A question I often get when talking to readers is are your characters based on real people? Most of mine are pure figments of my imagination, thought admittedly they sometimes bear a few characteristics of people I have known. In my new book, The Good, The Bad and The Murderous, however, a central character in the story is a fictionalized version of a young man whose story appeared in the local press.

He was Nashville's youngest murderer in recent memory, who shot a man during a drug deal when he was twelve years old. The article told what had happened, that he had been tried as an adult and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He was now out after spending more than half his life behind bars. He vowed to stay out of trouble but hadn't been able to find a job.

I modeled a character named Djuan Burden after him. Fortunately, the newspaper put an interview with the young man on it's website, giving me ideas for some of the dialogue.

The book opens with Djuan going into a medical equipment store to complain about a Medicare document showing his grandmother owed money on a power chair, which she didn't need and never received. He finds the owner of the store, which turns out to be a Medicare scam operation, shot in the head. He panics, knowing the police would never believe he wasn't the shooter, and flees.

None of the other characters in the book was based on a real person, but when I lifted Djuan out of real life (I even got the name Djuan from a male nurse in my doctor's office), it set the tone for the book. Instead of a story about Medicare fraud, it turned into a tale about police misconduct.

I've had a few other characters over the years based loosely on real people, but, with the exception of one in my first published novel, they all played minor roles.

Chester Campbell

Mystery Mania

TV and Newspapers Get Me Started

I just finished Chapter 1 in my new book, so I thought it would be a good time to answer that quintessential reader question, where do you get your ideas? Yet unnamed, this is the second in my new Sid Chance PI series. When I started casting about for a plot, I decided to use some current problem as the background for the story. About that time I saw a segment on the TV news detailing how FBI agents in Miami tracked down Medicare scammers.

It dealt with small companies that pop up and disappear just as suddenly, their aim to collect claims for expensive items like motorized chairs, hearing aids, handicap aids used around the home, etc. Trouble is, the claims are fake. And by the time Medicare gets around to questioning if they're fraudulent, the companies have closed shop and moved on. They're usually storefront operations that have been cleaned out by the time investigators arrive. According to the story, the racket is more lucrative than drug dealing and much less likely to result in an arrest.

New policies are being put into effect to slow the growth of Medicare fraud, but it's going to take a while to get the situation under control. Idea Number One checked off.

But I needed another. My protag is a former National Park ranger and small town police chief turned private investigator. He would not be involved in chasing down Medicare fraud. I looked for a character with some other problem whose presence could propel my PI into another case that involved one of these illegitimate medical supply operations.

I found my character on the front page of the newspaper a couple of Sundays ago. He was Metro Nashville's youngest murderer. He shot a man during a late night drug deal when he was twelve years old. Released from prison after spending more than half his life behind bars, he is back home now in his mid-twenties. The young man's life was chronicled in a series of articles exploring the question is there hope for children who kill?

He is faced with the problem  of starting his life over. He insists he will not go back to prison and wants to prove a person can change. But he hasn't found anyone willing to hire him, and he struggles to find his role in the community. Siblings who were three and four when he was locked up are now grown and have kids of their own.

He seemed like an ideal character to get my story moving, and that's what he did. He gets charged with another murder. I just need to find another 70,000 words to get him to the end. I think most writers would agree that generating ideas to initiate a story is one of the easiest parts of the job. What you accomplish with those ideas is where the hard part comes in. I'll have to let you know in a few months just how hard it was.

Or, as I like to say, now the fun begins.

Chester Campbell

Mystery Mania