Seriously, folks!
Take it from me! When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!
And when you get a creative idea, GO FOR IT! I turned a story about a bunch of battling relatives whose crazy family found themselves in the middle of a cold case into an award-winning book. You’ll never know if you can do the same unless you give it a try.
As I’ve previously reported on here, I was fascinated by the story of the Lincoln assassination as a ten-year-old in Mr. Michael Cohn’s fifth grade class at Victor Mravlag School 21 in Elizabeth, NJ, and became just as interested in it again when the limited series MANHUNT began on Apple TV. In fact, I got so impatient from having to wait every week for the next episode to air that I also watched THE CONSPIRATOR, starring James McAvoy and Robin Wright, which deals with an aspect of the same crime.
In fact, it deals with a pretty STRANGE aspect of it, if you ask me: the involvement, or not, of Mary Surratt.
Mary Surratt ran a boarding house in Civil War era Washington, D.C. Her son John was a friend and co-conspirator of John Wilkes Booth. The plot to kill Abraham Lincoln, Secretary of State William Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson was, in large part, planned around the table in her boarding house.
Lincoln was the only one who was actually assassinated. The stabbing attempt that another conspirator, Lewis Powell, made on the life of William Seward failed, thank goodness. He was wounded, and so were members of his household who got into the fray, but they all lived. As for the plot to murder Andrew Johnson, well, the guy who was supposed to do that, one George Atzerodt, didn’t even try to pull it off. He chickened out at the last minute.
It didn’t help him any. He wound up on trial for his life, before a military tribunal, and then hung for it. So did Lewis Powell, as well as David Herold, an accomplice of Booth’s who helped him escape.
But so did Mary Surratt.
Now, do not get me wrong here. By all accounts, Mary Surratt was an unrepentant Confederate sympathizer. She doesn’t even strike me as the brightest bulb on the Washington chandelier because apparently she made several pro-Confederate statements, when arrested, that certainly did not help her case. She is portrayed as the kind of gal who practically spits nails as she parries the inquiries of the authorities. After all, in her mind, anyway, they’re “damn Yankees” and that makes them “the enemy.” Furthermore, considering that the assassination plans were made at her table at her boarding house, it’s pretty safe to assume she knew all about them and was fully aware of what these guys were planning.
But did she deserve the death penalty over it?
The new president himself, Andrew Johnson, thought she did. An attempt to get her case transferred to another court and re-tried failed because he went and vetoed it.
I wonder, though. This was a woman who didn’t pick up any guns or knives. She’s not the one who pulled the trigger on Lincoln. I could see putting her away for a good long time over having knowledge of the assassination and not reporting it, as she should have, and for helping Booth at one point, but death by hanging for her? It seems extreme.
If anyone was in it up to his neck, it was her son, John, who was a Confederate spy, and had once plotted with Booth to kidnap Lincoln, but by the time of the assassination, John Surratt had fled the country. He wasn’t a direct participant in this mess, either, as a result of not being in D.C. when it happened. He may have helped plan it, but he wasn’t there. Later he was caught, put on trial, and released due to a mistrial.
They put an end to the wrong Surratt.
Take a look. Here’s the updated version of “The Book Show” that I first made a few months back. I altered it a bit in order to include the new release.
And by the way, if you ever want to make a video yourself, or need to promote a product or service on one, allow me to recommend Canva. It’s an amazing website. The animations I put onto this video are from Canvas “Lottie Files” and, let’s face it, they’re just adorable.
Go for it!
This has been a wonderful week!
The first surprise I received was that my book, THE HOLLYWOOD BACKLASH MOON, the one about a crazy show business family, a murder, and a Nazi on the loose in 1964, won the International Firebird Book Award.
The second surprise was that the mystery about a cold case from her childhood that never lets a woman go, CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF ANSWERS, is a FINALIST in the Maxy Awards! I’m very excited about this because it’s one of only five Finalists in the Mystery category. It’s such a great honor!
I wanted to say something to any Authors out there about these two contests. Both come with reasonable entry fees and the money goes to two very worthy causes.
Firebird’s entry fee goes to enhancing the lives of women and children in homeless shelters.
The fees for The Maxy Awards, named in memory of a little girl named Maxy who had a debilitating condition, go to assisting people with special needs. The results of the competition will be announced on the late Maxy’s birthday.
Now what could be better than awards contests that go to support terrific causes like the two of these?
Thank you, Firebird and Maxy! I hope more Authors will join you!
Hey, it works pretty well for me, folks!
Happy Sunday!
The whole time I was watching the mini-series PASSPORT TO FREEDOM I thought it was a brilliant work of fiction. I’ve never been so happy to find out I was wrong!
