Cha-cha-cha-changes. The one constant in life. In this decade-birthday year, I feel this acutely. A voice whispers in my ear, “You are the oldest you’ve ever been, and the youngest you’ll ever be.” If there’s stuff I still want to do, I better get to it.

The urgency has already resulted in two trips, one of them to check off bucket-list items: the Teddy Roosevelt National Park and The Enchanted Highway. But I also realize my years as a writer could be numbered. In September, I’ll be on a MWA panel at the MLK Library in San Jose with Laurie King, Leslie Karst, and Heather Haven. We’ll be discussing how we work, how we got started, and what a person needs to do “to make it.”

Like I know that?

However, on more reflection, I do know something about it. My first response—to laugh—is due to constantly moving my goal posts. At one time, I would have thought I’d made it to write a book. Well, I’ve done that a dozen time over if you count the two manuscripts in my file cabinet. Get an agent? I’ve had one. Have a book published. Done. Nine to date.

But even now with seventy traditionally published short stories and a two-book contract with Level Best Books, it’s hard for me to acknowledge the messages that tell me I have reached a certain level of success—the very invitation to be on the aforementioned panel, for example.
Other authors ask me for blurbs.

I was recruited by the NorCal MWA chapter to do a Facebook Live presentation on short story. I moderated a panel on short story at Left Coast Crime. The Coastal Cruisers chapter of Sisters in Crime asked me to do a Zoom presentation on short story.

My local bookstore reached out to see if I’d like to be “in conversation” with a NY Times Bestselling YA thriller writer. Are you kidding me?

The Capitol Crimes chapter of Sisters in Crime asked if I would be a judge for their anthology.

A well-known editor invited me to submit to an anthology he’s put together.

Barb Goffman chose one of my stories to be a reprint in Black Cat Weekly.

Some of these things have required a lot of work on my part but I’ve learned to say yes to opportunities, to step up to difficult jobs like moderating a panel or judging an anthology. They are my way to give back to a community that has supported me, but they are also benchmarks of “making it.”

And it has been my experience that seizing these opportunities and putting in the work generates more opportunities.
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I’ve always wanted to have a contract with a significant publishing company rather than indie publishing my long works via the small, collaborative press to which I belong. Now I’ve achieved that. Of course, reaching one metric does not prevent me from wishing I made more money from writing, would win a prestigious award, or break through to a best sellers list. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to level up, but it’s important to acknowledge our accomplishments and to understand we are not in competition with other authors, but only with our own expectations.

Vinnie Hansen fled the howling winds of the South Dakota prairie and headed for the California coast the day after high school graduation. 

She graduated from the University of California, Irvine (BA) and San Francisco State University (MA) writing programs. She’s gone on to pen numerous short stories; Lostart Street, a novel of mystery, murder and moonbeams; and the Carol Sabala mystery series. The seventh installment in the series, Black Beans & Venom, made the finalist list for the Claymore Award as did the opening of One Gun. 

Still sane after 27 years of teaching high school English, Vinnie has retired and lives in Santa Cruz, California, with her husband and the requisite cat. 

Along with over 150 million other citizens of the United Kingdom and her Commonwealth, without thinking much about it, I went about living my life as a ‘New Elizabethan.’  Despite the connotations of the word ‘Elizabethan’ and obvious links to Shakespeare, I have never worn a lacey ruff or tights, sported a moustache or pointy beard, or uttered ‘hath’, ‘doth’ or ‘gadzooks!’  Nor have I skipped about singing ‘hey nonny, nonny,’ or ‘Lorks a Lordy!’  I was a New Elizabethan.  Then it happened.

At 3.10pm on Thursday 8th September 2022, my Queen, Elizabeth the Second, took her last breath at her beloved Balmoral Castle.  A hidden fairy tale retreat set beside the shallow, burbling River Dee, which snakes through the purple heather swathed hills and valleys of a remote corner of Aberdeenshire, in North East Scotland.  A place I know well.

Although that day is over a year past, like so many of my fellows, it still seems strange to me to no longer have our Queen.  For the vast majority of us Brits, after reigning for seventy years, without giving it much logical thought, we assumed she’d always be there, as she always had been.  Of course we were wrong.  We shouldn’t have been shocked and surprised, there had been signs but we were.  So it was, as Her Majesty’s heart, in her surprisingly little body, finally rested, without realising it, I ceased being a New Elizabethan and became a Carolean.  (from Carolus, the Latin for Charles.)

I must declare a personal interest at this point, I am now retired but for thirty years I was an officer of London’s Metropolitan Police and for the final ten of those years I was a member of the Royalty Protection Department of that Service.  I met and interacted with most of the senior Royals, the late Queen in particular, when posted to Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and Balmoral in Scotland, where she passed away.  With a couple of exceptions I really liked The Royals I met, so I hereby declare myself a Royalist.

Queen Elizabeth’s funeral was code named ‘London Bridge’ and had been planned and periodically updated since the 1960’s, ‘just in case’.  (Each Royal’s funeral is code named after a bridge, her Mother was Tay Bridge, her husband, Prince Philip, was Forth Bridge.  His funeral had long been prepared for too, even the long wheel base Landrover, which on his orders would carry his coffin, was kept ready for decades, stored in the Mews at Windsor Castle, started and driven once a week and kept immaculately clean). 

