Whence I Sail-should be a photo of the little community dock

There. Doesn't that look sweet? (Imagine picture of my tiny boat.) How was I to know that next I'd be flung into the drink, and finally, having swum to the dock, be neglected for rescue, in favor of--oops. Can't give that away just yet.

Suffice it to say that tiny sailboats are perfect for mulling, watching handsome college students sculling, lulling oneself into a blissful daydream, and NOT helpful for pulling oneself onto a splintery dock beside an unspeakable mess that used to be human.

Now, back to the trials of uploading pics of Mer de Mere, or is it Mere de Mer? And who was phoning me just as I fell in?

Surprise Beginning

I am Chaz Kennedy--brave, independent and free. Oh well, that was a thought I used to have about myself. Puerile, I know, but sometimes a touch of grandiosity can get you through the day. Or night. My last name, Kennedy, often prompts people to ask if I am related. Nope. There are plenty of other Kennedys scattered around the east coast not part of the former royal family. Former? Quite. The current royals are the Obamas. Let's hope there are fewer tragic consequences to them for their nobility.

Back to me.

Chaz is usually a man's name, so you may wonder how I got it. I am named after Sister Charlotte Marie. Sister Charlotte was the principal of a catholic girls' high school, and she really looked after her kids. Sister Charlotte got me out of Dodge when I didn't know how to, yet needed to. Charlotte became Chaz as soon as I read somewhere that it was a nickname for Charles--you see, I had been trying to get people to call me Charles. I liked it, but, as a young teen, it didn't catch on. Chaz did, so here we are.

Now, I star as the sleuth in a series of pi thrillers by Jude McGee. After coming back from several years as a foreign correspondent for the Boston Globe--will we be saying RIP for the dear old paper soon?--I took up the cudgels for justice as a Private Investigator, duly licensed by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. How, you may ask, did I go from reporter to licensed PI so fast? While in college I worked for a crazy Romanian detective as my summer job, several summers. So I got my 3000 hours in way back then, and they came in handy when I applied for my license, along with some good recommendations.

In the first novel, PREY FOR THE CHURCH, I come across quite a weird set of culprits, all more or less justified in their hatred for the Church, and I need to sort out who is killing the pederast priests of Boston.

Daddy Warbucks

As I share in the outrage over the bonuses paid to AIGers (why weren't they smart enough to call them something else? deferred salary? housing allowance?) I realize that we do have a classed society. It seems to our leaders that rich sobs get to have their contracts honored while the UAW and other workers have theirs abrogated as a required part of the auto bailout. Is that about right?

Into the Drink!

Poor poor pitiful me! Not only did I forfeit my DESERVED vacation, but someone videoed my topless act after I was toppled over into the Charles River on that deceptively gorgeous Sunday morning. The events of that summer, exploits on Boston waterways to avoid the depredations of the Big Dig, dead priests littering the Freedom Trail, are well recounted in PREY FOR THE CHURCH, the first of my series.