{"id":788,"date":"2015-11-12T10:43:01","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T16:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/alumninewsletter\/?p=788"},"modified":"2015-11-18T15:33:31","modified_gmt":"2015-11-18T21:33:31","slug":"788","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/alumninewsletter\/2015\/11\/12\/788\/","title":{"rendered":"Check It Out: Alumni Spotlight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Zahren, class of 1986, is the author of the newly released book <em>Officer Involved, <\/em>a book that is set in Sioux City, Iowa, and features a main character that is a Morningside College graduate.<\/p>\n<p>Zahren started writing the book in 1998 but took a break after he got discouraged by the number of hoops he had to jump through to get it published.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWriting a book is a lot of work,\u201d said Zahren. \u201cDrafting 89,000 words is just a small part of it. Editing over and over and over is the real challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The book was revived in 2014 when Zahren started working towards self-publication. It was released by Mill City Press in Minneapolis on Oct. 6 and is currently available in paperback and eBook through Zahren\u2019s website, billzahren.com. It can also be found at Barnes &amp; Noble and Amazon.<\/p>\n<p>The fictional novel is set in Sioux City primarily because of Zahren\u2019s fondness for the area.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs in every novel, the characters are amalgams of characteristics and mannerisms of a lot of people,\u201d said Zahren. \u201cThere\u2019s definitely bits of people I knew in the county attorney\u2019s office in Hillary Reed. Tom Kingman is the reporter I always fantasized about being but never was. Some of the stuff he does, real reporters probably wouldn\u2019t or couldn\u2019t do for various reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Office Involved <\/em>is the first of four books in the series. The second book, <em>Paper Trail<\/em>, is tentatively planned to be published in the fall of 2016. The series continues on with the story of Tom and Hillary as they dig to discover the truth of crimes.<\/p>\n<p>Zahren majored in mass communication with a double minor in English and history. After college he worked as a newspaper reporter for the Le Mars Daily Sentinel and the Sioux City Journal for nine years. He and his wife, Rhonda, now live in West Des Moines, Iowa. Rhonda is a registered nurse, and Bill works as a self-employed freelance marketing writer when he is not writing novels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Bill Zahren, class of 1986, is the author of the newly released book Officer Involved, a book that is set in Sioux City, Iowa, and features a main character that is a Morningside College graduate. Zahren started writing the book in 1998 but took a break after he got discouraged by the number of hoops [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":629,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52909],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-volume-1"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/alumninewsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/alumninewsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/alumninewsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/alumninewsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/629"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/alumninewsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/alumninewsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":817,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/alumninewsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions\/817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/alumninewsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/alumninewsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.morningside.edu\/alumninewsletter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}