News…vs…fiction. They’re as different as Obama vs Trump. I learned to tell stories in the news business, where facts matter and “making stuff up” would lead to a very short career.
Then one day my then 26-year-old daughter, Tamiko, came to me wondering if I’d be interested in co-writing a fairy tale she was working on. Okay, sure, I thought, how hard could it be? That was 12 years ago, and our novel Slumber is finally ready for the query gauntlet. What took so long? My daughter got busy raising a family, and I discovered that making stuff up is harder than news.
But I kept at it, and wrote my first “solo” book, a suspense novel titled The Closed Circle, mixing things I know with stuff I make up: news and fiction.
The stuff I know comes from 37 years in TV news, first as a broadcast engineer, then as a cameraman, and finally as a producer for special projects, including investigative reports and documentaries. TV news is an undiagnosed form of insanity, brought on by too much coffee, unforgiving deadlines, and burnt-out adrenal glands. But God, it’s exciting. Every day is different. And you get to work with people just as crazy, evidenced by our secret desire to change the world through journalism, even though we rarely know if our stories have any real impact. And sometimes our high-minded efforts clash with the fact that TV news is a business. As one boss put it, “Your job is to keep the Pontiac commercial from bumping into the Pepto-Bismol commercial. You’re the filler.”
“Your job is to keep the Pontiac commercial from bumping into the Pepto-Bismol commercial. You’re the filler.”
So I filled. A documentary on the nine Americans murdered in El Salvador’s civil war. A special on the drive for redress by Japanese Americans interned in World War II. An exposé on housing for homeless children. Several reports on insurance companies denying healthcare. An early (1995) look at the emerging fight for gay marriage. Specials on the conflicts in Israel and Ireland. Dozens of stories on race relations and civil rights. And one of my favorites: a documentary on the history of Negro League baseball.
In 2004, the CBS affiliate in San Francisco offered me the position of executive producer for “30 Minutes Bay Area,” a local version of the network news magazine “60 Minutes,” complete with the famous ticking clock. Consulting producer for the program was news legend Don Hewitt, who created the original “60 Minutes” and had always wanted to try the concept on local TV.
My body of work, in collaboration with many wonderful colleagues, has garnered three George Foster Peabody awards, an Edward R. Murrow award, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award, a George Polk award, and 26 regional Emmy awards.
As for my connection to Japan––which is at the heart of The Closed Circle––I studied at Waseda University in Tokyo, where I met my wife Yuko. We settled in San Francisco but visit her family in Japan every year or so. I still remember just enough Japanese to order a beer and find the bathroom. I’m now retired, living in San Francisco, and keeping busy by…
…making stuff up.
Craig Franklin 