Here We Are
Mostly what slips away is time. And, like the ocean tide, it takes with it everything.
It takes with it memories, good and bad. It takes with it people, both the good and the bad. It all becomes history. Happenings of all sorts. Inventions and human progress...
I enjoy research. I can get lost chasing rabbits. My favorite genre is historical coupled with fiction. And this is what is difficult.
Yesterday is history, but it isn't historical—yet. My really really close to being published work, "If I Should Die" posed a huge problem.
It is set in a specific year—1987. In order to fit historical fiction it has to be Vietnam war era, which was technically 1954 to 1975.
Yes, my detective began his foray into the world during the Vietnam war, and he wouldn't be where he is today without that training, but the story is set in 1987.
I've had several people ask why is it set there, and why can't we move it to a current date?
It all has to do with history. My undercover detective, Julius C. Armstrong, didn't just spring up from nowhere. He has a long history, both before this story and after. And I don't know exactly why this was the first novel in the series.
But he isn't a Chicago cop...I had an editor who thought she would just change the story in that direction. Young Fuzzy had choice words for that idea.
The story itself defies all odds and pushes the boundaries of what is possible. The same editor kept repeating 'this is impossible' you must change it...but I tried to tell her it works as written. And, I might add, it works well.
I would be a millionaire plus today if I had a dollar for all the things 'I wish I had done', when I had the ability to do them. I wish I had asked my father and mother-law about their 'story'.
I wish I'd asked my grandparents, my aunts and uncles about their stories. But I didn't. They call some of these people 'the greatest generation'. Every generation has the ability to be the greatest generation.
My grandparents went through the roaring twenties, the great depression, and the dust bowl. Not to mention the transitioning of homesteading on the prairie, the turning of the century and the early 1900s. And I missed it.
Not all of it, but only because my grandpa was a storyteller, and he told us stories.
