The Morelville Mysteries Full Circle Collection Boxed Set

The Morelville Mysteries Full Circle Collection Boxed Set-2

Now, I’m not naive nor was I born yesterday. I’m well aware that illegal and illicit drugs are big business. I also know that there are drugs out there that are in huge demand that I’ve never even heard of. The first show that I saw from about 10 minutes in focused on one of those drugs, NMDA and especially Ketamine. It’s in high demand and causing major law enforcement headaches in Canada and it’s spreading rapidly in the U.S.

The next episode was all about the trade of ‘Molly’ a very pure form of the clubave scene drug, Ecstasy. Anyone who’s lived in a major metro area for any length of time has heard of that, seen it used or knows someone who uses it. Molly is just the most recent, in high demand, iteration of that. This most pure form of an otherwise synthetic drug has a basis in sassafras oil that comes from trees found only in Thailand. Its widespread use is causing multiple problems internationally.

While I watched, I surfed the net looking up these drugs with regard to their effect on the users and their capability to produce an OD, among other things. The things that I found were as stunning to me as what I was seeing play across the television screen. Everything gave me much pause but it also made me start re-thinking my story. There are so many different places to take it now that I hadn’t the faintest notion of when I started planning it that it’s almost scary.

5 Things You Didn't Know About the Morelville MysteriesOriginally published April 10th, 2015

1. Zanesville, Ohio and Muskingum County are used a lot in the stories. Both are very real. Morelville doesn't exist - it's a figment of my imagination. I set it down in Muskingum County because it worked there and it made sense to have Mel, as the county Sheriff work out of the County Seat, Zanesville. What you didn't know is that Morelville is based on the very real, teeny, tiny unincorporated village that I actually live in. Some stuff you just don't have to make up!

2. The Dana Rossi character is me - if I was 6 inches taller, several years younger and had done what I originally intended to do with my life. I've been in the military; I work for the government but I'm not a Customs Agent. I always wanted to be an investigator though...or a writer. Now I'm a writer who writes about investigators. It's certainly less dangerous this way!

3. The Mel Crane character is my spouse - if she were a cop. Everything about her screams my wife. Her language, her mannerisms; everything. Well, okay, not one thing. My wife has zero patience. Mel has all the patience in the world. I guess I wrote in a character trait there that I wish a certain someone had, ahem...

4. Faye and Jesse Crane, parents to Mel (Melissa) and her twin sister Kris (Karissa) are my spouses’ parents and they have their life. We lost my spouses dad unexpectedly about four years ago but everything about Jesse Crane is him other than that he would talk a bit more than Jesse does...sometimes. I don't feature Faye and Jesse in the third book, Dana's Dilemma which is still in process but they'll be reappearing in Book four which is unnamed at this time (*All as of the time I wrote this post several months back – Anne). Incidentally, my spouse really does have a twin sister but the Kris of this book series only slightly resembles her. I gave her some of the same traits and background and some that were different so I could exploit the different ones later. Stay tuned!

5. My villains in all three books are based on real people from in and around this little town that I live in that Morelville is based on or they're based on someone in my past life. When I say based on in this case, I mean from an appearance, mannerisms and attitude perspective and, in some cases, just a little background that gives them their back story. That in no way means that any of the things the bad guys do in my books was ever done by anyone I've used as a character model - far from it. The character model for 'Relic', for example is actually a friend whose background was perfect for the story. Like I said, sometimes you just can't make stuff up that's as good as what real life presents you with.

Character Profile – Sheriff Melissa ‘Mel’ Crane

Originally published March 29th, 2015

Melissa Raye Crane is the imaginary county Sheriff of the very real Muskingum County, Ohio. She bears no resemblance whatsoever to the current Sheriff of the county or to any of the Sheriffs that preceded him. Melissa prefers to be called 'Mel'. She's tall for a woman at about 5' 10", broad shouldered and physically fit. She has short dark hair that she sometimes wears a little spiked and deep brown eyes.

Mel is 35 and the older (by minutes) of a set of identical twin girls, the only children of Faye and Jesse Crane. Mel's slightly younger sister is Karissa 'Kris' Crane. Their birthday is in July.

Mel and her sister Kris live in the old family home of their grandparents who are now deceased. The house is located in the tiny fictional village of Morelville, Ohio which is named after the morel mushrooms that grow so abundantly around there in the dampness of a good spring. The village is home to approximately 500 people who live in the village proper. There's a store, a pizza shop, a post office and a gas station in town. Kris is the afternoon/evening shift manager at the gas station. Kris's children, Cole age 15 and Beth age 13 live with her and Mel. Their father is not in the picture.

