

I've taken the ghost tour two times at the Brown Palace Hotel, built in 1892.  Both times, the guide told us fantastic stories about ghosts and ghouls who haunt the hotel, from a long-dead string quartet that still practices their music to a ghost-like train conductor who walks through walls. I would have loved to have seen or heard one of these apparitions, but I didn’t. Neither did anybody else on the tours.

Although one of the tour guides swore that late one night she saw a “black mass” of vapor swirl up to the ceiling and disappear.  Hmmm.  Shame no one got a picture of that.

House of Mirrors

Seven or so years ago, I was writing a novel that featured a ghost character who lived during the late nineteenth-century silver-boom days of Colorado.  During this era, there was a famous madam, Mattie Silks, who supposedly still haunts her old living quarters in Denver (called the House of Mirrors).

One spring afternoon, I visited the House of Mirrors, which had morphed into a bar/restaurant. The business was closed, but a friendly bartender let me in to walk around and look at spots where the madam's ghost has been seen and heard (several people claimed to have heard her whispering on a certain staircase).  Did I see or hear any ghostly goings-on?  Unfortunately, no.

The bartender wanted to share his personal ghostly tales with me. Claimed that late at night, when he was alone cleaning up, sometimes the elevator would suddenly start working, its doors opening...and no one would be inside.  And then there was the night when, alone again, an entire shelf, out of the blue, crashed to the floor.

I wish I could imagine ghosts in those happenings, but it seemed to me that both the shelf and elevator had been in serious need of repair.

Would You Hire a Ghost Hunter?

If you heard mysterious noises or voices, would you hire a ghost hunter?  Or, have you ever witnessed a ghost?  Please post your answer in a comment. 

Thanks, Colleen! Now, who has a comment or question for Colleen Collins? Good luck in the contest!

Tomorrow's Guest: Colleen Collins

Tomorrow, fellow mystery author Colleen Collins will guest on my blog with an article titled "Paranormal Investigations: Do Ghost Hunters Really Find Ghosts?". I'm sure you'll be intrigued by what she has to say. Also, Colleen will run a contest for two people to win an electronic copy of her latest nonfiction release, a combination memoir and reference book,  Secrets of a Real-Life Female Private Eye. She will choose the winners from among those who leave a comment.

Colleen Collins has written several dozen novels for Harlequin and Dorchester, including her indie mystery The Zen Man, a semifinalist in Best Indie Books 2012, as well as three nonfiction novels on private investigations.

Today's Mystery Author Guest: Colleen Collins

As promised yesterday, fellow Colorado mystery author Colleen Collins is visiting my blog today. To read her bio and see her photo, please page down to yesterday's post. Also, Colleen is running a contest for a free autographed copy of her latest release, The Next Right Thing, with TWO winners, US addresses only. Tomorrow evening, she will pick the winners from those who comment on this post.

In The Next Right Thing, tough-minded private investigator Cammie Copello always gets results, even if it means stepping into a gray area where rules are broken. That gray area is what caused the breach between her and high-profile attorney Marc Hamilton. But when his career is on the line, and the only one who can save it is Cammie, she has to make a choice that will either redeem or shatter both their worlds…for Cammie, what is the next right thing?

“Colorful, skillful description and lively, fully fleshed-out characters contribute to this great read.”
     - Romantic Times Book Reviews

Sounds like a yummy read to me! Below is Colleen's guest article. Please leave a comment for her, and if you have a question for her, ask it!

Looking Under the Alibi: The Work of a Legal Investigator

by Colleen Collins

Hello, everyone!  Thank you to Beth Groundwater, a friend and fellow writer, for welcoming me to her blog. Besides being a writer, I am also a private investigator. In The Next Right Thing (Harlequin Superromance, March 2013) the protagonist is a female private investigator who, like me, specializes in legal investigations. Because many of you are mystery writers, or love reading the genre, I thought it would be of interest to discuss legal investigations; chat briefly about V.I. Warshawski, a legal investigator character created by author Sara Paretsky; and describe some tasks a legal investigator might tackle.

What Is a Legal Investigator?

In a nutshell, an investigation is the gathering of facts to form a cohesive and well-reasoned picture of a given situation. Legal investigation is also a gathering together of facts for a given situation with the addition that these facts will be presented in a court of law.

The legal investigator applies her evidence/fact gathering through exacting requirements, called rules of evidence, which must be met for their admissibility for the judge and jury to see and hear.

