Suzanne Ferrell's Blog

Writing books takes research. Some more than others.

When I'm working on the Westen books I'm lucky to have the setting in a fictional town I set in central and northeast Ohio. That gives me freedom to make the town, it's characters and the plots free reign as long as they are contemporary. Most research may be things like laws, career specifics (i.e.police, firefighters) and sometimes logistics.

When we're in the Edgars' world, the research is a little deeper. These books take place in real cities. So I have a deep love affair with Google Maps. It lets me not only define the areas where the action takes place, but sometimes like in DRAINED, it let me find areas of Cleveland for my characters to live, places for the villian to "hunt" and even let me describe abandoned buildings. I also talked with a member of the Cleveland Forensics department and then delved into the actual workings of the bloodbank systems, (some of which I knew from years of doing high-risk obstetrics nursing).


Historical books take the most research. For the Neptune's Five books, I not only had to learn about the year before America entered WWII, which was the settings for book 1 and 2, but I needed to research the areas for the books to take place. In SHANGHAIED I discovered there was an emergency shipyard built in Wilmington, NC. How cool. That set up the entire plot. In TRACKED, I used the actual setting for the Carolina war maneuvers performed by the Army in late Novemeber of 1941. In these books I also had to learn about the waters off the Carolina coast and discovered that U-boats sailed just off the coast of North Carolina like sharks waiting for our boats to come by. I also had to learn a lot about spies that were in America and the Western Hemisphere at that time. There's also discriptions of clothing, hair styles, weapons, and even real people, like generals, admirals and politicians of the time.

So, when you read TRACKED, I hope all that research pulls you into 1941 and lets you feel as if you're living the story with the Neptune's Five team.

COMING 9/14/21 Preorders available now at Amazon, iBooks, B&N and KOBO

When I was writing HUNTED a Deputy U.S. Marshal came into the picture. Frank Castello was Katie's contact in the Witness Protection Program. At first Castello was supposed to be a secondary character in this book only. Problem was, he became not only an integral part of the story, he bonded with the Edgars brothers, Matt and Luke. A bit of a loner, the Edgars clan unofficially adopted him as one of their own.

Rarely do I have the image of an actor so connected to my vision of a character. Except, everytime I close my eyes when I think about Castello I see Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Sigh. 😊

As I got to know Castello, I learned he was a man of action more than words. He also had a witty sense of humor, laced with sarcasm at the right moments. He was also loyal and brave. He'd do anything to protect his adoptive family, every last one of them. Even if that meant dealing with his most hated professionals, photographers. EXPOSED is Castello's story!



She Was Going To Be Trouble…
U.S. Marshal Frank Castello is on medical leave and feeling restless. While at his friends’ wedding he finds himself attracted to Sydney Peele. Problem was, the cute, sassy blonde is the photographer for the wedding. Frank hates photographers. They’re a hazard to his profession, especially when he’s on witness protection duty.

He Had Hero Written All Over Him…
Sydney Peele is intrigued by the grumpy Marshal at her friend’s wedding, even when the big, sexy man begrudgingly offers to take her home afterwards. Her pleasure is short lived when her home and life is literally going up in flames. Her brother had been staying at her home and there is no sign of him anywhere. When Sydney goes into a state of frozen shock, finely honed instinct has Castello rushing her from the scene to safety at his home.

Danger Surrounds Them…
A visit to the fire scene the next day confirms his suspicions when the firemen on the sight confirm it a case of arson. As Frank and Sydney search for answers about who might’ve started the blaze, questions arise about her brother, also a photographer. Was he responsible for the fire? Or has he exposed his sister to something far more sinister?

While it's been cold and dreary, I've been busy crafting a new story. This is TRACKED, the second book in the Neptune 5's spy-chaser books.

We're still in 1941 and while America hasn't actually entered the war, the powers in charge can see the writing on the wall. At some point the United States will have to join forces with the Allies to defeat the Axis powers trying to dominate the world.

In preparation for this, the Congress have started the Selective Service. They plan to draft men to serve for a year's term, staggering them at six-month intervals, so by the time the first group are ready to go back to their lives, half of the men staying will be trained. They also start improving and manufacturing more weapons of war, including armored tanks.

