John Grisham, Lee Martin and isolation

If you are like me, you are staying home and trying to isolate yourself from the world where this pandemic is flying around like wildfire. This might be putting a knot in your creative writing. 

Glenda wearing a mask because of COVID 19

I spent many hours this past weekend watching and listening to famous writers online. I read John Grishams' early novels, legal thrillers, and watched the movies. I enjoyed the interviews online with him and his conversations with other writers like Stephen King. I heard them speak of how they came up with ideas for plots and characters. 

John Grisham is a down to earth friendly person who has the same values I have. His appearance in Amsterdam a couple of years ago is the most interesting video I watched. 

He was promoting his novel, The Guardians. Grisham’s main character here is a so-called “innocence lawyer,” a workaholic attorney-and-Episcopal-priest named Cullen Post. Post has trimmed his life down to the barest of essentials, living in spartan quarters above the nonprofit Guardian Ministries, his workplace in Savannah, Ga. The book focuses on Post’s investigation into the wrongful conviction of a black man named Quincy Miller who was set up to take the fall for the murder of a white lawyer in a small Florida town some 22 years before the opening of this story.

This story intrigues me because of a story I heard about a black man in Dougherty County Georgia when I was very young. While out hunting, the black man found the bodies of a man and a woman. The woman's husband had discovered they were having an affair, killed them, and dumped their bodies in the woods.

Everyone knew the husband was the killer, but the Powers that Be would rather blame the black man who was accused, arrested, and sent to prison for life for a crime he did not commit. He had no motive and did not even know the couple. 

This was in the days before the Civil Rights Movement and when black people had no voice and no rights in the justice system of south Georgia. It was said that the white man, the killer, was a father and well-thought-of in the community. I tried to research this trial but am not living there anymore and have no names, etc. I wonder if John Gresham would consider it a good story for one of his novels. 

If you need a push to write a piece of fiction, try this tip from Lee Martin, author and one of my favorite bloggers. 

Read it here.