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6.
AOTW: Truly sensational stories get played out everyday in the media. How do you bring a fresh perspective to a story when (we think) we've heard it all before? How has the intense media scrutiny affected your job as a true crime writer? Does it affect your choice of subject matter? Do you look for less publicized crimes? If so, is this a harder sell to publishers?
Susan Kelly: Bringing a fresh perspective to the Boston Strangler story wasn't difficult for me, since I was the first person saying in print that Albert DeSalvo wasn't the Boston Strangler. Also, the media scrutiny given that case had occurred thirty years before I started to write about it. So I pretty much had the field to myself.
It's difficult to gauge what might grab and hold a publisher's interest. I've heard that books about so-called "trailer trash" crime are in vogue now, simply because they tend to be so bloody and horrific. But that might not be true a year or a month from now.
Gretchen Brinck: Competition with mass media’s instant overkill on exciting crimes is one reason I decided to switch to fiction. If I were continuing with true crime, I would choose little known crimes to avoid competing with high profile writers. Writing a book about any case, famous or not, ideally requires the writer to dig into angles not covered in the original rush of publicity and to deeply research the stories of victims, survivors, investigators, attorneys and others; review all court, prison, psychiatric, medical, police and other documents about the perpetrator and interview people close to him/her.
Michael Fleeman: I do try to find stories that received large local, but not national publicity. It makes it much easier to interview people and get official cooperation because the sources haven't been put through the media ringer as much.
Brian J. Karem: Okay, lot's of questions here for number six. Regarding fresh perspective, that's actually quite easy. Having spent most of my adulthood as a newspaper and television reporter, let me say that except for the very few good reporters out there it's always easy to find a fresh perspective. Intense media scrutiny isn't necessarily the worst thing to have happen to your subject. It provides you with a willing audience who will buy your book. The media glare can actually make your job easier getting information and since the arrival of the Internet I can do 99 percent of initial research sitting in my shorts eating donuts and scratching my ass. Never forget that you still have to get off that butt, go out and knock on doors, but in the beginning I can see if something at least has my possible interest without having to break a sweat.
There's absolutely no reason to search for a hitherto unheard of crime as a professional writer when publishers will pay you to write what interests them. If you have a pet project do the work on the side while making money and, once the manuscript's done, then see if you have another In Cold Blood on your hands and run with it.
Burl Barer: I have always looked for less publicized crimes. That is to say crimes not publicized nationally. Murder in the Family was about Kirby Anthoney, a killer in Alaska who murdered his aunt and her two children. This was a huge story in Anchorage, but not elsewhere, and it happened in the 1980’s. Head Shot is about a double homicide in Tacoma, Washington in the 1980’s again, a big story there at the time, but not well known elsewhere. Body Count is the exception. I did not approach the publisher and ask to write it, but the publisher approached me. I knew that there would be a “quick and dirty” cranked out by someone almost before the last click on the killer’s handcuffs, and I was correct. Body Count will come out late this year long after, I hope, the quickie exploitation book is forgotten. What makes the sale to publishers is not whether or not the crime is well known, it is better if it isn’t, but is the crime kinky enough and does it meet the criteria of the market? The market is women, and the ideal perpetrator is a white male serial sex killer, or a conspiring white couple sex killers, or anyone who kills before, after, or during sex, especially if the sex is not with farm machinery or marsupials in captivity.
Don Lasseter: I really try to stay away from highly publicized cases. The subject I covered in Die For Me, though, had a great deal of media attention. But it was such a complex case, I had no trouble finding material reporters had overlooked. I prefer an unpublicized case in which I am the only person writing about it because the people involved are so much more willing to cooperate and be interviewed. Publishers, of course, want a story that's been splashed all over television, magazines, and newspapers.
Irene Pence: Kensington doesn't want the extensively covered true crimes (such as O.J. Simpson) because too much has already been reported. I choose a story for its novelty, interest appeal, then add to it with my research that goes farther than the media coverage. I try to find out what happened to the perp to cause him/her to act as they did.
Sue Russell: Lot of questions here! The need to find a fresh perspective drew me to writing Lethal Intent, my book about Aileen Wuornos who killed seven men. As arguably the first female serial killer to kill male-style --- a predator, picking up strangers on the Florida highways --- she intrigued me immediately. The freshness was inherent. The feeding frenzy that now goes on around high-profile crimes has definitely made life more difficult. More players ask for money to talk. With the giant appetite of the TV news program machine, it's increasingly difficult to find lesser-known crimes or untold stories. And I've no desire to write the twenty-fifth book on O.J. Simpson.
Robert Scott: I do look for less publicized crimes. Especially out in the hinterlands in smaller cities and rural areas. The law enforcement agents involved with these cases tend to be more forthcoming, and it generally has a greater impact on the community than say in some large city where murders can be a common occurrence. With an under-reported case there's a freshness to it, both for me and the reader. And the publishers seem to like this because the stories are not well known, but compelling nonetheless.
As one court reporter in a small city once told me, "This case is more interesting than the O.J. Simpson trial." And he was right. The case dealt with the Irish Republican Army, an assassination bureau, murder for hire and a devious con-man. It was something I could never have gotten away with in fiction. But it was all true.
Carlton Smith: As current events blend into entertainment, the process of obtaining information becomes more difficult. I am frequently asked by witnesses to pay them for their information, which I will not do. Official sources tend to shy away from cooperation, often because of the excesses of daily, usually broadcast, media people. Still, the art of developing a well-covered story into a book depends on two related factors: time and detail. The more detail one has, the better the book. The more time one has, the more detail one can obtain.
Dina Temple-Raston: A Death in Texas goes beyond the headlines of the James Byrd killing. It covers the background and the other personalities in Jasper --- what the newspaper journalists, with their "rough drafts of history," just don't have the time to uncover.
Carlton Stowers: The high-profile, thoroughly reported cases don't interest me --- for the simple reason that the public has been saturated with information on them. I've been drawn to the cases that involve ordinary people in small town America. They are more difficult to sell to the publisher and the public, of course, because there's always a knee-jerk reaction to headline-making stories. It is my belief, however, that the reader can more closely identify with the working class in mainstream America and therefore might find their stories more interesting.
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