The Story Behind the Story

My newest ebook, just available on Amazon for the Kindle, is titled Beware the Jabberwock. It has quite a story behind it. Actually, several stories. I wrote it back in 1990 after I retired from an eighteen-year career as executive vice president of a statewide trade association. I had written non-fiction for years as a newspaper reporter, free-lance writer, magazine editor, and a few other permutations. I had written two book manuscripts over the years and told everyone I intended to write novels when I retired.

I was an avid spy story reader all through the Cold War, so it was natural that I turned to this genre when I looked for a plot. I had read extensively about the KGB and CIA and had no trouble creating a situation involving both agencies. With the Iron Curtain shredding and the Soviet Union falling apart, clandestine warriors on both sides found their futures in jeopardy. I chose that as my starting point.

Since this was an international thriller, the setting was anywhere. I had been on a fifteen-day tour of Europe in the early eighties and spent a month touring the Far East in 1987. With that background, I had lots of possibilities to choose from. I started the story in Vienna, then moved to Washington, DC.guide I had to depend on guidebooks for scenes on Cyprus and in Tel Aviv, but I had visited Hong Kong and most of the locations in the States. I created a small island off the Florida coast south of Apalachicola.

For the main character, I turned to a man I had met back in the sixties when I was editor of Nashville Magazine. He was a close friend of one of my colleagues and I got to know him pretty well. He was an ex-FBI agent with a wild story to tell. I did a long interview with him, and we talked about writing a book. Then he had second thoughts about writing it as a true story. The statute of limitations hadn't run out on some of the things he had done.

According to his story, and my colleague vouched for his authenticity, he had gone to Washington out of high school and worked as a clerk at FBI Headquarters while getting an accounting degree. His job involved taking documents to Hoover's home, and he became closely associated with the director. He attended the FBI Academy after graduation and worked as a field agent. He was tapped by Hoover to be a member of his Goon Squad, a select group of agents who carried out sometimes illegal acts for the director. According to my guy, some of it involved cases outside the U.S.

Hoover and his assistant came up with a plan to infiltrate the Mafia and chose my agent for the task. He was told to resign from the FBI, commit a few crimes to establish his bona fides, and work to get in with the mob in Las Vegas. But after months of trying, he never managed to get connected. When he came back to Washington, Hoover refused to talk to him, calling him a failure.

All of this is covered in the background of my character, Burke Hill. I lost contact with the ex-agent but learned he died several years ago. It makes for quite a story. You can check out Beware the Jabberwock at  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007VQJ3PY.

Chester Campbell

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My Field of View Is Narrowing

I've realized that the focus of my writing has narrowed over the years. My first three novels written in 1990-93, but never published, have a decided international flavor. The first ranges from the U.S. to Austria, Cyprus, Hong Kong, and Israel, winding up in Toronto. Book two takes us from the U.S. to Korea and China, while the third wanders among Ukraine, Iran, Belarus, Mexico and the U.S.

This trilogy of post-Cold War spy stories grew out of my love of the espionage genre, which I had followed for years with authors like Helen Macinnes, John le Carre, Graham Greene, and Robert Ludlum. The international scene was fresh in my mind from travels across Europe and around the Far East in the eighties.

While revising the books with an eye toward publication, I was reminded of how much additional research I had done in preparation for writing them. I make folders for each of my books and place all of the research material in them. Besides notes they include call slips for various books I checked out of the library. I also have a supply of maps and travel books covering the areas. The shelves in my office include books on the CIA, the KGB, and such famous spies as Harold Adrian "Kim" Philby.

By the end of the nineties, my settings had narrowed down to mostly U.S. locations. After a trip to the Holy Land in late 1998, however, I set my first Greg McKenzie mystery half in the U.S. and half in Israel. My second McKenzie book wandered off to Perdido Key, Florida where we vacationed often in my brother's condo, but since them the mysteries have all taken place around my hometown of Nashville.

I suppose this is part of the aging process, since my wife and I have cut back on our personal wanderings over the years. There's probably a bit of laziness involved, also, as it's much easier to write about an area you are intimately familiar with. I enjoy venturing out to re-check locations I haven't visited in a while, and I'll occasionally include a place I've never been before.

I still enjoy the high-octane machinations of the spy story, though I haven't read a good one lately. Who knows, I might just stumble into a dead drop  or pick up a one-time pad and get motivated to turn out another espionage tome. Meanwhile, look for the Burke Hill trilogy in the near future.

Chester Campbell
http://chesterdcampbell.com
Visit me at Mystery Mania