H.B. Berlow's Blog, page 26

Secrets of the Righteous – Excerpt

I was daydreaming about Olivia De Havilland as Maid Marian when I was called into Chief Richardson’s office. I eagerly stood at attention, waiting while he had his head bent over a folder and then ruffled through some papers on his desk. He hadn’t yet looked up at me which was unusual.

“Wichita Police Department is requesting your presence for a…consultation.” I didn’t respond. I didn’t understand what that meant. The chief finally looked up. “They’ve got a series of crimes similar to what you…worked on three years ago.”

“The men who were brutally murdered?”

“Says here,” he remarked holding up the folder, “several women have been stabbed. Among other things.” Again, I remained silent. While our case was extreme, certainly for our part of Kansas, I was certain a big city like Wichita would have had the resources to investigate such a case.

“Why me, sir?”

“Seems they heard about your investigation and want your feedback.” I nodded, as it was the only other thing I could think to do. “You can drive up today. Better pack a bag in case you have to stay a bit. Oh, and save your hotel and meal receipts and the department will reimburse you.” At least now I had something to do.

As I started to walk out, I turned back and shut the door again. “Chief, do they…know about me?”

“About what?”

“My, well, my face and, you know, my scars.”

He dropped the folder on his desk, flustered but trying to hide it with a moderate anger.

“Witherspoon, you’re a police officer. They’re police officers. They are currently investigating what appear to be horrific killings. They are not going to be concerned with your war wounds.”

I nodded and politely left his office knowing there were many people who would not consider these merely war wounds but something closer to a monster like Frankenstein. They were so keen on having me assist them; what would they think when they saw me?

My doubts did not go away.

Secrets of the Righteous

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and Ark City Confidential

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available on Amazon.

The story behind the story

Often, a reader will ask something like “Where did you come up with that story?” or “Where did you get that idea?” Certainly valid questions after spending their time immersing themselves in a world you created. My primary answer is “What if?” scenarios. A notion pops into my head based on something I’ve read or seen. It yields to: What if? From that point a story develops.

However, in the case of Ark City Confidential, the idea came from good old-fashioned story-telling. Not my own, but my wife’s uncle.

A long time resident of a community in south central Kansas near the Oklahoma border, Larry would pass along tales of underground tunnels, a nickname of “Little Chicago”, and the mysterious “grandfather on the hill.” Out of curiosity, I tried looking up these various elements just in general. I have always been fascinated by the peak of the gangster era in the U.S. from 1933-34 so I was already familiar with the fact that Charles Arthur “Pretty Boy” Floyd lived in the northeast section of Oklahoma and made his way into Kansas; that the car Bonnie and Clyde were killed in was stolen from a gentleman in Topeka, KS; and that the state had a long history of desperadoes and bandits. The story came almost naturally.

It’s important to note that my two prior novels (now out of print) were contemporary crime fiction. The notion of historical fiction was a daunting challenge but one certainly worth taking.

In 2016, while attending the OWFI Writers Conference, I pitched the book. I was also told that series characters were very big. I took it as more than a hint. So, on the two plus hour ride home, I fabricated ideas for the second and third books. Secrets of the Righteous came out this year; I’m currently writing the third in the series and outlining the fourth. The fifth will be the last in the series.

Some might think it’s easier to write a series having spent the better part of the first book developing the main character. However, as we grow and change, so too do our characters, main or secondary. There might be a natural progression in the story telling, pieces connected from one to another, but each book has its own introduction, build up, and resolution.

What I have found fascinating is how the research into history has revealed the kind of stories that are beyond even a writer’s imagination. “Truth is stranger than fiction?” It certainly is.

Secrets of the Righteous – Excerpt

Chapter Fifteen

I remember reading a book about Richard the Lionheart, journeying from England to the Holy Land on the Crusades, seeking to kick out the infidels, praise the Lord, and ransack the magnificence of Jerusalem. It was my own interpretation. I can only imagine what it must have been like for him to emerge from the desert and gaze upon the splendor before him.

Wichita was nothing like a holy city, although it surpassed anything I had seen since growing up in Chicago and a darn sight more fast-paced than Ark City. There were by far more cars which meant more frustrated drivers. If more women fancied being behind a steering wheel, it might have been catastrophic.

By the time I arrived in the city, all thoughts preoccupying my mind seemed to vanish like an afternoon spring rain. I was on an assignment and nothing else occurred to me. It took a bit to find the police headquarters. I didn’t realize they made them as big as it was. Seemed more like a castle to me.

