Something's very wrong in our country

Like all of you, we are sickened, horrified, saddened. We don't have answers, but we do have questions...

Why are the lives of children less important than owning guns?

Why does anyone need an assault weapon unless for killing people?

How many people have to die before the people we elected to lead us band together to do something about this?

We cannot let any more lights be extinguished...

When Real People Intrude in Fiction by David Hagerty

LUCY BURDETTE: When David Hagerty, a contributor, contacted the Reds about a date for the new anthology, LOW DOWN DIRTY VOTE 3, we said we'd love to have him. What's more important than every single person having a chance to vote? Today he'll talk about including historical figures in his fiction. Welcome David!

DAVID HAGERTY: I’ve included many historical figures in my fiction. Growing up in Chicago, I heard stories of corrupt politicians and infamous criminals that fit right into a mystery. The city’s history teems with ready-made characters, so when I need a villain I don’t have to look far. I insert John Wayne Gacy or Mayor Richard J. Daley and let them do their worst.

However, I get a lot of questions about the practice, often from other writers. Have you ever been sued? (No, I’m not famous enough). Do you make them do stuff they never did? (No, that would be grounds for a lawsuit). Do you research them? (Yes, as much as possible).

For me, the challenge and delight of using real people as characters is capturing them as they were. Anyone can create a caricature. To sum up a living being, with all his or her traits and contradictions, is far more difficult.

Truth be told, you can choose facts based on your own ends. Whether you love the president or loathe him, there’s plenty of material out there. You just need to put your spin on it.

In my last book, I wanted a community activist to pontificate, so I read Jesse Jackson’s speeches and distilled them to a few catch phrases. When I needed a criminal governor, I had four in Illinois’ recent history to choose from. And when I needed a tale for Low Down Dirty Vote 3, the new anthology about voter suppression, I had decades of election fraud to cull.



I created a fact as fiction piece about Chicago’s last political assassination: of Aldermen Ben Lewis in 1963. I read all the original sources I could find and stuck close to the facts. Ben Lewis was executed in his own office two days after his reelection. No need to falsify the drama of that.



What’s more, there was rampant speculation in newspapers of the time about who did it and why: a jealous husband, a bilked business partner, a vengeful mobster. All I created was a skeptical journalist to narrate the tale, and the story wrote itself.

I don’t often get so lucky. In most of my books, I have to invent most of it and sprinkle in the historical figures for spice. I like to think it gives the text the flavor of my hometown. This story captured the city’s corruption at its most rotten.

What about you? Is there a person from your town’s history you’d like to write about?

David Hagerty is the author of the Duncan Cochrane mystery series, about a governor bent on revenging his daughter’s death using the powers of political office. He has also published more than two dozen short stories online and in print. The most recent, “City Mourns Slain Pol, Chicago Style,” appears in Low Down Dirty Vote 3, which released this month.

About Low Down Dirty Vote 3: Twenty-two writers contributed stories to the anthology, which is the third focused on voting rights. The theme of this edition is « the color of my vote. » Sales from the volume will fund $10,000 donated to Democracy Docket, a journalist organization fighting voter suppression.

https://lowdowndirtyvote.com/

Throwback Thursday, Rochelle B. Weinstein

LUCY BURDETTE: Today it's a pleasure to introduce Rochelle Weinstein with some absolutely wonderful advice for surviving the writing and publishing rat race. But it also goes for life! Welcome Rochelle...

ROCHELLE WEINSTEIN: The date was June 29, 2017. I had dinner with a fellow author at a lovely restaurant in Banner Elk, North Carolina. My third novel had released the year before and my fourth was slated to release in 2018. Before that, my self-published works released in 2012 and 2013. Dinner with Rebecca Warner is always brimming with author talk—sharing tidbits about the business, our latest reads, the ups and downs of the industry. 

Upon returning home that evening, I ventured onto Publisher’s Marketplace in search of something I now have the faintest idea what. As a lark, I did what we tend to do online, searched for myself, clicking on the Bestseller tab, which was sure to say: no bestseller status available. But there it was. What We Leave Behind, my first self-published work featured on the USA Today Bestseller list. #145. But I was only finding this out three years later. Talk about an epic Throwback Thursday.

I tell this story because it highlights my journey to publishing and some of the best of advice in the business: never giving up. Backtrack. When I sat down to write What We Leave Behind, I had no formal training (unless voracious reader counts) and I was merely filling time during a year-long severance. Doors didn’t open for me—they slammed—and when I made the decision to self-publish, I had specific goals for my work. The Mourning After followed a similar path, and with robust sales and a community of readers and fans, I sought an agent for my third novel, Where We Fall. They say the third time’s the charm, and I secured an agent and a publishing deal.  

Never during that time of disappointment and hustle did I know about the bestseller status. I had been diligently working on Somebody’s Daughter (my fourth novel) doing what I loved, going going going. And it raises the question: What if I had given up? What if I had walked away after that first door closed? Rebecca texted me the next day. “The puzzling thing is, Rochelle, you didn’t have this accomplishment to bolster you through some tough times, and you pushed through. What does that say about your capacity to go to great heights?”

There. That. 

Yes. My self-published title, my little engine that could, hit a bestseller list. I didn’t have that to hold onto. I didn’t know what I was capable of. But I kept going. Moving. Writing. Listening. Learning. Trusting. Dusting off the bruises.  

Anyone who has been in the trenches knows the sting of rejection, the vulnerability (or stigma) associated with self-publishing, and the vast challenges we face as writers competing in an over-saturated market. Many writers don’t have accolades or career milestones boosting them through the rough patches, so what I’ve learned from this experience is that it’s what we do with the hard times, how we handle the pitfalls, that ultimately measure our success. If you’re a writer in the trenches, focus on your goal and ignore the voices saying you can’t. It’s a wild ride with highs and lows, but if you stay the course you are bound to land where you were supposed to. And soar.

 

How do you react to rejection? Do you easily get frustrated and give up? Or do you let the misery in, experience it, and get back on the saddle? Do you know why you write? The goals you have for your work? The best advice I can give: the difference between success and failure is the never giving up. Onward. 

About the Author

Rochelle B. Weinstein is the USA Today and Amazon bestselling author of emotionally driven women’s fiction, including When We Let Go, This Is Not How It Ends, Somebody’s Daughter, Where We Fall, The Mourning After, and What We Leave Behind. Rochelle spent her early years, always with a book in hand, raised by the likes of Sidney Sheldon and Judy Blume. A former entertainment industry executive, she splits her time between sunny South Florida and the mountains of North Carolina. When she’s not writing, Rochelle can be found hiking, reading, and searching for the world’s best nachos. She is currently working on her seventh novel. Please visit her at rochelleweinstein.com.

About WHEN WE LET GO: When Avery Beckett is proposed to by Jude Masters, a widowed father and the man she loves, it should be a time of great joy. Instead, Avery is on edge. She’s wary of the idea of family, doubtful of happy endings, and too afraid to take the leap. It’s the kind of fear that comes from having secrets. Before Avery commits to a new life, she must reconcile with the one she left behind.

When Avery returns to her childhood farm in the North Carolina mountains, she’s surprised to be saddled with a companion: Jude’s teenage daughter, Elle, who’s grappling with the loss of her mother and the complicated emotions of first love. On a path of mending wounds and breaking down walls, Avery and Elle form an unexpected alliance. It’s giving them the courage to move forward. And for Avery, everything she needs to confront the past.

An emotional tale of mothers and daughters, loss and acceptance, When We Let Go is about the lessons that come from heartbreak and the healing it takes to embrace the joy of a second chance.