In The Media
Lincoln's Hat and the Tea Movement's Anger
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COLUMBUS AUTHOR TAKES ANOTHER LOOK AT LINCOLN IN RIVETING, NEW HISTORICAL NOVEL
April 5, 2016 Norie Libradilla Columbus, Ohio
Author David Selcer adds spice to history in “Lincoln’s Hat: And the TEA Movement’s Anger,” a historical novel that is set to hit the bookshelves nationwide this week.
Many have forgotten how unpopular Abraham Lincoln was in his time. He had to sneak into Washington for his first inauguration to avoid a reported assassination plot. He was opposed for his second term during the Civil War by one of his key generals. His resort to humorous parables at stressful moments exasperated his followers and detractors alike. Claims circulated that his lineage was partially black and that he fed his pets at the dinner table with a gold fork. He was a lightning rod for haters of every stripe, who didn’t hesitate to circulate outrageous stories of fiction about him.
The story of “Lincoln’s Hat” could have been one such story of fiction. Had his enemies known the contents of the congratulatory letter the sixteenth president received from the International Workingmen’s Association of Europe upon his reelection, they easily could have conflated it with his support for the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to paint him as a “socialist,” and the Civil War as his “war between the classes.” The congratulatory letter is a historical fact, and all the new civil rights legislation was the partisan work of radicals, albeit the radical Republicans of the day. Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, didn’t enforce the Constitutional Amendments nor, for that matter, did anyone else for the next 75 years. Ironically, had the Amendments been enforced, a strident movement like the Tea Party of today might have arisen back then among the Democrats, when the country was even more divided than it is now.
Published by Tate Publishing and Enterprises, the book is available through bookstores nationwide, or by visiting barnesandnoble.com or amazon.com.
Selcer, who was born on Lincoln’s birth date 78 years after the Civil War ended, has made studying Lincoln a hobby for 50 years. He majored in American history and began writing at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. Selcer has also written several murder mysteries for the “Buckeye Barrister Mystery” series.
Question: Does “historical fiction” actually change what occurred? Or is it simply a fictional story told against the backdrop of actual history during a particular period? Are the views held by Tea partiers today merely those that were held by the Democrat Party at the end of the Civil War that caused the Reconstruction of the South to fail? How are they different? How are they the same? Would things have been any different had Abraham Lincoln completed his second term?
Available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and various other online and “brick and mortar” bookstores nationwide.
Dream Catcher Murders
By Chris Gaitten
Senior Editor, Columbus Monthly || Posted Apr 13, 2018 at 3:00 PM
The writer will be one of many at this weekend’s festival. This Saturday, April 14, the 12th annual Ohioana Book Festival will welcome readers from across the state to the Sheraton Columbus Hotel at Capitol Square. The fest features roundtable discussions, book signings and meet-and-greets with about 120 writers and illustrators in genres including poetry, essays, nonfiction, young adult, memoirs, fantasy and photo collections. David Selcer’s genre of choice is mystery. Like several other local writers—three of whom were covered in the April issue—Selcer sets his books against the backdrop of Columbus, where he’s lived since 1970. Once a partner at Baker and Hostetler, he also keeps the subject of his stories close to home with his Buckeye Barrister mystery series about a fictional lawyer’s thrilling legal cases. On Saturday morning from 10:45 to 11:30, Selcer will be part of a panel on the greatest fictional detectives based in Ohio, which will take place in the Sheraton’s Legislative Room A. He praises Ohioana for acting as a springboard for Ohio authors to get much-needed publicity for their books. “Writing a book is half the battle; getting people to know about it and read it is the other half of the battle,” Selcer says. “And Ohioana really helps.” He gave us a little more insight into his writing style and his books.
Number of Books: Five fiction
Newest release: Dream Catcher Murders,” Buckeye Barrister mystery series (June 2017)
Number of Books:
Synopsis: Troubled lawyer Winston Barchrist III travels from his home in Columbus to Sarasota, Florida, to help his biggest client wriggle out of a land deal gone sour in the fourth book in the series. On his first day in Florida, Barchrist goes to a meeting with the developer only to find him dead in his penthouse apartment. The attorney winds up tangled in the bad land deal, with a murder hanging over his head, scrambling to clean up the mess.
Main character: After nearly being disbarred while working at a large law firm in Chicago, Winston Barchrist III moves to Columbus to give his career a fresh start. He mostly represents penny-ante crooks and takes on easy divorce cases and car wrecks ripe for quick settlements. But every now and then, someone walks through his door with a case bigger than anyone anticipates. Author’s inspired reading: Mystery writer Stuart Kaminsky
On writing a strong lead character: “It needs to be somebody from out of the ordinary, and when you start writing about this person, you have to let your imagination run strong and wild, and yet you have to anchor it to something truthful and true that people can accept.”
On setting books in Columbus: "I’ve lived in Columbus since 1970. I’ve watched it grow. It’s been a wonderful place for me to live and grow up and practice law with some modicum of success, and I’ve just seen the city burgeon and come into its own. And I really think that it’s a big city that ought to be a supporting background for various novels.”
DEADLY AUDIT AND DEAD BUT STILL TICKING
Transcript of Interview with Author David Selcer || PBS/WOSU All Sides Weekend Books
In his second career as an author, lawyer David Selcer, began writing mysteries, and has produced the engaging Buckeye Audit and Dead But Still Ticking.
Protagonist Winston Barchrist has seen better days. Now back home in Columbus, he's a morbidly obese private eye who is nonetheless a babe magnet-and someone trouble has no problem finding.. Selcer plans a series of Buckeye Barrister Mysteries-set in and out of Columbus.
