Seifert completes locally based historical fiction novel

Notable local resident and a candidate for Minnesota’s Republican governor nominee in 2012, Marty Seifert can now also be called an author.

Seifert, a former Republican minority leader, did most of the work on his new book, “Sundown at Sunrise,” during the fall of 2016, with editing being done since then.

“There is a lot of excitement,” Seifert said. “I’ll be doing lots of book launches and signings.”

Seifert was quite surprised by the high amount of local interest “Sundown at Sundrise,” which is a historical fiction book about an axe murder that took place in Morgan, MN 100 years ago.  He noted how the book has been getting even more attention than his 2012 run for governor of Minnesota.

“We never saw this kind of interest in the political realm,” Seifert said. “There’s lots of pride in my home area over this book.”

Seifert grew up in Marshall and is an alumnus of SMSU class of 1995, or SSU at the time. Writing a book has been on Seifert’s bucket list for a while, and after getting out of politics, he has accomplished that goal.

“Lots more goes into [writing a book] than people realize,” Seifert said.  “It was original going to be a chapter book, but now it’s 46 chapters. It ended up three times longer than I thought.”

As “Sundown at Sunrise” is based on real events, Seifert did extensive research to write the book. Originally meant to be a non-fiction book, Seifert changed ended up changing it to historical fiction. The book is still based in the area, but Seifert said he took some liberties with the killer’s motive, noting that the real motive for the axe murders was never discovered.

“I did all the research and realized that as a non-fiction book, it would’ve been about five pages,” Seifert said.

“Sundown at Sunrise” will be available Dec. 10.