In preparation for a new publisher for Shooting Shrink v2, Big Island Play, I have recently secured the rights to Gun Play, the series logo, and series title, Shooting Shrink.  For a short period of time, Gun Play will be out-of-print and available from Amazon Kindle, Signed First Editions at this website, and various booksellers on-line and in-store who have stock remaining.

LIMITED TIME OFFER  Email  me a copy of your Kindle receipt for Gun Play  dated in 2010 and I will send the first fifty (50) folks a Signed Copy of Gun Play (not 1st edition.) Please include your name and mailing address.  michaelthompkins@shootingshrink.com

As a spin-off from the Shrinking Fiction Workshops at Southern California Writers Confereence , a number of students approach me to help them with their writing projects. My work with them has been highly enjoyable for me and, hopefully, for them. My work with these first students is falling into a pattern where we divide the projects into three parts: Act One, Act Two and Act Three of their novel. The work is taking place in Seattle, where I live and Palm Springs where I have a condo. 

If you are interested in this work, please listen to the following podcast which is a discussion between Claudia Whitsitt and me in Palm Springs in July. Need I say in advance, the weather was hot, 106 degrees. You can hear the fountain in the background helping cool the patio. In the podcast, we discuss progress on Claudia's novel, The Wrong Guy.

February 2010: This just in from SCWC: "SCWC21, 22, 23 and 24 conferee Claudia Whitsitt has inked the deal for her debut novel, The Wrong Guy, with Echelon Press. This makes for the sixth or seventh author discovered by Echelon publisher Karen Syed at the Southern California Writers Conference. Congratulations, Claudia!."

Listen to the Video Podcast Here!

Listen on Newstalk 920 KPSI-AM, Palm Springs, California. Each week Elli interviews the mover and shakers in Palm Springs.  Listen to the podcast of her interview with Michael Thompkins.  The discussion ranges from Gun Play, v1 Shooting Shrink, the next novel in the Shooting Shrink Series, and the criminal mind to politics and Palm Springs. Elli is a talented interviewers and the questions she asks are stimulating. She is also a substitute newscaster for Newstalk 920 KPSI-AM.

Listen to the podcast

Three years ago this week, I was busy setting up a booth at Village Fest in downtown Palm Springs to give away promotional t shirts with the Shooting Shrink logo along with the first copies of Gun Play. I reflect with gratitude on the hundreds of fans I have met since that night. Sales of Gun Play have been extremely rewarding for a first novel and Big Island Play, v2 Shooting Shrink Series, will be published soon.

Thanks to all my fans and folks who have helped me begin this series. Special kudos to my editors and police officer friends. Salutes to two Palms Spring's police officers for their unfailing support of a rookie author. Finally, bouquets of appreciation to a friend, who I refer to as my Palm Spring's CIA station chief, because she knows everything and everyone in Palm Springs. I hear the expression 'self-made man' often. In my opinion there are no self-made writers--it takes a village to raise a writer. These friendships are priceless.

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Plans for this website are expanding. In order to create room for my growth as a writer, the URL of this site will stay the same and change. The soon-to-be new  URL will be michaelthompkins.com, the website for author Michael Thompkins. The shootingshrink.com URL will still get you to the website. This move will allow me to start a new series of novels TBA, and expand the site to include any topic that relates to my writing. Enough for now-- more later.

Judith at 7500 feet at Pebble Creek beneath the Muir Snowfield

Finally, this is a picture (sent to me by Irish relatives) of my grandfather, Michael Reynolds, who was an Irish police officer before immigrating to the US in 1904. Considering I write crime fiction, I think it is safe to say that it's in my genes.

I received this sad email earlier this week:

Palm Springs Iconic Former Mayor Frank Bogert, The Cowboy Mayor of Palm Springs, Dies  (Contact: Amy Blaisdell Director of Communications City of Palm Springs (760) 323-8250 March 23, 2009)

Frank Bogert, Palm Springs’ iconic former cowboy mayor, passed away at his home Sunday night surrounded by his family. He was 99. Bogert, a noted cowboy famous for his rodeo ensemble, was Mayor of the City of Palm Springs from April, 1958 to January, 1966 – when the Mayor was an appointed member of the City Council by the City Council. In 1982, Bogert became the City’s first directly elected Mayor after residents voted a year earlier to directly elect their Mayor. He served until 1988.

“Frank Bogert was a remarkable and truly iconic Mayor who gave his life to Palm Springs,” said Mayor Steve Pougnet. “He worked tirelessly and unselfishly to support any local philanthropies, to cheerlead countless community events and to promote the town he loved and helped create. His public service, quick wit and candid rhetoric will be greatly missed by everyone in Palm Springs and the Coachella Valley. He was a one-of-a-kind… and a true pioneer whose name was synonymous with Palm Springs. I extend my deepest condolences to his family.”

I immediately was lost in reflection on one early afternoon in late June, when this writer had the privilege to interview Frank at his home in Palm Springs. It was a completely unassuming home for an equally egalitarian man. I spent a totally enjoyable hour with Frank discussing our writing careers, his mastered and mine fledgling. His opening remarks to me were that he had read Gun Play and, so far, he had only found one mistake. In Gun Play, I had written that the fountain at the airport had a concrete circular parapet. He corrected me that it was made of canterra stone. 

In our time together that day, the most significant impression I had of this man was his regard for all the citizens of Palm Springs that he had served, the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak, and the residents of elegant desert castles and the homeless desert hermits. I looked forward to another visit. Soon.  Today, March 23, 2009: Would that I could...visit again.

I want to share that day in June with you when Claudia Whitsitt (one of my writing students) and I interviewed Frank at his home. The tape is unedited in Windows Media format as I hadn't quite got around to how I would best use it ; honoring Frank now seems appropriate. Technical notes include the fact that his living room was full of light, sound from neighborhood construction and, most of all, Frank's 99 year-old spirit.   

Download the interview. 

 Born Jan. 1, 1910, Bogert arrived in Palm Springs in the 1920s  More...