Behind the Book, Vickie Fee

Behind the book: Protocol

Welcome to “Behind the Book,” our fun new Chicks on the Case feature! Join us as we Chicks share the real stories behind our stories: Inspiration, motivation, frustration, jubilation– research, rewrites, tidbits– you’ll find them all right here… 

Hiya! It’s Kathy, and I’m delighted to offer a peek into my first book, Protocol.

A large portion of its plot revolves around odd messages my protagonist receives on the used cell phone she purchased. To make a long story short (or a novel a blog post), these messages essentially function as digital harbingers of murder. Try as she might, protag Maggie can’t figure out what’s going on–or how to block Death. 

This old phone = new problem situation was more than a nifty vehicle for the book. It was torn from a page in my own life. 

Well…kinda. 

Years ago, my laptop went belly (er, keyboard?) up. We dutifully followed customer service’s instructions and sent the ailing computer to the manufacturer for repair. Several weeks later, it was returned. 

It powered up right away! Amazing!! It booted up without stalling! A miracle!! It contained files I had never seen!

What, WHUT?

Turns out, my laptop was returned with someone else’s hard drive, complete with all of the digital detritus these magical machines harbor. 

Family photos: check. Personal letters: check. Important Looking Documents I Shouldn’t Have Access To: check check!

I was horrified. I was also struck with the sickening possibility that somewhere someone else was seeing MY Important Looking Documents and photos of our trip to Disney. 

And, in fact, I was correct. The computer manufacturer had indeed accidentally swapped hard drives. It was as if two very informative babies were switched at birth.

There wasn’t a happy ending to this technological fiasco. The other swappee stopped communicating with me, and the computer manufacturer clucked their tongues and said that the whole thing seemed like a real shame.

We lost photographs and digitized mementos (friendly reminder to back up to an external server or cloud), but I gained the kernel of an idea for my first book. 

That kernel popped into a case of another form of digital mistaken identity, which powered Protocol’s plot. (And which is also fun to say three times fast.) I’m not sure if this was a silver lining to a technical bummer. Maybe a silicon lining. 

Dear friends, can you share a story of technological turbulence? Have you ever been the victim of mistaken identity, computer or otherwise?

PS I’m not sure how I managed to say this was Vickie’s post! More mistaken identity!

Freshly minted college graduate Maggie O’Malley embarks on a career fueled by professional ambition and a desire to escape the past. As a pharmaceutical researcher, she’s determined to save lives from the shelter of her lab. But on her very first day she’s pulled into a world of uncertainty. Reminders appear on her phone for meetings she’s never scheduled with people she’s never met. People who end up dead. With help from her best friend, Maggie discovers the victims on her phone are connected to each other and her new employer. She soon unearths a treacherous plot that threatens her mission–and her life. Maggie must unlock deadly secrets to stop horrific abuses of power before death comes calling for her.

46 thoughts on “Behind the book: Protocol”

  1. No I haven’t, thank goodness. That is one headache that I don’t need.

    Years ago I worked in a grocery store and we had this sweet girl with Down’s Syndrome sacking groceries parttime and her mom told me how her identity was stolen online and to the tune of $20,000. They were trying to fight it.

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  3. Our home telephone number was found on a “resident” at a nearby correctional facility. A staff member called to ask us if we knew this person. We did not and our only thought was they were mistaking our listing for a family member by the same name in law enforcement. (His numbers are all unlisted). Turns out, our number is one digit off from the local motel that many family members from away stayed at during visitation weekends. We get calls for them by mistake frequently and never made the connection. Happily, they did investigate and found nothing bad was going on.

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        1. My Aunt & Uncle did, too!! They would take the orders then call the pizza place. They got dinner on the house occasionally for being the answering service.

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  5. I once got a call from a motel in Florida telling me that my daughter had used my credit card number to stay there and had stolen the TV–would I pay?

    “Whoa,” I said. “Daughter? My only daughter is a Jack Russell terrier mix, and I very much doubt she could be your gal, as she’s lying right here on the floor next to me in California. And besides, she’s most definitely not a big TV watcher.”

    I’m happy to say that the motel ate the loss (get some ID, people!), and our credit card company refunded us the money.

