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Ken Blaisdell |
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Ken grew up in the small coastal-New England town of Rowley, MA. The same town that is host to the central action of a forthcoming novel, The Nightmare Murders. He attended grades 9 through 12 (class of 1970) at Newburyport High School, which is the setting for pivotal plot elements in The Weaver Conspiracy. Also featured in Weaver is the fictionalized “St. Jacques Hospital,” which is based on the real-life Anna Jaques Hospital, where both of his daughters were born.
He currently live in the Phoenix, AZ area “Valley of the Sun,” where his immediate neighbors were the inspiration for The Wives of Logan’s Point. And many of the scenes of his latest novel, Guardian, are set in downtown Phoenix and the surrounding communities.
The title character in Katie: A Novel of Autism was inspired by Ken’s wife’s real-life niece Quin.
If you’re beginning to see a pattern, it’s because Ken likes to be very familiar with the subjects about which he writes.
Accuracy and detail are important to Ken—as he believes they are to his readers. So, if he doesn’t know enough about something that he needs in one of his plots, he will research it. Ken will spend hours digging for a single detail so that he never has to “fictionalize facts.” He believes that one untrue fact, stumbled upon by a reader, will forever break the spell being cast by the author.
Fantasy and science fiction are different, of course, but well-written mainstream fiction, in Ken’s humble opinion, must leave the reader wondering where the reality ends and the fiction begins. With the best novels, the reader never even thinks to ask the question.
One reviewer, after reading Weaver, complimented the authenticity and detail in the book by saying that he found himself expecting to hear updates about the characters and events on the evening news. That is the spell that Ken endeavors to cast in every one of his novels.
To get that level of accuracy and detail, Ken spent more than two years researching his historical novel, A Kiss For Luck!. He also read several books on psychology for Freefall, to make sure he had the details of psychopathy and DID (dissociative identity disorder) correct. And in Camelot, he actually owns the 1963 Ford Falcon that is a main “character” in the saga.
Ken currently has three more novels on the editing shelf. One is The Nightmare Murders, about the desperate race between the police and a victim’s vengeful and psychopathic father, to find a serial killer.
The second is The Kennedy Box, which features a small cache of lost clues about the JFK assassination that resurfaces in 2008. But the family that accidentally discovers the collection finds itself in mortal danger from people who still need to keep the secrets hidden.
The third is titled The Chamberlain Abduction, and is about a kidnapping-for-ransom that takes place in Scottsdale, AZ. Suspicion and infighting caused by tension, guilt, and greed within wealthy but dysfunctional family, not only tears at the fabric of the family, but puts the young victim in even greater jeopardy.
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E-mail Ken |
