It’s been a fact since January, but I only recently found out about the death of mystery novelist Robert B. Parker. Parker was a huge influence on my back in the late 1980s when I was in college and trying my hand at mystery novels; his Spenser series was hot at the time and I prided myself on loving his novels before the TV series debuted.

Parker was a prototypical hardboilded detective fiction writer, projecting the standard tough-guy image. Actors who have played his series characters… Robert Urich and, later, Joe Montagna, on Spenser; and more recently, Tom Selleck as Jesse Stone… are all folks who bear a passing resemblance to Parker himself, as his fictional characters tended to.

Though in his seventies and certainly the beneficiary of a long career, I will nevertheless miss Parker; he’d just started a “Young Spenser” series for young adults, focusing on Spenser’s teen years, that he’d barely scratched the surface on. And despite some trendiness, his novels still made the New York Times best-sellers list on a regular basis.

Yet Parker would have liked how he passed; sitting in front of his work station, working on a manuscript. While his family and fans will miss him, I can’t imagine him wanting a more apropos exit than what life handed him at the end. While a coronary event isn’t the most pleasant way to pass on, at least he didn’t have to suffer anything long and drawn out and painful like mesothelioma cancer. And he was able to stay productive right up until the end.

Even though I’ve had mostly legitimate setbacks on my novel project, I’m really starting to feel like I’m treading water and, to mix metaphors, in need of some roadside assistance to get going again.

I started this current novel over 18 months ago, when I first learned my mother was stage four in her cancer and we’d be losing her soon. I suppose it was a bit of an escape, as well as a way of coping with the looming loss.

Which is odd because the novel doesn’t really deal with grief directly, and its theme is actually rather light and breezy, even though death is a major part of the novel – it being, of course, a mystery novel.

I suppose in some ways, enough time has gone by that I am coping with Mom’s death better these days and the novel is less therapeutic than it started out to be. But I really do hope to get back on track soon; considering why I started it, I’d love for this project to turn into my first published novel, so I can dedicate it to my Mom.