Blue suede news and other tales

Writing a novel is a unique challenge, especially your first time around. Now throw in an attempt at quasi-historical fiction, set in late 1980s Memphis, and for good measure, try to match up the plot with the actual timeline of those days, weeks, and months.

That was my aim when I wrote LAST BRIDGE TO MEMPHIS.

The novel may have a fanciful aspect, namely that Elvis Presley lived another ten years, but aside from that, the story’s backdrop is drawn from real events.

While much of it is derived from my memories of 1987-1988, some of the realism is the product of extensive research into those years, down to the occurrence of a tornado, a snowstorm, a presidential election, a riverfront festival, former street and place names, days of the week, and even the phases of the moon!

Sunset Symphony, May 1988

Where memory wasn’t specific enough I conducted some deep dives into the technology of the day — from coffee machines to weaponry, electric typewriters to beepers (pagers) and landline phone booths.

But I think the most fun aspect of the entire enterprise (aside from creating an evocative portrait of Elvis Presley in his fifties) was conjuring up the music references, either in dialogue or narration or in the chapter titles, which all point back to an Elvis song or to the Elvis mystique.

The television newsroom of the time is a character in itself. I strove for a warts and all description of the gritty, competitive, unforgiving environment that was a broadcast journalist’s workplace. Although I’ve been out of the business for a while, I’m guessing it’s probably to some extent the same cut-throat arena today, with the addition of computers and internet.

Here’s how Tom describes his “home away from home,” the Channel 2 newsroom:

Deep in the bowels of the WMDW-TV Channel 2 studios, I inhabited a quarter of a pod of desks, shared with another reporter and a pair of producers. An arrangement so intimate you could smell yesterday’s lunch and today’s deodorant.

My desk had a unique vantage point within this journalistic jungle—although desk was too big a word for it. Call a newsroom workspace a desk and you might as well call a toaster a barbecue grill. It was a chair and a typewriter buried beneath scripts, papers, and videotapes.

Before long, Tom will be called to the front lobby. A mysterious visitor awaits him there, a curiously familiar looking man calling himself “Danny Fisher.”