I walked in through the front entrance, head held high, a feeling of pride because I was being asked to assist in something so important. When Jay Davis ran up to me, I understood where the whole thing started. I wasn’t too cocky to believe I had earned a large reputation from my showdown with Jake Hickey or my investigations into horrific murders. Somehow, Jay Davis blabbed to his fellow cops in Wichita about a hotshot cop named Baron Witherspoon in his old town of Ark City who was real smart and could probably help out. I was hoping he didn’t build me up too much.

“You made it,” he said, a smile plastered across his face.

“So it was you?”

He leaned in close, like we were speaking of the Devil while in church.

“It’s been real bad. No one wants to admit it. I figured you had more know-how than most of what they got passing off as detectives.”

He wrapped his arm around my shoulder and started guiding me through the station house. I noticed other officers turning away, not even saying anything to Jay. My earlier bravado was starting to dwindle. It’s not that I had any doubts about myself or concerns about my appearance. The whole notion of not knowing who I was when looking into a mirror, the conflict between being Eric Kimble and becoming Baron Witherspoon, the uncertainty about the future—all of this had been brought under control to a point where I could manage living each and every day. It wouldn’t have bothered me if a young child stared at me or cried or even laughed. But these were police officers, like me, who, one would imagine, had seen far worse things than a man with a scarred face. Without so much as speaking with me, it hurt knowing I was already being rejected.

Secrets of the Righteous is currently available on Amazon as well as Ark City Confidential which is also available on Audible.

Going for it!

So, this is happening:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1836396473083300/

A book signing/30’s style cocktail party to promote Secrets of the Righteous, Book Two of the Ark City Confidential Chronicles. My co-host is the Rev. Cindy Watson, the senior pastor at the First United Methodist Church here in Wichita, my neighbor and my friend. As the inspiration for a tent revivalist whose exhortations may have inspired a serial killer, she embraced the character and the opportunity to help promote me, a local writer.

This has involved planning and promotion and serious thought and consideration. But I realized if I am to truly take my writing efforts seriously, I absolutely need to make more of an effort at “getting myself out there.” I use a variety of social media, I connect and interact, I attend writer’s conferences…all of that. Until now, however, I’ve never put myself in the forefront, leaning on the edge, putting something at risk.

You may get to a point in your life where you are more concerned about losing what you have, as tenuous as it may be, and deciding that your passions are more pastimes and diversions. You may even convince yourself of that. In the end, you don’t move forward. At work, you’re “the guy who wrote a book” or among family you are “our resident writer” with the word itself being more of a curse than a blessing.

I’ve realized that in the nearly 50 years since I first penned quaint stories with pencil on blue-lined yellowish paper the notion of being a writer has stuck with me through all the things I’ve been through, good or bad. I’ve always had my writing to bolster me and guide me.

So, now, after the second book in a series no less (with three more to come), I am going for it, risking something (money, reputation, possible embarrassment and failure) for the possibility of reaching a larger audience, a more local following, and step forward into a world that has been my passion since youth.

I won’t be any worse off after this. But, I may be a lot better.

Lessons learned

I was moving from Florida to the Boston area in 1990. I had just completed a novel which was a hybrid of suspense thriller/police procedural/experimental fiction based on part on the Gainesville Ripper. In those days, I didn’t have any of the latest technology. Everything was hand-written on legal pads. (Thirty years ago I didn’t have to worry about Carpal Tunnel or arthritis.) I had no idea how I was going to edit it or who to pitch it to. But it was very special in my progression as a writer.

With a minimal amount of personal possessions, I took a journey by bus with one suitcase and a briefcase that had been a present from my sister. My most recent writings, including that novel, were in the briefcase. I stopped in NYC for an overnight visit with a college friend. We tossed my meager possessions in the trunk and went out for dinner and drinks. After dinner, we drove to his house on Long Island. When we got there, we popped the trunk…only to realize that someone else had previously popped the trunk. I had one carry bag with some clothes and toiletries; other items had been pre-shipped to the family I was going to stay with temporarily.

At the time, the most devastating loss was the manuscript. There was absolutely nothing that could be done in terms of the law (i.e. the crime took place in one location before realizing it in another location); I didn’t have insurance; I was in a transitional period in my life and the only thing of any value was my writing.

