Bonnie Hearn Hill’s ‘If It Bleeds’ is second book to hit bookstores in less than a year on scandalous Central Valley newspapers - By N.L. Belardes

The new blood-and-guts companion to books about newspaper
corruption in conservative Central, California...


Lords of the corrupt Central Valley publishers?


The San Joaquin Valley in Central and Northern California—also known as the Great Central Valley. How great is such a valley with nearly a dozen river systems feeding its soil-rich farmland? The hydraulic society of the world’s hydraulic societies, an artificially controlled hydrological network of agricultural landscapes with canals and rivers, with some that can reverse flow, and a giant aquafier in the Kern Water Bank neatly tucked away in the Kern River Alluvial deposit, not to mention oil rivers below ground in crisscrossing streams that feed America’s hunger for petroleum-based products. It’s the literal land of milk and honey, with golden grasslands to prove, right?

Don’t forget I used the word, ‘artificial’. Such a landscape is man-made, built with millions of dollars of hybridized agriculture and mechanical waterworks, and controlled by corporate landscapes as tricky and complex as reversing the flow of metric tons of H2O. Don’t forget the Kern Water Bank can hold one million cubic feet of water—that’s the largest in the world—no wonder it’s a bank many moguls would like to crack. The water and oil that flows in the valley are the valley’s liquid diamonds, with agriculture just as wealthy and sparkling on the vine.

The cities and the towns of the Central Valley boast all-American status, and can be as quaint as a roadside fruit stand surrounded by grape vineyards—the very places where the Central Valley breadbasket meets its highway roots, the very places where bodies are sometimes left for farmworkers to stumble across.

A discovered body could lead to a big news story. And a big news story in the Central Valley tied to a body found in agriculture fields could lead to who-knows-where—a bleeding front page news story perhaps? When working in a newsroom there might even be an axiom to live by—for journalists that is. They might say, “If it bleeds, it leads.” Maybe such an axiom just depends on the mantra a particular newspaper wants to exercise; maybe that’s just a way to say gruesome stories are always at the top of the news in the Central Valley: a landscape of many socialites with deep pockets, some of who have been tied to a murderous past.

Sure, there is my book Lords: Part One based on the ‘Lords of Bakersfield’ news stories about a citywide conspiracy of murder and newspaper corruption. A fictional newspaper called the Tule Reader harbors a publisher with a mind-controlling agenda over his fundamentalist readers so despicable that corrupt lawmakers and city officials would lead hidden gay lives that preyed on the hopeless. A local Bakersfield theatre director would tell me after reading the book, “Even though it would make a good movie, no one will make a movie about it. It won’t sell because it’s about Bakersfield.” Oh it wouldn’t? No one wants to read about the land of Buck Owens, Korn, and newspaper conspiracies? Then why did such dark news stories get picked up even by the Main Stream Media (MSM) in 2003? Popular stories breed in the public consciousness. They make for good movies that society can relate to. And just maybe such a brooding work about Central Valley newspaper corruption isn’t alone…

September 1st marks the mass market paperback release by Mira Books of Bonnie Hearn Hill’s newsroom thriller, If It Bleeds, a book loosely based on Central Valley happenings within the corrupt side of the newspaper biz. Echoes of Santa Barbara newspaper scandal ringing in your ears? (Not to mention the local Bakersfield Californian plagiarism scandal last year that I can't find on their new website. Click for dead links. Now why would the news suppress the news about their own scandal?). Read Hearn Hill’s fictional account of newspaper drama as it unfolds in conservative Central California city life. Follow investigative reporter Corina Vasquez as she explores murder and intrigue surrounding her own Valley Voice newspaper. Will she find the killer of the city’s mayor? Does the plot deepen to a wider conspiracy regarding the city’s corporate elite, rich builders and some rather stereotypical conservative bigots?

Brutal murders, big headlines and a conspiracy as deep as the plot of Lords: Part One? Yes, of course. If It Bleeds is definitely a collector’s item for people wanting books not just by Central Valley writers, but about the conspiracies of the Central Valley. There’s a lot of truth in such fiction. Who would have thought that two books about Central Valley newspaper media machines would hit bookstores less than a year apart?

And Hearn Hill is no newspaper slouch. She’s a self-made insider of the newspaper game who worked for the Fresno Bee for more than two decades. I’m thinking she may have seen her share of murder stories, interdepartmental newspaper shenanigans and newspaper scandal. There just has to be a tie-in to If It Bleeds. A big “no comment” from her on the topic. Writers tend to resolve their own distant past. As she said in a recent interview with me, “Fiction is the lie that tells a truth.” So she tells it. Her truth-telling is just woven with some good storytelling is all.

If It Bleeds storms its way into the world of psychological thrillers and leaves readers wondering just what their newspapers are up to behind closed doors and brick walls. In part one of the trilogy, Bonnie Hearn Hill takes sentences filled with narrative sarcasm, a healthy dose of mostly hidden novelist agenda, and spins a fiction about secret newspaper power trips, sexual corporate escapades, thrilling intrigue, and sprinkles her work with a journalist bent on a mission not to necessarily do good, but to find the truth no matter the cost. Hearn Hill’s ability to squeeze every last drop of plot and structure is why her novel works.

There’s no doubt, If It Bleeds is the blood-and-guts companion to Lords: Part One. If you own one, you need the other. Get If It Bleeds September 1st on Amazon. September 2nd, get your book signed in The Big “No” Barnes and Noble (Fresno).

(*If you're in Bakersfield, pre-order from Russo's Books)
Read more about Hearn Hill’s trilogy and If It Bleeds
And her purple gloves get interviewed by Authorlink
Bonnie Hearn Hill Official Site
Get If It Bleeds on Amazon. Pre-order for September 1st delivery
Try my novel for size if you want more on Central Valley newspaper corruption
Coming soon: a review of another valley writer: THE SWAMI…

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Tuesday, August 22, 2006. You can leave your response.