Forgive my first attempt at blogging--to be honest, I am still getting used to not having a bottle of white out next to the typewriter (just kidding). I've actually been on a bit of a hiatus from True Crime after my last TC book Love Me To Death.
As I'm sure many other true crime writers here can attest, especially those who have spent years as crime reporters, writing for this genre can take its toll emotionally, psychologically--and when those add up--physically. I'd simply had enough for the time of murderers and their impact on other human beings.
So I took a few years break, did a non-fiction World War II dramatic narrative, a sports/motivational and a series of crime thrillers under another name (yes, I could tell you but then I'd have to ...).
However, I've reentered the game to co-write a new True Crime book on the Ramon Salcido murders in April 1989 in Sonoma, California.
The crime ...
...one morning, Ramon Salcido, a Mexican national working in a local vineyard, got home after a night of drinking took his three little daughters to the county dump where he slit their throats before returning to his home where he shot his wife, Angela; he proceeded to the home of his in-laws where he beat, stabbed and brutalized his mother-in-law, as well as his two young sisters-in-law. Not finished, Ramon shot to death a fellow vineyard worker he believed was having an affair with his wife, and then shot and wounded his vineyard supervisor.
At the time, it was the largest mass-murder in California history and garnered media attention all over the world.
It's a great true crime story--the capture of Ramon and consequent trial and conviction followed by a sentence of death (he currently resides on death row in San Quentin) are a classic detective tale meets court procedural, plus as with In Cold Blood (and Ron Franscell's new book Fall) a study of the impact such a crime on a tight-knit community.
But what really attracted me to the story was that one of Ramon's little girl's, Carmina, survived two days lying with the bodies of her dead sisters in the dump.
Believe it or not, the murders of her family was just the beginning of Carmina's travails and then her quest--when she reached the age of 18--to learn the truth about what had happened and seek some sort of closure with her father.
I am co-authoring this story with Carmina and will be trying to find a mix between first- and third-person story-telling that hopefully won't turn out to be too much of a challenge (wish me luck). It's really quite a story.
Well, that's about it for my first stab at blogging (no pun intended) ...
[ICB update 10/16/2009: Read the interview by Ron Franscell with Steve Jackson here, where they discuss the book Steve has co-authored with Carmina, Not Lost Forever.]
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