Marilyn's Musings

  Tall Chambers is the main character in my new Mystery/Thriller novel titled TALL CHAMBERS: JUSTIFIED ACTION.   At the age of 38, Tall left the Army after twenty years, primarily in Special Services in the Middle East.   In addition to leading covert operations, he taught small arms, hand to hand combat, and explosives. * * * * * EARL  – Thanks for sitting down with me for this interview, Tall. ( smiles) First off, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you get that unusual first name? TALL  – ( smiles )  I don’t mind a bit.  A lot of people ask me about that.  My real name is Tallmadge, an old family name my mother picked out. As soon as I was old enough to talk, I asked people to shorten it to Tall. Everyone did  ( grins) . . .except Mom, of course. EARL  –So it’s not just because you actually are tall. TALL  – No. I’ve been six foot three since I turned fifteen, but I was thin as a stick. In fact, ...

INSPIRATION FOR A NOVEL On the first night, the instructor announced, “By the end of this class, each of you will have written a short mystery story.”               Wow. When I signed up for a writing class at the community college, I thought someone was going to teach me how to write, not make me write something right away. Okay, I decided, she’s a writing professor and if she says we can do it, we can.     We had to come up with a protagonist, of course. After a lot of thought, I decided to write about a private eye with a psychic gift. I’d always been interested in psychic phenomena and loved reading about real-life psychics using their gift to help law enforcement agencies solve crimes. I named him Adam Kingston. He wouldn’t see dead people. A medium does that, not a psychic. When he touched an object related to a crime or visited a crime scene, he would receive fleeting images which might lead him in the rig...