Dad/Grandpa Jesse Crane is a farmer who runs a small family farm with enough grazing land to keep a herd of about 40 longhorn cattle happy. Longhorns aren't common in Ohio or, really, anywhere in the Midwest or the East so he does a neat bit of business breeding his cows and selling their calves. They also raise some hogs and chickens but mostly for family consumption. Jesse does hog butchering and hog roasts for others in the area. He also hunts. Mom/Grandma Faye Crane tends to massive gardens and fruit trees spring through fall and cooks, cans and freezes food with abandon. Kris's children spend most of the summer with their grandparents raising livestock to show at the late August Muskingum County Fair.

Mel joined the Sheriff's department as a dispatcher not long after graduating from high school. She worked as a dispatcher until after she turned 21. Once she was 21, she was called on a lot to assist with the searching and processing of arrested females since there were few female deputies in the department. The Sheriff then, the completely fictional Caden Carter, convinced Mel to go to the Ohio Peace Officers Training Academy to become a deputy upon graduation. Like all new Sheriff's Deputies, Mel then put in a couple of years as a jailer in the county jail before going out on patrol and on other law enforcement assignments.

Mel realized she was gay when she was in high school. Living in such a small village and having exposure only to the small city of Zanesville (a real city used fictionally in my stories), she didn't have a lot of opportunities to meet like-minded women. Instead, she threw herself into her work and excelled at patrol and at investigations. She moved up through the ranks of the department very quickly. When the elected Sheriff Carter was killed in a botched drug raid when Mel was 34, she was appointed as the Sheriff to fill out the balance of his term. She's a good Sheriff but she prefers on the ground police work to pushing paper and playing local politics.

Mel never expected to meet a woman she could fall in love with. She never expected to meet someone like Customs Special Agent Dana Rossi.

Character Profile - Special Agent Dana RossiOriginally published March 30th, 2015

Dana Marie Rossi - Dana to her family and friends and 'Dana Marie' to her mother when she's angry - is a 34-year-old Special Agent with the United States Customs and Border Protection Service. She's about 5'6", and a bit on the thin side but fit (when not recovering from certain wounds...). She has long brown hair she often wears in a ponytail to keep it out of her face.

Dana grew up in Western Pennsylvania where her parents and her brothers still live. One of her brothers is a local cop in that area. She joined the Army out of high school, did a four-year tour as a military police officer (where she served time overseas during the first Gulf War) and then moved on to college after that where she got a degree in law enforcement. While she was in college, she met Nate, a native of Chicago. They married after their college graduation and settled back in his hometown.

While on the waiting list for a slot in the Chicago Police Academy, Dana took a job working private security and investigations for a small Chicago based firm. She found she liked the work and that she excelled at it. After a couple of years with the company, she took an offer to work with a much larger firm doing investigations primarily and she withdrew from the applicant pool for the police department.

Dana began having strong feelings for another woman that she worked with that was in a committed same s*x relationship. As she reflected back on her life, she came to the realization that she'd always had those sorts of feelings for certain women she'd become close to. At the age of 29, and after many long talks with Nate, who she lived with more like a close friend than as a husband, they split amicably. They had no children.

Dana came out and began trying to date women after her marriage dissolved. She met Terri, her first real female love interest, and after a short time they moved in together. Dana quickly found that Terri was not all that she seemed at first and that she was also controlling and domineering. She began to look for a way out of the relationship but, as she was spending a lot of time on the road with her investigations job, it wasn't easy to extricate herself quickly. It was nearly a year before she was able to break away. Terri controlled everything and left Dana with only a bag of clothes and toiletries she was able to get out with by feigning like she was going on another work trip.

Once Terri found out that Dana had set up a new bank account and that she wasn't coming back, she began to contact all of 'their' friends and turn them against Dana. She also started to harass her via phone and email and she began calling Dana's employer non-stop. Eventually Dana's employer got fed up with Terri's antics and, when Dana couldn't convince her to stop, she was fired.

Dana couldn't afford to stay in Chicago with no job and a blackball against her name in the security industry. She went home to her family in Pennsylvania (PA) to stay while she figured out her next move. While back in PA, she ran into an old high school friend who was working for the Customs service. After hearing about Dana's background, he convinced her that she should apply for an investigative position with them.

Dana applied and, after several rounds of interviews where the whole sordid Terri story came out, she was hired on and moved directly into Special Investigations. She was assigned to the very real Chicago Field Office to work for a bunch of very fictitious people that only exist in this author's mind. She didn't bother to establish residency again in Chicago as her job had her living life on the road most of the time.

Special Agent Rossi ended up in Ohio when the smuggling case that's detailed in the first book in the Morelville Mysteries Series, 'Relic' drew her there. She had a desk in the very real Cleveland Port Office for a time. The Port Office is also populated by people who are only figments of this author’s imagination. She shared a small apartment with another made up by me Customs employee, Cheryl, who was assigned to the very real Ashtabula, Ohio Port Office. By the time she became the lead on the Ohio based investigation, Dana had been with the Customs service for three years.