The State Funeral of Her Majesty took place on Monday 19th September 2022 after ten days of National Mourning.  An image seared into every viewers memory is of her coffin, draped with the Royal Standard upon which sat, apparently precariously, the Crown, The Sceptre and the Golden Orb.  As the red-coated and red faced Guardsmen skilfully manoeuvred the weighty, lead-lined coffin, the nation held its breath, fearful the ancient, priceless objects should perhaps slip and fall.  They were of course, securely fastened.

For me, it was the small, almost unnoticeable vignettes which adhere to the memory and move me deeply.  The Queens daughter, Anne, The Princess Royal, her face riven with sadness, curtseyed slowly and reverentially as the coffin passed her by, honouring her Mother for the very last time.  The New King, Charles III, his eyes glistening with tears which he fought and failed to keep from falling as his ‘Dear Ma’ma’ began the descent into the Vault of Windsor Castle’s St George’s Chapel, to rest beside her Father, King George VI, her Mother Elizabeth and her Husband, Philip.  Most moving of all was the single piper, playing the lament, ‘Sleep, Dearie, Sleep.’  The drone of the pipes and the soulfulness of the tune echoed through the five hundred year old Chapel walls, and as the piper slow stepped away the sound diminished until it could be heard no more. 

It made me recall each morning at Balmoral Castle, The Queens Piper, my friend Pipe Major Jim Stout, played for exactly fifteen minutes, pacing the terrace beneath the dining room window as Her Majesty enjoyed her breakfast.  He could be heard each evening, in his quarters at the Castle, practising for the next morning, to get the timing precisely right.  His tune would begin as Balmoral’s clock struck the hour and finish fifteen minutes later.  The clock would strike the quarter hour the briefest moment after his tune ended.  Jim’s accuracy was fearsome.  The Queen loved the sound of the pipes and it was his honour and joy to please her.

At the end of The Summer Court at Balmoral the Queen would hold the famed Ghillies Ball.  An evening of Highland dancing (called a ceilidh, pronounced kay-lee) attended by whichever Royals were in residence and invited members of the Royal Household Staff.  Initiated by Queen Victoria in 1852 and held every year since, it is named for the estate Ghillies (Highland Gamekeepers).  By my time among the one hundred guests were servants, cleaners, soldiers, cooks and hairdressers, and a few very lucky police officers, such as myself. 

A total novice, I needed Highland dancing lessons for eight weeks in preparation for the event.  Queen’s Piper Jim Stout, who would provide music for the dance, oversaw my feeble efforts, oft declaring (with an amused twinkle in his eye) that I was a “flat-footed, uncoordinated English oaf.”  (Thanks Jim, love you too).  Somehow I eventually passed muster and on the great night was permitted to cavort enthusiastically around the ballroom demonstrating ‘Strip the Willow’, ‘The Dashing White Sergeant’, ‘The Eightsome Reel’, and my particularly flamboyant interpretation of ‘The Gay Gordon’, which I imagine is recalled by traumatised witnesses with incredulity.  The climax of course was dancing with Her Majesty, whose hands were soft, whose stature was petite, whose feet were tiny and whose radiant smile was so, so warm.
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She rests in peace now, for evermore.  Surrounded by her family and noble ancestors, encompassed and protected by the thousand year old walls of Windsor Castle. 
Like millions of others, I can’t quite believe it.  Like millions of others, I miss her.
God save The Queen. 


Steven Packwood was born in the economically declining industrial Midlands of England in 1960 to parents who worked in factories.  In 1984 he moved south to London to become an officer of the Metropolitan Police.

He served in many departments and in many capacities until specialising as one of the British Police’s, very few, firearms officers.  He was employed for several years on armed response vehicles and motorcycles until selected to undergo further training, to qualify as a Protection Officer.  There followed several exciting years safeguarding Prime Ministers, including Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, as well as other senior Government Ministers and visiting Heads of State.

Steve was invited to join the Royalty Protection Group, initially on Prince Charles’s team (now King Charles III) and ultimately with H.M. Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and in Scotland at Balmoral Castle.  In 2014 Steve retired from the police relatively sane and reasonably intact after providing “Thirty years of exemplary service.”.

Steve has been very happily married to Sue for ten years and has two daughters from a previous marriage.  Amy is twenty seven, a nurse in a central London hospital, whilst Emma is twenty four and has recently followed in her father’s footsteps to join the ranks of the Metropolitan Police.

Steve’s wife encouraged him to start writing when he retired, mainly as a creative outlet after so many years of living a disciplined and regimented life but also, he suspects, to keep him from getting under her feet.  He finds the process of writing both enjoyable and cathartic and admits to savouring being told that his stories are “not bad,” or sometimes even “quite good.”  Words of high praise in a country steeped in a tradition of understatement.​

Steve and Sue are passionate about the theatre and love to travel, having so far ticked off the Far East and the Indian sub-continent as well as most of Europe but take special joy in crossing the pond to visit the USA which they adore.  The couple have relatives in Florida and good friends in New York, so these are the most frequent destinations but they plan to explore the rest of the country soon, pandemics permitting.

Steve has an adventurous spirit, as a qualified scuba diver he has a passion for swimming with sharks, misunderstood creatures he adores, he has also sky-dived, para-glided, abseiled and bungee jumped.  Sue keeps a substantial life insurance policy in her back pocket.  Steve considers himself amongst the luckiest of people and loves his life, often exclaiming with a satisfied sigh to anyone who will listen, “where did it all go so…right!”.