Getting Started

By JJ Harrigan

Getting started can be a major problem for budding authors. A great story seethes within us, but we need something to push us into action. For me, it was my political science students at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, who planted the seed in my mind that I should write a novel.

Late in my career, I introduced a course on Politics and Fiction that resonated with my students. Every now and then, someone would announce how much he or she liked the way the fiction got them to feel what it had been like for the people in the story to live through the confrontations of their day. One young woman became enthused with a novel about the late 1940s and revealed her wish to have lived in those days. 

As I slowly realized the powerful impact historical fiction could have on readers, discontent began to fester in my mind. I was the author of two successful political science textbooks. But no student ever told me that my textbook had touched them viscerally the way that a novel could. 

Things came to a head when my publisher asked for a new edition of each of the two textbooks. Such an announcement normally provokes glee in an author, but this time the idea depressed me. What I really wanted was to write political fiction, but that would be impossible if I spent the next two summers in the basement of the library pouring through erudite Social Science journals in search of some golden nugget of wisdom that would make the next editions of my texts stand out over the previous ones.

I persuaded the publisher to find co-authors for the subsequent editions under a shared royalty setup. At the same time, I worked out an early retirement agreement with the university, and, with much delight, I started off on a brand-new venture, a venture that would require no more research.

I was going to write historical political fiction. 

I don’t know what madness deluded me to think a person could write historical fiction without doing research. But sometimes we need a little delusion if we are going to be able to step into the unknown. The result was that I found myself at the end of that Spring term with no more classes to prepare, no more scholarly research to conduct, and no committees to snore through. I was free to write whatever I wanted.

And I couldn’t think of a single paragraph to put on that computer screen.

Then, some months later, a horrible thing happened. U.S. Senator Paul Wellstone’s plane fell out of the sky, killing him, his wife, his daughter, and the two crew members.

I was stunned, as were most of the people with whom I hung out.   Wellstone was a Minnesotan and a fellow academic. Although we were not close friends, we had conversed together, and I had great respect for him. 

But why did his plane crash?

The National Transportation Safety Board and the FBI studied the crash and discounted foul play. But if their reports could not provide an explanation that would satisfy critics, I certainly could not do so. I could, however, do something else. Something they could not do. I could write a story about what it was like to have lived through that event. 

So, that was the origin of my first novel. It was originally self-published as The Patron Saint of Desperate Situations, and it got a nice reception in Minnesota. This year, I brought out a new edition retitled Fateful Flight to provide a better fit with the substance of the story.

With this book under my belt, I was encouraged to produce more novels that would bring historical moments to life. The first was self-published and was set on the home front during the Korean War The next three found a publisher, and their settings include the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the 1979-81 Iranian Hostage Crisis, and the interweaving of the Vietnam War with Bobby Kennedy’s 1968 Presidential candidacy.

Writing stories of our past is a worthy way to spend one’s time. And I’m grateful to the handful of students who unwittingly pointed me in that direction. Maybe that’s all we need to get started as authors. Someone or something to help us recognize our discontents and hint at a way out. Different authors, of course, will chart their own ways out. Mine is writing historical novels. I want the past brought to life.

JJ Harrigan is a former soldier, U.S. foreign service officer in Brazil, and college professor. He writes historical thrillers. His latest, Goodbye Cuba (Bronzewood Books, September 2023), takes you back to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Today, he scribbles his tales of intrigue from his home on the banks of the St. Croix River, near St. Paul, Minnesota, where he lives happily with his wife Sandy.