Cynthia Hamilton's Blog: Reading and Writing, page 4
October 5, 2018
The Story Behind the Story: Beatrice Colin "To Capture What We Cannot Keep"
The Eifel Tower has been a sensation since it’s construction in 1889. It has gone on to become the most well-known and most recognized landmark in the world. From our current evolved state, it’s hard to imagine what an incredible feat it was to construct such a monument. It was an absolute act of daring to even visualize such a thing, yet the tower has become synonymous with the city itself, though popular opinion at the time believed it would be an eyesore and a complete failure.
Being terrified of heights, I’ve never been able to even get close to it. This is something the female protagonist in Beatrice Colin’s stunning novel and I have in common. When Caitriona Wallace ascends in the hot air balloon over the future home of the Eifel Tower, my stomach lurches along with hers.
But a shared fear of heights had nothing to do with my affinity for the story. From the first paragraph, I was transported to a time and place so authentic in its description, I felt as though I was seeing it with my own eyes. Just as I can feel the tense and immediate attraction between Cait and Émile Nouguier, the architect and chief engineer of the further monument. It is their separate stories and how they slowly and intricately weave together that had me savoring every evocative scene, every nuanced word of a story set when class and gender almost always determined one’s outcome in life.
I loved every word of this gorgeous novel and I was so keen to learn what inspired the author to write it. It’s my great pleasure to share Beatrice Colin’s story behind To Capture What We Cannot Keep:
For the last twenty years or so I have been a regular visitor to Paris, first to see an elderly relative who lived near the Bois de Bolougne and second, as Fashion Editor for a Scottish newspaper. Deep below the Louvre I took my seat, watched the shows and took notes; Chanel, Vivienne Westwood, Issey Miyake, each more a theatrical spectacular than a parade of clothes. Working in Paris was, of course, a joy. When each day ended later than scheduled (fashion shows never run on time) I sank into my bed in the small hotel I frequented on the left bank and thanked the configuration of stars that had led me to spend time my favourite city and get paid.
To work in Paris is quite different from being a tourist. You drink a café at the bar, zip around the herds of coach parties and avoid the spots where the prices are high and the crowds are big. The Eiffel Tower was one such place. I had been there once as a student and never again. I remembered dozens of buses pumping out exhaust fumes, long queues for the lifts and tourists swarming around the base like ants.
One day, however, when surfacing from a fashion show in the north of the city, my eye caught the tower. Taller that the buildings that surround it, constructed from iron girders to render it almost transparent against the light and as elegant as a decorative hat pin, for the first time I wondered who had built it and why.
This led me to books on Gustave Eiffel whose company designed and constructed it, Victorian engineering, the Belle Epoque and Paris in the 1880s. Although the tower is arguably the most famous landmark in the world, few people, me included, knew the fact that when it was built for the World Fair in 1889 it was only intended to stand for twenty years. It has always been a celebrity – it was the tallest structure in the world for decades – and although now the epitome of an icon, its likeness reproduced on everything from t-shirts to iphone covers, it was once the subject of vicious debate. Some engineers claimed it would act as a giant lightning conductor and electrocute all the fish in the Seine. Others said it looked like a giant lamp post and would ruin Paris’ skyline. No matter what one thought about its aesthetics, its construction was nothing short of miraculous. Built in two years by fashioning each individual piece in the workshop and then bolting it together on site, the tower was a masterpiece of engineering in an age where metal was just coming into its own as a building material.
An interest in iron pointed me towards bridges – Eiffel was primarily a bridge builder – which led me back to Scotland to our own iconic Forth Rail Bridge which was constructed in the same period. I discovered that the company who built it were based in Glasgow, where I live, and the man in charge was a man called William Arrol.
Both Arrol and Gustave were middle-aged at the time that I wanted to set my book. And they were men. I tend to focus on women, for obvious reasons. So how could I fashion a story out of this wonderful material. It was while reading up on the Eiffel Tower that I came upon a picture of Emile Nouguier, one of two engineers working for Eiffel who actually designed the tower.
There isn’t much written on Nouguier but there is a photographic image of him as a young man and he looks so sensitive, so serious, so handsome, that in short, I fell in love with him. I wanted a character who would feel the same way so I invented Cait, a young widow who becomes connected with Arrol when she is employed as chaperone for his two young relatives, who, for reasons I won’t go into here, all go to spend an extended time in Paris. The novel is told from alternating perspectives, Cait’s and Emile’s, and their relationship echoes the difficult construction of the tower. I didn’t write it as a traditional love story but one which shows two characters trying to fashion something new in contrast to what was expected of them at the time. Paris was both extremely conservative and excitingly modern, and it was against that backdrop that I wanted to show the effect of the political (with a small p) on the personal.
I followed the trajectory of Emile’s life as closely as I could. He did eventually leave Eiffel’s company and form his own and he did eventually work in Africa. Cait is a fictional character but her life explores how easily a woman’s life could be over at a relatively young age if she lost her husband or never married.
Writing the book was a pleasure. I loved researching the clothes they wore, the social season, the high-class brothels and the art scene. It did, of course, also mean many more trips to Paris, for reasons of research, to spend an afternoon in a boat in the Bois de Bolougne, or walking up the steep hills of Montmartre imagining the air infused with the smell of oil paint.
Today once more women’s rights are once again under threat. One hundred and forty years ago women were just emerging from an age where life was a struggle without a man. As we fight to retain our agency, novels like mine remind us of just how much we have to lose.
Where to find Beatrice:
http://www.beatricecolin.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/Beatrice-Col...
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
Being terrified of heights, I’ve never been able to even get close to it. This is something the female protagonist in Beatrice Colin’s stunning novel and I have in common. When Caitriona Wallace ascends in the hot air balloon over the future home of the Eifel Tower, my stomach lurches along with hers.
But a shared fear of heights had nothing to do with my affinity for the story. From the first paragraph, I was transported to a time and place so authentic in its description, I felt as though I was seeing it with my own eyes. Just as I can feel the tense and immediate attraction between Cait and Émile Nouguier, the architect and chief engineer of the further monument. It is their separate stories and how they slowly and intricately weave together that had me savoring every evocative scene, every nuanced word of a story set when class and gender almost always determined one’s outcome in life.
I loved every word of this gorgeous novel and I was so keen to learn what inspired the author to write it. It’s my great pleasure to share Beatrice Colin’s story behind To Capture What We Cannot Keep:
For the last twenty years or so I have been a regular visitor to Paris, first to see an elderly relative who lived near the Bois de Bolougne and second, as Fashion Editor for a Scottish newspaper. Deep below the Louvre I took my seat, watched the shows and took notes; Chanel, Vivienne Westwood, Issey Miyake, each more a theatrical spectacular than a parade of clothes. Working in Paris was, of course, a joy. When each day ended later than scheduled (fashion shows never run on time) I sank into my bed in the small hotel I frequented on the left bank and thanked the configuration of stars that had led me to spend time my favourite city and get paid.
To work in Paris is quite different from being a tourist. You drink a café at the bar, zip around the herds of coach parties and avoid the spots where the prices are high and the crowds are big. The Eiffel Tower was one such place. I had been there once as a student and never again. I remembered dozens of buses pumping out exhaust fumes, long queues for the lifts and tourists swarming around the base like ants.
One day, however, when surfacing from a fashion show in the north of the city, my eye caught the tower. Taller that the buildings that surround it, constructed from iron girders to render it almost transparent against the light and as elegant as a decorative hat pin, for the first time I wondered who had built it and why.
This led me to books on Gustave Eiffel whose company designed and constructed it, Victorian engineering, the Belle Epoque and Paris in the 1880s. Although the tower is arguably the most famous landmark in the world, few people, me included, knew the fact that when it was built for the World Fair in 1889 it was only intended to stand for twenty years. It has always been a celebrity – it was the tallest structure in the world for decades – and although now the epitome of an icon, its likeness reproduced on everything from t-shirts to iphone covers, it was once the subject of vicious debate. Some engineers claimed it would act as a giant lightning conductor and electrocute all the fish in the Seine. Others said it looked like a giant lamp post and would ruin Paris’ skyline. No matter what one thought about its aesthetics, its construction was nothing short of miraculous. Built in two years by fashioning each individual piece in the workshop and then bolting it together on site, the tower was a masterpiece of engineering in an age where metal was just coming into its own as a building material.
