Welcome, friend! Today I bring you a collaborative post with author Fred Tippett II. We are chatting about his mystery novel, Textbook Murder.

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Get to know the author: Fred Tippett II

Welcome Fred! Tell me and my readers a bit about yourself!

Hello! It’s a pleasure to be included. I’m an author who writes mystery novels for both adults and young adults. The first two books that I released—they are The Women in White and The Lethal List—are actually young adult books. In addition to writing, I have a YouTube channel called TPP Dynamite that I use semi-regularly to post reviews of TV series, films, and books. Hahaha. And if that’s not enough, I am also a licensed attorney!

What inspired you to write this book?

I first started on this book in January 2020, during the COVID crisis. America was, of course, on lockdown back then. So I spent plenty of time watching television and reading books. It was around that time that I did something of a deep-dive into the cosy mystery subgenre—both the books and the sorts of movies that tended to be adapted from them primarily for the Hallmark Channel. 

I got interested enough then to decide that I wanted to try writing something like that. However, I also wanted to go with a slightly different approach from the one taken in most of the books and movies that I’d been devouring. 

I wanted to write something that played up the amateur sleuth angle and that was relatively light on elements like violence and swearing and sex. But I ALSO wanted to write something that was a bit more realistic than the sorts of cosy crime fiction that I’d seen up until then. Something that wasn’t downright soul-crushing but something that also took a slightly more real-world stab at the amateur detective angle.

How long did it take you to write this book, from the first idea to the last edit?

Like I said, I began in January 2020. I finished the first draft within—I believe—a month. But it took me over another two years of on-and-off edits before I felt comfortable with releasing it into the world. I finished up everything around May of this year.

Who would enjoy reading your book? 

Textbook Murder is marketed towards those who are age eighteen and above, and the subject matter is definitely of the sort that would resonate with adults more so than children. I think that the best experience will be had by either adult readers or at least older teenagers.

What’s something you hope readers would take away from it?

One main lesson that I hope comes across is that the pursuit of justice is always worth the fight—and the risk. Particularly justice for those who have been robbed of their voices or who otherwise cannot seek it out for themselves.

Textbook Murder’s entire story revolves around Frank Hall’s quest to get justice for his mentee and friend, Damien Morgan, when the powers that be essentially write Damien and his plight off for one reason or another. It is not easy, it very quickly becomes quite dangerous, and Frank learns fast that Damien wasn’t exactly a saint. But Frank persists for the sake of his friend and his friend’s grieving mom because, to him, the justice of Damien’s cause matters more than the struggle or even any personal weaknesses that Damien might’ve had.

This is the first book in Frank Hall Mysteries. Do you have a few other books charted out? Would you like to share anything about the series?

I do have several more “Frank Hall Mysteries” loosely planned out. I’m waiting to pull the trigger on writing them, though, until I get a better feel for how audiences will react to this first one.

One thing that I feel it safe to say about the series is that if readers like this first one, then they’ll love the future stories that I have planned. This first one sets a tone. Future books in the series will maintain that tone while expanding upon it in interesting new ways.

What is something you have learned on your author journey so far?

One thing that I’ve definitely learned is the benefit of patience. Getting out even one book truly is an endurance exercise. It usually takes months to write a novel’s first draft—and if you can believe it, that’s just the beginning. From there, the book is edited and altered about a million times for totally valid reasons that generally work to improve the story. Then comes the marketing battles. It’s a gruelling task but one that’s quite rewarding for those with the patience to ride it out.

What’s the best piece of advice you have received related to writing?

Probably the advice to write SOMETHING every day. Writing—more so writing well—is very difficult to do. I’ve learned that the best way to get good at it is to practice…and practice and practice. For me, adopting a discipline of writing something every single day, no matter how much or little, has been very instrumental in helping me to get better at it.

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Book Excerpt from
Textbook Murder

Chapter 1

It was a perfect night, Damien Morgan decided as he strolled alone down Fourth Avenue’s well-illuminated streets.

Of course, there was nothing inherently perfect about the night itself. Just another Seattle Sunday. A time to decompress from all of the fun that a twenty-seven-year-old graduate student could be expected to have on Saturday. A time to prepare for the class-and-work grind of Monday.

