The True Story of How a Series of Lies Sent an Innocent Man to Prison
Early in Aggravated there is a scene where a sheriff’s deputy interrogates Steve, and tells him he knows Steve is lying because he had been tracking Steve’s eye movements. Steve has a glass right eye, so he took off his glasses, tapped the right eyeball with his fingernail, generating a clacking sound, and said, “Which …
Parts of this were used in Aggravated. As I worked on the book, I found myself making a number of grammatical and stylistic decisions that varied from standard acceptable usage. I’ve detailed them here in case you found them to be cumbersome when reading the book and wanted to know why I used them that …
In writing this book, I did a number of things stylistically that I probably wouldn’t do in a novel or a short story. For example, I used ellipses in an abnormal way, violated standard guidelines for numbering, and collapsed the dialogue from the trial’s transcripts. Part of the explanation below is taken directly from the …
I introduced you to the book’s primary characters and some of the locations in the posts, Name Substitutions and Deep Springs: Real vs. Fictional. In total, though, there are over 200 people, places, businesses, roads, and institutions named in the story, and (with very few exceptions) they aren’t listed by their real names. I couldn’t …
The disclaimer in the book, Aggravated, explains how and why I changed the names of almost everyone involved in the story. That passage can also let you know what to expect on this blog and website, since I will be doing the same thing here. Here’s the passage. “This is a true story, filled with …
I’m using a fictional city named Deep Springs, Texas, as the primary setting for this (non-fiction) book, Aggravated: The True Story of How a Series of Lies Sent an Innocent Man to Prison. I realize that’s quite a mouthful, so I usually just refer to it as Aggravated. I wanted to include this post on …