Bridging the Frontier 
Bob Smith, Executive Director
Bob Smith is Executive Director of the ESD Alliance responsible for its management and operations. Previously, Bob was senior vice president of Marketing and Business Development at Uniquify, responsible for brand development, positioning, strategy and business development activities. Bob began his … More » Ray Daniel Salemi: Debugging Chips by Day, Creating Mayhem on the Written Page by NightDecember 20th, 2018 by Bob Smith, Executive Director
Note: This is the first in a continuing series of blog posts about people in our industry who have creative outlets outside of their “day jobs” in the electronic system design ecosystem. If you are one of them, drop me a line at: bsmith@semi.org It was a cold and blustery night. I readjusted my muffler and trudged through Boston’s East Fens neighborhood to meet my prey at the local dive bar. I stomp into Bukowski Tavern across the street from the convention center on the edge of Back Bay. I make my way past the long bar with the regulars slouched in their seats nursing their Oh So Precious IPAs in a dive bar no less to a table in back with more elbowroom. This, after all, isn’t a casual conversation but a serious discussion about crime. A shadow looms over the table as I check out the typical bar-food menu and wonder what a vegetarian would order … … and there stands mystery novelist Ray Daniel, better known to our industry as Ray Salemi, who is balancing his writing career with his verification consultant gig for Mentor, a Siemens Business. The thought of debugging chips by day, creating mayhem on the written page by night amuses me as I look into a face boasting a goatee and moustache, befitting a hardboiled mystery writer.
Welcome to the world of Tucker (first name Aloysius), the main character modeled after Robert B. Parker’s much-loved Spencer. According to Ray, his mysteries are written in the first person. Tucker is wise cracking and Boston based. Tucker even has a mysterious sometime sidekick named Jael, a good-looking, tough, fit female former Mossad agent who dresses in all black and is good with a gun. Something Tucker isn’t. Except for Tucker’s aversion to guns, all are in homage to Spencer.  Nanette Collins and Paul Cohen flank Ray (Daniel) Salemi at Bukowski Tavern. The story of Tucker actually begins with DAC in Anaheim in 2005 and it’s at this point that Paul Cohen from the ESD Alliance and Marketing Consultant Nanette Collins join us. Ray and another engineer took a break from the action and walked from the convention center to Disneyland and back. During that fateful day, he was turning 40 and admitted to himself that his 20-year study of chess wasn’t working. Instead, he confessed to his friend the urge to write a mystery and outlined the first of what would become a four-book series published by Midnight Ink. He quit the chess club and joined a writing club, making friends with a host of supportive local mystery writers who, surprisingly enough, are not competitive with each other. Nine years after the fateful walk and a few drafts later, “Terminated” appeared in 2014, after Ray got everything to fit together. The fast-past thriller is set at a technical conference in the convention center across from Bukowski Tavern and “deeply, deeply inspired by DAC.” Now, before you race off to buy the book only to find it has no references to DAC and no character that looks like or behaves as anyone you know in electronic system design, remember: It’s fiction. Pattern the character around what you do, Ray heard Boston-area mystery writer Linda Barnes make that observation about mystery authors, which is what he did with Tucker and “Terminated.” Although, Ray admits that one recurring character was modeled on many of the traits we all recognize in industry sales managers. Tucker is a hacker and there are just enough technical references for technical people to recognize, but not so much to put off non-techies. Ray fills his book with odd characters though relatable to anyone who knows Boston, including a mobbed-up guy from the North End, an area he knows well. He grew up in Revere, one stop on the T’s Blue Line from Boston. His grandmother grew up on a street prominently featured in one book, his mother on another both in the North End. Much like Robert Parker’s books, Boston is a character in Ray’s books, especially the South End where Tucker lives. Unlike Spencer, Tucker is not a gourmand. As for any references to the electronic system design business, his agent and publisher told him no one would understand the obscure little industry he wrote about, so he switched it up and called the conference SecureCon. Close enough so Ray could write convincingly, while readers in our industry will certainly recognize it as DAC-like. Tucker’s wife is killed before the book opens, a trick of mystery writers, so readers can fall in love with the unattached protagonist. Writing is an iterative process, Ray acknowledged, and exposes flaws in the storyline. His normal day starts at 8 a.m. with one hour of writing –– the goal is 500 to 1,000 words per day –– then his day job with Mentor, a Siemens Business, begins. Ray writes as if it was a screenplay with three acts and eight sequences. It takes about four months of daily writing to pound out a first draft. The second draft takes another three months of connecting the theme, fixing the structure and polishing. It’s at about this stage that his wife Karen, who he calls a solid editor, reads the draft. One other early reader is Tom Fitzpatrick, also of Mentor, a Siemens Business, a well-known verification expert. The entire process takes about a year to 18 months. Yes, Ray’s at work on his next book with a new agent. Readers will be surprised to learn it’s not a Tucker book but part retrospective and part set in the present in Boston. The working title is “The Worst of Times.” Now, you may wonder why Ray Daniel, his nom de plume, and not Ray Salemi. We can thank Lee Child, author of the hugely popular Jack Reacher books whose real name is Jim Grant. They met at a Mystery Writers event. Child took one look at Ray Salemi’s badge and suggested another last name with the first letter higher up in the alphabet. Ray said his middle name was Daniel and Child told him to use that with no “s” at the end. Perhaps Ray always envisioned a writing career. He went to Northeastern then UMass, colleges in the Boston area majoring in engineering with a minor in English. And while it’s clear he loves writing, he notes that it is hard and he is often left feeling his work isn’t as good as it could be. The career track of a writer includes a level of humiliation, he says. Nonetheless, he perseveres and will continue to do so. As we finish our talk, he ticks off some of his favorite mystery writers. Two are Hank Ryan Philippe, a Boston-area broadcaster, Bill Martin whose recent work is “Bound for Gold,” a great yarn about Harvard swells sailing to San Francisco during the Gold rush, and attends Red Sox games with Ray. Best-selling author Joseph Finder (pronounced Fin-Der) is another. For anyone looking for last-minute Holiday gifts, Ray’s books are available on Amazon in print, Kindle or audio at https://amzn.to/2Sg12rP. Ray’s website can be found at https://bit.ly/2SWpz4Y
ES Design West will present Ray and all the other creative types from our industry a venue to discover new inspiration. With a fresh perspective, let your imagination go wild with presentations, flashy, interactive graphics for your company’s booth or the idea for a mystery, a song or whatever else churns your inventive thinking. We’ll see you there! Follow the ESD Alliance: Website: www.esd-alliance.org ESD Alliance Bridging the Frontier blog: http://bit.ly/2oJUVzl Twitter: @ESDAlliance LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8424092 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ESDAlliance |
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