But Damien’s outlook was bound to be positive, borderline cheery. He always found himself in a good mood after good sex, and he’d spent quite a fair part of the past few hours enjoying just that with Her.

Damien had not known Her for very long and had been seeing Her for an even shorter period. Their relationship was the very definition of high-risk, and they had to move Heaven and earth to maintain it.

He’d known that things would be that way before they’d slept together that first time—and would’ve even if She hadn’t told him ad nauseum beforehand. She’d been just as aware as he of the consequences that could ensue if they were caught.

It wasn’t as if he’d set out to screw her, as if he’d had some master plan for slowly wearing her down and ultimately having his way with her. Damien had the utmost respect for Adam and the opportunity that the man had given him. The last thing that he wanted was to repay that kindness with betrayal.

To be sure, Damien had tried to fight the feelings at first. So had She. They’d tried to deny the desire, been ashamed of the very fact of its existence.

But then minutes had turned to hours. Hours had turned to days. Days had turned to weeks. 

The flame, the unspoken passion, had grown so powerful between them that it could no longer go unaddressed or contained. There had been that first time, that first release, and three more afterwards on the same night.

Then had come the long discussion. What could happen if they were caught—by Adam or anyone else. How neither of them wanted to stop regardless. How they could accordingly be careful. How they could accordingly stay safe.

That had been five months ago.

They were in a good place now, with a good routine built on firm ground rules. They saw each other when they could, they acted appropriately when they couldn’t, and neither of them got too greedy in the meanwhile. Security, practicality, and moderation were their guardians.

All the same, Damien was happy that that afternoon had fallen decisively into the category of when they could. Earlier that morning, he’d been almost certain that it wouldn’t. But She’d surprised him when she’d messaged him and let him know that she was free, that four p.m. was good for her.

They’d spent a lovely two hours enjoying a fantasy of champagne, strawberries, whipped cream, and each other in their own bed, their own space. They’d talked and laughed and decompressed. Then it had been time to go back to the real world.

She’d had to leave. He’d agreed to stay and clean up—which he’d done before deciding, spur-of-the-moment, to take a brief walk about downtown and grab a quick dinner from one of his favorite food trucks.

Now, as he moseyed, good and full, back to The Martin, the luxury apartment complex at which he and She had been meeting for the past five months, Damien mentally rehearsed the details of their most recent get-together. He felt warmer. He got hard. It was almost as if She’d never left him.

But once he got close enough to the building to see the concierge’s face behind the full-glass front door, he forced all of that from his thoughts. He forced his face to go neutral.

The Martin was a private enough place that most people there minded their own business. That was why Damien and She had chosen it in the first place. But still, they took precautions. They never came in or left together, they tried not to speak to any more people inside than necessary, and they tried to downplay any signs of precoital anticipation or postcoital fulfillment while outside of their apartment.

The concierge opened the door once Damien was within a few feet of it. “Evening, sir,” he said into a smile.

“Evening, Norman,” Damien said, then hustled inside without meeting the man’s eyes.

The impeccably dressed, middle-aged black gentleman had manned the door for as long as Damien had been seeing Her at The Martin. Norman likely knew nothing of their involvement, but this was another of their precautions. Minimal contact with those who might ever be able to identify them as regular visitors.

Heading deftly towards the ground floor’s elevator bank, Damien kept his head low and his eyes forward. When he arrived, he called an elevator, waited for it, and boarded it the second that it came.

He pressed the button for floor thirteen; but just before the doors could shut, a gorgeous brunette woman darted inside. “Sorry!” she said with a hurried grin as she hit the button for floor twenty. “Just didn’t want to miss it.”

Damien gave her a curt nod and looked away, keeping his eyes on the wall nearest him. He would’ve preferred to ride alone. Since that wasn’t happening, he needed to stay as forgettable as possible.

The doors shut, the elevator ascended, and it stopped on floor thirteen several seconds later.

The second the doors opened again, Damien left, ignoring the woman’s polite call of “See ‘ya!” He walked to room thirteen-thirteen without stopping, pulled his key, and unlocked the door. He stepped inside, shut and relocked the door, then flipped on the lights.

