Howard McEwen, CFA

I don’t know.

I always read. I read ahead of my age although I realized I didn’t comprehend the subject matter.

Once in elementary school I had a librarian stop me in the hall after checking out something she thought I was too young for. For some reason I’m picturing the book as Lord of the Flies. I remember the cover had a boy looking out through some jungle brush. But it could have been something else. I remember her stopping me in the hall outside the library and telling me “You’re in second grade, you can’t read.” Nice. She was a scary woman and was always mean. I was frightened. I thought I’d done something wrong but soon realized she just though I was dumb. Anyway, when I countered she held me then gathered up a few students and made me read it in front of them to prove she was right. Double nice. Now I was frightened. Anyway, I opened the book when she let me and started to read. I remember my hands shaking and fumbling a bit. But I read it. I apparently did ok. She let me keep it with a growl. (N.B. if it was Lord of the Flies I’m sure I didn’t understand it).

There’s plenty of people who read everything that they can get their hands on and have done so from a young age but only some of them put down someone else’s book and tries to write their own.

I was a reader. But what made me a writer? I don’t know. I must have started shortly after I became a reader because I remember writing little stories very young. I wasn’t proud of them. I hid them. But I was writing.

I have no idea why though. Something for the therapist to figure out.

When writing my novel Wrath – the life and assassination of a United States Governor I wanted to open with something that would be noticed.

I pondered the greats:

It was the best of times worst of time…
Call me Ishmael.
It is a truth universally acknowledged….
Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.

And of course my favorite from One Hundred Years of Solitude

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

Nothing poetic came so since I’m a 21st century American I thought of something provocative (i.e. offensive). The first line of Wrath is:

The kitchen had a chill that only a wife can give a room.

A winner! I thought. Nah, nobody – no woman – registered one complaint. Oh well. Maybe the next novel.

One of the problems I had with writing Wrath – the life and assassination of a United States Senator is that I didn’t like my lead character – William Goebel.

Historically, he was a nasty man. My book was a novel so I could fill in some back story for him and could make up reason for why he was such a jerk. But I still didn’t like him. It’s like someone you know who has had a hard life and is an unpleasant person to be around. Knowing they’ve had it bad helps you understand but you’d rather not hang out with them.

That’s one of the reason I introduced the character of the Mountain Man. He was someone I liked writing about. He was self reliant, curious, brave, intelligent.

Yep, the mountain man helped. Pick up a copy and read about them both!

I’ve written fiction off and on since I can remember.  What I never knew until the last few years is the why. Why do I write fiction?

It’s pretty damned simple really. I’m trying to figure people out. People baffle me. I have no idea why they behave the way they do. I look at how people choose to conduct their lives and I’m utterly confused.

You abandon your wife and kid, eh? Why?
You decide to give mainlining heroin a shot? Why?
You thought it’d be fun and consequence free to sleep around on your husband? OK. But why?

And it goes to smaller things also. Why do people (me) do stupid things? Why do they eat too much junk food and watch too much TV and don’t show up for their kids events? Maybe it’s best left to psychologist but I’m not bent that way.

I write.

Fiction lets me have my characters do crazy things then I get to make up plausible reasons why they did those things. In Wrath, I had to come up with a realistic, congent reason that someone would pick up a rifle and shoot a politician. That took some work. I also had to imagine reasons why that politician, William Goebel, would do the things that would make him so hated that someone would rationally choose to shoot him.

Fiction helps me understand people. In Wrath I placed myself in the mind of a despised politician and his assassin. I may not have the right answers but at least I can make some up. And that brings a little order to my confused world.

Sometime in 2008 I was doing the pre-internet equivalent of web browsing – aimlessly roaming the public library. I’d pick up books, sample a bit then move onto something else. In the ‘BIOGRAPHY’ section a slim, 130 page blue book caught my attention.

It was William Goebel: The Politics of Wrath by James C. Klotter. I sat down and read it straight through. I’m a history buff and I’d never heard of William Goebel. I learned he was a divisive Kentucky politician in the vein of a Huey Long who remains the only United States Governor to be assassinated in office.

Why hadn’t I heard of him? This was a great story. As I read, my curiousity grew 100 fold.

Somewhere in the middle of the book, we learn that five years before becoming governor in 1900 and being assassinated himself, Goebel shot a fellow Democrat in broad daylight…while standing next to the Attorney General of Kentucky. This event is somewhat glossed over in the biography. This was not Klotter’s fault. It was his first book and the limited space he was given forced him to stick to the facts.

But Goebel, the president of the Kentucky senator, shots a politician on the streets next to the chief law enforcement officer of the state and then goes on to be elected governor? What a story!

And that’s the one I tell in my novel Wrath – the life and assassination of a United States Governor. I released it in February but we’re making a few changes that I think will make it a much better novel. It will be available soon.

You can find links to the short story at Amazon and BN.com for the Kindle and Nook @ facebook.com/prescottcarmichaeljaunts

Here’s the description

Just fired and sitting in a bar, Jake Gibb gets a phone call. It’s a job offer from the mysterious investment advisor Prescott Carmichael. Jake soon learns providing ‘client service’ involves more than answering the phone or filling out forms. When a historic spoon goes missing, it’s up to Jake Gibb and Mr. Carmichael to figure out the ‘who’ but also to learn the unnerving ‘why’.

It’s here.

I talk with 700-WLW’s Scott Sloan and Tracy Jones here about the importance of keeping your beneficiaries up-to-date. As Sloanie said, “It’s a five minute fix”.

Last week I got a call every day (and twice on Thursday and Friday) from clients and friends telling me they were unemployed. That was 7 non-lazy, skilled people losing their jobs. Of course, people have called me in the past every so often and people are losing their jobs all-across the country for years now but last week’s call-a-day really brought it home for me.

We have to create jobs! And our current policies aren’t doing it. Hear what Darryl Parks and I had to say about it on Saturday’s show.

Part one here.

Part two here.

Give a listen here.