The Reporter’s Toolkit: Bringing Journalistic Skills to Fiction shows how investigative techniques—research, interviewing, and fact verification—can bring fiction to life. Award-winning journalist Geri Spieler reveals how reporters’ methods build authenticity, depth, and credibility in storytelling. Perfect for novelists seeking truth in their imagination.

Geri Spieler has written about a woman who shot at a sitting US president. Using her high-level investigative skills, she got Washington to open the file of what really happened the day she shot at President Ford instead of what the FBI covered up. In her breakthrough book, Housewife Assassin-The Woman Who Tried to Kill President Ford, (Diversion Books), Spieler reveals the true story of that woman, Sara Jane Moore, who was a mother and doctor’s wife who lived in the country club community of Danville in 1975 for 18 months, and tried to assassinate the president, missing his head by six inches.  The book has a three-book deal with a new publisher. 

Geri is the immediate past president of the San Francisco Peninsula branch of the California Writers Club and has authored articles in numerous publications. She has written for the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Forbes. As a Research Director for Gartner, a global technology advising company. She was a regular contributor to Truthdig.com, an award-winning investigative reporting website and also a contributor for the Huffington Post. She is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists, the Authors Guild, the Women’s National Book Association, the Internet Society, and the Book Critics Circle. Her latest published book is the first of the Regina trilogy. It is historical fiction based on her grandmother’s life.

Schedules

  • Occurs Thursday, April 9th, 2026 @ 6:30 pm – 7:45 pm

Venue

San Mateo Public Library

55
San Mateo, CA 94402

Contact

David M Strom

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