Why Do I Write ?

It’s a question that I have been asked probably a hundred or more times and it is a question you would think I would know the answer to, but incredibly it is one that I have struggled with, until now.

In the past I would simply say, ‘I have a lot of stories to tell,’ and while that is true, it doesn’t answer the actual question. Everyone has a lot of stories to tell, but not everyone becomes a writer. My first novel, PERFECT PAWN, came about because my wife dared me to write it, but seven years later I have nine novels, two novellas, and three non-fiction books published. I also have a tenth book ready to come out and two more outlines queued up and ready to go.

So why do I write?

The answer didn’t hit me until I read a blog post by Jason Allison, a fellow retired NYPD detective and author. Jason writes some terrific posts and I highly recommend you check them out. But it was one particular post titled: You Can’t Go Home Again, which really resonated with me.

From the ripe old age of five I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up, a New York City Police Officer, and for two decades I had a front-row seat to the Greatest Show on Earth. My time with the NYPD was filled with incredible experiences. To quote Charles Dickens, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.”  There are no words to adequately explain a career spent with the largest police department in the United States, but one memory stands out and that was the day I retired from it.

After loading up my car and saying my goodbyes to my co-workers I walked out of my office, pausing for a moment to look back and it is this moment that is ingrained in me. My career was ending, but the job continued. It always does.

This month, the NYPD celebrates its 175th Anniversary. During that time, some of the most gifted and heroic police officers have been a member of the Department, but we all share a common legacy, and that is to say the job continued, long after we were gone.

It is true that my career gave me a lot of stories, both good and bad, that I draw from in my writings, but is that why I write? The answer to that question is no. I realize that the reason I write is to maintain that connection to the job.

As I sit here in my office, writing this post, I am surrounded by a collection of NYPD memorabilia that spans a period of time that is almost as old as the Department itself.  Sometimes I look at these items and think about the officers who wore or used them. What events, both good and bad, did they experience? Could they have ever imagined that the last time they touched it, that it would end up in the hands of another NYPD officer a hundred years later? The truth is that the NYPD is not who I was, but who I am.

My books are my link to the job. In creating the characters of James Maguire, Alex Taylor, and Angelo Antonucci, I have forged an eternal link between myself the Department. Long after I am gone, these characters will survive and so will my connection to the job.

Perhaps this is the reason other cops, such as Joseph Wambaugh, Ed Dee, and John Mackie, became writers, because as long as the characters live in the reader’s mind, so do you.

I could have retired from the job in 2005 and just walked off into the sunset, content in the knowledge that I had been a small part of the greatest police department in the world. But perhaps my greatest legacy will be that one day a reader will pick up one of my novels and say, ‘yeah, that’s what I want to do.’

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