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Crime Fiction and Cybercrime: An Expert's Point Of View.

Today, I share my enlightening interview with Chris Walsh, Detective Constable Cybercrime Unit at the North Wales Constabulary, who kindly donated his time to answer some burning questions I had on Cybercrime and how it’s depicted in the pages of crime fiction.  I learned a thing or two, I hope you will too. Thanks for agreeing to be on the other end of the interrogation process, Chris. Can you give me a quick overview of your work? As Detective Constable Cybercrime Unit, my role involves the investigation of cyber dependant crimes that occur within North Wales.   These typically include offences such as Hacking, Denial of Service, Ransomware investigations, Online Blackmail.   I also provide training to staff in respect of Open Source investigation skills, and as a forensic examiner, I also conduct the technical element of any Cybercrime offence that the department deals with on behalf of my colleagues. What led you the cyber-crime field?  My background has b
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The Good the Bad and the downright Ugly truth about Self-Publishing. Part One.

Take One. I'm pounding like a madman at my keyboard, my cappuccino now cold as the December chill blowing in through the half- open door of my favorite Cafe ( Cafe Trieste, in Oakland if you must know) and the soft murmur of daily life providing all the background music I need. Solitude, I'm finding is a dish best served with an accompanying soundtrack of other people. I'm good at blocking out other people: just ask my wife. There's a table full of older women, fresh from their morning workout, next to me. They're loudly debating the upcoming Trump Presidency and comparing iPhone photos of their grandchildren. In a few minutes, a couple of regular characters will make their daily entrance: the wild-eyed Asian guy of an indeterminable age who likes to sing along loudly to whatever's playing on his headphones, and the homeless dude who's debating fiercely with whatever noises he's hearing in his own head. It all passes by me like a burbling stream.

It took 43 years to write my debut novel. Here's why I'm glad it took so long.

I began writing my first novel at the age of ten.  It was probably inspired by the horror books I was addicted to at that age, the Pan Bo ok Of Horror Stories. These gothic slices of macabre were my bedtime books of choice, and no doubt led to some nighttime terrors of my own. But I wasn’t about to allow anything as mundane as a nightmare detract me from devouring these stories like Halloween candy.  My book, as you might have guessed, never made it past the first few pages and ended its brief, uneventful life in the bin, where it belonged. Fast forward forty-three years and I’ve just self-published my grown-up crime- fiction novel,  Anglesey Blue.  I could bullet-point a whole litany of reasons why it took so long, but I looking back, I’m glad I had four decades of experience to write from.  Life, they say, gets in the way. So it was with me. An interesting job that fueled my creative side, a family, a move to America, all good reasons, or excuses, to put that ambit