An interest in iron pointed me towards bridges – Eiffel was primarily a bridge builder – which led me back to Scotland to our own iconic Forth Rail Bridge which was constructed in the same period. I discovered that the company who built it were based in Glasgow, where I live, and the man in charge was a man called William Arrol.
Both Arrol and Gustave were middle-aged at the time that I wanted to set my book. And they were men. I tend to focus on women, for obvious reasons. So how could I fashion a story out of this wonderful material. It was while reading up on the Eiffel Tower that I came upon a picture of Emile Nouguier, one of two engineers working for Eiffel who actually designed the tower.
There isn’t much written on Nouguier but there is a photographic image of him as a young man and he looks so sensitive, so serious, so handsome, that in short, I fell in love with him. I wanted a character who would feel the same way so I invented Cait, a young widow who becomes connected with Arrol when she is employed as chaperone for his two young relatives, who, for reasons I won’t go into here, all go to spend an extended time in Paris. The novel is told from alternating perspectives, Cait’s and Emile’s, and their relationship echoes the difficult construction of the tower. I didn’t write it as a traditional love story but one which shows two characters trying to fashion something new in contrast to what was expected of them at the time. Paris was both extremely conservative and excitingly modern, and it was against that backdrop that I wanted to show the effect of the political (with a small p) on the personal.
I followed the trajectory of Emile’s life as closely as I could. He did eventually leave Eiffel’s company and form his own and he did eventually work in Africa. Cait is a fictional character but her life explores how easily a woman’s life could be over at a relatively young age if she lost her husband or never married.
Writing the book was a pleasure. I loved researching the clothes they wore, the social season, the high-class brothels and the art scene. It did, of course, also mean many more trips to Paris, for reasons of research, to spend an afternoon in a boat in the Bois de Bolougne, or walking up the steep hills of Montmartre imagining the air infused with the smell of oil paint.
Today once more women’s rights are once again under threat. One hundred and forty years ago women were just emerging from an age where life was a struggle without a man. As we fight to retain our agency, novels like mine remind us of just how much we have to lose.
Where to find Beatrice:
http://www.beatricecolin.co.uk
https://www.facebook.com/Beatrice-Col...
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
September 19, 2018
The Story Behind the Story: Vicki Tapia "Maggie: A Journey of Love, Loss and Survival
Maggie: A Journey of Love, Loss and Survival by Vicki Tapia is one of those books that rings true right from the start. From the first page, I was transported back in time by descriptive writing of a period so different to the world we live in now. Each scene conjured up perfect images of what it was like to live without modern conveniences, in a period of vastly different norms, giving the reader an understanding of what was important to people during that time, what their values were and what was expected of them.
Women from that era had it particularly difficult. Marriage was expected, so was raising children, mostly for laboring in the fields and around the house. Courtship was a highly regulated affair, though it wasn’t especially designed to determine whether both parties were well-suited. It was more of a business proposition engineered by the fathers. Rarely, if ever, were women allowed to have their own interests outside of caring for their children and their home.
But Maggie thought her dreams had come true when Sam declared they should marry. Instead of finding wedded bliss, she learned that appearances can be very deceiving. Her images of a happy home life were quickly obliterated by a reality so cold and brutal, she could never bring herself to share the truth with anyone.
I don’t want to give anything away because Maggie’s journey makes for truly fascinating reading. But the thing I liked the most about the story is that it’s essentially all true. Maggie Perry Jobsa Herman was the author’s great-grandmother. The book, which started out as keepsake to pass onto other generations, was twenty years in the making. And I will tell you that it’s as polished and tight as any masterpiece of fiction. It’s rich, disturbing, joyful and inspiring in turns.
It is my great pleasure to give you Vicki Tapia’s story behind the story:
On a two-lane road in the 1950’s, it took three hours to drive from Miles City to Lavina, a tiny burg of less than 200 people in south-central Montana. Mom, Granny and I made the journey every summer for a multi-day visit with Great-Grandma Maggie, her daughter Frances and husband. My memories of Great-Grandma are not crystal clear, although I do vaguely remember her as a soft-spoken, tiny woman who smiled a lot. When Maggie passed away, I was only seven years old, so I really don’t remember her well. I’ll always wonder, had I been older, what stories might she have told me?
Many years later, Maggie’s life inspired my novel in which I explore intergenerational relationships between parents and children, husbands and wives, and sisters. Maggie is a story of survival and courage set against the backdrop of late 19th century Michigan and the prairies of eastern Montana at the turn of the 20th century. An independent woman ahead of her time, my great-grandmother rose above adversity through a rare determination and grit. I call my book a #MeToo story that waited over a century to be told.
How Maggie’s story evolved:
In 1997, I determined the time was ripe for someone to gather my family’s stories and promptly elected myself to the position. My goal: Compile a memory book for my parents and my children, complete with old photos and all remembered family lore. Well aware many memories had already been lost with the deaths of older family members, there was no time to lose.
Using an old cassette tape player and microphone, I spent hours over several visits interviewing Mom and Dad, the only elders of my immediate family still living. I asked them to share every story and memory they could recall and then painstakingly transcribed all their words. To this I added stories that I remembered, told and retold over the years at various gatherings of our extended family.
While compiling this family history book, one person’s story stood out, that of my maternal great-grandmother, Maggie Perry Jobsa Herman. What I knew about her life story intrigued me and I wondered how I might learn more. After some thought, I pursued locating a genealogist in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, where Maggie lived the first 31 years of her life. That’s how I met Ann. We struck up an email friendship and over a period of months, she uncovered court documents, including Maggie’s divorce affidavit and trial transcript, depositions and newspaper clippings. These treasures ultimately became the basis of my novel. I owe this amateur genealogist from the Mt. Clemens library a great debt of gratitude, because without her determination and doggedness to keep digging, I believe Maggie’s story would be lost to the ages, buried somewhere in a pile of microfiche or in old manila folders tossed in a box, sitting in a dusty corner of the county courthouse building’s basement.
While finishing up my family history booklet in 1998, a seed planted itself in my brain. I wanted to tell Maggie’s story. I wanted to expand it into a book length novel, believing in its potential to be transformed into a compelling story of one woman’s survival and ultimate triumph, set in a time when women had few rights.
Life intervened, the years passed and the seed lay fallow in my frontal lobes. Fast forward to 2013, a few months before the January 2014 release of my first book, Somebody Stole My Iron: A Family Memoir of Dementia. Finally, the Maggie seed sprouted and I was ready to begin writing her story.
Late in 2014, in hopes of tying up some loose ends, I thought about Ann. What were the odds she still did genealogy work and that I would find her again after more than 17 years?
I wrote to her old email address. The email didn’t come back as undeliverable, but then, neither did a reply. Two weeks passed. I wrote again and this time I received a prompt answer. Yes, Ann told me, she still volunteered as a genealogy resource, receiving up to 75 requests a day for information. She had inadvertently overlooked my email, but well-remembered Maggie and me and we once again began corresponding.
Since I already had plans to visit my daughter in Lansing, Michigan in the coming year, it seemed only fitting to combine a trip to Mt. Clemens. Before lunching together that day in late January, 2015 and for old time’s sake, we spent a couple of hours together in the Clinton-Macomb County Library searching through old file folders and microfiche scouring for any additional information on the Perry and Jobse families.
Three years later, Maggie, A Journey of Love, Loss and Survival was born.
How much of “Maggie” is actually true?
The births, marriages, and deaths are well-documented. They are all true. Maggie also left behind two valuable pieces of information…the hand-written divorce affidavit and deposition, collaborated in a separate deposition given by her step-mother Lizzie. Rich with details, these documents were instrumental in writing the first two-thirds of the book. Much of Maggie’s life in Montana, the last one-third of the book, was written from stories I heard repeated over and over while growing up.
Alas, since time-travel has yet to be perfected, the conversations are a figment of my imagination. Or, are they? I admit to feeling a presence when writing many of the scenes. When I shared this with a friend, she nodded knowingly and said, “Perhaps that’s because you were channeling Maggie…”
Where to find Vicki Tapia:
Amazon Author Page: amazon.com/author/vickitapia
Website: vickitapia.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vicleetap
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomebodyStol...