Another weakness they saw in their Army was leaders who knew how to fight in a war, and how to use the new armored divisions. So, a plan was developed to use these new men and machines to perform war maneuvers. One took place in Louisiana in September. and two were planned for the Carolinas in October.

That is the premise of our story. What if...someone in our own government or armed services doesn't want us to join the war? What if they want to delay our entrance? What if they want to sabotage the war maneuvers?


Enter the crew of the Neptune's Folly, this time joined by the heroine of SHANGHAIED, Sophie and her friend Ruth, the young heroine of this newest book, TRACKED. The hero of this book is Sean "Scout" Hanahan, the team's youngest member, but raised in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky, he's the one who can track anything, including spies on a mission in the rural lands of the Carolinas.

I'm about half done with the story, but Lyndsey has already finished our concept for the cover and I couldn't wait to share it with y'all!

DRAINED, the next book in the Edgars Family Novels will be available for purchase in October! 😎
I’m hoping on the 1st, but it will depend on the editing and formatting. Amazon has been having major glitches with the pre-orders to Indie authors, so I’m afraid I’ll not be doing one for this book. 🙁

So, watch for the announcement on FB and of course I’ll put out a release date newsletter the day it goes live!

This is a special book. My sister Sami has been asking me for years to write a “serial killer” book. I kept telling her I don’t write thrillers, I write straight up romantic suspense, with characters you’ll fall in love with in dangerous situations.

Then my son Eric came up with a story concept and the title DRAINED that would fit the bill for Sami’s “serial killer” story and my genre of RS. This was an opportunity to gift a story to both of them and move the Edgars series into it’s new direction.

While the Edgars Family members are secondary characters in this story, the hero and heroine you’ve met before in VANISHED, Detective Aaron Jeffers and Brianna Matthews.

I hope you will enjoy their story as much as I did writing it.
Drained
Here’s the blurb:

DRAINED
Who reports a homeless person missing? They’re already missing.
Three years ago, Brianna Matthews became a victim at the hand of powerful men and barely escaped with her life because her friend cared enough to search for her. From that moment on, she lived her life trying to pay the favor forward by working in a women’s shelter for abuse victims. When her coworker and a former resident in the shelter doesn’t show up for work, Brianna knows it’s up to her to find her. Enlisting the help of Homicide Detective Aaron Jeffers to go with her to check in on her friend, little does she know they would end up walking in the underworld of Cleveland’s homeless community.

They make the perfect target.
In finding Brianna’s coworker seriously ill, they promise to find her friend, a homeless man, only to discover his body in an abandoned building. Aaron’s years of experience with murder and death alerts him that this may be more than the death of one Vietnam Vet living on the street. What appears at first to be a death by natural causes quickly turns into a bizarre murder investigation.

The corpse is drained of blood.
Another body is found in a more public setting, this time with an attachment to the women’s shelter. Fearing Brianna might be in danger, Aaron keeps her with him as the investigation, along with their relationship, deepens. As the new Edgars Security and Investigations Group lends a hand, one of their own goes missing.

Can Aaron and Brianna find their friend before the killer claims another victim?

Becoming a published author has had an affect on my reading habits. From the time I could read a chapter book at the age of five, I have been a very voracious reader. As many of you probably were, I was that kid that the “only seven books per child” rule at the library was broken constantly, with my mom adding some of my books to my sister and brother’s piles so I could read to my heart’s content. There was the Tacy, Betsy & Tib series, I couldn’t get enough of. Then came the Anne of Green Gables series and then The Miracle Worker, which set off my love of both historical fiction and true-life biographies. Following that I found two things that would shape my life, the Sue Barton, student nurse series and romance novels.

After nursing school, which limited my reading to course books during the semesters and fiction on school breaks, I couldn’t get enough books to read, usually no less than three a week. By the time I started writing, I was reading between two-fifty and three-hundred books a year.

