Welcome friend to Create Art Podcast where I help you tame your inner critic and create more than you consume. I am Timothy Kimo Brien your thankful head instigator with over 20 years in arts and education. How I accomplish this is by providing you with commentary, interviews, discussions, and projects that will inspire you to create art. This month I will be podcasting daily and writing a novel in 30 days. I am participating in NaPodPoMo and NaNoWriMo again this year as I did last year and you can hear those episodes here. You will be able to listen and read along with what I wrote for the day. I like to practice what I preach when it comes to art so I am challenging myself to write and having you come along for the ride. It is my hope this inspires you to accomplish your goals with your art and if you would like to share what you are doing email me at timothy@createartpodcast.com
History of NaNoWriMo and NaPodPoMo
NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month began in 1999 as a daunting but straightforward challenge: to write 50,000 words of a novel in thirty days. Now, each year on November 1, hundreds of thousands of people around the world begin to write, determined to end the month with 50,000 words of a brand new novel. They enter the month as elementary school teachers, mechanics, or stay-at-home parents. They leave novelists.
NaPodPoMo: NaPodPoMo* is a month-long event similar to National Novel Writing Month aka NaNoWriMo. The difference? Well, instead of writing a 50,000-word novel, you post a podcast episode every day for 30 days from November 1st-30th. Use any platform you desire. From full production studio to iPhone app and just about anything in between. The goal is to use the challenge of podcasting daily as a form of podcasting boot camp.
The Writing So Far
7 Nov 2022 words today 1667 words total 10382
Mark and Tinley gathered themselves and got into her car. Mark noticed a call coming in but the caller ID displayed all zeros, so he declined the call. He set the GPS up for the Police Station and turned off the radio. A text message came in with the same phone number of all zeros and he deleted it before looking at it.
“What’s going on, who is trying to call you at this time,” asked Tinley.
“Probably telemarketers or a scam. They just tried to text me too, I can’t block the number because there is no number,” replied Mark.
Mark started the car and began driving to the station. According to his GPS, it would take about twenty minutes and they both sat there in silence. Tinley turned off her phone in case she got the same call.
Username 87 hit their desk and the coffee mug and notebooks shook. They were visibly upset, and they altered Username 1 about the declined call and text.
“Reporting in username 1, target 1 declined the call and text. Probably spooked at getting an unknown caller and target 2 has shut off her phone. Permission to use one of their known contacts,” asked Username 87?
“Permission denied, they have already been through a lot right now and there is no guarantee we know which contact they would actually pick up for. Just monitor their location and let me know when they get back to their residence. I don’t want to make physical contact, but we may need to do that in the near future. Are you also monitoring their home alarm system,” asked Username1.
“Affirmative, they set the alarm and we have visuals, I will alert if there are any issues. I might suggest a blunt force entry into their phones, Username 42 could accomplish that easily without giving away their location,” said Username 87.
“Taken under advisement. I just want to see what happens at the police station. Put Username 42 on alert for possible blunt force entry,” replied Username 1.
“Doing that now, out until I have an alert for you, "replied Username 87.
The traffic was light that day. Mark and Tinley received no more phone calls or text messages and arrived at the police station parking lot sooner than expected. They were waved through by the officer standing at the gate and followed the signs to the covered garage. As they passed the front gate officer radioed Detective Courtney that the Bale had arrived and were en route to the covered parking garage. Detective Courtney acknowledged the message and headed to the secured entrance where he would meet the Bales. When the couple approached the door, Detective Courtney approached them and brought them inside the building. He flashed his badge at the officer behind the desk.
“Thank you both for coming this afternoon, have you had lunch or anything to eat,” Detective Courtney asked.
“No, we had breakfast this morning but nothing since then except coffee,” replied Mark.
“I took the liberty of grabbing some stuff from our breakroom, we are just going to head to my office. Your car will be fine here, we use this entrance to avoid the press or the public for special cases like yours,” said Detective Courtney as he ushered them past the security checkpoint. He took them through a maze of corridors and offices until they reached his. Mark and Tinley both sat down as Detective Courtney sat behind his desk.
“I don’t know if this is important, but I got a call and a text from an unknown number on the way over here. The caller ID listed it as all zeros so I thought it may have been a telemarketer or something,” started Mark.
“That is the reason I wanted to make sure you both had your cell phones on you. Listen I am a blunt guy and there is no easy way to ask this, has your daughter ever said anything about bullying at school or older kids hanging out in the schoolyard,” asked Detective Courtney.