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vicki.tapia
Women from that era had it particularly difficult. Marriage was expected, so was raising children, mostly for laboring in the fields and around the house. Courtship was a highly regulated affair, though it wasn’t especially designed to determine whether both parties were well-suited. It was more of a business proposition engineered by the fathers. Rarely, if ever, were women allowed to have their own interests outside of caring for their children and their home.
But Maggie thought her dreams had come true when Sam declared they should marry. Instead of finding wedded bliss, she learned that appearances can be very deceiving. Her images of a happy home life were quickly obliterated by a reality so cold and brutal, she could never bring herself to share the truth with anyone.
I don’t want to give anything away because Maggie’s journey makes for truly fascinating reading. But the thing I liked the most about the story is that it’s essentially all true. Maggie Perry Jobsa Herman was the author’s great-grandmother. The book, which started out as keepsake to pass onto other generations, was twenty years in the making. And I will tell you that it’s as polished and tight as any masterpiece of fiction. It’s rich, disturbing, joyful and inspiring in turns.
It is my great pleasure to give you Vicki Tapia’s story behind the story:
On a two-lane road in the 1950’s, it took three hours to drive from Miles City to Lavina, a tiny burg of less than 200 people in south-central Montana. Mom, Granny and I made the journey every summer for a multi-day visit with Great-Grandma Maggie, her daughter Frances and husband. My memories of Great-Grandma are not crystal clear, although I do vaguely remember her as a soft-spoken, tiny woman who smiled a lot. When Maggie passed away, I was only seven years old, so I really don’t remember her well. I’ll always wonder, had I been older, what stories might she have told me?
Many years later, Maggie’s life inspired my novel in which I explore intergenerational relationships between parents and children, husbands and wives, and sisters. Maggie is a story of survival and courage set against the backdrop of late 19th century Michigan and the prairies of eastern Montana at the turn of the 20th century. An independent woman ahead of her time, my great-grandmother rose above adversity through a rare determination and grit. I call my book a #MeToo story that waited over a century to be told.
How Maggie’s story evolved:
In 1997, I determined the time was ripe for someone to gather my family’s stories and promptly elected myself to the position. My goal: Compile a memory book for my parents and my children, complete with old photos and all remembered family lore. Well aware many memories had already been lost with the deaths of older family members, there was no time to lose.
Using an old cassette tape player and microphone, I spent hours over several visits interviewing Mom and Dad, the only elders of my immediate family still living. I asked them to share every story and memory they could recall and then painstakingly transcribed all their words. To this I added stories that I remembered, told and retold over the years at various gatherings of our extended family.
While compiling this family history book, one person’s story stood out, that of my maternal great-grandmother, Maggie Perry Jobsa Herman. What I knew about her life story intrigued me and I wondered how I might learn more. After some thought, I pursued locating a genealogist in Mt. Clemens, Michigan, where Maggie lived the first 31 years of her life. That’s how I met Ann. We struck up an email friendship and over a period of months, she uncovered court documents, including Maggie’s divorce affidavit and trial transcript, depositions and newspaper clippings. These treasures ultimately became the basis of my novel. I owe this amateur genealogist from the Mt. Clemens library a great debt of gratitude, because without her determination and doggedness to keep digging, I believe Maggie’s story would be lost to the ages, buried somewhere in a pile of microfiche or in old manila folders tossed in a box, sitting in a dusty corner of the county courthouse building’s basement.
While finishing up my family history booklet in 1998, a seed planted itself in my brain. I wanted to tell Maggie’s story. I wanted to expand it into a book length novel, believing in its potential to be transformed into a compelling story of one woman’s survival and ultimate triumph, set in a time when women had few rights.
Life intervened, the years passed and the seed lay fallow in my frontal lobes. Fast forward to 2013, a few months before the January 2014 release of my first book, Somebody Stole My Iron: A Family Memoir of Dementia. Finally, the Maggie seed sprouted and I was ready to begin writing her story.
Late in 2014, in hopes of tying up some loose ends, I thought about Ann. What were the odds she still did genealogy work and that I would find her again after more than 17 years?
I wrote to her old email address. The email didn’t come back as undeliverable, but then, neither did a reply. Two weeks passed. I wrote again and this time I received a prompt answer. Yes, Ann told me, she still volunteered as a genealogy resource, receiving up to 75 requests a day for information. She had inadvertently overlooked my email, but well-remembered Maggie and me and we once again began corresponding.
Since I already had plans to visit my daughter in Lansing, Michigan in the coming year, it seemed only fitting to combine a trip to Mt. Clemens. Before lunching together that day in late January, 2015 and for old time’s sake, we spent a couple of hours together in the Clinton-Macomb County Library searching through old file folders and microfiche scouring for any additional information on the Perry and Jobse families.
Three years later, Maggie, A Journey of Love, Loss and Survival was born.
How much of “Maggie” is actually true?
The births, marriages, and deaths are well-documented. They are all true. Maggie also left behind two valuable pieces of information…the hand-written divorce affidavit and deposition, collaborated in a separate deposition given by her step-mother Lizzie. Rich with details, these documents were instrumental in writing the first two-thirds of the book. Much of Maggie’s life in Montana, the last one-third of the book, was written from stories I heard repeated over and over while growing up.
Alas, since time-travel has yet to be perfected, the conversations are a figment of my imagination. Or, are they? I admit to feeling a presence when writing many of the scenes. When I shared this with a friend, she nodded knowingly and said, “Perhaps that’s because you were channeling Maggie…”
Where to find Vicki Tapia:
Amazon Author Page: amazon.com/author/vickitapia
Website: vickitapia.com
Twitter: https://twitter.com/vicleetap
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomebodyStol...
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vicki.tapia
September 2, 2018
The Story Behind the Story: Dominic Piper "Femme Fatale"
Daniel Beckett is an appreciator of women, and not just in a carnal sense, but in every aspect. Whereas the women in “Femme Fatale” are mostly coveted for their physical attributes, Mr. Beckett’s interest in them is genuine and all-encompassing. It may rightfully be said that he’s never met a woman he didn’t find something to admire, or desire, about her.
Aside from being an easy touch with the fairer sex, Beckett possesses many talents that allow him to navigate the seedier side of life and somehow keep an arm’s length from an untimely death. He consumes more alcoholic beverages than any mere mortal possibly could, yet never looses his uncanny ability to sense the danger that continually dogs him. Though his exploits are intense, they manage to retain just a little tongue-in-cheek, even in the throes of orgasmic delights or being thrashed within an inch of his life.
But the main reason the Daniel Beckett series is so fun and compelling is the ingenuity the author employs as he leads us through devilishly twisted plots to very satisfying conclusions. And along the way, we become privy to decidedly unique sleuthing techniques—something I look for as a reader.
It’s my pleasure to give you Dominic Piper’s story behind Femme Fatale:
Femme Fatale is the third novel featuring the London-based private investigator Daniel
Beckett. Beckett is something of a mystery, and readers of these novels have a lot of fun guessing at his background and where he picked up his skills. When I was commissioned to write Kiss Me When I’m Dead (the first Beckett thriller), I wrote a page-long background for the publisher, which gave a lot of detail about his past, but when I came to write the books, I decided that it would be more interesting for the reader (and for me) if this past was kept a little vague. It would be a mystery within a mystery. One reviewer hit the nail on the head when he said: ‘Beckett, however, continues to be an enigma, and the more you find out about him (through his knowledge, amorality and abilities), the more out of reach he becomes. This is the mark of a great fictitious character.’
I particularly like that last sentence.
I suppose part of this characterization is a reaction to the predictability of many characters in film, television and literature. You’re always coming across people who are ex-Navy SEALS or ex-CIA or ex-police or ex-army. I was pretty certain that I wasn’t the only one who was starting to find this a little tedious, so decided to avoid it whenever possible. It’s pretty easy for me to write a character as unusual as Beckett, who doesn’t fit in to the usual PI profile, as I’ve never been a big reader of this genre (I’ve maybe read two or three detective thrillers, if that), and therefore have no precedents clawing their way to the surface. That’s not to say I don’t have my own agendas in these novels. I have pretty strong views about a wide variety of matters and one of them is the treatment of women by arrogant and entitled sexist males, religion and society as whole. People with such outdated attitudes don’t do very well in these books. I’ve always been a great believer in the fact that there are certain things which can be more effectively said in fiction than they can in non-fiction.
