Reopening the Case…And Myself
by Bill Collins

I have a story that won’t let me rest….

Last Hallowe’en I found myself driving through a rainy morning to an appointment that had been 37 years in coming. I was on my way to meet a homicide detective who was attached to the cold case unit of the Santa Clara County’s district attorney’s office. The detective was working my sister Jeanette’s murder case. She was killed during the commission of a brutal rape in 1977. The crime was never solved.

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Dammit author Douglas Gwilym talks about how a
particular book changed the course of his life.

Where Anything Is Possible
by Douglas Gwilym

I’m a musician. I’ve played bass and sung in a bunch of bands you’ve never heard of. Quirky, energetic stuff. But I never wanted to be a rock star. I played with those guys when I was a teenager. The guys who believe they are going to make it big, that all the advantages of the rock-n-roll lifestyle are about to drop into their hands like overripe fruit. If I was immune, it was only because another dream had sunk its claws into me over a decade before.

I wanted to write books. I could give you a complicated explanation, but it wouldn’t be honest. The truth is simple: I wanted to write books because of J.R.R. Tolkien. During a family vacation when I was eight, an uncle handed me a well-loved copy of The Hobbit. He thought I’d like it, but he didn’t count on it hitting me as hard as it did. I was halfway through The Fellowship of the Ring by the time we made it home. And everything had changed.

For me, it wasn’t about dwarves, or elves, or ancient songs and lore from an imagined world. But I’d be lying if I said it wasn't about the “epic” nature of that English philologist’s fantasies. The scope. If you want to get away from yourself—from your life—you want to go deep, and stay long. And it was my first time. What I knew then was that I wanted to give that feeling to other people. I wanted to let them in on the secret that all horizons are the borders of new worlds, and that anything is possible out there. I started putting one foot in front of the other then, and the journey has been—yes—epic.

What happens when someone shares a story with us—a true story, a story from their heart-of-hearts?

We feel connected. We realize the commonality of our emotions. How we are, as human beings, all the same. We all falter. We all fear. We all stumble. And we can all come back stronger.

This book contains those stories.