The glow illuminated an opulent and breathtaking space. Not for the first time, Damien thanked God that he and She were privileged enough to be able to afford it. When they’d first started seeing each other, it had been evident that they were going to need their own private zone, a neutral location not known to Gillian or Adam or anyone else. The Martin, a luxury apartment, had been his suggestion. If their meetings were to be fleeting pockets of pleasure, why shouldn’t their meeting place be commensurate? She had agreed—and between Her private funds and his own allowance from Gillian, they’d been able to make it happen.

Damien walked to the apartment’s French-Door refrigerator and pulled from it a chocolate BOOST protein shake. Then he crossed over into the lounging room and turned its lights on too. He placed the shake on a coffee table next to the room’s Birch Ivory sofa and walked to the television set near the front of the room to retrieve the remote.

Once he had it, he went back and sat on the couch, exhaling upon impact. The lounging room’s Samsung TV was far superior to the Sony Bravia that adorned his own apartment home, and his favorite NFL team was playing that night. He wanted to watch in style. He’d done this often enough before—after She’d left, once he’d had the place to himself.

Damien kicked off his shoes, clicked on the TV, switched to the appropriate channel, and turned up the volume.

It was that kind of night. He’d relax, drink the shake, watch maybe thirty minutes of the game, then head home. He had an early call the next morning—class at eight—and he wanted to be sharp for it.

Damien shook up the shake, uncapped it, and started sipping.

*******

One hour later, he was still nursing his drink, still watching his favorite guys. It really wasn’t shaping up to be their night. They were down by fifteen points and showed no signs of making any comeback.

Damien hadn’t intended to be there for as long as he had. Time had just slipped away. Truth be told, he’d also—within the past ten minutes or so—begun to feel a distinct fatigue that was starting to make it hard for him to even keep his eyes open. Alongside that fatigue was a rush of pleasurable fulfilment so great that he hardly even wanted to move.

If he hadn’t been so tired, so content, he’d have been alarmed. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew what this was. The feeling, the blissful oblivion, was quite familiar. But he hadn’t experienced it in years, and he knew that he shouldn’t be now.

Even so, everything would be fine. He’d finish the game, maybe take a quick nap. He could still be home by ten, in bed and asleep for real by eleven. He was just starting to feel so tired.

The game went on. Damien’s boys fell behind by three more points, then got a penalty of five yards and an automatic first down for the opposing team when the quarterback was cited for illegal use of hands against a player on offense while attempting to ward off a block.

When Damien saw that—his man’s barely offending conduct and the official’s extreme reaction—he got a fast burst of energy and outrage. He dropped his shake on the coffee table, sprang to his feet. “That’s crap!” he shouted at the TV like the penalizing official could hear him. “He hardly touched him!”

Then the heaviness and pleasure returned with a ferocity that made Damien wonder where he’d ever found the strength to stand up in the first place. “He… he harly… tushed him,” Damien spluttered, nearly tripping over his own feet. 

His world started to spin, to become unfocused. He had to reach out and balance himself against the couch’s armrests to avoid falling on his face. 

What was happening? What was going on? He knew that he wasn’t drunk. He knew that he wasn’t high. So, what?

“Wut the… wut the f—”

That was as far as he got before he lost control. Of everything. 

He slumped over the couch and fell back-first to the floor. He twitched slightly. But he was out of it, insensate. Zero muscle control.

He was on the head of a pin, in the sweet spot just between awake and asleep. Nevertheless, his eyes were still open. He could still see a little—could see the blurred ceiling and lights above. 

Then, in another instant, he saw something else. 

No. Someone?

A figure in black. Maybe a dark hoodie? Dark jeans? Holding… a pair of scissors or… a syringe?

Damien couldn’t be sure, and he was finding it increasingly hard to care or even want to. His eyes began to inch shut as the empty encroached to take him. All the while, he—the shrinking part of him that could still reason—noticed that the figure was coming closer. Leaning closer. Slowly filling his eyeline until all that he could see was the black.

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Interested?

Thank you for hanging out with us today. Find Textbook Murder on Goodreads and Amazon. Connect with Fred on Twitter, Instagram, FredTippett2.com, Goodreads, Amazon and YouTube.

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Cover image: Photo on Unsplash