Beckett is certainly a libidinous personality, but I don’t think descriptions of him as a womaniser are quite correct. He’s a rather haunted character, and knows that long-term relationships are out of the question for him, and may even put his female companions in danger. As Sayara St Clair noted: ‘But seriously, there are things about Beckett's thoughts on women that I feel the need to point out. One is that he finds something to appreciate in each of the women he meets. I'm giving him brownie points for that. Also, no matter the women's career choices, life choices, vices/sexual proclivities etc., Beckett never judges them. Ever. A large number of brownie points right there.’
There were a couple of topics I wanted to deal with in Femme Fatale, and one of them was freemasonry. I’ve only ever met about half a dozen people who I positively knew to be freemasons (most of them surprisingly young) and I was intrigued to find that they were all people that seemed to have rather odd, humourless personalities and were a little too arrogant for my liking. Why was this? What attracts that sort of person to that sort of society? Why do they have to have someone to look up to? Why do they so badly want respect when they often have it in spades in their personal or professional lives? They always defend themselves against their potential for theoretical and actual corruption and will point to their charitable work, but as the assassin Caroline Chow says in Femme Fatale: ‘Huge waste of time. Ready-made mythology. All bullshit. Just add water. Real men wouldn’t bother. If you want to give to charity that badly, write out a cheque, yeah?’
I’d also noticed that the rituals, lodges, secret signs and so on that the Triads favoured bore a striking resemblance to those of freemasonry. Another all-male secret society, but, at the present time at least, mainly criminal (though there are now attempts to drag it back to its patriotic origins). Freemasons can always deny things written about them in factual books (usually blaming ‘disgruntled former members’), but dragging them into fiction is something else altogether. I wanted the freemasons and the Triads to collide in a dramatic way in Femme Fatale, to ask the question ‘who is the most corrupt?’, and for the Triads to demonstrate an internal integrity that the freemasons did not and could not possess, being, certainly in comparison to the Triads, decadent. The factor that linked the two societies in the novel was the world of burlesque; a celebration of strong femininity inhabiting a counter-culture that would be regarded as both alluring and distasteful by the sort of males we come across in the book.
Femme Fatale is about doing the right thing, and to question what the right thing is when it’s outside the law and on the fringes of normal society.
You can find Dominic Piper at:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2wCotme
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DominicPiper1
Until next time,
Happy reading!
Very warmest regards,
Cynthia
Aside from being an easy touch with the fairer sex, Beckett possesses many talents that allow him to navigate the seedier side of life and somehow keep an arm’s length from an untimely death. He consumes more alcoholic beverages than any mere mortal possibly could, yet never looses his uncanny ability to sense the danger that continually dogs him. Though his exploits are intense, they manage to retain just a little tongue-in-cheek, even in the throes of orgasmic delights or being thrashed within an inch of his life.
But the main reason the Daniel Beckett series is so fun and compelling is the ingenuity the author employs as he leads us through devilishly twisted plots to very satisfying conclusions. And along the way, we become privy to decidedly unique sleuthing techniques—something I look for as a reader.
It’s my pleasure to give you Dominic Piper’s story behind Femme Fatale:
Femme Fatale is the third novel featuring the London-based private investigator Daniel
Beckett. Beckett is something of a mystery, and readers of these novels have a lot of fun guessing at his background and where he picked up his skills. When I was commissioned to write Kiss Me When I’m Dead (the first Beckett thriller), I wrote a page-long background for the publisher, which gave a lot of detail about his past, but when I came to write the books, I decided that it would be more interesting for the reader (and for me) if this past was kept a little vague. It would be a mystery within a mystery. One reviewer hit the nail on the head when he said: ‘Beckett, however, continues to be an enigma, and the more you find out about him (through his knowledge, amorality and abilities), the more out of reach he becomes. This is the mark of a great fictitious character.’
I particularly like that last sentence.
I suppose part of this characterization is a reaction to the predictability of many characters in film, television and literature. You’re always coming across people who are ex-Navy SEALS or ex-CIA or ex-police or ex-army. I was pretty certain that I wasn’t the only one who was starting to find this a little tedious, so decided to avoid it whenever possible. It’s pretty easy for me to write a character as unusual as Beckett, who doesn’t fit in to the usual PI profile, as I’ve never been a big reader of this genre (I’ve maybe read two or three detective thrillers, if that), and therefore have no precedents clawing their way to the surface. That’s not to say I don’t have my own agendas in these novels. I have pretty strong views about a wide variety of matters and one of them is the treatment of women by arrogant and entitled sexist males, religion and society as whole. People with such outdated attitudes don’t do very well in these books. I’ve always been a great believer in the fact that there are certain things which can be more effectively said in fiction than they can in non-fiction.
Beckett is certainly a libidinous personality, but I don’t think descriptions of him as a womaniser are quite correct. He’s a rather haunted character, and knows that long-term relationships are out of the question for him, and may even put his female companions in danger. As Sayara St Clair noted: ‘But seriously, there are things about Beckett's thoughts on women that I feel the need to point out. One is that he finds something to appreciate in each of the women he meets. I'm giving him brownie points for that. Also, no matter the women's career choices, life choices, vices/sexual proclivities etc., Beckett never judges them. Ever. A large number of brownie points right there.’
There were a couple of topics I wanted to deal with in Femme Fatale, and one of them was freemasonry. I’ve only ever met about half a dozen people who I positively knew to be freemasons (most of them surprisingly young) and I was intrigued to find that they were all people that seemed to have rather odd, humourless personalities and were a little too arrogant for my liking. Why was this? What attracts that sort of person to that sort of society? Why do they have to have someone to look up to? Why do they so badly want respect when they often have it in spades in their personal or professional lives? They always defend themselves against their potential for theoretical and actual corruption and will point to their charitable work, but as the assassin Caroline Chow says in Femme Fatale: ‘Huge waste of time. Ready-made mythology. All bullshit. Just add water. Real men wouldn’t bother. If you want to give to charity that badly, write out a cheque, yeah?’
I’d also noticed that the rituals, lodges, secret signs and so on that the Triads favoured bore a striking resemblance to those of freemasonry. Another all-male secret society, but, at the present time at least, mainly criminal (though there are now attempts to drag it back to its patriotic origins). Freemasons can always deny things written about them in factual books (usually blaming ‘disgruntled former members’), but dragging them into fiction is something else altogether. I wanted the freemasons and the Triads to collide in a dramatic way in Femme Fatale, to ask the question ‘who is the most corrupt?’, and for the Triads to demonstrate an internal integrity that the freemasons did not and could not possess, being, certainly in comparison to the Triads, decadent. The factor that linked the two societies in the novel was the world of burlesque; a celebration of strong femininity inhabiting a counter-culture that would be regarded as both alluring and distasteful by the sort of males we come across in the book.
Femme Fatale is about doing the right thing, and to question what the right thing is when it’s outside the law and on the fringes of normal society.
You can find Dominic Piper at:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2wCotme
Twitter: https://twitter.com/DominicPiper1
Until next time,
Happy reading!
Very warmest regards,
Cynthia
August 20, 2018
The Story Behind the Story: Lucky at Love
Inspiration is a stealthy devil. We never know when or where it will strike, and often we don’t even realize we’ve been hit until a musing becomes an obsession. I was at work on my second novel when I encountered the inspiration for Lucky at Love at a friend’s wedding. It appeared in the form of the bride’s uncle, an improbable hulk of a man under an alarming thatch of greying red hair. But as we know, attitude is everything, and Uncle Stuey had it in spades. As soon as his presence was discovered, he was immediately surrounded by a throng of giddy females.