Then I started writing. At first it was just a can-I-do-it sort of effort. Then I finished my first book (CANTRELL’S BRIDE), and I was hooked. But it wasn’t until I started publishing that I realized not only did I have less time to indulge in reading three or four books a week, but I had to be careful what I read while I wrote. When I’m writing the small town Westen books, like my new release, CLOSE TO THE HEART, I steer clear of other authors who write the small-town romance genre books. When I write the darker Edgars books, I don’t read any dark romantic suspense. Why? Because I don’t want what I’m reading to seep in and influence my stories, plots, characters or my writer’s voice, (aka how I tell a story).

So, even though I soooooooooo want to read Karen Rose’s new release, INTO THE DARK, since I’ve started a new book in the darker Edgars novels world I’m refraining until my book is finished. I’ve been on a Paranormal and historical and non-fiction kick. This is what I’ve been reading:

1)MAISIE DOBBS-by Jacqueline Winspear. A series of mystery books set in the period between the end of WWI and the beginning of WWII. The main character is Maisie Dobbs, (which is also the title of the 1st book in the series), a nurse in the Great War. She is also a trained investigator and somewhat psychologist. Totally not something I’m ever going to write, but I do enjoy them. I’m on the fifth book in the series.

2)BLOOD TRUTH-the 4th book in the Black Dagger Legacy series by JR Ward. I’ve love the BDBrotherhood books ever since my friend Addison Fox told me I had, HAD to read Dark Lover. Good thing, too, as I never writer true paranormal books. Yes, occasionally a character may have premonition-type visions, but nothing beyond that hits my books. Again, not in my wheelhouse as a writer.

3)AND IF I PERISH; FRONTLINE U.S. ARMY NURSES IN WORLD WAR II by Monahan & Neidel-Greenlee. This one is non-fiction and combines not only my love for history, but the very much forgotten stories of nurses and other medical personnel who served in dangerous situations to care for the wounded—soldiers, civilians, POWs and even their own—during WWII. As a daughter of a surgical nurse and having worked in surgery almost daily in L&D, I found the nursing advancement made during these stories enlightening. The personal stories are true, and sometimes hear-breaking.

4)And finally, THE FLIGHT GIRLS: A Novel by Noelle Salazar. I actually bought this thinking it was non-fiction. (Yeah, I know it says novel in the title, but I was half-awake when I clicked on the buy button.) I was delighted it was a novel, women’s fiction with heavy romantic elements. I haven’t finished it yet but am thoroughly enjoying it.

Why so much historicals and non-fiction? Well, I’m reading things that might ground me in the period right before WWII for the second book in the Neptune’s Five series, which I’ll work on after this Edgars book. Also, none of these books interfered with me writing CLOSE TO THE HEART, either.
So, what are you reading?

It's been two years on my calendar since I last released a book in the Westen Series, but the fun part of being an author is, the town and characters don't exactly move on the same timeline as real life.  When last we left our small Midwestern town, they were still trying to dig out of the blizzard that had encompassed the state of Ohio and a little girl named Lexie had been found abandoned in an empty house.

In Close To The Heart we take up the story about six weeks after Close To Danger's ending and the snows that followed the blizzard have finally ended. The town is moving into spring repairs, planting crops, and the warmer weather brings the beginning of spring baseball.

Lexie has settled into life in the Westen House, the group home for at-risk teens, and is starting to thrive under the care of  Melissa Davis, the house mother. Her own mother is missing and that fact alone keeps Sheriff Deputy Daniel Lowe coming by to check on her safety. Daniel is also the high school baseball coach and encourages the four teenage boys living at the house to try out for the team.

Here's a morning at Westen House:

“The bus will be here in five minutes. Don’t forget your lunches!” Melissa Davis called to the four young men stomping around overhead.

They sound like a heard of elephants.

She smiled. She wouldn’t want it any other way. They were acting like normal teenage boys. Loud, active, rushing towards their day and their futures. So different from the sullen, wary teens who’d been living in the house when she’d taken over as in-residence foster mom last fall.

Part of the problem had been their backgrounds. Each had various levels of abuse, neglect and run-ins with the law. The other problem had been Todd Banyon, the man who’d previously run Westen House, and died in a horrific fire he’d started.

It had taken her a few weeks to find her way with the boys, but she had two things going for her. First, a belief that each person was worthy of respect. Respect from others and respect for themselves. Something she was learning as well with her weekly counseling sessions and meeting with other survivors of domestic abuse.

