To fight against tropical fish poaching...

There's a lot that goes on beneath the surface of the sea

After getting certified for scuba and falling in love with the playful, brilliantly-colored tropical fish and fascinating reef worlds of Hawaii, I wanted to learn more about the aquarium poaching going on in the Islands. 

My time-tested method for developing the plotline of a novel is to find a topic I care about that the story will touch on, then locate an “expert” willing to help me. I then meet with that person and interview them. Once I have enough insider background start with, I plow through the whole first draft, shooting occasional questions to my “expert” as needed. After the first pass is done, I give the book to him or her to read, and provide corrections. Following this process had kept my my mysteries fresh and relatively authentic.

My “expert” for Bone Hook was a thirty-three-year-old woman named Danielle, a marine biology ichthyologist, and former DLNR agent on Maui. Danielle was referred to me by a reader fan as a possible resource, and I met her at a coffeeshop for the …