Jeff Sherratt is a Newport Beach, CA mystery writer with three published novels among his credits. Jeff is also my friend.

 In recent years the younger (and even older) generation has overused the slang word “bro” to the point of meaninglessness, even referring to strangers that way. Not me. In my entire life I’ve only called two people “bro.” The first is my late brother, Alan Sirota.

Jeff Sherratt strikes a mystery writer pose.

 The second is Jeff Sherratt.

 At present Jeff is dealing with some serious health issues. He may not be here next month. Or he and I may be engaging in our usual multi-weekly shtick ten years from now. But I guess we can say the same thing about all of us. Unless we’re Marty McFly, our future lives remain unknown and unwritten. I’ve done newsletters and articles about friends, colleagues, and family that have passed. This time, I want to celebrate the life of someone who, despite his challenges, continues to give so much pleasure to others.

 Jeff writes noir mysteries circa early 1970s Los Angeles. His main protagonist, Jimmy O’Brien, is a former cop turned criminal defense attorney. Jimmy is a few notches above bumbling, many notches below Perry Mason, and he exhibits a propensity for getting himself into a hell of a lot of trouble. The books, always humorous, often tense, crackle with an endless cast of quirky characters, sharp dialogue, and witty internals from Jimmy. I would love reading them even if I wasn’t Jeff’s editor and coach.

 I first met Jeff in 2006. He had heard about me after listening to Michele Scott—another one of my successful writers and a good friend—sing my praises at a Sisters in Crime event. Jeff had already self-published two Jimmy O’Brien novels but wanted to go mainstream with his new story, ultimately titled The Brimstone Murders. Though unfinished, the chapters that he sent me for consideration showed much promise. I agreed to take him on, and our great working relationship began.

 This story is indicative of Jeff. We had numerous phone meetings while working on Brimstone, but we’d never met face to face. Learning that he liked baseball, I invited him down to San Diego for a Padres-Cubs game. I suggested that we meet and park north of the city, ride the trolley downtown, take a walking tour (about a mile-and-a-half) along the bay and grab some dinner on our way to the ballpark. I amended the walking part of it by joking, “Unless you only have one leg or something.”

 Jeff’s reply: “Actually, Mike, I only do have one leg.”

Jeff and Michele Scott

 At first I thought he was pulling my leg (no pun intended). No, he explained, he’d lost a leg in an industrial accident decades earlier. I wanted to crawl in a hole and die a thousand times. Jeff laughed it off and said that he really wanted to do the tour, that we’d just need to stop every five minutes or so for him to rest. We had a great time that day, and I even got to see his artificial limb, which by the start of the ballgame I was referring to as “a wooden leg named Smith.”

 The Brimstone Murders, and subsequently Guilty or Else and Detour to Murder (my favorite) were published by two mainstream start-up publishers. Through the years I worked with Jeff on all of them, and together we’ve had a great ride. He’s currently working on number four, Cyanide Perfume, and he fully expects to take it all the way through to publication. I, for one, believe him, and I’m getting revised chapters back to him as fast as I can.

 Jeff’s experiences with mainstream publishing have not been great. (I can relate to that—the reason why I got out of it in the mid-’90s.) A marketing dynamo and top-notch “people person,” Jeff spent many weekend hours at bookstores doing meet ’n greets and hand-selling trade paperback editions of his books by the thousands. But when the health issues interfered and he could do it no longer, he found out just how little support that publishers in general—and his in particular—gave their authors in the way of marketing and distribution. He subsequently got back the rights to his three titles, published them on Amazon Kindle, and—to use the cliché—the rest is history. His titles have sold in considerable numbers, and he’s been consistently ranked among the highest in a few of Amazon’s crime fiction categories. This success could not have happened to a more deserving person.

Jeff (l) and me

In 2010 Jeff urged me to resume my own writing career after a “retirement” of nearly two decades. In 2011 I published my ghost story, Fire Dance, followed by a second one, The Burning Ground, in 2012. Subsequently I have undertaken the revisions of my nineteen-book backlist, plus about seven or eight unpublished works. I’m also publishing the backlist under my own imprint (five down, a lot to go), and guess who MY coach is? Jeff has helped me through the entire process, even to the point of formatting the files. My upcoming work in my dotage is well defined now.

Talking to Jeff these days, one would never know that he was battling health issues. He is as upbeat, positive, and funny as he was on the first day I hung out with him and his “wooden leg named Smith.” He loves writing; he loves talking about writing and publishing. He hangs out with a number of old friends. He has a wonderful wife in Judy, and a supportive family in his three daughters and seven grandchildren. He talks openly, even philosophically, about his own mortality. Oftentimes I visualize him as the guru sitting cross-legged atop the mountain. He would play that role well.

 So keep on writing, bro. After Cyanide Perfume we have at least ten more books to go.