The second thing easing her into her new role was her love of baking. After making her mother’s ginger snap recipe one afternoon, two of the boys had tentatively joined her in the kitchen for an after-school snack. They talked about school, cracked jokes on each other and gave her a little look into their personalities. She’d learned something that day. Boys were more willing to talk when you fed them.

Maybe that’s where the old adage, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, came from?

Too bad it hadn’t worked on her ex-husband, Frank Compton. Of course that adage assumed the man actually had a heart to begin with, which Melissa could attest wasn’t true of Frank. The man was a monster, incapable of loving anyone. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He could love someone, as long as that someone was Frank Compton.

Feet pounded down the stairs. She turned to see three of her four boys hurry through the kitchen towards the counter where the sack lunches she’d packed for them sat.

“Thanks Miss. D. See ya, Shrimp,” Bryan said, patting the little girl seated at the counter, eating her waffles, on the head as he passed by.

“Love PB and J day, Miss. D,” Colt said, snatching both his lunch and a berry from Lexie’s plate with a grin.

“You ate yours already,” the little girl said with a pout.

“Still hungry, Shrimp,” he said and followed Bryan through the backdoor.

“Hey, Shrimp, you gotta eat faster,” Trent said, as he too stole a berry then grabbed his lunch.
“Thanks, Ms. D. Geoff! Get a move on it! Bus is pulling up,” he yelled up the stairs and dashed for the door.

“Tell Mr. Mike to hold on a second,” Geoffrey yelled as he ran down the steps, snagged a lunch and darted out the door.

Melissa followed him onto the porch. “You going to be here for dinner tonight, Geoffrey?” she yelled as the tall, lanky brunette reached the bus just behind the others.

He turned and shrugged. “Depends on if Joe and I finish the paint job at that new quilt store in town.”

“Get a seat, Hamilton,” Mike Karkosak, the fifty-ish bus driver said to him and waved out the open bus door to Melissa. “Got six more stops yet. Can’t have you making everyone else late.”

Melissa turned from the door to find Lexie holding her head in one hand and staring at her food with her lips pressed tightly together. In the month the little girl had been living at Westen House, this was the first time Melissa had seen her angry.

Picking up her mug of hot spiced tea, she sat in the chair across from the little girl. “Did that waffle do something to make you mad at it?”
Lexie shook her head.

“So, the berries must have done something wrong?”

Again, Lexie just shook her head, this time her lips relaxing a bit.

“Well, that settles it. The milk must be the problem.”

Without lifting her head, Lexie looked up through her lashes at Melissa and shook her head, her lips fighting the urge to lift in a smile. “Food can’t make you mad.”

“Sure it can. If someone burns it, your food can make you mad.”

“No, the person who burnt it makes you mad.”
Melissa took a long drink of her tea before continuing. “What if the food is too salty or too sour to eat? That can make you mad.”

“You’re mad cause you can’t eat it. That’s the cooker’s fault, too. Not the food’s,” Lexie said as if everyone knew that, then shoved another bite of maple syrup-laden waffle in her mouth.

In the first few days caring for Lexie, Melissa had quickly realized that the little girl was smart and very mature for the age of six. Probably from learning to care for herself while living with a drug addict parent.

“Well, if it’s not your breakfast, what had you staring at your food like you were very mad?”
Lexie’s face fell as she chewed then swallowed. “The boys call me Shrimp.”
Ahh. Melissa fought her smile. It wasn’t that she thought the nickname cute or was amused at Lexie’s discomfiture over it. The fact that the little girl reacted like a normal child to a nickname she didn’t like was a good thing.

“What would you like them to call you?”

“Lexie,” she said as if there was no other need to call her anything else, then popped two blueberries in her mouth.

“Hmm,” Melissa said, pretending to give that great thought. “They could just call you that. But do you know why people give other people nicknames?”

Lexie shook her head.

“Sometimes they call people a nickname because they can’t quite remember names, like my grandmother. She knew she loved me, but she had so many granddaughters, she’d sometimes get us confused. So, she’d just call us sweetie.”

“What if you were with all your girl cousins and she said sweetie. Who would she be talking to?”

