Series Prospectus: How My Love of History Conquered the 20th and 21st Century.
Sue Grafton had an extremely bright idea for her private investigator Kinsey Millhone. Grafton established a one word bullet point for the story behind the cover. She did it with her alphabet series. For example Q is for Quarry… O is for Outlaw… Get the theme? Hmm that sounds catchy now, doesn’t it? Of course. Grafton backs up the alphabet with compelling mysteries in her fictional town, Santa Teresa, California. What about using the year of my time travel book as a headline for time and place?
My Background
Let me create the backdrop of a love affair with history. No, I was not born with a genetic proclivity toward things historic. Or was I? My parents not only brought my brother and me to national battlefields and historic places during summer vacations. They read historical books and so did I. To love history one has to find people interesting, events interesting and history’s consequence twice as interesting. I think that having a decent memory helps but what is more important is the ability to connect events and plot the reasons or sometimes multiple pathways as to why things happen. Do we learn from history? Dribs and drabs. Sometimes gargantuan replays sound warning bells to prevent a second or third slipping down the slippery slope of disaster.
We were at Gettysburg in 1963 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of that consequential battle. Although only approaching my twelfth birthday, my emotional baggage was not psychological but transcendental. I absorbed the battlefield-Little and Big Round Top, Devil’s Den, The Cornfield and the open expanse where George Pickett led the charge toward the Angle where the Union cannon and soldiers were waiting. Being there with empathy and sensing the passion and the struggle at Gettysburg left an impression on me. Getting the stats correct inside the Battle Rama, in the battlefield pamphlets and on the historic markers I soon learned was essential to understanding the story. Seventeen years later I would return having studied the Civil War under a nationally prominent Civil War professor at the University of Massachusetts and later extended my studies of Gettysburg. I carried several new Gettysburg books for an enhanced appreciation of Gettysburg 2.0.
1882: When You’re Dead, You’re Dead: Nexus Series
John Wayne meets Johnnie Ringo
Nineteen years after the Gettysburg battle Jake McBride will head to the old American West. (With a little help from Mr. Melbourne and the Nexus House) Having that same Civil War Professor for a course on the American West was a great foundation to write this book.
In a time when liars were heroes and killers walked free McBride is a San Francisco assistant district attorney who watches the infamous killer Johnny Rheingold go free on a technicality. Mr. Melbourne offers Jake a chance to bring Rheingold to justice in the old American West. After hedging the doubting Jake enters a corridor the connects to an 1882 frontier saloon. He becomes Marshal Jake McBride from Brinson, Nevada.
I frequently visited the Nevada landscape and upper desert when I lived in Southern California. Many of the scenes in When You’re Dead, You’re Dead are places I hiked or in the case of Rhyolite, Nevada was shot at from a distance and under whizzing bullets ran into an abandoned mine. Who’s says the old West couldn’t come alive? (for real )Hiking down into Ubehebe Crater in Death Valley laid the groundwork in my mind for Jake chasing the wagon into the volcanic crater.
The adventure begins when silver on the way to the US mint in Carson City disappears from Overland Train 924 now a wreck just outside Brinson. Rheingold arrives in town on the evening stage and Jake’s quest for justice begins. Jake rides out to the Dunbar ranch where Tom Dunbar has been shot dead. The townspeople are gathering under an oak tree, pushed by the Turner boys, and ready to hang Dan Dalton. Jake orders them to release Dalton into his custody and he is placed in jail while Jake investigates the train wreck. Having visited the high desert as well as Arizona I mirrored the plot in the old west with real old west figures. Reflecting my time in Southern California, the next book tells the story of California success in Los Angeles.
Flash Gordon meets the Egyptian pyramid builders
Have you heard of the most spectacular feat of the Twentieth Century? I’m speaking of William Mulholland’s magnificent Los Angeles Aqueduct. Why, it’s just water. Correct but bringing that water down from the north gave birth to the megalopolis known as Los Angeles. The contrast of how present day Los Angeles would appear against a denuded economy, population and culture provides a vivid window of the importance of Mulholland’s dream. Sure, there is an antagonist Neeko Mauro, who blames the United States for all his shortcomings. Neeko is able to manipulate the timeline to destroy the future. Our Hero, Mark McKenna and his crew follow Neeko back in time to save the future. McKenna finds Aubrey, a Harvey restaurant girl and the world is changed.
I drove by the Newhall exit of the aqueduct several times a week during my time in LA. I think living in Los Angeles and being amidst its history excited me about writing a story about the aqueduct.