Naturally I was devastated. In those technology-less days, there was no back up process (other than spending money which I didn’t have to make copies). Shortly after settling in to my new digs, I bought a word processor and rewrote the novel. I don’t know if it was better or worse than the original. There’s no way of knowing. What I am sure of is that the piece was important enough to me to write again.

Flash forward to the modern day. I have thumb drives, an external drive, a network drive. I am familiar with the concept of redundancy, backing up, saving work, both after I’m done and as I go along. Why I didn’t do that for a recent project I’ll never know. Approximately six hours of work lost when a thumb drive became corrupted. There were gritting sounds, language primarily used in crime novels, the possibility of tears. However, when the reality of it sets in, there’s nothing left except rolling up your sleeves and getting to work.

I could drone on to myself, get philosophical about the loss of time and how precious it is. The project is still gone. I could become frustrated that there are other things I need to be working on. The project is still gone. I could blow everything off, get stinking drunk (on a Sunday night no less). The project is still gone.

After letting you all know about this, I’m rolling up my sleeves and getting back to work. Better or worse? I say better because it has to be.

Research: The important tool in writing historical fiction

I spent nine hours this past Saturday on a book research road trip to Concordia, Kansas. Two hours of driving each way and a total of five hours in and around the city. My stops included:

The Frank Carlson Library

The Cloud County Museum

and POW Camp Concordia

I also purchased from the Camp Concordia Preservation Society two books:

Camp Concordia: German POWs in the Midwest

and Prisoners of War in Kansas: 1943-1946

Yeah, I could have perused them at my local library. But the purchased supports a non-profit organization desperately trying to keep a remnant of history alive, the kind they DON’T teach you in school.

It was a long day. On the return trip, my head was swirling with ideas. I have already started writing the third book in the Ark City Confidential Chronicles series. However, all this additional information will help flesh out the story, even if it is only the first third of the book. The thing I am realizing is that each subsequent tale in this series gets more complex as the stories themselves reach beyond simple crime fiction. In telling the tales of a state, county, or city during a particular period in time, the research sheds fascinating light on what few people know. I have the opportunity (and along with it the responsibility) of making readers aware of elements of our country that are hidden in pockets of oral history.

I remember a time when my wife’s late grandfather would regale myself, my brother-in-law, and my nephew with stories of Wichita during the Second World War. The ladies would ring the dinner bell but food didn’t seem all that important at the time. These were the kind of things that happened to one man on a day-to-day basis that history teachers tend to overlook.

This might not make the writing process go any faster, considering the fascinating information I am discovering. But I am fully confident that each entry in this series will bring to light a realism that will make these stories pop. I hope you’ll continue following me on this journey

Accuracy IS important

Writing, in and of itself, is difficult. Plot and character development. Setting. Dialogue. Some of the more “simple” components that can complicate a writer’s efforts. However, there is an additional element when writing historical fiction: accuracy. Granted, the task is not the same as a graduate level dissertation. Yet, glaring errors can be caught by a reader, taking them out of the magical ambiance that has hopefully been created. After that point, the connection is broken and the reader moves on.

There is, therefore, a balance that must be created and maintained: Enough factual information to establish an environment and time period while at the same time not inundating the story with mere facts (like we all did in our high school term papers). In doing the latter, more opportunities are created for the possibility of mistakes.

As dialogue is important to me, I found it necessary to determine the lingo of the 1930’s gangster. While some of the expressions are humorous and at times even unbelievable, their usage adds to the veracity of the story. Any other word choice creates an anachronism that sticks out directly to the reader.

References to everyday devices (phones, cars, office machines) or common tasks (going to the grocery store, doing laundry, eating out at a restaurant) are basic components intrinsic to the plot. As such, there must be an accurate presentation no matter how different they may seem to the reader because, again, less exact detail creates a stumbling block.

In my historical crime fiction series, Ark City Confidential, and Secrets of the Righteous, every attempt was made at presenting a time period as realistically as possible without inundating the reader with too many tidbits with which to be impressed. I have always believed that an entertaining story is far more important than excessive detail. The nature of the characters, their actions and verbiage, can create a significant image in the reader’s mind.

If enough slang and precise identification of “the way things were” is presented, the story will emerge from the time period. Any major errors will cause the structure to fall apart. As I continue writing this series, I can only hope my readers feel a sense of time and place.

Ah, the memories! But…

I was presented today with a Facebook memory from this date in 2014:

Well, you’ve got to start somewhere. Last night, I laid down the first 700+ words of the new historical crime fiction novel. It wasn’t anything that required any research, just an anecdote involving the protagonist to set the tone. Now, he is real, human, speaks and moves, and has opinions and attitude. I can work with that.