Melissa grinned. “She did that all the time. We all just figured she was talking to us personally. We never corrected her.”

A giggle escaped Lexie. “That’s silly.”

“Yes, it was.” Melissa gave her a wink. “Sometimes people giving a person a nickname and teasing them about something is a way to show they like them. Especially boys. I think that may be why all our boys call you Shrimp. They like having you here, but don’t want the others to know it. So, they tease you about being little.”

“Like a Shrimp in the ocean?”

“Something like that.”

Lexie took another bite of her breakfast and seemed to be considering all they’d discussed. Melissa hoped she’d given her a good explanation to the nickname issue. The boys always used the name in a friendly, teasing—even indulgent—way. Never mean or condescending.

Melissa was well acquainted with those kinds of names. Fatty. Lazyass. Stupid. Frank had use those often, even becoming crass when he’d had too much to drink, usually punctuating the name calling with his fists. Looking at the sweet little girl gobbling down her breakfast, Melissa prayed she’d never have to explain why people would call others—even those they supposedly swore they loved—ugly, hurtful names.

She shook off the melancholy thoughts, something she was finding easier to do each day she was further from her ex-husband’s reach, and took her mug to the sink.

“Hurry up and finish your breakfast. We have appointments in town today.”

“What’re we doing?” Lexie asked before shoving her last bite of waffle in her mouth, a much happier and excited expression on her face.

“First we have a visit with Doc Clint and Miss Harriett.”

“I love Miss Harriett,” Lexie said as she bounced out of her seat and brought her dishes to the sink.

It had taken Melissa weeks to get the boys to do this simple act when she first arrived at the half-way house, but Lexie had jumped at every chance to be helpful, even if it was just bringing her dishes from the table. It pleased Melissa and broke her heart at the same time.
She believed the little girl was anxious to please because she’d had so little attention paid to her in her young life. Melissa also suspected that Lexie was afraid if she wasn’t perfect, she’d be sent away. Which was why her little bout of anger earlier was such a milestone.

Melissa was in no way a trained counselor. Heck she was so messed up, she needed one herself. But she could give Lexie a safe and loving place to find her footing. If that allowed the little girl to grow and deal with the life she’d lived for six years with her neglectful mother, then Melissa was willing to do whatever it took to keep her safe.

So, I'm hoping y'all enjoy visiting Westen and all the characters living there with me again in Close To The Heart. Some of your favorites will pop in and of course as Lorna Doone, the owner of the Peaches 'N Cream Cafe always says, "Things aren't always as they appear in Westen."

Happy Reading,

Suzanne

Thank you to everyone who signed up to get an autographed print copy of KIDNAPPED. The contest finished on Saturday and there were 1303 of you!! I am stunned.

Congratulations to the ten winners. I will be mailing your copies out this week.

If you didn't make Goodreads' cut as a winner, I am running KIDNAPPED for $0.99 right now. AND next week we'll be making HUNTED, the second book in the Edgars family RS series, on sale @ $0.99.

Why all this PR for the books? (Besides the fact that I love these books and characters and want to share them with y'all?)

Well, that's because SEIZED the third story, a novella, is going to be ready for sale the first week of June!

Again, thanks to everyone!!

Sometimes an author builds a world that is so real it sucks me in. It holds my attention for the entire length of the book and often for spontaneous moments afterwards. I wonder about the characters. My brain will pull their images up as they move around the town and I think to myself, wonder what so-and-so are doing.

That is great story telling.

It's one of the things I've tried to emulate in my books. That sense of family or community or both.

In Kidnapped we learn that the heroine, Sami Edgars has three older brothers. (A friend once asked me why I give my characters so many siblings. My reply: "Sequels.") In Hunted we get to visit the Edgars family once again as we learn Matt's story. I'm currently working on the next book in the mix, Seized. It's the story of the oldest Edgars brother Dave and his wife Judy. And yes, even the youngest brother, Luke will get his story.

In the Westen series, I wanted to address community as family. In Close To Home we meet some of the residents of Westin. The hero, Clint Preston the new doc, Emma Lewis the single mom who works two jobs to support her twin sons and elderly mother.