Aracy de Carvalho was a secretary in the Brazilian consulate in Hamburg, Germany, right at the time when so many Jewish people were trying to get the heck out of that country. She and her new supervisor didn’t have to get involved in helping them. They weren’t even supposed to.
But they did. Hey, if they hadn’t, they wouldn’t have become the subject of a series all these years later.
Take it as a reminder, folks. Wherever you land, if you have the opportunity to do some good, by all means take it.
The series stars Sophie Charlotte as Aracy, Rodrigo Lombardi as her boss, Joãao Guimarães Rosa, Izabela Grizdak as Aracy’s best friend, and a large and terrific ensemble cast.
That’s all I’ll say – just check it out and enjoy!
I just wanted to put this out there for any kids, or adults, who might be in a horrific situation where they are being bullied. It’s probably for no reason at all. If it is for a reason, your tormentors might even be jealous of you!
Anyway I wanted to say stay true to yourselves. The sun’ll come out tomorrow, as Orphan Annie sings in the musical. I’m living proof.
And by the way, there’s a few CERTAIN PEOPLE out there in Internet-Land who will NOT be happy if they find this post and know THEY are the subjects of it, the bullies I knew personally who were just atrocious. Especially there’s a certain retired teacher who is still alive, well, probably tormenting more people even as I write this while living in a resort condo in Florida. God save Florida! I salute her thus, and the rest of them too, as they deserve it:
Have a wonderful day – and never pay attention to the bullies!
A GENTLEMAN IN MOSCOW by Amor Towles became one of my all-time favorite books when it was first published years ago, so I was delighted to hear it was being dramatized into a limited series. I even signed up for Paramount + with the Showtime plan to watch it.
It’s the story, beginning in the 1920s, of an aristocratic poet, Alexander Rostov, living in the country that was formerly called Russia and has been morphed into the newly minted Soviet Union. Alex returned from living in Paris in 1918 to get his wealthy grandmother out of the country but he wound up stuck there himself. The family mansion was burned down by the Bolsheviks who just don’t like it that anyone owned property (tough nuggets to that, I say). Without a home, he moves into a suite at the Metropol Hotel in Moscow, along with what pieces of furniture he’s able to salvage from the mansion, and that’s where he’s been staying for the past four years, at the hotel.
Alexander winds up in deep doo-doo because of a poem he wrote. The Bolsheviks don’t like that, either. You have to wonder if there’s anything they do like. They seem to think the poem is some kind of a coded call for resistance or action or some other way of threatening them. Don’t you just have to wonder about any regime that’s constantly reading “threats” into the innocuous? Anyway, the Bolshevik powers that be sentence Alexander to house arrest in the Metropol Hotel – for the rest of his life. And he can’t stay in his suite, either, but in a drafty garret room up in the attic.
That’s all I’m going to say because I never like to give away any spoilers, but I want to add this. The ending of that book was one of the BEST I’ve ever read ANYWHERE, which is why I ordered Paramount + with the Showtime addition in order to watch the dramatization of it in the first place. You have to wonder, while reading the book, just how in the world is this story is going to end? How will this resolve itself? Alex is determined not to let this situation get to him, at least, not outwardly, which makes it a fun read, but still. You’ve got to wonder how he can stand it. So far there’s only been two episodes, but keep watching. Just keep watching! That’s easy enough to do with an adorable guy like Ewan McGregor playing the role of “Alexander” in the first place, of course, but the ending shall pack a wallop.
Check it out and enjoy!
What’s the perfect ending to the day of the worst earthquake to hit NYC since 1900? Finding out I just won a Literary Titan Gold Book Award! What else?
I’ve got to tell you, though, today was horrific. At first I thought that there was a giant-sized truck passing by on the road, but then realized that was impossible. There was no truck in existence that could make as much noise as that!
Besides, the whole house was shaking like a leaf, and the floor seemed to be jumping up and down. This had to be an earthquake. Whoa, boy! I ran like the wind to open the door to the outside world, and once I did, the noise and the earth tremors had stopped…but the doorway still seemed to be swaying!
It was an earthquake, all right. A 4.8 on the Richter scale. The worst one I’d ever been in. There were two other memorable ones, but not like this. This one was insane.
Later, just when I thought it was all over, it wasn’t. Along came an aftershock and it was deeper in the earth than the first quake, though it only measured a 4.0 on the Richter. This day was nuts!
But look at the way it ended for me: I found out I received a Literary Titan Gold Book Award for CHILD OF SECRETS FROM AFAR, my cozy mystery about a Vietnamese orphan whose new parents are trying to figure out why a strange man is following her. Today turned out to be a great day after all!
Splendiferous Everything 