Here's an interview with David Selcer. Portions of this will be included on All Sides Weekend/Books.
CP: You've had a long and distinguished legal career. All those years you spent being an attorney, did you know then you'd end up writing mysteries with a legal background.
DS: No, I didn't. I didn't know that at all. I knew I loved to write because that was the part of practicing law I liked best. I loved writing the briefs. But I didn't know that I was going to write legal mysteries!
CP: How did you get started?
DS: I did want to try writing. I tried my hand at writing other types of fiction. I wrote a very serious piece of fiction, which my son, who's now 42, said "Y'know dad, maybe you ought to make this character a humorous character in a mystery." I thought, oh well, why not try that.
CP: Your hero, Winston Barchrist, has a lot of physical characteristics. First of all he's grossly overweight. Why?
DS: I wanted Winston to be the antithesis of the corporate lawyer. I spent 35 practicing management labor law, corporate law, and I knew a lot of corporate lawyers, but the ones I really liked were just quite the antithesis of a corporate lawyer.
CP: Winston wears a wrinkled suit, his idea of personal hygiene doesn't jibe with the corporate mentality. He's thoroughly likable, because he's more like the rest of us than he is not. Was that deliberate?
DS: Yes. I like him. I wanted to write about somebody I liked.
CP: You are from Columbus originally. Was your legal career here in town?
DS: Yes, it was. I was with a large national law firm in the Columbus office.
CP: People are told to write about what they know and you know the law, and you know Columbus. did you find Columbus a good locale for you r books?
DS: Yes, a very good goldmine of ideas. There's a lot going in in Columbus. It's a very diversified city. When I first came here, Columbus was a small town. I've watched it grow up and I've grown up with it. I think now it deserves to be a venue of a mystery series or a series of books.
CP: Deadly Audit is the first of the series. Now tell me about the new one?
DS: The new one is called Dead But Still Ticking. It's also set in Columbus, but it also covers all over the state. It covers a wide pantheon of things going on in Columbus. But Columbus is the focus. For example, our Somali population is now about thirty- five thousand. We have the second largest Somali population in the United States. They play a role in the book. It's not about them but the Somalis play a role. They came here because of the abundance of packing jobs, jobs that they could do. Only seven percent could speak English when they arrived here . There are other characters. I won't say where they came from!
CP: I enjoyed Deadly Audit. It was great fun and part of the fun was trying to figure out who was who in real life. I made a couple of connections. I'll say no more! Were you dropping hints to people who are from Columbus who read your books about identities?
DS: I hope not! (laughs)
CP: There are fascinating people in your books, so why not?!
DS: Practicing law here for thirty -five years, I met a lot of fascinating people. I'm not going to sit here and say some of the people in this book aren't "take-offs" or combination of people I've met. I had a lot of people tell me they enjoyed the book because they're from Columbus.
CP: But you don't have to be from Columbus to enjoy these books....
DS: No, I don't think so. But I wanted to accomplish that because I just like Columbus!
CP: What's your writing process? How do you do this? Do you sit in front of the computer and wait?
DS: No. Thank heavens I've developed a process! I think up a concept, what I'd like the book to be about. I figure out how I'd like to to start, and what should happen in the book. Then I sit down and start writing out of nowhere.
CP: Does it take over?
DS: Yes. Absolutely. I write myself into a corner and then the question is how to get out and have it all make sense
CP: How many more books are you planning? Are we going to met more characters?
DS: Yes, we'll continue with the characters we've met but I will be introducing new ones as I go along I envision five or six books in the buckeye barrister series.
I like to pattern myself after an author I don't think any people know about. His name is Stuart Kaminsky. He wrote over sixty mysteries. He was a professor at Northwestern. I like the way he writes so I pattern myself after him.
CP: You can find these books on Amazon, or Barnes and Noble. Deadly Audit is the first in the Buckeye Barrister Series and Dead But Still Ticking is just out. You do spend enough time on buckeye football That'll hook people in. If you have the passion and the anger for buckeye football, you are going to enjoy these books.
We'll look forward to more. Thank you very much, David Selcer.
The Old Stories
Article In Cleveland Jewish News
Columbus resident David Selcer’s sixth book, “The Old Stories,” is a fictional account loosely based on his grandfather, Hyman Zeltzer, who immigrated to Cleveland at the turn of the 20th century.
Number of Books: Five fiction
Newest release: Dream Catcher Murders,” Buckeye Barrister mystery series (June 2017)
He didn’t go through Ellis Island in New York, the way most immigrants who came to the United Statesa did. Instead, he entered the U.S. through Vancouver, Canada. The 17-year-old’s trek started on a Russian battleship in the Pacific Ocean. His first job was on the Canadian Northern Railway from Edmonton to Quebec and not in a New York sweatshop. Assimilation was a problem for him, but the values he learned early in life led him to amazing consequences.
When the family moved to Cleveland, his wife took the lead in running the family’s grocery store. He overcame his relegation to the sideline with personal courage through the simple lessons he learned in his Ukrainian Hebrew school and by his empathy for others when he temporarily left his home after World War II.
Selcer, who was born in Cleveland, is a member of Temple Israel in Columbus. In 2004, he retired from his partnership in the law firm of Baker Hostetler to write novels. He is author of the Buckeye Barrister Mystery series and wrote the “Lincoln’s Hat and the TEA Movement’s Anger,” which was awarded first place in category for historical fiction in the Chanticleer Reviews writing competition.
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David Selcer graduated from Northwestern University, where he studied in the Medill School of Journalism. He then obtained his law degree...
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