Two years ago, I wrote an article<\/a> in the jonestown report<\/i> about White Night<\/i>, a then-incomplete novel, a work-in-progress, other hyphenated descriptions of a book not yet done.<\/p>\n With a sense of both pride and apprehension, I would like to report that the novel based on the Jonestown tragedy is finished and I will be offering it for publication in the coming year.<\/p>\n The words \u201cbased on\u201d are important: it’s not a novel about <\/i>the catastrophe, but a fictional story written around it and leading up to the final horrific climax. The main character is a Guyanese journalist who happened to be living near the Jonestown site and decides to investigate.<\/p>\n As this is fiction, I have taken quite a bit of literary licence, including creating a right-hand-woman for Jim Jones, a partner in crime; someone pretty evil, but, unlike Jones, perfectly sane and drug-free. I’m hoping that those personally connected with Jonestown will forgive me this departure from the story as it really happened; this is fiction, after all, and we novelists do like to create own stories, and not just cling to the real ones!<\/p>\n I would, however, by delighted to find two or three so called beta-readers among the Jonestown community; people who know the story inside out, maybe lived there for a while, and would be willing to read and critique the manuscript. Anyone who is willing to read my work with the challenge to see if I got the story right without always being factually accurate is invited to contact me at sw.maas@gmail.com<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n (Sharon Maas’ other article in this edition of <\/i>the jonestown report is Running Away<\/a>. A contemporary account of the deaths in Jonestown and their impact upon Guyana \u2013 written by Sharon Maas’ mother Eileen Cox \u2013 is here<\/a>. Sharon may be reached via email at<\/i> sw.maas@gmail.com<\/i><\/a>. Her website \u2013 which will include updates on the book \u2013 appears here<\/a>.)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Two years ago, I wrote an article in the jonestown report about White Night, a then-incomplete novel, a work-in-progress, other hyphenated descriptions of a book not yet done. With a sense of both pride and apprehension, I would like to report that the novel based on the Jonestown tragedy is finished and I will be […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":40242,"menu_order":10,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-40253","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40253"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40253\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60358,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40253\/revisions\/60358"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}