Growing up, I was surrounded by really, really old folks, ancient relatives who wanted the kids in our family to know all about their own lives as kids. Some of my old people were alive when the Great San Francisco Quake and Fire occurred in 1906. None had experienced the quake and fire themselves, but they remembered details related by family members who lived through the terror and they recalled newspaper accounts. Of course, radio was in its tiny babyhood then, and TV was non-existent. I recall being impressed with the drama of it all.
When the more recent big quakes happened, "Northridge" that produced terrible damage in Southern California and "Loma Prieta" in Northern California where part of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge almost fell into the bay, and where people were crushed in the collapse of a double-deck freeway in Oakland, I was reminded of the tales of my ancestors. I started thinking about a story I could tell that would be both interesting and that might help readers get in the mood to confront the Big One that's sure to come.
So I started doing the necessary research in libraries and on the Internet. Tery Ordway was a ready-made character from her appearance in both John-Browne's Body & Sole (as a very small, already very bright child), and Buds wherein she serves as an "adviser" to much older Patella Sackworth.
Junior Kuhl was not a BalonaBooks character, but his father was "Julius," the neighbor kid in The Far Side of the Moon, now all grown up with grandchildren (it happens!).
What I'm suggesting here to young people who are writing stories is that old folks in the family are a great resource, if you will get them to tell you their stories. They have served me well.
