BLOG #1 HOW I GOT HERE
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BLOG #1 PERSONAL CATEGORY
Hi, my name is Bob Ainsworth, a retired accountant-turned-mystery writer living in Massachusetts with my wife and two of my sons. I have a BS in Accounting, an MBA in Finance, and had my CPA. No writing classes except required classes.
You’re probably wondering how a pencil-neck, thick-eyeglass-wearing, no-sense-of- humor beancounter became a writer, much less a mystery writer with five self-published books.
Here’s my self-promotion part. My books (CONNED, DUPED, SCAMMER, PONZI’d, and THE LAST UNINDICTED MAYOR) are for sale on Amazon. My website is www.rainsworthjr.com.
Back to the regular programming.
Well, the answer is the same as the answer to how you get Fenway Park, the Boston Garden or Symphony Hall. PRACTICE. PRACTICE. PRACTICE.
That’s sort of true for me. I always loved to read, especially mysteries and history.
As a kid, I read the Earl Stanley Gardner books featuring Perry Mason and watched the TV series with Raymond Burr. That got me in trouble with the local New Jersey librarian but my dad smoothed things over. The Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle and the Hercule Poirot stories by Agatha Christie were also favorites. Sorry, no Hardy Boys.
I liked the puzzle-solving, the twists and turns, the need to concentrate on every clue to solve the mystery before the unveiling in the final pages. (PS, I sometimes cheated and looked ahead.)
Then life happened with not much time to read but I do like movies. Eye of the Needle. The Presidio. Moneyball. A Few Good Men. The General’s Daughter. Get Shorty. Blazing Saddles. Young Frankenstein. A Time to a Kill. Mississippi Burning.
And TV, especially MASH, Law & Order, Ironside, the PBS specials with Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot, and The West Wing. Tight and complicated stories. Crisp dialogue. Unique characters. Memorable settings. But back to my writing journey.
Except for necessary college papers (corrected by my then-girlfriend, now-wife), I never wrote much during my career, except for emails. My life was spreadsheets, debits, and credits. A few things happened along the way.
First, I uncovered 2 frauds. The 1st was during my audit of a payroll clerk. She was padding her family’s hours; she wasn’t fired for some reason. The 2nd was by an executive at my employer who was ordering fake sales to be recorded to increase his bonus; I was fired for reporting that one.
Second, I had taught Accounting while obtaining my MBA. When kids and a mortgage happened and we were broke, I taught at local colleges at night and told my fraud stories to my class as a way of entertaining them. It worked and I added others that I’d learned of along the way.
Fast forward to 2015 and I’m getting ready to retire. But I need things to do after I quit. I tried drums but have no musical talent. I wanted to try consulting but my list of contacts was too short. I had back surgery and can only play golf once a week. There’s TV but I already know how The Civil War ended.
My last job was in Stamford, CT, staying over during the week, and I had lots of time to kill. I found a nice park with a long track and would circle it most nights while watching softball and Little League, trying to decide how to keep from going crazy without work.
I remember reading mysteries at night and watching Law & Order, and during one walk there was a spark: write a mystery book. No, a series. I recall that the show Ironsides came to mind, with its ensemble cast, each filling a role, each with multiple relationships, working together as a team, but with Raymond Burr as the brains, the strong lead. Other than not knowing how to actually do that, it was a great idea, and I rumbled it around during my walks.
I’ll continue this in a future post, but I wanted to discuss first why I’m doing this at all.
Writing, like marathon training, is a long-term, solitary activity. If you’re not comfortable with being alone, I don’t think writing is for you. Anyway, I’ve muddled through 5 books with help from various friends and other writers, but I always kept the process to myself. I recently came across a writing method (there are thousands) that suggested sharing outlines with friends, etc., as a way of developing the story. I liked that idea and also the idea of leaving a trail of my process and progress.
I’m working on 2 books now. One is a rewrite of one I finished 4 years ago, set in a small Massachusetts town, the idea for which was triggered while I was doing my one consulting job out there. The other is a new one about fraud, embezzlement, and financial corruption in The Vatican; the conviction of a cardinal for those crimes gave me the idea of a financially-focused version of Dan Brown’s THE DAVINCI CODE. I hope this was enjoyable for you. See you next time. That’s all, folks.