You also meet Cleetus, a sheriff deputy; Lorna Doone, the proprietor of the Peaches 'N Cream cafe; Harriet, the irascible nurse who drives Clint a little crazy; and Gage Justice, Emma's cousin.

So tomorrow the second book in the Westen series, Close To The Edge will be released for sale on Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Smashwords and Apple sites. This time Gage Justice gets his story. Here's the blurb:

After facing death as an undercover narcotics cop, Gage Justice has come home to heal. His recuperation is cut short by his father’s unexpected diagnosis of cancer and subsequent death. Now he’s honoring one of his father’s last wishes by taking over as the sheriff of his boyhood home, Westen, Ohio. Biding time until his father’s term is finished, he fights boredom more than crime in the sleepy little town—that is until one sexy little teacher-turned-Private-Investigator literally falls into his arms.

Bobby Roberts is looking for adventure. After giving up her own dreams to raise her two sisters after the death of their parents, she’s been trapped in a schoolroom for nearly two decades. The suffocating claustrophobia of the classroom has set her on a new career path. She arrives in Westen, complete with brand-spanking-new PI license, a handgun and a simple case—investigate a lien on property of a dead man.

Little does she realize her “simple little case” will lead her into the world of one sexy sheriff and the path of a murderer intent on keeping them both from discovering his secrets or stopping his plans that could destroy Westen.

You'll get to revisit with some of the zany characters who live in Westen, but you'll also meet a few more intriguing characters.

Yesterday, I ran an ad announcing my book HUNTED was $0.99 until March 17th at all the e-book venues, (Amazon, Apple, B&N, Kobo and Smashwords). About an hour after it went out, the book sales flew off the charts. Yea! I suspected this would happen. What I didn't expect was my husband's reaction to it.

See, he's a computer engineer with a math IQ on the genius side. Note: He DOESN'T read fiction. Has never read one of my books. And quite frankly I don't think I want him to.

However, he has always been very supportive of me through the lean years of no published works and these fun days of publishing my stories. Now, give the man a set of numbers and statistics to look at and he's in geek heaven!!

It started when the sales numbers on B&N came in. Not only was HUNTED selling, but so was KIDNAPPED. Of course he had to figure out the cross over sales percentage, (your eyes crossing yet, mine were). He figured out it fluctuated between 4-8%. Uh. Cool.

Then he discovered sales ranking numbers on Amazon. OMG. First the Kindle and books>romantic suspense list top 100, then the books>literature and fiction top 100 and the ranking of total Kindle ranking. The numbers kept getting smaller, which made the ranking higher. Hourly, I got a report.

Then the man found the "author ranking" near the bottom of the page. OMG again! I'd made the top 100 of like four of those. Imagine how fun it was to be awakened in the wee hours of the morning with the news that I'd gotten within 2 of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

So, between me giggling over the sales numbers and cool rankings, and watching hubby go into math mode, it's been a lovely experience.

I appreciate everyone who has taken the time and interest in HUNTED. Hope you'll leave me a review to let me know how you liked it either here or at one of the books sites.

AND if you haven't had a chance to try my Edgars' family Romantic Suspense series, please give KIDNAPPED and HUNTED a try.

(This is a copy of my blog from 1/28/13 over at the Romance Bandits blog. www.romancebandits.com)
For you who have read or watched the animated version of Alice In Wonderland, (Or even the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp version), you will understand when I say, I have fallen down the rabbit hole.

In the story when Alice goes down the hole, she moves from one odd scene to another, seemingly without any rhyme (or sometimes too many of them) or reason. But on she goes, jumping from cottages with strange biscuits to eating mushrooms with opium smoking caterpillars to tea parties with a Mad Hatter and March Hare, to a game of croquette with the Red Queen of Hearts and almost loses her head! (Shew! What an adventure.) Dizzy yet? That book and both movies made my head spin…yet, like Alice, I tend to follow the White Rabbit when he wanders into my head.

Here’s how it happened today.

Halfway through my daily word count, I was taking a break to do some PR work on Facebook and Twitter, when suddenly a tweet popped up that caught my eyes. THIS DAY IN HISTORY. (White Rabbit) Well, if you know anything about me, dear readers, you know I just love oddities about history, so of course I had to click on the URL (rabbit hole).

