Hi, Roxanne, and thanks so much for hosting me as a
guest blogger on Roxanne's Realm.
All three novels I've written in the Young Adult and
New Adult genre are "historical novels." My 2009 novel, Josef Jaeger, was set in 1933-34 Germany,
in the early years of the Nazi regime, while my 2013 novel, Tyler Buckspan, was set in a small town
in northeast Florida in the mid-1960's. My newest release, Becoming Andy Hunsinger, is set in Tallahassee, Florida in the
mid-1970's.
I was a Florida teenager during most of the 1960's,
so I had a pretty good recollection of that period, and what Florida was like
at the time. Likewise, I attended law school in Tallahassee during the
mid-1970's, so I have very vivid recollections of that time period.
Now, admittedly I'm an old guy, but I wasn't around in 1933-34, much less did
I live in Germany at that time. So, when I decided to write Josef Jaeger I knew I'd have to do a
great deal of research in order to describe what life was like in Munich,
Bayreuth and Berlin, the three cities where the Josef Jaeger story takes place.
I had already read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer, so I knew
the history of the Nazi movement pretty well, but I knew that was just a
starting point. Readers of historical fiction want to be transported back in
time. They want to know everything about the way people lived in whatever
period you, as a fiction writer, are describing in your books. And they'll be
very upset if you botch things up with a slew of historical inaccuracies when
you write for them. So here's what I did while writing Josef Jaeger.
I rented an apartment in Berlin for three months
during the summer of 2006, in the Schoenberg
district. I had a few friends in Berlin and also in Bavaria, where Munich
and Bayreuth are located. Most were former exchange students who'd lived with
me or with friends in Florida. And then I got busy.
I walked the streets of Berlin. I made notes on
architectural styles of buildings that survived the war. I asked people
questions about the types of trees, shrubs and flowers I saw growing in the
city. I learned the names of the city's districts. I went to the public library
to look at history books with photos in them so I could see how people dressed
in the 1930's. I talked to older people about what sort of cuisine they dined
on back then, and what sort of music they listened to. How did they transport
themselves around the city? What sort of furniture did people have back then? What
sort of movies did they watch? What was the public education system like back
then? I even found a few men who'd belonged to Hitler Youth.
Then I traveled with a former exchange student to
Bavaria, where we spent considerable time in Bayreuth and Munich. I repeated
what I'd done in Berlin because I knew southern Germany had differed so greatly
from Berlin, back in the 1930's. I couldn't just use what I'd learned in Berlin
when I wrote scenes occurring in Bavaria.
Then, after I'd collected a very large volume of
material (All stored on my trusty laptop computer.), I returned to Florida and
then I began to write Josef Jaeger.
The book has been very well-received since it
debuted. It won "Best Young Adult Novel" in the international Rainbow
Awards competition in 2009 and also "Best Young Adult Novel" in the
2010 Rainbow Excellence Awards competition sponsored by the Rainbow Romance
Writers association.
I took on quite a project when I wrote Josef Jaeger, didn't I?
My new novel, Becoming
Andy Hunsinger, didn't pose such a challenge, but I still had to be sure I
got things right. When we listened to music in 1976 we listened to LP records;
CDs, MP3 players and even cassette tapes didn't exist. Neither did cell phones.
Tallahassee was a very conservative town back then; gay people led their
private lives in shadow for fear they might lose their job if their sexuality
became public knowledge. And of course I needed do research on the fashions of
the day, as my memory was a bit hazy on that subject.
Like I said, readers of historical fiction expect an
author to "get it right." They'll know if you don't, and I for one
feel an obligation to be as historically accurate as I can be. I'm very pleased
with the final version of Becoming Andy
Hunsinger; it will transport readers back in time, to the days of
bell-bottom jeans, black light posters, and handlebar moustaches. I hope your
readers will consider giving it a try.
Thanks again, Roxanne, for hosting me today.
Becoming Andy Hunsinger
Jere' M. Fishback
Genre: Historical romance, GLBT,
Historical,Edgy Young Adult
Publisher: Prizm Books
Date of Publication: December 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61040-858-5
ASIN: B00RN6L8HS
Number of pages: 208
Word Count: 65,800
Cover Artist: Fiona Jayde
Book Description:
It's 1976, and Anita Bryant's homophobic "Save Our Children" crusade rages through Florida. When Andy Hunsinger, a closeted gay college student, joins in a demonstration protesting Bryant's appearance in Tallahassee, his straight boy image is shattered when he's "outed" by a TV news reporter.
In the months following, Andy discovers just what it means to be openly gay in a society that condemns love between two men.
Can Andy's friendship with Travis, a devout Christian who's fighting his own sexual urges, develop into something deeper?
Available at Amazon Prizm Books
Excerpt
On my seventh
birthday, my parents gave me a Dr. Seuss book, The Cat in the Hat.
I still have it;
the book rests on the shelf above my desk, along with other Seuss works I've
collected. Inside The Cat in the Hat's cover, my mother wrote an inscription,
using her English teacher's precise penmanship.
"Happy Birthday, Andy. As you grow older,
you'll realize many truths dwell within these pages. Much love, Mom and
Dad."
Mom was right,
of course. She most always is.
My favorite line
in The Cat in the Hat is this one:
"Be who you
are and say what you feel because those who mind don't matter and those who
matter don't mind."
***
Loretta McPhail
was a notorious Tallahassee slumlord. On a steamy afternoon, in August 1976,
she spoke to me in her North Florida drawl: part magnolia, part crosscut saw.
"The rent's
one-twenty-five. I'll need first, last, and a security deposit, no exceptions."