Alerted by the giggling and cackling, I edged closer to find out what all the fuss was about. Standing at the center of the hubbub, grinning like he’d just been made King for a day, stood Uncle Stuey, holding court. Adorned in mirrored aviator sunglasses and ostrich leather buckaroo hat, jacket and boots, he regaled his popup entourage with bon mots that could’ve been in Japanese and still elicited the same tittering responses. I managed to get close enough to hear him say that some people should never get married, to which he raised his hand. It wasn’t until I saw the bride run up and leap into his arms that I figured out who he was.
Now I could put into context all the crazy stories I’d heard—or at least try to. Problem was, the man did not fit the image of your average babe magnet. Really? He had how many marriages to his credit? No. Wasn’t possible. But what I was witnessing was magnetism in its roughest form. Uncle Stuey had something going on that was being picked up on a frequency I wasn’t receiving, not in the way my fellow guests were. What I was picking up on was the phenomenon of physical attraction, or maybe more to the point, the allure of self-confidence.
After the ceremony, the bride sat my husband and me at her family’s table. Without prompting, Stuey’s siblings and their offspring were quick to enlighten us with a vivid oral history of his serial nuptials. I think my mouth was probably hanging open half the time, and my mind was whirring. I was brought back to myself when Stuey informed my husband that he’d be happy to take me off his hands if Guy ever got tired of me. Just like that. Fortunately, Guy took it as a humorous, throwaway line, though I did see him tug at his collar as if the day had suddenly gotten a little too warm.
Walking back to our car hours later—after witnessing the groom’s mother offer to be the next Mrs. Stuey, in front of her husband—I knew that I had to understand this kind of attraction. What compelled some people to lose their hearts so easily? Are they fickle…unrealistic…out of touch with reality, or do they really, truly fall in love? And if they do, then what do they go through when the love affair is over? Do they harden their hearts and swear off falling in love again, only to fall under the spell again as soon as they turn around? Are they addicted to the high of love—the release of endorphins and all that chemistry stuff?
It took me several months to finish my second novel. During that time, the story inspired by Uncle Stuey grew large in my head. I didn’t want to use any of what I knew about my muse, so I contrived a character that didn’t closely resemble Stuey. In fact, I didn’t want to hear another thing about Stuey for fear of usurping his life. I changed his domicile and occupations, which in turn gave my fictional character his own unique persona.
Jake Sorenson is a Vietnam Veteran of Swedish extraction, who had been in the import/export business and owned many nightclubs. As the story opens, he is in the mule breeding business, something he does adroitly and with gusto in rural Oregon.
Aside from the initial inspiration provided by Uncle Stuey, I created Jake’s character from whole cloth.
After much internal debating, I decided to tell the story from a female journalist’s POV. The book ended up being Allison Tyler-Wilcox’s story, but Jake is the star. What we get in him is a man who genuinely and truly loves women, much to his detriment. His divorces and breakups are numerous, but they don’t damper his innate fondness for the opposite sex. And though Allison views him as an alien species in a Petri dish, Jake is gracious, welcoming and thoroughly happy to debate her bourgeois beliefs. As one reader put it, “It’s not a love story, it’s a story about love.”
Obviously, I couldn’t very well tell my coworker what I was up to. She had no idea that I wrote in secret. Nobody did outside my immediate family. It wasn’t until I had finished that I spilled the beans. To my utter bafflement, I then learned that good ol’ Uncle Stuey had since remarried and had relocated from Colorado to Oregon, where he had given up the ostrich business in favor of dog breeding. I was stunned, to say the least. A man of many talents and an infinite capacity for saying “I do.”
After publishing Girl Trap in May, I took a hard look at my first born. After reading it again—and not finding fault in what I had written—I decided the cover and blurb needed a makeover. After months of fine-tuning, I’m pleased to announce the second unveiling of Lucky at Love. Please take a look at let me know what you think!
To commemorate the new look, Lucky is available for free downloading today and tomorrow, August 20th and 2st. Wishing you all much Luck and Love!
https://amzn.to/2N6mUmV
Until next time,
Happy reading!
Very warmest regards,
Cynthia
Alerted by the giggling and cackling, I edged closer to find out what all the fuss was about. Standing at the center of the hubbub, grinning like he’d just been made King for a day, stood Uncle Stuey, holding court. Adorned in mirrored aviator sunglasses and ostrich leather buckaroo hat, jacket and boots, he regaled his popup entourage with bon mots that could’ve been in Japanese and still elicited the same tittering responses. I managed to get close enough to hear him say that some people should never get married, to which he raised his hand. It wasn’t until I saw the bride run up and leap into his arms that I figured out who he was.
Now I could put into context all the crazy stories I’d heard—or at least try to. Problem was, the man did not fit the image of your average babe magnet. Really? He had how many marriages to his credit? No. Wasn’t possible. But what I was witnessing was magnetism in its roughest form. Uncle Stuey had something going on that was being picked up on a frequency I wasn’t receiving, not in the way my fellow guests were. What I was picking up on was the phenomenon of physical attraction, or maybe more to the point, the allure of self-confidence.
After the ceremony, the bride sat my husband and me at her family’s table. Without prompting, Stuey’s siblings and their offspring were quick to enlighten us with a vivid oral history of his serial nuptials. I think my mouth was probably hanging open half the time, and my mind was whirring. I was brought back to myself when Stuey informed my husband that he’d be happy to take me off his hands if Guy ever got tired of me. Just like that. Fortunately, Guy took it as a humorous, throwaway line, though I did see him tug at his collar as if the day had suddenly gotten a little too warm.
Walking back to our car hours later—after witnessing the groom’s mother offer to be the next Mrs. Stuey, in front of her husband—I knew that I had to understand this kind of attraction. What compelled some people to lose their hearts so easily? Are they fickle…unrealistic…out of touch with reality, or do they really, truly fall in love? And if they do, then what do they go through when the love affair is over? Do they harden their hearts and swear off falling in love again, only to fall under the spell again as soon as they turn around? Are they addicted to the high of love—the release of endorphins and all that chemistry stuff?
It took me several months to finish my second novel. During that time, the story inspired by Uncle Stuey grew large in my head. I didn’t want to use any of what I knew about my muse, so I contrived a character that didn’t closely resemble Stuey. In fact, I didn’t want to hear another thing about Stuey for fear of usurping his life. I changed his domicile and occupations, which in turn gave my fictional character his own unique persona.
Jake Sorenson is a Vietnam Veteran of Swedish extraction, who had been in the import/export business and owned many nightclubs. As the story opens, he is in the mule breeding business, something he does adroitly and with gusto in rural Oregon.
Aside from the initial inspiration provided by Uncle Stuey, I created Jake’s character from whole cloth.
After much internal debating, I decided to tell the story from a female journalist’s POV. The book ended up being Allison Tyler-Wilcox’s story, but Jake is the star. What we get in him is a man who genuinely and truly loves women, much to his detriment. His divorces and breakups are numerous, but they don’t damper his innate fondness for the opposite sex. And though Allison views him as an alien species in a Petri dish, Jake is gracious, welcoming and thoroughly happy to debate her bourgeois beliefs. As one reader put it, “It’s not a love story, it’s a story about love.”
Obviously, I couldn’t very well tell my coworker what I was up to. She had no idea that I wrote in secret. Nobody did outside my immediate family. It wasn’t until I had finished that I spilled the beans. To my utter bafflement, I then learned that good ol’ Uncle Stuey had since remarried and had relocated from Colorado to Oregon, where he had given up the ostrich business in favor of dog breeding. I was stunned, to say the least. A man of many talents and an infinite capacity for saying “I do.”
After publishing Girl Trap in May, I took a hard look at my first born. After reading it again—and not finding fault in what I had written—I decided the cover and blurb needed a makeover. After months of fine-tuning, I’m pleased to announce the second unveiling of Lucky at Love. Please take a look at let me know what you think!
To commemorate the new look, Lucky is available for free downloading today and tomorrow, August 20th and 2st. Wishing you all much Luck and Love!
https://amzn.to/2N6mUmV
Until next time,
Happy reading!
Very warmest regards,
Cynthia
August 7, 2018
The Story Behind the Story: Cynthia A. Graham Beulah's House of Prayer
A setting can play a dramatic role in story writing, as if it is a character unto itself. Shaking its fist in the background of “Beulah’s House of Prayer” like malevolent spirit is a bleak spot of history that resulted from a financial collapse and the destruction of the land. But the story Cynthia A. Graham tells is not bleak, despite the combined circumstances of The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.
