Welcome! Glad you’re here to enjoy with me the book series on the Texas Grievance Committee.
Every time I speak about “The Grievance Committee,” I receive a lot of questions. Some readers question whether the people in the stories are based on real, live people. Are these stories based on actual cases? Did people really act that way during the Panel Hearings and during the discussions? What really motivated those decisions?
Some of my old friends in San Antonio cannot resist the temptation to substitute an acquaintance (or maybe themselves) for some character in the story. They’re absolutely positive that they’ve got the straight skinny, the true identity and don’t believe me when I protest that they’re without a clue. Let me explain.
Since I was fortunate to serve on the Grievance Committee in San Antonio for ten years (the last six as Chairperson) and since thereafter I was able to represent complainants, accused lawyers, and witnesses, I acquired actual knowledge utilized by my imagination to create characters. Into the mix-master, I threw some real life legal cases, adding a dash of my imagination, and flavored them with a smidgen of grievance complaints—-an interesting concoction.
The characters in the stories can be a composite of real but unidentifiable people with imagined stories. Or, the characters’ stories can be a composite of real stories which have been materially altered. The end result makes impossible the ability to identify any real person with that of any character in any story. So, the characters are true creatures of fiction and my imagination.
One reader commented that the characters seem alive and she expected to meet some of them at the grocery store. She is right, because using famous names, places, events, entities, et cetera does relate to reality and this method anchors the story to present, every day reality. The reader is persuaded that all the story characters are alive right now in San Antonio. Maybe they are!
I had a lot of fun creating these characters!
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Another frequent question asks about the creation history of the “The Grievance Committee.”
Tiring of the litigation wars, I started mulling over the concept of writing grievance committee stories. The idea struggled with me a few years, but I was too lazy to act. Finally, I began to write, and write, and write. After a few years, I finished a 900 page “masterpiece,” or so I thought.
When I presented my ballooned creation to a New York writer’s agent at a writers’ conference, she stuck a reality pin in my balloon and suggested changes, such as eliminating the numerous plots, subplots, themes, sub-themes, characters, which she said could fill several novels. She preached re-write and re-write and re-write!
And I did. Plenty. Excising one’s own“wonderful” writing hurts, but the surgery helps the patient heal properly and timely. That agent was 100% correct when she said, “You already have enough material for 3 or 4 interesting novels!” So, the re-writing process began and continued for a couple of years. I hope I finally got it correct.
In the meantime, I discovered that the publishing game is now more big-score oriented than ever, with the publishing houses interested in sure financial hits, carefully avoiding the works of first-time, non-celebrity authors. When one of my author friends recommended Create Space as a self-publishing company, I investigated and signed on for Book One. They’ve been great!
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I hope to hear from you and visit with you again very soon. Take good care of yourself.
-FRANK
