Fleeing Headlong Into the Past

[image error]First — I hope everyone will take a moment today to remember those who gave their lives on September 11, 2001. It’s hard to believe eleven years have passed.

Today I welcome Rob Kresge to Terry’s Place. Rob used to work for the CIA, whose Publications Review Board wants to approve every word written by former employees about events or countries since 1947. So Rob, an avid reader of historical mysteries, went back to 1870s Wyoming to create the Warbonnet mystery series.

Before I retired from the Army Reserve and CIA, my commuting buddies on audio books were Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael, Elizabeth Peters’ Amelia Peabody, Bernard Cornwell’s Richard Sharpe, and Patrick O’Brien’s Jack Aubrey.  The old saying is “write what you know,” but I’ve heard a more recent one, “write what you don’t know but would like to find out.”
I began to think about an historical mystery series set in a time and place not already overrun by sleuths like Ancient Egypt, Imperial Rome, the Middle Ages, and nineteenth century Victorian England and America.  I’d learned to ride in Wyoming as boy and found that that state (then a territory) had, to quote what Winston Churchill said about the Balkans, “manufactured more history than could be consumed locally.”
The first place in America (and nearly the world) where women could vote, the world’s first national park, the first female jurors, justices of the peace, Congresswoman, and governor.  The scene of literally battling dinosaur hunters, salted gem mines, mail-order brides, orphan trains, visits by Theodore Roosevelt and Virginian author Owen Wister, and the scene of many confrontations with Indian tribes being displaced.

I’d found my location, came up with my central characters—a Buffalo, NY newly-minted schoolteacher and a former Texas cowboy—and  identified the historical event that would underlie my first murder.  In 2000, I founded a writers group at CIA that included employees of all levels of accomplishment and every intelligence profession.  It had 180 members when I retired and is still active today.
But the road to publication is seldom smooth for first-time novelists.  I piled up about a hundred rejection letters, a few of which said “this is only a Western and we don’t publish/aren’t interested in Westerns”  What do you do when you get rejected?  Write another book.  Like a dummy, I liked my characters so much that I wrote two more Warbonnet novels while I kept querying.
Not having learned my lesson, I also wrote a Civil War female spy novel based on a true story that so far has not found a publisher.  Because of the timeframe, the Review Board isn’t interested in this manuscript either, although I found out about the true story in a book by a retired commander of the CIA’s Joint Military Reserve unit.
The one characteristic all my historical fiction shares is a strong romantic element.  I guess writing about historical women protagonists and other characters has stood me in good stead.  I set out to write what I didn’t know, but wanted to find out about.

For more about Rob’s books, you can  find the prologues and first three chapters of each novel at his website, www.robertkresge.com and order them from the publisher, www.abqpress.com, or from Barnes & Noble, Books a Million, your favorite independent bookstore via Indie Bound, Amazon, and on other ebook apps.