Marshfield author draws on experience in latest thriller
Marshfield resident and author Casey Sherman is at it again with a new novel titled "Black Dragon.'' While Sherman lives and writes on the South Shore, the novel's setting and backdrop deep in the heart of China are quite familiar and personal to him. Sherman and his wife traveled to Beijing in 2003 to adopt their daughter Mia, now 5, and found the experience enlightening, if not somewhat overwhelming. The couple also has an 8-year-old daughter, Isabella.
"Going to China was like walking on the face of the moon,'' explained Sherman, who was struck by the cultural differences he witnessed. "As a writer I thought, imagine facing obstacles like a language you can't understand, a culture you know little about, and streets so choked with people one could get lost in the blink of an eye.
"I wrote about what it smells like to get off the plane in Beijing, what it felt like to get lost in a city of 14 million people. All while trying to soak up the incredible history of the place,'' Sherman said. "We here in New England take pride in our history, but I was walking inside temples that were 5,000 years old.''
And thus, the seed for what would become "Black Dragon'' was planted.
The story is unique in that it's a mystery that focuses on the Chinese adoption experience. The plot follows a young TV anchorwoman who winds up kidnapped while trying to adopt a baby in China.
"It's a real boots-on-the-ground perspective of the adoption process from someone who's gone through it,'' Sherman said.
To the rescue comes Sherman's tried-and-true hero Heath Rosary, a former Boston College football star, who goes from being a secret agent to a private investigator. What follows is the same kind of high-stakes drama Sherman first tackled with the book "Black Irish.''
With the Beijing Olympics in the spotlight, the story is timely and fresh, but it also tackles some serious issues. Sherman set out to inform his readers about a generation of Chinese baby girls who are discarded because of their sex. "Infanticide is still a problem in rural China despite a government crackdown,'' Sherman said. "In rural areas, all the emphasis is on the male because he will take care of his parents when they are old.''
Still, at the heart of the book is a tiny baby and this is what fueled Sherman's creativity.
"I couldn't help but picture my darling little girl as I wrote page after page.''
Sherman hasn't always been a novelist; his background is in journalism. After graduating from Boston University in 1993, Sherman began a career in television news, eventually becoming a producer for the 6 o'clock news at WBZ Channel 4 where he was nominated for an Emmy Award. Always an avid reader, Sherman never thought about writing books until he lead a highly publicized re-investigation into the 1960s Boston Strangler murder spree. This case was personal for Sherman as well; he set out to find the true killer of his aunt Mary Sullivan, who at 19 was believed to be the youngest and last Strangler victim.
"I had no plans of writing about it, I just wanted to solve the case so my family could have closure,'' Sherman said. "But I thought - this is my story and if anyone is going to write it, it's going to be me.''
This became the core of his first book "A Rose for Mary: The Hunt for the Real Boston Strangler,'' published in 2002.
Sherman has a creative writing process that works well for him. "Some writers outline their entire book before writing the first page, but not me. I have a very loose idea of how I want to start a book and a loose idea of how I want to end it,'' he said. "Getting from beginning to end is as much of a surprise to me as it hopefully is for the reader.''
He also has some advice for budding novelists. "Write. Getting that first page under your belt is always the hardest,'' he adds. "Writing comes down to discipline. You have to sit at that computer for at least two hours a day regardless of whether you actually write anything. I find the nights I don't want to do it are usually the best writing nights.''
Sherman has three books "in the oven'' for next year including another true crime story called "Bad Blood: Freedom and Death in the White Mountains.'' The story follows the deadly police shooting in Franconia, N.H., in 2007.
"Unlike the 'Strangler' book, this one's not a whodunit,'' he said. "Instead I explore how it happened.''
The Patriot Ledger