“No, we just moved to the neighborhood two years ago so she hasn’t been there that long, she hasn’t made a lot of friends yet,” replied Mark.
“Detective Courtney, I appreciate the position you are in right now, and I thank you for trying to be delicate, this is about the school shooting, it's about Winnona. She’s...” Tinley tried to complete her thought but started sobbing. Mark reached over and held her tightly as tears rolled down his face.
Detective Courtney sat back and let the couple have their moment. “I am so very sorry for your loss, and I promise you we will find the person responsible and make sure they never see daylight again,” said Detective Courtney. Tinley took a handful of tissues and blew her nose and wiped her eyes as she tried to talk.
“Where is she right now,” Tinley asked.
“She is at the hospital right now and will be transported to the morgue in a little while. We will need one of you to identify her. I am so very sorry about this,” said Detective Courtney.
“Did she suffer,” asked Mark?
“The office staff found her in the vestibule with three gunshot wounds to her chest. My guess is that she was probably gone before she hit the floor. I know that is not much comfort, but I am sure she didn’t feel anything and went quickly,” replied Detective Courtney. “You mentioned that someone tried to call you and then text you, can you say how long ago that was?”
“It happened just as we were leaving to come here, maybe 15 minutes ago, maybe 20 tops,” Mark replied.
“I’d like to get my team to take a look at your phones as soon as possible, they will basically just download everything onto their secured server, and we can have those phones back to you in 15 minutes. We just want to see if there was any attempt to contact you by the person responsible. It will only take a few minutes and we are just looking for any clues that may show up, your privacy will be protected,” said Detective Courtney.
Mark handed over his phone to the detective and Tinley went through her purse and powered on her phone. A notification popped up that the same all-zero numbers had attempted a call.
“Oh god,” said Tinley.
“What is it Mrs. Bale,” asked Detective Courtney.
“That number must have tried to call me when I turned off my phone,” said Tinley.
“That could be something we can use, may I have your phone please,” Detective Courtney asked with his hand already outstretched. Tinley handed him the phone and he stepped out of the office and waved over another officer. “Get these downloaded right away and back to me in 10 minutes,” he said under his breath to the other officer.
Username 87 got the notification that Tinley Bales's phone had been turned on and was currently in the police station, however, the signal for both Mark and Tinley’s phones dropped out for about 10 minutes before coming back online. They noted this disruption and altered Username 1.
“We have confirmation that both are in the police station but there must be a shielded room where their phones were taken because we lost signal for about ten minutes,” said Username 87.
“I would guess that their data was dumped and maybe even a tracker was placed in the phones. We will need to ditch the brute force call to protect ourselves. We aren’t sure how many Zeno followers are in the police force, but whoever took their phones probably is one of them. Do we know who they went to talk with,” asked Username 1?
“A Detective Maurice Courtney. From the chatter inside looks like he will be the lead investigator for the school shooting. Makes sense since he reached out to them before we could get to them, but how did he get to them so fast. The victim's name or description hasn’t been released internally yet,” wondered Username 87?
Username 42 sent an alert to Username 1 about Bale’s residence. They had viewed two individuals approach the door and the camera suffered from being jammed as it only showed static. Username 42 reviewed the video to just before the interference and was unable to get a clear view of the individual’s faces due to their wearing of masks. Username 42 was able to estimate the build of these individuals and forwarded the information to Username 1. Once Username 1 viewed the message they brought Username 42 and 87 onscreen.
“The situation right now is that there are two individuals inside the Bale’s house and the Bales are at the police station. We don’t have facial recognition on the intruders as they were able to interfere with the camera and work masks upon entry. We cannot brute call them because their phones may be tapped at this time thereby giving us away. Do we have solutions,” asked Username 1?
“Before we experienced interference with the camera I could tell that the intruders came on foot at least from the end of the driveway to the front door. I would assume that they are not neighbors and came by vehicle. I’d like to tap into the neighborhood app and see if we can get some neighbors to survey the scene for us,” replied Username 42.
“That sounds like a good plan, Username 42, go ahead and make that happen and report back when you have something. Username 87 is there a way we could get the car to call the Bale’s cell phone after they leave the police station and utilize the car as a block to tracking,” asked Username 1?
“The communications computer on that model of car isn’t new enough, we would have to physically put a device in line with the communications computer for that model,” replied username 87.
Reaching Out
To reach out to me, email timothy@createartpodcast.com I would love to hear about your journey and what you are working on. If you would like to be on the show or have me discuss a topic that is giving you trouble write in and let's start that conversation.
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