McPhail wore a
short-sleeved shirtwaist dress, spectator pumps, and a straw hat with a green
plastic windowpane sewn into the brim. Her skin was as pale as cake flour. A
gray moustache grew on her winkled upper lip, and age spots peppered the backs
of her hands. Her eyeglasses had lenses so thick her gaze looked buggy.
I'd heard
McPhail held title to more than fifty properties in town, all of them cited
multiple times for violation of local building codes. She owned rooming houses,
single family homes, and small apartment buildings, mostly in neighborhoods
surrounding Florida State University's campus. Like me, her tenants sought
cheap rent; they didn't care if the roof leaked or the furnace didn't work.
The Franklin
Street apartment I viewed with McPhail wasn't much: a living room and kitchen,
divided by a three-quarter wall; a bedroom with windows looking into the rear
and side yards; a bathroom with a wall-mounted sink, a shower stall and a
toilet with a broken seat. In each room, the plaster ceilings bore water marks.
The carpet was a leopard skin of suspicious-looking stains, and the whole place
stank of mildew and cat pee.
McPhail's
building was a two-storied, red brick four-plex with casement windows that
opened like book covers, a Panhandle style of architecture popular in the
1950s. Shingles on the pitched roof curled at their edges. Live oaks and
longleaf pines shaded the crabgrass lawn, and skeletal azaleas clung to the
building's exterior.
In the kitchen,
I peeked inside a rust-pitted Frigidaire. The previous tenant had left gifts: a
half-empty ketchup bottle, another of pickle relish. A carton of orange juice
with an expiration date three months past sat beside a tub of margarine.
Out in the
stairwell, piano music tinkled -- a jazzy number I didn't recognize.
McPhail clucked
her tongue and shook her head.
"I've told
Fergal -- and I mean several times -- to close his door when he plays, but he
never does. I'm not sure why I put up with that boy."
McPhail pulled a
pack of Marlboros from a pocket in the skirt of her dress. After tapping out
two cigarettes, she jammed both between her lips. She lit the Marlboros with a
brushed-chrome Zippo, and then she gave me one cigarette.
I puffed and
tapped a toe, letting my gaze travel about the kitchen. I studied the chipped
porcelain sink, scratched Formica countertops, and drippy faucet. Blackened
food caked the range's burner pans. The linoleum floor's confetti motif had
long ago disappeared in high-traffic areas. Okay, the place was a dump. But the
rent was cheap, and campus was less than a mile away. I could ride my bike to
classes, and to my part-time job as caddy at the Capital City Country Club.
Still, I
hesitated.
The past two
years, I'd lived in my fraternity house with forty brothers. I took my meals
there, too. If I rented McPhail's apartment, I'd have to cook for myself. What
would I eat? Where would I shop for food?
Other questions
flooded my brain. Where would I wash my clothes? And how did a guy open a
utilities account? The apartment wasn't furnished. Where would I purchase a
bed? What about a dinette and living room furniture? And how much did such
things cost? It all seemed so complicated.
Still . . .
Lack of privacy
at the fraternity house would pose a problem for me this year. Over summer
break -- back home in Pensacola -- I'd experienced my first sexual encounter
with another male, a lanky serviceman named Jeff Dellinger, age twenty-four.
Jeff was a Second Lieutenant from Eglin Air Force Base. I met him at a sand
volleyball game behind a Pensacola Beach hotel, and he seemed friendly. I liked
his dark hair, slim physique, and ready smile, but wasn't expecting anything
personal to happen between us.
After all, I was
a "straight boy", right?
We bought each
other beers at the Tiki bar, and then Jeff invited me up to his hotel room.
Once we reached the room, Jeff prepared two vodka/tonics. My drink struck like
snake venom, and then my brain fuzzed. Jeff opened a bureau drawer; he produced
a lethal-looking pistol fashioned from black metal. The pistol had a matte
finish and a checked grip.
"Ever seen
one of these?"
I shook my head.
"It's an
M1911 -- official Air Force issue. I've fired it dozens of times."
Jeff raised the
gun to shoulder height. He closed one eye, focused his other on the pistol's
barrel sight. "Shooting's almost... sensual," he said. Then he looked
at me. "It's like sex, if you know what I mean."
I shrugged, not
knowing what to say.
Jeff handed the
pistol to me. It weighed more than I'd expected, between two and three pounds.
I turned the pistol here and there, admiring its sleek contours. The grip felt
cold against my palm and a shiver ran through me. I'd never fired a handgun,
never thought to.
"Is it
loaded?" I asked.
Jeff bobbed his
chin. "One bullet's in the firing chamber, seven more in the magazine;
it's a semi-automatic."
After I handed
Jeff the gun, he returned it to his bureau's drawer while I sipped from my
drink, feeling woozier by the minute. Jeff sat next to me, on the room's double
bed. His knee nudged mine, our shoulders touched, and I smelled his
coconut-scented sunscreen.
Jeff laid a hand
on my thigh. Then he squeezed. "You don't mind, do you?"
About the Author:
Jere' M. Fishback is a former news editor and trial lawyer. He writes Young Adult novels, short fiction, and memoirs. A Florida native, he lives on a barrier island on the Gulf of Mexico, west of Tampa/St. Petersburg. When he's not writing, Jere' enjoys cycling, surfing, lap-swimming, and watching sunsets with a glass of wine in hand.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2920032.Jere_M_Fishback
http://www.amazon.com/Jere-M.-Fishback/e/B00DDXM806/
http://www.amazon.com/Jere-M.-Fishback/e/B00DDXM806/
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