The Books: New York City
Amelia Earhart meets “Kalidahs”
Illustrating an epoch is another approach. I learned of social changes in America in the 1920’s from my advisor’s course on the US between the Wars. This professor was also well known around the world for his work. Many aspects of what I learned in that course has been woven into my adventurous thriller based in the year 1927. Embedding the 1927 Yankees into the story comes directly from conversations with my Dad. Same with the Dempsey Tunney Long count fight. Jack Dempsey was my Dad’s favorite fighter. The advent of ‘Big Media’ brought both of these sporting events instantly to sports fans around the country. Lindbergh’s flight across the Atlantic in May of that year and subsequent parade through downtown Manhattan was reported via radio. Smoking, the Flappers, the rise of the automobile and the influx into New York City by those from the hinterland were all apart of Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s by Frederick Lewis Allen, a book assigned by the professor. Fueled by a science fiction alien threat, the plots pops along through the Roaring Twenties.
1939: I Have Seen the Future: Lucy Apel, the 1939 World’s Fair and the Future
“The Gifted” meets Walt Disney”
Another professor understood American labor and social history, and his editing of many historians’ work is notable. But it was his incredibly detailed unveiling of the US Supreme Court for two semesters that remains inside my head like a social beacon while writing. The main text, The American Constitution, its Origins and Development by Alfred H. Kelly and Wilfred A. Harbison spotlights the evolution of the court and interpreting the laws of the United States. In the book 1939: I Have Seen the Future there exists a deep divide between the cold immoral, and reckless world hundreds of years in the future and the time of the 1939 New York World’s Fair. The focal point in time is Lucy Apel who seeks out the world renown social commentator Dr. Herman Geiger. The world so far in the future is controlled by artificial intelligence called the Seraph with no empathy or basis in law. Let’s contrast the constitutional republic and freedom that existed in 1939 to the framing of law outside the influence and long history of humanity. The US Constitution matters in its brilliance and its purposeful pursuit of the human condition which is embodied in its founding documents. All of these themes are wrapped up in a wild clashing of the two epochs at the World’s Fair.
The Books: War and CIA
Another of my professors wrote a brilliant book about Senator Joseph R. McCarthy which exposed the lies and demagoguery of Senator Joseph McCarthy of Minnesota. I was fortunate to also have this professor lecture about Senator McCarthy and the red scare history in the course the US. Since 1941. To say I was stunned about McCarthy’s confabulation would be a great understatement. I can remember the professor unearthing the phone list of communists in Wheeling West Virginia as he stood before the class in the old ROTC Building at UMASS. Going after communists for crimes, some founded and many victims of circumstance was something I had heard of, but I was unaware this could exist in a layer of our own government. Sometimes the conventional narrative of history might be dead wrong.
My mother would tell me the story of news of the Pearl Harbor attack 1941 and how the Japanese envoys were suing for peace in Washington, DC. So many sailors died in this sneak attack. All of their names are on my web site. I never lived that I know of in 1941, but I felt as if I had been alive in 1941. My Mom’s flare for telling the history about Pearl Harbor made the attack something that I took seriously.
Double Deception is a novel I wrote because of books I have read and videos alluding to the possibility that FDR and people in government knew that Yamamoto was going to attack Pearl. At first, I balked. But as time went by, I read the declassified documents and the lectures and authors pertaining to the contrary point of view. I’ll bounce back to McCarthy for a second. Why did McCarthy lie? McCarthy did not have the goods in Wheeling, West Virginia. Back to Pearl Harbor. Could it be that FDR did not have the goods to start a war? Could it be that that the United States citizenry, after the War to end all Wars (World War One) wanted nothing to do with another war. The America First movement of the 1930’s demanded that the United States stay out of yet another war. Getting the people to get behind the government’s idea of going to war is a fascinating proposition and that’s what I explore, like getting the info correct at my first visit to Gettysburg. All this is wrapped around an intense battle to get intercepted Japanese cables out to the American people. What did FDR know?
1947: The Platform
Jack Ryan vs Firefox
Four years before my birth CIA was formed actually on my future birthday, as a part of the National Security Act of September 18, 1947. The evolution of this agency, especially to go rogue, is part of the research I have done on all my books. Why would I be delving into the actions of CIA? The name of this article, How My Love of History Conquered the 20th and 21st Century might seem innocuous in my novel 1947. That rogue aspect relates to the Plat
form, an advanced entity inserted dimensionally around the world. And is tied together in a neat bow with Rosey and Buddy’s relationship. Bringing in the mover and shakers in the military defense realm and the formation scientific practical weapons was interesting as is every delving into history. As an added historical event-the incident at Roswell. The thriller aspect of the book begins the narrative of the Platform being stolen and then taken in time to 1947 with Buddy Powell which keeps the tension high through the book. 1947 connects directly to the military and intel of 1941. His romance with Rosey holds the book and the platform into the future and its proper place.