That comment was in regard to Ark City Confidential, the first book in my historical crime fiction series. Reading it brings back the feeling of starting a new book, like a sculptor chipping away at the marble for the first time, a painter laying down the first stroke on canvas, or a musician hitting a couple of chords in succession. When you are well past the completion of the project, recollecting its genesis is rewarding and satisfying.

Couple that with the fact the book was published on January 11, 2017. That’s two and a half years from starting a book, going through several revisions, pitching to a publisher, going through the business-necessary contracts, and then working in-depth with an editor, a blurb committee, the graphic design team. It may take me most of the day to prepare a gourmet meal for the family, one that will be devoured in a couple of hours. But contemplate two and a half years for something somewhat more lasting.

However, don’t contemplate it for too long. Because while I was wrapping up the editing on that book, I was working on the second and third drafts of the follow-up, Secrets of the Righteous. And now that it has been released, I’m working on the third book, outlining the fourth book, and considering the fifth. I suppose it’s easy for someone to say “Well, why don’t you just enjoy the fact you got a book published. And not just one, but two.” To which I respond, I do.

I suppose the real thing is that I do not need to recollect the process of a past work when I’m in the middle of the same process for a future book. Literary creation (or anything artistic for that mater) is a process of evolution. We can look back at where we came from (and I will acknowledge how important that is). Yet, I want to move forward. I want to become better as a writer, want to become a more viable partner with my publisher, want to expand my platform and fan base. To do that means keeping the focus on each step forward.

The memories are great. But, now it’s time to get back to writing.

The Lull

It always happens.

At some point after the completion of a book, after the editing and the cover design, the pre-release promotion, and the excitement of the cover reveal and the release date, there is a lull.

We, as writers, would certainly like to be writing ALL THE TIME. But, let’s face it, we can’t. Intellectual and creative pursuits take energy and sometimes you are just lagging. After the release of SECRETS OF THE RIGHTEOUS (which is Book Two of the Ark City Confidential Chronicles) my natural thoughts turn to Book Three. I’ve researched. I’ve outlined. I’ve started writing (even though more research is to be done).

But what am I doing? Well, not what I should be. But there have been family events and car issues and work and drivers license renewal and other homeowner things…And yet it’s all the same stuff that goes on throughout the year. It’s no different than any other time.

So, where does this lull come from?

I believe we “fill” ourselves up with our projects, totally embracing them, until they take over our essence. That’s okay, actually, because we want our work to come from us as completely as possible. To do so it has to be completely within us.

You run a marathon. You take the bar exam. You set up a 12,000 count domino fall. Doesn’t matter. After you’re done, you’re wiped out, drained. You actually want the banality of something non-creative. THAT’S the lull.

However, after a while, that itch, that twitch, that jones, creeps back up and the need to create returns to the forefront. That’s when the lull is put back in its place for a while.

Inspiration

If there is one thing I have learned throughout the years it is inspiration is NOT something you look for. You simply have to be open to it.

Many people will talk about “writer’s block” or how they listen to music in order to get in some kind of mood. The first implies there is no inspiration and the second is that it can be manufactured. I disagree with both concepts. Perception is the key to inspiration. If you look at everyday life in an everyday manner, it is doubtful you will become inspired. However, if you allow yourself to view the same route to work in a different manner; or look over your bookcase or old paperwork not because you’re looking for something but just to see something you haven’t seen in a while, you will be putting yourself in a position where you will be susceptible to becoming inspired.

Many years ago, I met a gal at work who would eventually becoming part of my department. Her name is Heather Devore. I thought it was an absolutely cool name for a femme fatale, told her so, and asked if I could use her name in some future novel. Well, that name is a significant character in the first back of my historical crime series, Ark City Confidential.

At some point at work, I was struggling with the proper resolution to that book. I had thought about it for days on end. I was talking with another co-worker about a crime show on t.v. The ending to the book just suddenly appeared. And quite satisfactory as well.

Just recently, my co-worker, dear friend, and supporter, Heather Devore, talked with me after completing the second book in the series, Secrets of the Righteous. The casual conversation before the start of the workday resulted in a completion of the outline for the fourth book of the series…even though I haven’t even completed writing the third book.

I just go about my daily life. I keep my eyes and ears open. I see things and hear things both as they are and as they impress me. I am, in essence, an open door for ideas to enter. And I accept them graciously.