Set in the Oklahoma panhandle in the 1930s, in a town that is as emaciated as its inhabitants, the story begins with the arrival of Sugar Watson, a young, orphaned trapeze performer taxed with the somber and dubious mission of burying her father in his hometown. The inhabitants of Barmy are as dreary as their surroundings, many of whom are just hanging by a dust-covered thread. The train—which doesn’t even stop in Barmy anymore—made an exception in Sugar’s case, depositing her in the closest place to hell that she’s ever seen.
But it’s the quirkiness of the individuals and their plights that make the story so fascinating and compelling. Layers are pulled back, exposing the small kernels of humanity that dire times have not completely snuffed out. With gentleness and humor, the author gives us an indelible look inside times that seem unsurmountable, yet are a glory to behold in the mind’s eye, and she uses history to show us the amazing resilience of the human spirit.
It’s my pleasure to welcome back the very talented Cynthia A. Graham:
Like many, I enjoy reading history. As I read The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, I was surprised to learn that, unlike what I’d been led to believe after reading Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, fully two-thirds of those living in the Dust Bowl stayed in place. As I continued to read, I became more and more astonished by the things I learned. So much of the Dust Bowl mystique is shaped by Steinbeck, so I decided to tell the story of those who stayed behind and endured. I wanted to give a voice to the vast majority of farmers who stayed on the family farm throughout the Depression.
But as Egan points out, most of the people who lived through these hard times never spoke of them. Like World War II veterans, they reasoned that after living through hell there was no need to conjure it up again, and therefore, much of what they experienced remained locked away. But Egan sought these people out and finally, after all these years, they began to discuss what they’d seen and endured. And as I learned what these survivors of the worst man-made environmental catastrophe in history went through, I knew I wanted to write about them. It was their stories I wanted to tell in Beulah’s House of Prayer.
Usually writing does not come easy for me, but in this instance I heard a voice, a voice that begged to have its story told. I was born in 1936 on a ragged, wasted little strip of land known as the Oklahoma panhandle. This voice stayed with me throughout the story, narrating from afar.
As I wrote Beulah, I began to enjoy the vivid characters that seemed to come into being of their own free will. The main protagonists are Sugar Watson and Homer Guppy, two lonely, young people who go in search of treasure and find more than they bargained for. And I began enjoying the minor characters as well, characters like Marigold Lawford, the young widow of the richest man in town whose parents traded her to him for a truck. And, of course, the book’s namesake, Beulah Clinton, a Holy Ghost preacher whose husband was carried away by a tornado. Her arrival in Barmy, Oklahoma coincides with that of Sugar Watson’s and becomes the catalyst for the story.
I tried to walk a fine line writing Beulah. I wanted to be realistic about the harshness of the Dust Bowl. I didn’t want to candy-coat facts such as over 7,000 people dying of dust pneumonia, or, to put a fine point to it, they died from simply breathing. I didn’t want to ignore the fact that suicide and alcoholism were ways that many coped. And I didn’t want to gloss over the mental toll of facing day after day of dry dust so thick even wet towels couldn’t keep it out.
But I knew when I began I didn’t want to write a story of sadness and defeat, but a story of grace and endurance. I sought to honor and acknowledge those who walked through these events -- through the heat and the bugs and the hunger, and came out stronger on the other side. I didn’t want the story to be bleak. And, in the end, though it is difficult, it is not depressing or sad. Instead, it is a testimony to love and hope, those things that undoubtedly kept people going throughout days and days of dust that fell like snow.
https://www.cynthiaagraham.com
Twitter: @cynthiaa_graham
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/cynthiaagrah...
https://amzn.to/2LXPDxw
Set in the Oklahoma panhandle in the 1930s, in a town that is as emaciated as its inhabitants, the story begins with the arrival of Sugar Watson, a young, orphaned trapeze performer taxed with the somber and dubious mission of burying her father in his hometown. The inhabitants of Barmy are as dreary as their surroundings, many of whom are just hanging by a dust-covered thread. The train—which doesn’t even stop in Barmy anymore—made an exception in Sugar’s case, depositing her in the closest place to hell that she’s ever seen.
But it’s the quirkiness of the individuals and their plights that make the story so fascinating and compelling. Layers are pulled back, exposing the small kernels of humanity that dire times have not completely snuffed out. With gentleness and humor, the author gives us an indelible look inside times that seem unsurmountable, yet are a glory to behold in the mind’s eye, and she uses history to show us the amazing resilience of the human spirit.
It’s my pleasure to welcome back the very talented Cynthia A. Graham:
Like many, I enjoy reading history. As I read The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, I was surprised to learn that, unlike what I’d been led to believe after reading Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, fully two-thirds of those living in the Dust Bowl stayed in place. As I continued to read, I became more and more astonished by the things I learned. So much of the Dust Bowl mystique is shaped by Steinbeck, so I decided to tell the story of those who stayed behind and endured. I wanted to give a voice to the vast majority of farmers who stayed on the family farm throughout the Depression.
But as Egan points out, most of the people who lived through these hard times never spoke of them. Like World War II veterans, they reasoned that after living through hell there was no need to conjure it up again, and therefore, much of what they experienced remained locked away. But Egan sought these people out and finally, after all these years, they began to discuss what they’d seen and endured. And as I learned what these survivors of the worst man-made environmental catastrophe in history went through, I knew I wanted to write about them. It was their stories I wanted to tell in Beulah’s House of Prayer.
Usually writing does not come easy for me, but in this instance I heard a voice, a voice that begged to have its story told. I was born in 1936 on a ragged, wasted little strip of land known as the Oklahoma panhandle. This voice stayed with me throughout the story, narrating from afar.
As I wrote Beulah, I began to enjoy the vivid characters that seemed to come into being of their own free will. The main protagonists are Sugar Watson and Homer Guppy, two lonely, young people who go in search of treasure and find more than they bargained for. And I began enjoying the minor characters as well, characters like Marigold Lawford, the young widow of the richest man in town whose parents traded her to him for a truck. And, of course, the book’s namesake, Beulah Clinton, a Holy Ghost preacher whose husband was carried away by a tornado. Her arrival in Barmy, Oklahoma coincides with that of Sugar Watson’s and becomes the catalyst for the story.
I tried to walk a fine line writing Beulah. I wanted to be realistic about the harshness of the Dust Bowl. I didn’t want to candy-coat facts such as over 7,000 people dying of dust pneumonia, or, to put a fine point to it, they died from simply breathing. I didn’t want to ignore the fact that suicide and alcoholism were ways that many coped. And I didn’t want to gloss over the mental toll of facing day after day of dry dust so thick even wet towels couldn’t keep it out.
But I knew when I began I didn’t want to write a story of sadness and defeat, but a story of grace and endurance. I sought to honor and acknowledge those who walked through these events -- through the heat and the bugs and the hunger, and came out stronger on the other side. I didn’t want the story to be bleak. And, in the end, though it is difficult, it is not depressing or sad. Instead, it is a testimony to love and hope, those things that undoubtedly kept people going throughout days and days of dust that fell like snow.
https://www.cynthiaagraham.com
Twitter: @cynthiaa_graham
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/cynthiaagrah...
https://amzn.to/2LXPDxw
July 26, 2018
The Story Behind the Story: Justin DiPego "Seven O'clock Man
The most vital part of any story is the authenticity of the author’s voice. Is it believable? Do we trust the message he or she is trying to convey? Does the language put us in the moment, allowing us to see what is unfolding, feel what the characters are experiencing?
While reading the debut novel “Seven o’Clock Man” by Justin DiPego, I felt as though I were watching the scene through the characters’ own eyes. The sense of place was acutely visual—grimy and ominous; the degradation the central characters face eerily ominous. I found myself clinging to the author’s voice, even though my figurative feet told me to RUN! RUN, AND DON’T LOOK BACK!
Despite the sense of foreboding, I could not stop reading. I had never come across anything quite like this novel. What I got was a look into the life on the streets that hasn’t improved any in the last three decades. I belong to the part of the parallel universe that exists side by side with the invisibles. Even though I know this world exists, even to the point of trying to imagine—for short periods of time—what it would be like to live the life of a homeless person.