The Books: Plymouth, MA and the Past
1958:The Butterfly in the Deadly Storm
Peter Proud meets the Lakehouse
“What’ll we do?” she asks. “We climb down,” he answers. “If they come, then we have no choice.” The woman is Eva Marie Saint and the intrepid Cary Grant outlines the escape plan. The movie is North by Northwest a Hitchcock classic thriller. The escape route is down the face (or nose) of Mt. Rushmore or ‘a facsimile there of.’ I eventually saw Mt. Rushmore in my travels, the historic representation drawing me to South Dakota as much as the graves of Wild Bill Hitchcock and Calamity Jane in the adjacent Deadwood. Hitch’s idea of having the action and the plot within a historic venue drove me insane. The reader/viewer is trying to deal with the surroundings and like an open wound the plot comes gushing through producing a new mixture called a thriller adventure, inflated with tension and an unstoppable identification with the main characters that is captivating.
1958: Plymouth home of the Pilgrims, many centuries after stepping on Plymouth Rock in 1620. In this distinctly American town in Massachusetts a rising star and his corrupt manager hope to shed the confines of a small broadcast station and pursue a broadcast the celebrity career. Except the manager if Mafia corrupt and the exceptional talent will do what he’s told to become famous-even murder two young people who have deduced his evil intent in the murder of her uncle in the well of the Monument to the Pilgrims in downtown Plymouth in the shadow of the Mayflower II. Spookiness is not the theme of the novel, yet it does get pretty spooky when in the 1990’s a woman in Ohio has horrid, vivid dreams about the murders as if broadcast from the Pilgrim Monument which later devolve into the events leading to the murders. The table is set and Kathryn and her friend Roz flee the muscle of the celebrity and his manager but pass through time to 1958.
Good grief! There’s a Howard Johnson’s Restaurant along the waterfront. My mother and father met at Howard Johnson’s! The sign over the ice cream flavors says there are 28 flavors. Wow. Cars are big, I mean really big with fins like stabilizing rocket fins. There are no cell phones, computers or digital TV’s. You get the picture. It’s history, always evolving whether we want things to stay the same or not. And now the investigative adventure is just beginning as she confronts this nascent star and his Mafioso buddy in a quest for justice.
The Books: Patch Kincaid and the 1960’s
1961: The Kennedy Paradox: The Divergence of History
Mission Impossible vs Seven Days in May
Welcome to volume 1 of the Patch Kincaid Series . Although I was alive in 1958, by 1961, just three years later a mass of neurons somewhere above my shoulders had increased where I should have been smarter. Instead I became more ‘smart mouthed’ and until one teacher proclaimed: The was not humor. It was wit! The world was hardly passing me by. My family visited historical places and the arrival of John F. Kennedy on the scene had me pumped up on politics. I stayed up until the wee hours on election eve 1960, the television volume turned down low, to listen for the results. I finally went to bed but woke up to a Kennedy victory. Like many Americans and citizens of the world the death of President Kennedy less than a thousand days from that election day changed everything. I have devoted four volumes in novel form to the events leading up to the assassination of the President and the subsequent revelation though released documents and the efforts of researchers.
I knew that Castro had taken over Cuba when I was a kid, but did not know how the entire intelligence apparatus that I described in the Platform evolved politically and powerfully during the 1950’s. Although more people understand this now, many don’t. It was personally important to me also given my admiration of President Kennedy and having lived through his assassination, to find out why. Patch Kincaid. My research in this preliminary book on the Kennedy Assassination is listed in the Bibliography. I knew the outline of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, but I did not know the inner intel agencies and military machinations concerning this disaster. Although more people understand this now, many don’t. The Catch 22 (Joseph Heller) in this novel is based on historical facts. President Kennedy was assassinated because of a historical fact instigated by his mentor Ray Meinkewitz sending Patch back in time.
1963-Return to Dallas-Patch Kincaid Series vol. 2
Jason Bourne meets Allen Dulles
1963 was stacking up as a good year personally for me as winter approached. When entering the teenage years a sense of power, independence and entitlement opened up a new world of possibilities. As we walked into the monthly dance in the gym on a Friday afternoon, we lined up on one side and the girls on the other side. Who to dance with. Who to dance with. Nobody ever said no I don’t want to dance. That’s why we were there! The music rocked and many dances were slow. I was out on the dance floor when our principal, a man we respected entered the stage area with an expression of seriousness usually reserved for announcing silent lunches. “I have some sad news. President Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas this afternoon. I ask you to pray for Mrs. Kennedy and his family” We all bowed are heads.