V.I. Warshawski: A Fictional Legal Investigator

I view V. I. Warshawski, a private investigator character created by writer Sara Paretsky, to be a legal investigator. V.I. attended law school and worked for several years as a public defender, which attests to her understanding and passion for the law. She became a PI in 1982. For fans of the V.I. Warshawski books, you know she works independently as well as for attorneys (not uncommon for real-life legal investigators, too).

A Legal Investigator’s Job

Some legal investigators work in-house at a law firm, public defender or district attorney’s office, while others work as independent contractors (under the umbrella of their own investigations agency). A legal investigator’s tasks might include:

- Locating and interviewing witnesses
- Drafting witness interview reports for attorneys
- Reconstructing scenes of crimes
- Helping prepare civil and criminal arguments and defenses
- Serving legal documents
- Testifying in court
- Conducting legal research (for example, drafting pleadings incorporating investigative data, devising defense strategies and supporting subsequent legal proceedings)
- Preparing legal documents that provide factual support for pleadings, briefs and appeals
- Preparing affidavits
- Electronically filing pleadings.

A legal investigator’s training and skills often include:

- Good people skills, sincere interest in people
- Understanding people’s rights to privacy, city ordinances, statutory laws
- A passion for righting wrongs.

Lawyers as Legal Investigators

Sometimes lawyers become legal investigator rather than practice law. That’s certainly true for the PI-character V.I. Warshawski. It’s also true in my private investigations agency. For eight years my husband, who had a lengthy, former career as a criminal defense attorney, was my PI partner. His knowledge of the law was a boon to our investigations business; in fact, many of our first cases came from defense attorneys who had worked with him in the past.

He has since returned to the practice of law, but he tells me that sometimes he misses being out on the streets and investigating cases. On his law blog bio, he writes that he is “proud of the many hours he has spent on the streets working as a legal investigator” because he knows that “not-guilty verdicts and huge jury awards are won on the street as much as they are won in the courtroom.”

As for me, I’m still on the streets (and in the office) conducting investigations.  Or writing about them.


Thanks, Colleen! Now, who has a comment or question for her? Good luck in the contest!

Tomorrow's Guest: Colleen Collins

Tomorrow, fellow Colorado mystery author Colleen Collins will be a guest on my blog. Also, Colleen will run a contest for a free autographed copy of her latest release, The Next Right Thing, with TWO winners, US addresses only. Colleen will choose the winners from among those who leave a comment.

Colleen Collins has written several dozen novels for Harlequin and Dorchester, as well as an indie-published mystery, The Zen Man, and two indie-published nonfiction books on private investigations, How Do Private Eyes Do That? and How to Write a Dick: A Guide for Writing Fictional Sleuths from a Couple of Real-Life Sleuths. Her current release, The Next Right Thing (Harlequin Super Romance, March 2013) features a female private eye protagonist, and is available in print and ebook.

Colleen's books have placed first in the Colorado Gold, Romancing the Rockies, and Top of the Peak contests, and placed in the finals for the Holt Medallion, Coeur de Bois Readers Choice, Award of Excellence, More than Magic, and Romance Writers of America RITA contests. Colleen graduated with honors from the University of California Santa Barbara and completed graduate work in telecommunications. She has worked as a film production assistant, improv comic, telecommunications manager, technical writer/editor, speech writer, and private investigator. All these experiences play into her writing.

In her guest post tomorrow, Colleen talks about "Looking Under the Alibi: The Work of a Legal Investigator", and I'm sure you'll be intrigued by what she has to say. Then, please make a comment or ask her a question in the comments, and good luck in her contest!

Today's Colorado Mystery Author Guest: Colleen Collins

As promised yesterday, fellow Colorado mystery author Colleen Collins is visiting my blog today. To read her bio and see her photo, please page down to yesterday's post.

Above is the cover photo for her most recent book, The Zen Man, which is being released this month. Just as washed-up criminal defense attorney, life-long Deadhead (nicknamed “The Zen Man”), and current PI Rick Levine decides to get relicensed as a lawyer, he’s charged with killing one, who also happens to be his ex-wife, and ends up in the slammer with a half-million bail. Out on bond with 30 days to find the real killer, Rick and and his girlfriend Laura dig for dirt from Denver’s shady legal backrooms to the city’s tony corporate centers. Dodging bullets, trumped-up charges and the FBI’s unwanted intervention, they continue tracking key suspects who have motive…until they face a final, deadly encounter with the surprise killer.