But there is beauty in almost anything, and what shines through these unfortunates is their hope and sense of humanity—greatly diminished, but courageous in spite of everything. Lay this on top of a well-crafted mystery and you have a riveting work of fiction.
It is my sincere pleasure to introduce Justin DiPego:
Lots of people say they hate Los Angeles. When I tell someone where I’m from they frequently respond with something like, “I’m so sorry.” And when I ask how long they lived here it turns out most have only visited for a few days. LA has a bad rep that’s hard to put your finger on. “There’s no there there,” no culture, nothing real to do, it’s so fake, it’s so spread out, it’s so crowded. All of these things are true. And none of them are. The real truth is LA is hard to get to know. I’ve lived here most of my life and I love this city.
Have you seen Hellboy II? Guillermo del Toro creates a New York in which if you know what door to open you can find the secret Troll Market. Los Angeles is a series of doors. They aren’t hidden, but you have to be paying attention to find them. Behind those doors whole worlds open up.
In Seven o’Clock Man I want to open one of those doors and pull you through to the other side. This particular door won’t give you a more positive impression of my city, but it will introduce you to one of the flourishing cultures here—the world of Vagabondia. That’s the archaic, romantic term your narrator and guide uses to describe the population of homeless that live on and off the streets.
Vagabondia isn’t invisible. It’s just out of the corner of your eye and most of the time we choose not to look there. But I’ve lived in parts of town where the homeless are hard to ignore. I got to know some of them and the complicated issues that pushed them to the outside and that kept them there.
I am a storyteller. I could not help but take what I learned from my acquaintances on the streets, my visits to shelters, conversations in dive bars, bus trips across town or working security in a junk yard, and ask myself—what if one of these people on the absolutely lowest rung of our society was the hero of our story? All of them come from somewhere. In each of their own real lives, they are the main character.
Skid Row is changing. Now there are galleries and coffee shops on 5th Street. The homeless are still there, but the giant encampments are gone and the population has largely been pushed along to Orange County. But back in the late 80s and early 90s, that transformation was in its infancy. Skid Row spread out from 5th and most of Downtown LA was a no-go zone after dark.
But I was there. Because in the abandoned hotels and shuttered storefronts, there were floating, underground clubs if you knew how to find them. Club Scream or The Hole would be in different locations on different weekends and you could open a door into a world of gothic DJs and dramatic lighting. But there were other doors inside those places. If you opened the wrong one, you were instantly transported from a Bauhaus dance floor to a shooting gallery where junkies and crackheads smoked or shot up their poisons. That sudden contrast was jarring to this young storyteller, dressed all in black and listening to songs about death, and then suddenly finding myself face to face with people barely surviving on the edge of the world.
So another “what if” presented itself to me. What if the homeless hero of our story was living through the Downtown LA of my youth? I think I have a way into both those worlds that can bring them together to deliver a story that takes you in and gives you more than a glimpse at places you might never go, gives you a guide who invites you along to listen to his tale that is a dark mystery and a tense thriller but is also a trip you can take down the rabbit hole without ever leaving town.
To take that trip, check out Seven o’Clock man here: http://amzn.to/2FprhoL
And be on the lookout for my next novel, now in progress, about what magic you might rip up if you scratch the surface of Los Angeles.
Connect with Justin:
Website: http://justindipego.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DoItWithJustin
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JustinDiPego
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justin_dipego
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doitwithjustin
While reading the debut novel “Seven o’Clock Man” by Justin DiPego, I felt as though I were watching the scene through the characters’ own eyes. The sense of place was acutely visual—grimy and ominous; the degradation the central characters face eerily ominous. I found myself clinging to the author’s voice, even though my figurative feet told me to RUN! RUN, AND DON’T LOOK BACK!
Despite the sense of foreboding, I could not stop reading. I had never come across anything quite like this novel. What I got was a look into the life on the streets that hasn’t improved any in the last three decades. I belong to the part of the parallel universe that exists side by side with the invisibles. Even though I know this world exists, even to the point of trying to imagine—for short periods of time—what it would be like to live the life of a homeless person.
But there is beauty in almost anything, and what shines through these unfortunates is their hope and sense of humanity—greatly diminished, but courageous in spite of everything. Lay this on top of a well-crafted mystery and you have a riveting work of fiction.
It is my sincere pleasure to introduce Justin DiPego:
Lots of people say they hate Los Angeles. When I tell someone where I’m from they frequently respond with something like, “I’m so sorry.” And when I ask how long they lived here it turns out most have only visited for a few days. LA has a bad rep that’s hard to put your finger on. “There’s no there there,” no culture, nothing real to do, it’s so fake, it’s so spread out, it’s so crowded. All of these things are true. And none of them are. The real truth is LA is hard to get to know. I’ve lived here most of my life and I love this city.
Have you seen Hellboy II? Guillermo del Toro creates a New York in which if you know what door to open you can find the secret Troll Market. Los Angeles is a series of doors. They aren’t hidden, but you have to be paying attention to find them. Behind those doors whole worlds open up.
In Seven o’Clock Man I want to open one of those doors and pull you through to the other side. This particular door won’t give you a more positive impression of my city, but it will introduce you to one of the flourishing cultures here—the world of Vagabondia. That’s the archaic, romantic term your narrator and guide uses to describe the population of homeless that live on and off the streets.
Vagabondia isn’t invisible. It’s just out of the corner of your eye and most of the time we choose not to look there. But I’ve lived in parts of town where the homeless are hard to ignore. I got to know some of them and the complicated issues that pushed them to the outside and that kept them there.
I am a storyteller. I could not help but take what I learned from my acquaintances on the streets, my visits to shelters, conversations in dive bars, bus trips across town or working security in a junk yard, and ask myself—what if one of these people on the absolutely lowest rung of our society was the hero of our story? All of them come from somewhere. In each of their own real lives, they are the main character.
Skid Row is changing. Now there are galleries and coffee shops on 5th Street. The homeless are still there, but the giant encampments are gone and the population has largely been pushed along to Orange County. But back in the late 80s and early 90s, that transformation was in its infancy. Skid Row spread out from 5th and most of Downtown LA was a no-go zone after dark.
But I was there. Because in the abandoned hotels and shuttered storefronts, there were floating, underground clubs if you knew how to find them. Club Scream or The Hole would be in different locations on different weekends and you could open a door into a world of gothic DJs and dramatic lighting. But there were other doors inside those places. If you opened the wrong one, you were instantly transported from a Bauhaus dance floor to a shooting gallery where junkies and crackheads smoked or shot up their poisons. That sudden contrast was jarring to this young storyteller, dressed all in black and listening to songs about death, and then suddenly finding myself face to face with people barely surviving on the edge of the world.
So another “what if” presented itself to me. What if the homeless hero of our story was living through the Downtown LA of my youth? I think I have a way into both those worlds that can bring them together to deliver a story that takes you in and gives you more than a glimpse at places you might never go, gives you a guide who invites you along to listen to his tale that is a dark mystery and a tense thriller but is also a trip you can take down the rabbit hole without ever leaving town.
To take that trip, check out Seven o’Clock man here: http://amzn.to/2FprhoL
And be on the lookout for my next novel, now in progress, about what magic you might rip up if you scratch the surface of Los Angeles.
Connect with Justin:
Website: http://justindipego.com
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/DoItWithJustin
Twitter: https://twitter.com/JustinDiPego
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/justin_dipego
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doitwithjustin
July 13, 2018
The Story Behind the Story: Golden State
The idea for Golden State came to me quite out of the blue while taking a walk with friends on New Year’s Eve 2007. It had been a year since I’d received the correct diagnosis for what had been torturing me from within for nine years. Reflecting back on a time that is happily in the review mirror, I get glimpses of why being inspired by a conversation with my friend was such a momentous occasion.
Writing—what I’d turned to seven years earlier as a means of coping with the pain—had to be abandoned because I was physically unable to sit for hours at my laptop. I’d gotten to the point that I couldn’t even do it for fifteen minutes at a time. The pain was completely overwhelming. Looking back, I can’t fathom how I managed my “real job”. But the alternative methods of treating late-stage Lyme had robbed me of my one solace. By the end of 2007, I had abandoned two novels, one at 75,000 words. To say I was hanging on by a thread would not be overstating it.
