Merging Family History With Fiction
My most recent blog post announced the publication of my short story, “Under The Blackjack Tree” in Killer Nashville magazine and now I’m now doubly thrilled to announce that the short story was also chosen by Otto Penzler and John Grisham to appear in the 2025 edition of Best Mystery Stories of the Year! (Mysterious Press)This is a huge honor. Honestly, at first I didn’t think it was true. I read the email about three times and did some online research before I believed it!
But another reason why this is so special to me is because my story is steeped with bits of my family’s history.
It began when my mother told me several years ago that one of her most cherished memories was when she got to help her grandfather feed the inmates at the Huntsville jail when she was about four. (Wait, what?) That’s when I learned that my great grandfather had been sheriff of Walker County. I later learned that it was common practice for the sheriff and his family to live on the first floor of the jailhouse while the inmates would be on the second floor.
The image of an innocent girl closely interacting with a potentially dangerous person was so intriguing to me, I was compelled to put it in a story. (I played with the timeline and instead of my mother being the little girl, I made it my grandmother. It simplified the story.) I had no idea where the story was going to go, but I knew that I needed that opening scene. It took me places that I didn’t expect!
Some of the things that were true are-
- My great grandfather was sheriff at the time of Bonnie and Clyde. I thought that would make an interesting backdrop. A lot of tension in Texas at that time.
- My grandmother’s first mother did die in childbirth and her loving stepmother was called “Cullie”.
- There really was a bank robbery in Conroe at that time. (I don’t think it was ever solved.)
- Trusted inmates often cooked the meals for the other inmates and sometimes for the family.
- It was my mother that fell into the yard with the hunting dogs and was almost mauled.
- My grandmother was shot in the face with a shotgun, by accident. It was a miracle that her eyes were spared, and she had not one single scar. That is such an amazing part of our family history that I had to include it.
And two things that I didn’t know until after I wrote the story.
- My grandmother was sometimes called “Mary V” at school because there was another Mary in her class.
- When she attended Sam Houston to get her teaching certificate, she would often cut across the cemetery when her classmates wouldn’t. She was never a squeamish person.
Although the Mary V in the story is pure fiction, I hope that my grandmother would be proud the story and that some of our family history is saved and shared with others.
Posted in Writing and tagged Best Mystery Stories, Bonnie and Clyde, Huntsville, Jailhouse, John Grisham, Killer Nashville, Mysterious Press, Otto Penzler, Texas sheriff, Under The Blackjack Tree, VP Chandler by VP with 1 comment.