JAMES LILLEY has a lot of stories to tell after 25 years in the Howard County Police Department. But the Mount Airy resident never considered putting pen to paper until a friend suggested it. Now, Lilley has published two books and has written more than a dozen stories.
A karate teacher in Elkridge and a former Marine, Lilley has seen much that could provide fodder for his books. As in most jobs, he has had good and bad experiences, but some things have been tougher to deal with than others, he said.
"I can still vividly recall the first fatal accident I investigated only 2 1/2 months out of the police academy," Lilley said. "There were some very ugly crime scenes that are forever burned into my mind."
Lilley, 59, said he attended a military school in Southern Maryland during his middle school years.
He then attended and lived at Mount St. Joseph High School in Baltimore.
"That's where I learned to be a very creative writer because, when boys would be boys and get into trouble, we'd have to write for punishment," he said.
Lilley said some papers required thousands of words, but he soon realized the educators weren't reading the whole essay. When Lilley was assigned to write 10,000 words on "Why Fire Is Hot," he used the punishment to his best advantage. (The disciplinary action was provoked by an incident involving spitballs, water pistols and a paper airplane.)
"I'd write all the definitions for fire, heat, flame, match, etceteras, on the first few pages, and then make up stories for the rest of it," he said.
Before beginning his 25-year stint in police work, he spent four years in the Marines, where he learned karate.
"I was lucky enough to be stationed in Okinawa, and I found a school by asking a taxicab driver to take me to the best one he knew of," he said.
That's when he met Takeshi Miyagi.
"Not the Mr. Miyagi from The Karate Kid movies [Pat Morita], but the real Mr. Miyagi," Lilley said.
He said he was one of only two Americans who enrolled in Miyagi's dojo, or school, and he was the first and only American to be promoted to the rank of black belt by Miyagi in more than 35 years. (Another Marine was promoted to black belt in January 2000.) Now Lilley holds the rank of 7th-degree black belt.
Lilley says that in 1981, a friend, Sheldon Greenberg, told him that he had "a God-given talent" for writing, so he decided to try writing a book. He received his first rejection letter in 1982.
