Below are excerpts from an excellent review by the Southwest Manuscripters, when author James Keck spoke on the topic of research at their summer monthly meeting. Check out his novel, The Big House: Story of a Southern Family, and his website, jkeck.org/books/the-big-house/ Bravo, Jim! :) “James Keck is a gentleman of Southern upbringing and West Coast sophistication. From his opening remarks, it was apparent his Southern manners and cordiality had not deserted him. Soon the audience was drawn into his witty down-home presentation, which he likened to chatting on the porch of his family’s old Memphis ‘big house.’ The chronicles of a Memphis family in the mid-1920s, as seen through the eyes of a powerless thirteen year daughter, provide the basis of Jim’s novel, ‘The Big House: Story of a Southern Family.’ Jim told us about the exhaustive research he expended on the book. ‘Personal stories, family traditions, and hidden secrets provide the level of authenticity that is the glue holding a book together. Sometimes the voices you hear will surprise you,’ he said. In researching the story, Keck used his expertise in psychology and journalism. He referred to the Diagnostic Manual of Psychology to authenticate the behavior of dysfunctional families and the important relationship between parents and their children. Using his journalism training and Internet resources, Keck researched the history of Memphis, Tennessee, and its population in the 1920s. He exercised his reporter’s natural audacity to pick up the telephone directory and call strangers for one-to-one unscheduled interviews. He had conversations with family members, reading family papers, letters, and documents, while at the same time searching his own memories. Jim maintains the characters wrote themselves. However, ‘The Big House’ reflects the richness of his labors. He acknowledged that all writers experience blocks, but those times between writing and not writing can be productive. The dialogue will begin to speak to you if you let it. Finally, Keck told of his experiences in publishing. He attended writer’s conferences and made lists of agents. He worked with Amazon’s CreateSpace and with Book Baby. He explained the inspiration for the cover art of his novel and gave credit to the illustrator. Jim Keck left us with much to contemplate.”
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 23:05:27 +0000
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