And, The Lawyers Win!

They usually do. Even when the verdict is for $100,000.00, a sum that was once a princely annual salary. Those six figures are the amount awarded to Vicki Stewart by a jury in the State Court of Hall County, Georgia. Instead of the usual auto accident, business fraud, or divorce case, the award was made in a defamation of character suit, wherein a “friend” sought legal damages against another friend, who just happened to be a best-selling author.

The plaintiff (Stewart) claimed that the former friend/author, Haywood Smith, based a character, Su Su, on her life. Indeed, the plaintiff claimed some 30 similarities between her life, and the “fictional slut” in Smith’s novel, The Red Hat Club. Apparently, the jury agreed, hence the award to Stewart.

A professor of English testified in Smith’s defense, telling the jury that it is common for authors to base characters on real people, citing great writers from the past, including Ernest Hemingway and Flannery O’Connor. While writers should be a bit careful, it is not only common to base fiction on real life, it is impossible to write without it. If a character is a young woman with dark hair and eyes, then any dark haired, dark eyed female reader might identify with that character. (I did, when reading The Last of the Mohicans, but I did not sue James Fennimore Cooper for killing her off. Of course, he was long dead when I read it.)

To build a character, an author must choose characteristics, and the palette of character traits comes from the author’s own experiences with fellow humans. The strong, yet self-sacrificial Venice Dylenski, the main character in Trinity on Tylos, owes some of her stamina to a certain Irene Blackstock Dodd, who had more grace under pressure than most folks. I know, because she was also my mother. When I was writing The Gift Horse, I gave Angie a mane of beautiful auburn hair, and one of my former students, a tall, rather athletic high school junior, had such a mane of hair. Angie's captor, Billie, is former military and ridiculously loyal; so was an authority figure from my own early life, when I was a student at Piedmont College. Now Angie and Billie have other characteristics, drawn from other images in my brain, but these very human characteristics are based upon people, and I do not see how to write fiction without so doing.

One fellow local author, who writes fictional mystery and nonfiction true crime, tells a rather funny story about having written a book, another in her true crime portfolio, but explains that she is waiting for the main player to die before she publishes it. Even though this person is serving life in prison, for the very crimes that are recounted in the manuscript and is presumably guilty of them, this author is so concerned about possible legal action that she has decided to just wait it out.

Sometimes folks have urged me to tackle nonfiction, but thus far I have resisted. Knowing the vindictive nature of folks in northeastern Georgia, coupled with the fact that anyone can sue anyone else over just about anything, has kept me a fiction writer. There is plenty of “inspiration” available, for fiction and for nonfiction, but wth the current crop of lawyers and juries, being any sort of writer is frought with danger. Sadly, the case of The Red Hat Club is one of losers. Stewart and Smith lost their friendship. Smith lost both the award and her own attorney’s fees. There is little doubt that Ms. Stewart, who did not win attorney's fees, will take the six figures she “won” in Hall County and pay off her legal bills, which are estimated to be more than the entire award.

Sometimes a book takes off and garners good royalties, and sometimes it doesn’t. But, lawyers charge by the hour, so they always win.

A Book by the Same Name

Google Alerts let me know that another writer has recently published a book entitled The Gift Horse. When I chose the title, I looked at Amazon and a few online used bookstores to see if the title was in print, and I noted that an autobiography by Hildegard Knef was the only use of the title in works intended for an adult audience, and even that had a subtitle, "A Report on a Life." The book had been in print for more than thirty years and was not fiction, so I decided to keep using it. Since its publication, I have had a few folks ask me if I chose the title because it had been used before, and that wasn't a reason to use it, but a reason to consider changing it. After some consideration, I realized that I really did not want to dump a good idea for a title, yet I certainly did not want to confuse readers, either. As I was pulling the manuscript together for publication, my cover artist suggested that I not picture a carousel horse, because that might make readers think the book was about a horse, or that it was intended for a young audience. The artist suggested the dark green cover, and I do like it, but I don't know if it helps people figure out that I am referring to the old saying, "don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

A couple of years ago, I created a YouTube video, A Brief History of Science Fiction, and that time I did play off Steven Hawking's famous title, A Brief History of Time. This video has served me well, garnering more than 1500 hits. Recently, someone posted a video with the same exact title, and I watched it a couple of times before deciding that mine really is better.

Back to that Google Alert. I had to surf a bit to see that a romance author, Jami Davenport, has used "my" title, The Gift Horse, for adult fiction— a romance. I wish her well with it. I might even read it sometime! When I began writing Angela Donalson's story, I had in mind to write a romance. Alas, it just wasn't in me. While I love and respect my hubby, I know that there are many pitfalls in life, and I threw a whole bunch of them at Angie, plus a few that I hope no one ever face, just to see what would happen. My version of The Gift Horse has plenty of suspense and conflict, but it certainly isn't a romance.

“Imitation is the sincerest flattery” according to Charles Caleb Colton, and rather than be miffed, I've decided to be glad that others thought my titles worthy enough to use them.

The Impossible Virgin

Sometimes it helps to look back when looking forward. My son is wanting to write a novel, and so, from time to time, he comes to me and says, "Mom, I have an idea for a book." Often, his ideas are not novel enough, but he does not know this because he has not read enough to know what has already been written.

Good writers are first good readers. Voracious readers, in most cases. How good I am depends upon who is asking the question, but I was once a voracious reader of novels. Mom is to blame. She took me to the library, weekly in the summer, and guided my reading, from my middle school years until her death. When I was a teenager, I enjoyed thrillers and what mom called "mysteries" which were billed as gothic suspense. When she handed me The Impossible Virgin, having plucked it from the shelves of the Jefferson Public Library, I was a bit shocked. It did not look at all like a mystery, with its modern art cover and titillating title. But mom had earned my absolute trust in such matters, so I put it in my checkout pile.

Since The Impossible Virgin is the fifth story in the series of Modesty Blaise novels, I had a bit of a chore figuring out the backstory, but these books stand alone well enough, especially the early ones, so I was soon engrossed. O'Donnell published eleven novels and two books of short stories starring Modesty Blaise, who is a far more entertaining figure that Ian Fleming's James Bond. As a teenager, I was only able to find four of them, all via the local libraries. As a young adult, I read a couple more, and after the internet made shopping used books much easier, I managed to purchase all of the series, save one.

When I published The Gift Horse, a reporter at our local paper conducted a telephone interview, and she asked me what influenced my writing. My answer was "reading the news" and certainly reading some of the odd stories that are online have been in the back of my mind when I wrote some of the scenes that readers have called "fantastic" or "implausible," but another influence, one harder to describe, are all of the characters, plot devices, and action scenes in the fiction I read for years and years, prior to taking on the task of novel writing myself. As a writer, I rely on what has already been written, for research, or merely for ideas.

Recently, my son proposed a scene, where a character is strapped to a chair, and as I listened to what he thought was a great idea, I said, "Wait a minute... that has already been written, and you must see how he did it." Immediately, I went to one of the numerous book cases in my home, pulled out an old paperback copy of The Impossible Virgin and had my son read the scene, written by a master, almost 40 years ago. I've read many, many action/adventure novels, and the first five novels in the Modesty Blaise series are among the best.

I do hope that my son is able to realize his dream and write a good action novel. But he has not yet read enough to be ready for the task.

In looking for a few details, I noticed that there are now some web based resources for O'Donnell fans, including a website, and more than a bio on Wikipedia, and I am linking to those for any readers who want to know more about this wonderful writer, who also wrote gothic suspense under the pen name Madeline Brent.