By Robin Weaver
 |
| Not me, but could have been. |
In sixth grade, I had a best friend who created a book of short
stories. Well, not an actual book, but a compilation of typed pages,
hole-punched and joined together by pronged fasteners. Even so… That was the
coolest thing ever.
Note, this same
friend later decided he’d sleep in a coffin every night. And did. But that’s a topic for another blog.
Anyway, Pudgy
(my childhood nickname—I’m not sure why) decided then and there… “I, too, will
be a writer.”
My parent’s
reaction…
Being at that
impressionable age, I didn’t then realize I was
giving up a dream, but I did
pursue a more practical degree.
Until… About
ten years ago, another friend showed me a compilation of short stories. This was an actual book (headers, footers,
page numbers, etc.—the whole ISBN). Again, the coolest thing ever.
Thus
my dream emerged from the ashes of my geeky IT existence. A few months later, a genealogy quest uncovered
my great-great Uncle Noverta. That’s
when I decided I must write
mystery-suspense (not that I hadn’t already decided that—being a Nancy
Drew/Colombo/Linda Howard/John Grisham fan girl).
But
back to Noverta… You see, the District Attorney decided ole Verta had murdered
his wife—in the coldest of blood. No matter that Noverta’s folks, and even his
inlaws, insisted the poor wife committed suicide. Maybe the neat little bullet
hole in the middle of her forehead was coincidental.
Okay,
confession time. There’s no evidence of a neat little hole. You see, the deeply
buried writer gene cannot resist embellishing an already cool story. Anyway,
Noverta’s jury didn’t buy the suicide defense and Great-great Uncle went to
Parchment Prison in Jackson Mississippi. Not only did Noverta not serve his time-before-my-time, he
escaped from that maximum security cell easy-peasy.
Stranger
than the strangest fiction… (Did I happen to mention Noverta’s last name, like
my grandfather’s, was actually Strange?)
Hold
on, the story gets even better. Our
escaped con somehow made his way to Colorado, where he became the deputy
sheriff. That’s not my writer gene, that’s the truth and nothing but. I swear on
a stack of mystery books. Noverta served in law enforcement under the pseudonym
Charles Boltz for over thirty years.
I Decided to Finally
Write that Book. How could I not? Only research proved far
more difficult than I anticipated. Apparently, Google didn’t exist in the
1930s. Sigh. I did find a distant cousin in Colorado, who was Noverta’s
great-grand daughter (we are Facebook friends). The Colorado Boltz’s knew
nothing of the Mississippi con man.
Anyway, when I couldn’t fill in all the pieces of Noverta’s story, I
decided to make it fiction (somewhat). Only once I started writing Framing
Noverta, the tale took over and the novel became the story of Sheriff Cal
Henderson—a baseball hero turned cop who does his best to prove Noverta has
been—you guessed it--Framed.
You do get part of Noverta’s story. Like the real-life character, good
ole Vertie gets tried, convicted, and framed. He escapes and heads out west.
Book 2 of this series, Saving Noverta, is expected to be released
this November. The tale picks up in Colorado with a former-salon-gal-turned-maid
finding something strange In Sheriff Noverta’s house.
We all have at least one…interesting character in our family tree. Hope
you have as much fun as I did chopping
down the branches.
Happy hunting, happy reading.
Robin
How can you uphold
the law when following the rules will destroy everything worth protecting?
Weary of D.C. murder and mayhem, Cal Henderson trades in his
city badge for a sheriff’s star. Regrettably, his Tennessee hometown proves anything
but peaceful—a woman is shot dead in her bed and the only viable suspects are
his best friend, Noverta, and the love of Cal’s life—the current Mrs. Grace
Gardner.
Noverta escapes from jail, making Cal question
his efforts to prove the man’s innocence. As more evidence points toward
Grace’s involvement in the murder, 
2 comments:
I'm fortunate that the maternal side of my family has had genealogy buffs for centuries. I have a neat hardcover book documenting the Rawson family back to Charlemagne. Among the archbishops and other notables, we have our fair share of highwaymen, etc. I come from a long line of strong, independent women. My great-grandmother was shunned because she divorced her husband who had abandoned her and their 8 children. The two oldest were grown by that time. She took the younger six and moved from Minnesota to Oregon. Her youngest daughter lived to be 104 as did my aunt (her granddaughter).
Great post! I love hearing how writers got started. Everyone has a different tale to tell. Can't wait to read Noverta's story!
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