I didn’t cry right then but the feelings swirling inside me were indescribable-like drain becoming instantly clogged. As I walked out to my locker # 108, gathered up my books and coat, but I didn’t see any of my friends who lived nearby. It was only when I walked up Columbus Ave, my shoes crushing and displacing the fallen autumn leaves, as the shock of death overcame me. I gripped my books and trudged forward. He was really gone. The bad news had to be correct if the principal had reported it. It was less than a mile down Sheridan Street to our house and I immediately negotiated the use of the portable TV in my brother’s and my bedroom. The wall to wall coverage had begun on NBC as they concentrated on events on the ground in Dallas. My father had rented a floor sander and had scheduled a big weekend project in the living room. I did not hear the sander and had now switched to the more comprehensive coverage on CBS. He leaned in the doorway, and I thought I would lose the TV but he said in an empathetic tone what was the obvious. “You really liked him, didn’t you…” I could only nod my head. He returned the nod. I watched the coverage and after he returned to the sanding my eyes welled and I cried.
Little did I know that decades later my four Patch Kincaid Books would be archived in the Sixth Floor Museum’s library in Dealey Plaza along with my video interview for their Oral Hstory project-available in the Museum’s Oral History Collection. Return to Dallas has 873 footnotes to source the material in Return to Dallas.
Click the film icon icon on the Sixth Floor Museum’s site to view The Robert P. Fitton Patch Kincaid Series and JFK recollections interview.
And now even though I know pretty much why President Kennedy was killed the experience on that Friday afternoon lingers like a chilled evening breeze across my mind but is indelibly etched in my heart.
1967-American Injustice: Jim Garrison (Patch Kincaid Series Book 3)
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington meets William Randolph Hearst
So, why not leave the Kennedy Assassination back in the Return to Dallas Book? In 1963-64 the mantra was that ‘Oswald did it.’ I would posit that the Warren Commission was not as much an investigative unit as it was an assemblage of facts. Facts are like highway barriers-they can be placed it strategic locations to divert the motor traffic to the desired location. Years of sifting through the evidence from a panoply of researchers shows that relevant statements about the assassination were omitted from the final 26 volumes and even the shorter version which I bought. Listen to the interviews Mark Lane conducted with the Dealey Plaza witnesses- some took place right in the plaza. Anyone would be shocked at what the witnesses are saying. No, I’m not going to stop at the burial of President Kennedy.
Volume 3 begins in late 1966. Patch becomes part of the ultra-stealth group Milky Way Network, looking into the powers and methods behind JFK’s assassination. The network’s goal is to aid Jim Garrison’s investigation in New Orleans. He links up with Meinkewitz, and they set up a functioning safe house outside New Orleans. Patch, torn by not being able to return to his family at Apex Junction, rebuffs the advances of Lieutenant Natalie Tompkins. When she leaves the safe house Patch remains confused but realizes he did like Natalie.
The government, using their minions in the press, both written and on the TV networks begin a full-fledged attack on Garrison. As witnesses are eliminated one by one Garrison is characterized as a buffoon by NBC news, by a Kennedy insider Walter Sheridan and Newsweek and The Saturday Evening post provide hit pieces written by Hugh Aynesworth and James Phelan. Witnesses are intimidated and bribed while Garrison is mocked. An entire task force is set up inside CIA to thwart Garrison’s attempts at justice. But in dribs and drabs Garrison is uncovering collateral JFK information.
At the end of 1967 there are hints that Robert F. Kennedy might have some political capital to run for president-but not unless LBJ is out of the race. And the numerous speeches of Martin Luther King are highlighted as Dr. King merges the peace movement with the civil rights struggle. Patch, chased by CIA and the military faces the dark clouded future of 1968.
1968-American Injustice: Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy (Patch Kincaid Series Book 4)
The Manchurian Candidate meets The Parallax View
Connecting the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy to President Kennedy’s assassination is not the mission of book 4. As 1968 commences those events are connected in time. ( A five year period) Flying to war-torn Vietnam Patch Kincaid and Ray Meinkewitz are part of a secret plan, Operation Bluebird Rescue, to extricate Commander Phineas Beauregard from an American prison near Saigon and question Winkamp, an important player in the death of President Kennedy. An extensive riot ensues as Patch’s flying skills are challenged. Patch, Phinney and Meinkewitz attempt to flee the country and top CIA operative Baker Finch.
In the next phase throughout Europe Patch searches for an elusive report (The De Gaulle report) that specifies how and why President Kennedy was killed. Finding that report leads to deadly consequences.