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  6. Great post, Kathy! I loved PROTOCOL so much. And technological turbulence? Story of my life, sigh. I did have my identity switched by a credit card that caused all kinds of hassle. What astounded me was that no one would talk to me, or give any info, in case I was a criminal. After weeks of zero progress, I decided to find the other person myself. I tracked her down through her college alumni fund donations, ha. She hadn’t done anything wrong, and of course I didn’t contact her. I did, however, lay out the whole case for my local police. And suddenly…I got my name back. Bonus: maybe the other woman could finally buy that new mattress she wanted.

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  7. My fave is when I was working as a govt contractor. Somehow, the powers that were decided we all had to undergo background checks and be fingerprinted in order to keep our jobs. Never mind that all we worked with was publicly available data, most of which was not generated by the govt. Anyway, I had to go to the security office to be fingerprinted. They used an electronic pad, not ink. After taking my prints, they ran them through the system to verify that they came back to me. Unfortunately, they did not. They did the whole procedure three or four times; that is, take the prints, load them into the database, then verify them, but they never verified. Thus they proved that I was not me.

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  8. WHOA! A CBC Canada’s national news investigation recently sent in a laptop containing monitoring software to 15 computer repair stores. Over half of the store staff looked at photos & browsing history. One computer staffer downloaded ALL photos to a USB drive. Major privacy invasions!!!

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  9. Thanks for this post, Kathy! So fascinating about the real-life story.

    My tech troubles have usually been with Zoom–most recently, the internet went down just for the duration of my important meeting with my agent & editor. As for ID stuff, thankfully, the only issue I’ve ever had is having my Wikipedia profile photo changed to someone else’s.

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  10. I absolutely loved Protocol, Kathy! Maggie is the best. While I’ve been fortunate to avoid any mistaken ID issues, way back in the early 90’s, a board member of the agency I was working at said I reminded him of Tom Hanks. I took that as a compliment!

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  11. Good morning, Kathy!
    Yes, we had one problem that stands out, and it was handled in a very “Me” type of way.

    Daughter’s cell screen cracked. She was about 13. So not a top phone, but we were able to take pics with it, we just never sunk a ton of money into a phone for a new teen. She dropped it 50 billion times, and when we went for a screen repair, the guy took it in the back, a bit later he walked over and tried to hand it to kiddo. I took it from him. I wanted to see the screen was truly repaired. It was already on, I accidentally hit her photo bank. First picture?! The tech guy had shown my girl that “special” part of himself! 😳 Me being me, (we had insurance on the phone) I performed a lovely palm heel strike, and the phone broke. I said, Oops, the insurance will cover a new phone! And I gave my Mama Bear glare at the 20- something slime in front of me. He brought a sealed box out- it was an IPhone! Something she didn’t originally have! And we had a female there set it up for kiddo.

    I broke the phone after my wife took a pic of what was on daughter’s phone, and a pic of the worker who had put his part in the phone. He knew we were ready to draw blood! He probably left work with co workers for a long while!

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  12. I don’t have any stories like these. The only real one I had was when I got my cell phone number and got some calls and texts for the person who had had it before. No big deal.

    Although there was a while when I was getting phone calls from collection agencies on my land line. Again, they were looking for the person who had had the number before. They’d call during working hours (and so no one was home) and leave messages day after day until I’d finally give up, call them back, and explain that I didn’t know who they were looking for. It would be quiet for a few months then start back up again.

    Then there was the one guy who call in the evening looking for a Debbie Baker (or something like that, don’t remember the first name). I explained that, while Baker was my last name, I didn’t know anyone named Debbie. “Are you sure.” “Yes, I’m quite sure on that.” Turns out, there had been someone with that name in a different unit in my condo building who had gone into collections, so he figured I must know them. “Do you know how common a last name Baker is?” He didn’t care. He just randomly started calling people with the last name Baker and giving them a hard time when they didn’t know the person.

    So no, I don’t have a lot of respect for bill collectors.

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  13. Vickie: Kathy, Protocol was a great concept — and a great book! Thank you for inadvertently giving me credit for it. But you’re the brains. Take a bow. And give yourself the by-line!!

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