The answer I gave above is for my WIP Clickbait. Here's my answer for The Necklace:
Nine years ago, I read an article in the Glens Falls Post-Star about a woman from a small town in upstate New York who was holding a fundraising event at a local bar. She needed money to travel to the upcoming execution of the man who had raped and murdered her young daughter twenty-two years before.
Everything about this story stuck with me: not only the tragic death, but also the woman’s dire circumstances and her quest to find justice and closure two decades later.
For years I wanted to write a novel about this, but I didn’t know what the story would be. Then one day I was having coffee with a writer friend, John Henry Davis, and he suggested: “What if the guy who’s being executed maybe didn’t do it?”
And that’s how The Necklace was born.
After I wrote the novel, I discovered something amazing. There is a woman in Idaho named Carol Dodge who devoted her life to proving that Christopher Tapp, the man imprisoned for raping and killing her daughter Angie many years earlier, was innocent. Thanks to Carol’s relentless efforts, Tapp was finally set free and the real killer, Brian Leigh Dripps, was arrested.
Nine years ago, I read an article in the Glens Falls Post-Star about a woman from a small town in upstate New York who was holding a fundraising event at a local bar. She needed money to travel to the upcoming execution of the man who had raped and murdered her young daughter twenty-two years before.
Everything about this story stuck with me: not only the tragic death, but also the woman’s dire circumstances and her quest to find justice and closure two decades later.
For years I wanted to write a novel about this, but I didn’t know what the story would be. Then one day I was having coffee with a writer friend, John Henry Davis, and he suggested: “What if the guy who’s being executed maybe didn’t do it?”
And that’s how The Necklace was born.
After I wrote the novel, I discovered something amazing. There is a woman in Idaho named Carol Dodge who devoted her life to proving that Christopher Tapp, the man imprisoned for raping and killing her daughter Angie many years earlier, was innocent. Thanks to Carol’s relentless efforts, Tapp was finally set free and the real killer, Brian Leigh Dripps, was arrested.
Talk about life imitating art!