And we’re off.

First I scanned the page. Hmm, Martin Luther King JR was born in 1929. Cool. A brief read confirmed a lot of what I learned in school. Nothing new. 1974 fashion designer, Rachel Roy (don’t really know her work) was born, interesting, but not enough to send me down another hole. 1919, an 8-foot wave of hot molasses floods the streets of Boston, killing 21 people. Okay…gotta read about that. Bookmark that for possible use in a book.

Further into this rabbit hole I go. OMG, in 1831 Victor Hugo finished writing The Hunchback Of Notre Dame. He’d been contracted to write it for over a year. Who knew publishing companies with contracts were around back then? (I imagine it was a wealthy sponsor more than a business.) How cool is this, nearly 2 centuries later his Les Miserables won Golden Globe honors for acting?

Okay, new hole…a little more relevant to me. In 1972 Don McClean’s epic American Pie hits #1 on the charts. Love that song! Can actually sing all the lyrics, a feat which completely amazes my family as they know I make up my own lyrics when I don’t know what the singer is singing. Must look up that one. Oooo here’s a link to the lyrics. (Left turn in the rabbit hole).

When I was in high school, that song had been out about four years. (You do the math.) My English Teacher, Mr. Harker, a tall, bald man with nearly coke-bottle-bottom-lensed glasses and a late 19th-century type beard, who wore vests and cotton shirts and faded jeans to class, handed us each a copy of the lyrics. (Yes, this is how I know them.) He challenged us to interpret the words based on the history of rock and roll. (Okay, this was way cooler than MacBeth, which I happened to adore, but using stuff from my life to interpret something..way cooler!)

Ooooo, another URL, interpretation of the lyrics. Let’s see how spot on I was. (Right turn in rabbit hole and further down we go.) The first verse tells us about a simpler life when Don was a young teen delivering newspapers on his bike. Then the fateful day when Buddy Holly, Richie Valenz and the Big Bopper all died in an airplane crash. How devestating that must have been?



Then there’s the chorus, “Bye, bye, Miss American Pie. Drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry. Them good ol’ boys were drinking whiskey & rye. Sayin’ this will be the day that I die. This will be the day that I die.” Two American icons. American as apple Pie and Chevy. Both represented a simpler time of the 50′s. Now that’s gone.

On to verse 2. Our troubadour is now an older teen, going to sock hops (“I was a lonely teenaged broncin’ buck, with a pink carnation and a pick up truck.”) , only to question his girl’s loyalty. He references ”The Book of Love”. Some in my class thought it was about the bible, since the bible is further down in the verse and God is mentioned point blank. But I was one of the few who knew the song, “Who Wrote The Book of Love” from a 1950′s do-wap group, The Monotones. (Yes, got extra credit for finding that one!) And the girl dumped him at the dance, (“And I knew I was out of luck”) The Day The Music Died.

(further into the hole we go) Verse 3: Okay, this is a lonnnnnnnng verse to interpret, because there are so many icons referenced. It’s been more than 10 years without his idol, Buddy Holly, and now there’s this new guy he calls the Jester. Who is the Jester? Some thought it was Mick Jagger because of the line “Moss grows fat on a rolling stone”. But there’s also the reference to “A coat he borrowed from James Dean”. Bob Dylan wore a similar coat on an album cover. The King was thought to be a reference to Elvis, because he was called the King of Rock N’ Roll. But then the King and Queen could be JFK and Jackie O and the jester could be Oswald. “And while the King was looking down, the jester stole his thorny crown” and “no verdict was returned” could be the loss of justice in a trial when Oswald was killed. Hmmm

Here in verse 3 he also references more change. “Lennon reads a book on Marx”, (not Groucho) and “the quartet practices in the park” (The Beatles farewell performance at Candle Stick Park). Sigh. I can’t even begin to get into the 4th and 5th verse.

It’s at this point, I realize I am truly, truly deep in the rabbit hole, my day so skewed and my word count lost, that I slowly turn away from the lure of symbolism and metaphors (White Rabbit) and retreat to the sanity of my WIP, before I start chasing URL’s about the Beatles, Janis Joplin and a host of others.