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Johann C.M. Laesecke

Goodreads Author

Born

in The United States

Website

https://theroaringroad.com

Twitter

JohannLaesecke

Genre

Historical Fiction, Fiction, Thriller

Member Since

February 2014

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/roadtripdog

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Please see www.theroaringroad.com for complete and correct information about my books and titles.
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Why did you use the title "The Roaring Road"? It's the same title of my grandfather's book of that era which was also made into a movie of that same name (starring Wally Reid who you document). He was a prolific writer of that time and also has 53 films to his credit. You say you did a ton of research so this book/film/WallyReid connection is instantly Google-able. Wondering why you didn't come up w your own title??

Johann C.M. Laesecke It is a long chain of events and research that led to my decision to title my book The Roaring Road. My original book idea was a story of a young lad …moreIt is a long chain of events and research that led to my decision to title my book The Roaring Road. My original book idea was a story of a young lad whose father is a race car driver, set in the 1950s. Being from the Chicago area I wanted to use Chicago locations and did research on the Meadowdale Raceway near Carpentersville having been there many years before for a TransAm race near the end of Meadowdale's history. I had also just finished reading The Chase by Clive Cussler, set in 1906 and featured train vs. auto chases and train chases. I like old cars and steam locomotives. This led to discovering the Elgin Road Races which were held from 1910-1915 then again in 1919 and 1920. In searching for more historic background I found in the history of Elgin IL where it told some of the story of the Elgin Road Races. (http://www.elginhistory.com/eaah/eaah.... Chapter 4 of that history is titled The Roaring Road) That was where I got the idea to make The Roaring Road the title of my book. The Elgin history does not reference the movie, just the Elgin Road Races.

Next I discovered the Elgin Motor Car Company in Elgin IL. The company promoted its automobiles in endurance events and some racing, as many early auto manufacturers did to establish credibility. One of the events was an automobile vs express train race from Chicago to Indianapolis. The Elgin won by 56 minutes, and there was a photo of an Elgin Victory Light Six racing on a road next to a locomotive thundering along on the track.

My interest in moving my book to the 1919 to 1926 time frame became strong because I was reading Lackadaisy. It is an excellent graphic comic with superb artwork and careful attention to history. For me it brought to life the excitement of the Roaring Twenties, where many events directly affected the social history of the day. The end of WWI, Women's Suffrage, Prohibition, the Flapper movement, the coming of age of the automobile industry which led to more road development, motels, the beginning of the decline of railroad passenger service etc. In my book I added the growing aeroplane industry where Laure's father (who had worked at Elgin Motor Car Co until it moved, then started his own aeroplane service business), the rising prominence of organized crime during the 1920s that eventually gave the mobs the money to invest in Las Vegas (see https://www.amazon.com/30-Illegal-Yea...) and the movie business being consolidated in Hollywood and expanded rapidly, even before the talkies took over.

So I recast my plot and opened the book with an auto/train race, with the young man in the car and his father driving. Searching for historic background I found the Wallace Reid 1919 movie, The Roaring Road. Reid was a very interesting star who died way too young, but that's another story.

In any event the Elgin Motor Car race against the express train never really happened, the company merely took the best elapsed time of the train against the best elapsed time of their motor car. But they made it seem like it had really happened! The timed event of the automobile was held and I fictionalized it as an actual race against the train.

The eventual book that all this was born from is a story of a young man who's father is driving for a Long Grove IL gangster when he is run off the road and killed by a rival gang. The son gets pulled into taking on a marathon cross country drive to the California Napa/Sonoma Wine Country. I'm not giving spoilers so people need to read the book to find out why, and how a girl named Laure joins Dan on his mission. At that point, the book explodes into its action sequences. As you can see, my plot is completely different from the movie or the Cussler books or the actual Elgin auto vs. Monon express train race. My story happens on the roads and railroads from Chicago to Napa to Hollywood and eventually back to Chicago.

In the course of my research I discovered that book, movie and song titles are not copyrighted. See https://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ3.... In some cases a movie title can be trademarked, but even that is a difficult process. There are many titles that are widely used for many different books by multiple authors, including some famous authors.

Further, there are several works titled The Roaring Road on Amazon:
The Roaring Road, Irving Werstein 1957
The Roaring Road, Gene Olson 1967
The Roaring Road: The Best Auto Racing Stories of the Decade, Irving Werstein listed October 27, 2012
The Roaring Road, Byron Morgan listed published November 20, 2015 although the brief description only says it is republished from the original artifact and is in the public domain without any summary of what the original artifact covered.
The Roaring Road, Olson G, 1962 (likely the same as Gene Olson's book)
The Roaring Road, no author listed, published in 1973
The Roaring Road, no author listed, unknown binding, published 1967, which could be another Gene Olson edition
The Roaring Road, A Sports Car Novel, Gene Olson 1962
The Roaring Road, no author, unknown binding 1971
There are other variants such as Roaring Roadsters, Saga of the Roaring Road etc. Obviously some of the above are different editions of the same book, but this is substantial evidence that different authors through the decades have used The Roaring Road as a title for their books.

My book of The Roaring Road is original fiction. It was published on August 28, 2015 and at least one book with the title The Roaring Road was published after my book. My plot devices and characters are completely different. Since titles cannot be copyrighted, I used the title for my book since it aptly describes the adventures of Laure and Dan on the roads and railroads of the 1920s. I had no intention nor is there any reality that could conceivably cause my book to be confused with the others. In fact, the name is used by other businesses, one is a coffee drive-thru in California called The Roaring Road.

So yes I did a ton of research before I made a careful decision to use The Roaring Road the title of my first book. I have more research but I hope this answers the question of why I used The Roaring Road title. (less)

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How do you deal with writer’s block?

Johann C.M. Laesecke I rarely get writer's block. Very small applications of rye whiskey seems to work for me. I call it LiterarRye. No, in truth I have ideas for so many …moreI rarely get writer's block. Very small applications of rye whiskey seems to work for me. I call it LiterarRye. No, in truth I have ideas for so many books right now that if I get caught on one I simply lay it aside for a few days or a couple of weeks and work on another, or simply turn and write a short story for practice. I like to walk too, and that has been some of the best thinking time I've ever experienced. (less)

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Combine Editions
Johann C.M. Laesecke’s books

Average rating: 3.15 · 13 ratings · 1 review · 3 distinct works

	The Road West (The Roaring Road, #1) 3.67 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 2015 — 5 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Road East (The Roaring Road, #2) liked it 3.00 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 2015 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Road Trip Blues (The Roaring Road #3) 2.33 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2017 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Johann C.M. Laesecke's Blog

Independent authors beware!

Goodreads librarians have co-opted my intellectual property and violated ISBN Terms Of Service by re-naming my books over my strenuous objections. Goodreads support staff caved to the librarians demands. I was told that my titles were in "violation" of the librarian manual, but when given the section of the manual, it supports my titles. When I asked for further explanation of how my titles violat Read more of this blog post »

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