LBJ drops out of the presidential race after Senator Robert F. Kennedy from New York announces a run for the presidency. Kennedy’s extraordinary campaign is recorded primary by primary and speech by speech.
Patch faces down Baker Finch at Gibraltar and confronts more intelligence officers at a Christmas gala at a castle in England. He again meets Natalie Tomkins. The torch is lit in their relationship, and they race to find the de Gaulle report on the assassination of President Kennedy.
This is 1968, a horrendous year of assassinations and further bloodshed in Vietnam. The deaths of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy are detailed with the truth-how they were killed as threats to the existing order. I recorded Senator Kennedy’s extemporaneous response to Dr. King’s death on my 3 ½ inch tape recorder. Justice is denied to those who dared to seek it and for those citizens left to absorb the deluge.
Once again, an inconsequential event, this one involving Jim Morrison and The Doors, changes the timeline. Patch and Natalie are killed in France along with CIA’s Baker Finch as a helicopter explodes incinerating the de Galle Report.
As for me I worked as a coordinator in a congressional campaign and later for Sergeant Shriver while at UMASS. Although I remained very much interested in politics, I lost the initial zeal of my earlier years and began writing and reflecting my adventure on the planet.
To discuss film rights or production scheduling for the Robert P. Fitton Revocable Trust IP, contact: fittonbooks@gmail.com
The Books: Into the 1970’s- The Amanda Zimmerman Series,
1971 The Nixon Theorem-volume 1
The Girl from Uncle meets Ming the Merciless
Before Watergate there was a prelude, events that transpired when Daniel Ellsberg dropped the Pentagon Papers. Amanda Zimmerman from the future is a descendant of Patch Kincaid in the Apex Junction, Canada. In her time all authority on earth and its surrounds has evolved to the Perfectus, an entity not human and their Gappers, also non-human, enforcers. She is a gifted scientist and with her colleagues Peter and Chip unravel time dilation algorithms that indicate something President Richard Nixon did or did not do on the timeline led to the total Perfectus control and the subjugation of humanity.
They flash into the past, emerging in the Black Hills of South Dakota, a place where I have camped-a perfect place to enter a past time and hide their vessel. Their destination if the last known location for Patch Kincaid in the late 20th Century- Centerville, Vermont. They encounter Ray Meinkewitz and Phineas Beauregard on Wilton Jefferies farm, which begins a harrowing chase by CIA and they research to understand what President Nixon did or did not do to cause the rise of the Perfectus- all in a shadow of the Watergate Scandal.
The Books: California Postscript
2000: A World Without Her
Looper vs Last Man Standing
When I lived in Southern California, I was often seen at Griffith Observatory below the Hollywood Hills and overlooking the expansive Los Angeles Basin. I rode my fifteen speed bike along the San Gabriel foothills and up the road to the observatory (without stopping and in a sitting position!) Mostly I would find solace especially when the sun set below the Pacific horizon as I gazed across to the morass of an incandescent masterpiece dissected by freeway lifelines and a sweeping skyscraper glow. The aching in my soul would not go away yet I sensed I was operating in a dimensional warp in this unusual place. I was connected with a higher realm- protected and strong.
What a magnificent place to bring the protagonist of a World Without Her, Peter Sturgis, a man who is in a multiverse where his wife has been taken into this new world by a man, Ricardo, who can flip timelines at will and has done so for power and wealth for five hundred years. Tension and confrontation reign supreme in A World Without Her. Although Peter’s wife Jeannie has no idea who he is, Peter and Jeannie instantly have that same chemistry that transcends time and space. But Ricardo is not going to be happy with that. Without Griffith Observatory being a favorite haunt A World Without Her might have lacked the punch and power of the final novel.
Sojourn Series: 2040: Desperado
Jason Bourne vs Escape from New York
As the history of the past is a passion of mine, the future unwritten history is speculatively fascinating. Sometimes progress is not the hallmark of the future. The San Francisco in this second book of the Sojourn Series is not the San Francisco I remember during my time in California. Troops half traffic on the Golden Gate Bridge. Fossil fuels are fined and technology has run wild. Amidst the tremendous change is a Jason Bourne type special operative (memory intact) who is called back to action. The internal intel powers are now pitted against Loftus as he balances the confrontation with them with a renewed meeting of his lost love. But there is more happening that will lead Loftus to discover unfathomable technology and distant planets.
That’s my sweep of history, which doesn’t include the time warped world awaiting Loftus. There will be more history embedded within fast paced phantasmagorical plots that strive for meaning and relevance.
To discuss film rights or production scheduling for the Robert P. Fitton Revocable Trust IP, contact: fittonbooks@gmail.com
History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
Winston S. Churchill
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