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Vicki Stiefel

We were eight strangers that day in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, sitting on a sunny deck, licking ice cream cones, getting to know each other while we waited to go trout fishing on the South Fork of the Snake.

I turned to the gal on my left. Her name was Donna. She looked like a kid, barely in her twenties. She had sun-streaked blond hair, legs that wouldn't quit, a slender six-foot body.

"So what do you do when you're not fishing?" I asked her.

She hesitated, then smiled. "I'm a homicide counselor."

"A...what?"

"I counsel families who've had a loved one violently killed."

"I never heard of a job like that."

"There aren't many of us," Donna said. "It's like grief counseling, only different."

A homicide counselor, I thought. That's it!

At the time I was struggling with a mystery novel. My protagonist, a reporter, felt derivative. It wasn't working for me. Now here was this woman, this kid, who looked like a cream puff but dealt with violence and murder and tragedy for a living.

"Do you work out of a hospital, clinic, or what?" I asked Donna.

She shook her head. "The Office of the Medical Examiner in Philadelphia."

"You mean, the morgue? Bodies and autopsies and Y-shaped incisions?"

"Yup."

And that's when Tally Whyte, my protagonist in BODY PARTS was born.

Donna Cautilli and I became dear friends. She's the little sister I never had.

Donna took me to GAP, Philadelphia's Grief Assistance Program, in the medical examiner's building on the first floor. They look like many other offices—fluorescent lights, steel desks, stacks of paperwork. But their work is unique.

Donna introduced me to Wanda Henry Jenkins, a survivor of her mother's homicide. Wanda founded GAP and has written books on surviving a homicide in the family. She's counseled hundreds of victims. I met Paul Clements Jr., another expert on counseling those close to homicide victims.

Donna and Wanda and Paul helped me to imagine dealing with people whose lives have been napalmed apart, and doing it day after day. It's rough and cruel and scary work. These homicide counselors seemed open-eyed and big-hearted. But few things are as they seem. Each time they counsel a victim's family, a little piece of flesh is burned from their skin.

Donna's out of homicide-counseling now—she's busy raising four kids. Paul is an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico. Wanda founded the Association of Comfort Ministries in order to provide education, training, development, network and consultation to caregivers.

These people inspired me to create Tally Whyte and her story, BODY PARTS. Many other people contributed, too, professionals and non-professionals—Crime Scene Services officers, K-9 Corps troopers and their dogs, psychologists and psychiatrists, friends.

Yes, writing a novel is a long, solitary journey. Sure, I sit at my computer for long hours staring at my monitor, pumping the keys. But how can I be lonely with such interesting fictional people along for the ride and all the flesh-and-blood people for guides?

And the places... The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for Massachusetts. Alien. Surreal. Stranger than CSI, more disturbing than Law and Order.

Tally's apartment, based on a real townhouse in Boston. Harvard, Massachusetts, with apple trees perfuming the air. Roxbury, a revelation. The famous—and infamous—Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. Funeral homes. Six Feet Under gets it right.

Tally's next adventure has begun. I hope you're as eager as I to meet Tally's new places and people. The journey is definitely half the fun.