{"id":8956,"date":"2021-04-14T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-14T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8956"},"modified":"2021-04-13T19:23:53","modified_gmt":"2021-04-13T23:23:53","slug":"history-mysteries-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=8956","title":{"rendered":"History Mysteries \u2013 Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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New Orleans-based author Michael H. Rubin attended the Deadly Ink! Conference around the time his historical, The Cottoncrest Curse<\/em><\/a>, was published, and I met him there, then read and reviewed his book. His academic publisher, LSU Press, insisted on historical accuracy of the book\u2019s two time periods, 1893 and the 1960s Civil Rights era. To make sure, they had \u201ca bevy of historians\u201d vet the manuscript. That sounded like a nail-biter to me, because historical events don\u2019t have a single interpretation, and we\u2019re always learning more. Think how, after 3400 years, we’re still making new archaeological discoveries in Egypt!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the current issue of Mystery Readers Journal<\/a><\/em>, Paul Vidich\u2019s essay, \u201cA Personal Historical Murder Mystery,\u201d struck a chord with me. His novel, The Coldest Warrior,<\/a><\/em> was inspired by the death of his scientist uncle who \u201cjumped or fell\u201d from his 13th<\/sup> floor hotel room in New York City. Only years later did the family learn he\u2019d been given LSD in one of the CIA\u2019s ill-considered experiments<\/a>. He had several false starts in trying to fictionalize this story, mostly because he was too close to it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It wasn\u2019t until he took a step back and examined the events not from his family’s point of view, but from that of the CIA officers engaged in\u2014\u201cmurder, cover-up, and a power struggle over the repercussions of the case\u201d\u2014could he make headway. Ultimately, the story showed the psychological burdens on them, and Vidich makes the broader point that \u201cHonorable men who work in covert operations inevitably bring some of the darkness into themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This resonated with me after a failed attempt to write a short story that would bring in highlights from the fascinating (to me) genealogy of my great-great grandmother. Like Vidich, I was much too close to the subject, so I sent an early draft to my editor, Barb Goffman, more than a little embarrassed because I knew it was awful! All the elements that engaged me came out, and a completely different story resulted. It\u2019s \u201cThe Unbroken Circle,\u201d published last summer in Pulp Modern<\/em><\/a>. Despite the magazine title, this story is a historical, set in the late 1800s. The editors must have found its evergreen themes of family loyalty and connecting to the past \u201cmodern\u201d enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Orleans-based author Michael H. Rubin attended the Deadly Ink! Conference around the time his historical, The Cottoncrest Curse, was published, and I met him there, then read and reviewed his book. His academic publisher, LSU Press, insisted on historical … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"History Mysteries \u2013 Part 2 Even though these events occurred a long time ago, sometimes you can be too close!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[62,174,266,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8956","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","category-first-draft-blog","category-history","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2ks","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8956","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8958,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8956\/revisions\/8958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}