My suspense novel, What Came
Before, came out first online at Every Day Novels as a serial, seventy
chapters a day, five days a week, from March to June in 2014. It then became
available in trade paperback and in Kindle format. Almost a year later, I’m
beginning work on the prequel which will be set in the late 1940s Los Angeles
and in the fictional town of Beauport, Louisiana which means I have some reading
to do.
I did quite a bit of research for WCB, exploring both the mid-1900s as
well and the timbre of the times in 2000s in terms of the African-American
experience, but I focused my book on a middle-aged, middle-class white woman
who bears an uncomfortable resemblance to me.
This made my job easier because I could reference my thoughts,
experiences, and observations and use them as I deemed useful to the
story. I warped and exaggerated those
experiences and similarities – my own life being undramatic. However, I tried to keep the emotions real,
taking from something I went through and using how I felt as my resource for how
my characters might feel. As for my African-American characters, I had to ask
questions, read books and articles, watch documentaries and movies, and observe
and extrapolate and hope I could get it right.
Now I need to go back and research the same subjects, Hollywood, Los
Angeles, Palm Springs, the movie business, Jim Crow laws, African-American
history, Latino history, and the era of the mid-19th century. I went through my bookshelves and found some
of the references I’d collected and will share
some of my notes from this research as I work through it. I'll also reference movies etc. and what I learn from them.
1 comment:
Ooh, a prequel! Thanks for putting so much work and research into your books.
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