Below is Colleen's guest article. If you leave a comment or question for Colleen, you'll be entered into a contest for a free copy of her Kindle book, How Do Private Eyes Do That? Good luck to everyone!

When Writing a Whodunit, Think of Dear ol’ MOM
(Motive, Opportunity and Means)
By Colleen Collins

Recently a writer friend of mine who’s written dozens of romance novels landed a book contract where the publisher asked for a “complex crime” at the core of the story. My friend contacted me, worried. “I’ve never written a crime!” she said, “can you give me any advice?” “Sure, think MOM,” I answered, “which stands for motive, opportunity and means.”

Besides being a writer, I’m also a private investigator who’s married to her private investigator partner who’s also a criminal defense attorney. I tell you this because our lives are full of MOM, from crafting stories to trying criminal cases.

In U.S. criminal law, MOM encapsulates three sides of a crime necessary to convince a jury of guilt in a criminal proceeding. Did the defendant have a motive to commit the crime? Did the defendant have an opportunity, or chance, to accomplish the deed? Did the defendant also have the ability (means)?

Let’s look at some ways a fictional sleuth might use MOM in a story:

Conduct witness interviews. There’s the direct questions a sleuth might ask, and which we often hear in movies, such as “Where were you at nine o’clock on the night of April 12, Miss Smith?” (opportunity). But also think about your sleuth asking questions that delve into a suspect’s character (motive), history of violence or peacefulness (means/motive or lack of means/motive), or knowledge about using a certain type of weapon (means). A sleuth might also interview other people who’ve seen that suspect use the same type of weapon or conduct certain violent acts.

Examine the murder weapon. Let’s say your sleuth wants to prove the killer was someone other than the person charged with the crime. Your sleuth might looks for clues that show lack of means on the murder weapon (such as bloody hand imprints that are larger than the defendant’s or a strand of hair stuck in blood that's a different color than the defendant’s).

Recreate the homicide event. Your sleuth might reconstruct the event at the scene of the crime to prove a person had access to a weapon (means) as well as opportunity. For example, the reconstruction might show how easily a suspect could have reached for the murder weapon. Or, conversely, that the suspect wasn’t tall enough to reach the weapon, strong enough to lift it, or maybe even literate enough to have read the instructions on how to use the weapon. As a lawyer, Abraham Lincoln once reconstructed a crime scene to prove that a witness couldn’t possibly have seen what she claimed to have seen because there wasn’t ample lighting to clearly see at the time the incident occurred.

Find an alternate suspect. Your sleuth might research other people who had motive, opportunity and means to commit a crime. For example, the sleuth might analyze someone’s character for motive (such as his/her history of outbursts toward the victim), look for clues tying another person to the murder weapon (for example, his/her knowledge of how to use that weapon), or establish someone had opportunity (by analyzing a person’s timeline).

A last point to keep in mind: a court cannot convict based solely on motive, opportunity and means. A lawyer must provide convincing proof of all three. Obtaining this proof is, of course, what your sleuth (a detective, private investigator, amateur sleuth) has been doggedly investigating, with the help of MOM, throughout the course of your story.

Thank you to Beth Groundwater for hosting me today at her blog. I’d like to give away a Kindle copy of How Do Private Eyes Do That? to one of today’s commenters. You don’t need a Kindle to download the book (Amazon provides a free, easy-to-download app for downloading the ebook onto your PC, Mac and other devices).


And thank you, Colleen, for that excellent article! I'm expecting to see lots of comments here, since Colleen is giving away such a great prize.

Tomorrow's Guest: Colleen Collins

Tomorrow, fellow Colorado mystery author Colleen Collins will be a guest on my blog.

Colleen Collins is a multi-published author and private investigator who’s written 20 novels and anthologies for Harlequin (including a romantic paranormal thriller for Dorchester, writing as Cassandra Collins). Her books have placed first in the Colorado Gold, Romancing the Rockies, and Top of the Peak contests, and placed in the finals for the Holt Medallion, Coeur de Bois Readers Choice, Award of Excellence, More than Magic, and Romance Writers of America RITA contests. Her next novel, The Zen Man (“21st-century Nick and Nora”), available December 2011, relies on techniques discussed in tomorrow's article.

In her guest post tomorrow, Colleen writes about "When Writing a Whodunit, Think of Dear ol’ MOM", and I'm sure you'll be intrigued by what she has to say. After you read her article, feel free to ask her some questions in the comments. Every comment is an entry in a contest to win a Kindle copy of How Do Private Eyes Do That? Good luck to everyone!