How far would you go to keep from losing a friend?
When I started writing The Beat on Ruby's Street, I had no idea it would turn into a series. By that I mean a limited series of three books--with the second just being completed.
The first reason I started expanding Ruby's story was because my first publisher requested it. As I moved to Dragon Moon Press, I realized I didn't have to continue--but I wanted to.
The characters we meet in book one were pulling me into book two--especially Ruby's best friend, Sophie. Because Sophie's mother was a comedy writer, and it was rare for a woman in the 1950s to be one, I wanted to start there. I also knew that the 1950s brought the Blacklist--an infamous list used to persecute writers believed to be Communists.
Ruby doesn't know what Communists are, but soon finds out that if you're suspected of being one, you can lose your job, home and everything that's important to you. During America's "cold war" with Russia in the 1950s, being a Communist meant being one of "them" -- Russians who wanted to take over the world and take money away from people who worked hard for it.
After reading about the history of how the Blacklist got started, I started thinking of it as a time of political hysteria. People ratted out their neighbors for being "Commies" or reported them to people who put them on the list. Those on the list couldn't get work, and most of them were in the entertainment industry.
The more I learned, the more parallels I found with our own times--people turning against each other because of political differences and attacking each other personally and professionally if they didn't agree. I started to think about friendship, about what it means to lose a friend due to reasons beyond your control.
I also started thinking about the perceptions we have of each other--such as the way Ruby thinks of the neighborhood social worker, Mrs. Levitt--and how a policeman might think of Ruby's father's friend Bo, just because he has a different color of skin.
Most of all, I thought about what Ruby would do to find her friend Sophie and Sophie's mother Mrs. T when they both had to leave town. Mrs. T is afraid to stay in New York because she knows a committee in Congress wants her to testify against her friends. Ruby admires that, but doesn't want to lose Sophie.
How far would you go for a friend?
That's what I wanted to explore in Fool's Errand, which should be released in about eight weeks. By exploring this question, and friendship itself, I found a little bit of an answer. I hope you can, too.
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