As my body struggled, my psyche gradually healed to the point that when my friend regaled me with tales of mutual acquaintances who were bravely chasing success in the real estate profession, my pent-up imagination went wild. In a matter of seconds, I saw it all unfold in my mind’s eye. Roxanne Platt is a thirty-something single mom who struggles valiantly but without grace as a cashier at bargain grocery store and has become nearly despondent from the mind-numbing tedium. She is so open to a way out that becoming a real estate agent during the collapse of the housing market doesn’t even register.
What Roxanne sees is a lifeline. She grabs it, digging in with her heels and turning a pair of deaf ears to anyone who doubts she has the right stuff.
Because I worked in the mortgage industry, I was required to have a real estate license. My profession was wedded to real estate sales, so luckily for me, I knew the ins and outs, the pluses and pitfalls of the real estate world. Where I channeled Roxanne, I have no idea. She popped into my head, fully-formed, daunting attitude securely intact. She’s my anti-heroine and I had a blast watching her in action. The fire she walks through hones her instincts and melts away the rough edges. She is at such a low point in her life, failing isn’t an option.
From this vantage point, I can see a correlation between Roxanne’s situation and what I was going through. I had no conscious appreciation of this as I wrote the book; Roxanne was escapism for me, plain and simple. It gave me hope that Lyme had not robbed me of everything. I had recovered enough to pound the keys and complete a 135K-word novel in a year’s time. I was down, but I wasn’t out…not yet.
Aside from being a saving grace, Golden State turned out to be a fun romp with a slightly garish ray of hope. The underlying message—if there is one—is that we are capable of transforming our lives, even when we’re so down we can’t see a way out.
Golden State is available for FREE downloading July 14th and 15th. Grab your ereader and indulge in a little summer escapism!
****Correction: Due to a scheduling snafu, Golden State will now be available for FREE downloading July 15th and 16th.
Happy reading!
Until next time,
Warmest regards,
Cynthia
Writing—what I’d turned to seven years earlier as a means of coping with the pain—had to be abandoned because I was physically unable to sit for hours at my laptop. I’d gotten to the point that I couldn’t even do it for fifteen minutes at a time. The pain was completely overwhelming. Looking back, I can’t fathom how I managed my “real job”. But the alternative methods of treating late-stage Lyme had robbed me of my one solace. By the end of 2007, I had abandoned two novels, one at 75,000 words. To say I was hanging on by a thread would not be overstating it.
As my body struggled, my psyche gradually healed to the point that when my friend regaled me with tales of mutual acquaintances who were bravely chasing success in the real estate profession, my pent-up imagination went wild. In a matter of seconds, I saw it all unfold in my mind’s eye. Roxanne Platt is a thirty-something single mom who struggles valiantly but without grace as a cashier at bargain grocery store and has become nearly despondent from the mind-numbing tedium. She is so open to a way out that becoming a real estate agent during the collapse of the housing market doesn’t even register.
What Roxanne sees is a lifeline. She grabs it, digging in with her heels and turning a pair of deaf ears to anyone who doubts she has the right stuff.
Because I worked in the mortgage industry, I was required to have a real estate license. My profession was wedded to real estate sales, so luckily for me, I knew the ins and outs, the pluses and pitfalls of the real estate world. Where I channeled Roxanne, I have no idea. She popped into my head, fully-formed, daunting attitude securely intact. She’s my anti-heroine and I had a blast watching her in action. The fire she walks through hones her instincts and melts away the rough edges. She is at such a low point in her life, failing isn’t an option.
From this vantage point, I can see a correlation between Roxanne’s situation and what I was going through. I had no conscious appreciation of this as I wrote the book; Roxanne was escapism for me, plain and simple. It gave me hope that Lyme had not robbed me of everything. I had recovered enough to pound the keys and complete a 135K-word novel in a year’s time. I was down, but I wasn’t out…not yet.
Aside from being a saving grace, Golden State turned out to be a fun romp with a slightly garish ray of hope. The underlying message—if there is one—is that we are capable of transforming our lives, even when we’re so down we can’t see a way out.
Golden State is available for FREE downloading July 14th and 15th. Grab your ereader and indulge in a little summer escapism!
****Correction: Due to a scheduling snafu, Golden State will now be available for FREE downloading July 15th and 16th.
Happy reading!
Until next time,
Warmest regards,
Cynthia
July 5, 2018
The Story Behind the Story: Marianne Sciucco
I had read a few books dealing with Alzheimer’s before I started “Blue Hydrangeas” by Marianne Sciucco. The difference was they were true-life accounts of dealing with the disease, though Marianne’s tale is every bit as believable and moving. It’s a story that allows us readers to witness the heartbreak of the diagnosis along with the love, strength and determination of a couple still very much in love in their senior years.
There’s a reason this book is so captivating and believable. The author has seen more than her share of tender love stories and the pain of an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. What she shows us is that love can continue to thrive, even in the face of an uncertain future. Her story is faithful, evocative, enchanting, and ultimately hopeful. To live with love and courage no matter what is in store for us is a credo for our time.
It is my pleasure to give you Marianne Sciucco:
Perhaps it seems only natural that I'd write a book about Alzheimer's. I had three beloved aunts succumb to the disease, and for years I'd worked with people living with Alzheimer's and dementia. As a nurse, I had a lot of experience with these patients and their confused, distraught, heartbroken families, but the idea of writing a book about them never crossed my mind.
Then I met the lovely couple who inspired the characters Jack and Sara in my debut novel Blue Hydrangeas, an Alzheimer's love story.
I was a case manager in a rehab unit at the time, and in the middle of trying to put together my first novel, which was going nowhere. I was making my rounds one afternoon and ended up with conversing with this sweet couple, who captivated me at "hello."
She was 86, very pretty, with a friendly smile, deep dimples, and long white hair pulled back in a tidy chignon. She also had Alzheimer’s. Throughout our conversation she kept saying, "Oh, I'm so mixed up," which became my heroine Sara's line. Her husband was a frail, thin, elderly man with a bemused expression on his weathered face. How he adored her! He hung on her every word and told me they were fine, everything was all right.
The amazing thing about them was that they’d driven from Florida to New York by themselves without any incident. Unfortunately, once home she fell and broke her pelvis, and landed in the hospital. That’s where I came in, to assist with the discharge plan. She was supposed to go to a local nursing home for continued rehab and her son planned to drive her and his father there on discharge day. He asked me to make sure his parents, skeptical about this plan, did not leave the hospital without him. This was not unusual and I agreed.
I completed their plans and said goodbye, but couldn’t stop thinking about them, wondering what would happen if they somehow left the hospital without their son and did not go to the rehab. Where would they go? What would they do? My wild imagination took off, I abandoned my work-in-progress, and the seeds for the novel took root. Eighteen months later I had a complete manuscript.
My book is set on Cape Cod, where blue hydrangeas, my favorite flowers, are abundant and gorgeous. It's one of my favorite places. I often call it "my home in my heart." Cape Codders are known for giving their homes whimsical names, and I wanted my characters, Jack and Sara, to name their home. I tossed around several ideas, such as "By the Sea," and "Sea Breeze," then had the epiphany to name it "Blue Hydrangeas," with a long driveway leading to the house with two dozen hydrangea bushes on both sides. You can't get more Cape Cod than that! Then I started thinking: Who are the people most likely to name their home? Innkeepers! So, Jack and Sara became innkeepers, with a twelve-room house they built for their retirement, a replica of an 1860's captain's house.
On Cape Cod, there are 15 distinct, unique towns and I know many of them very well after living there for a few years back in the '80's, and vacationing in many of them almost annually for the last 25 years. Plus, my mother lives in Wareham, the "Gateway to Cape Cod," and I'm there all the time. I could have chosen any one of these towns for the setting of this story. Instead, I created the village of Falmouthport, which I placed in the southernmost tip of the peninsula, and made a part of the town of Falmouth proper.
Creating my own special place was useful in many ways: I could make it the way I needed it to be for the purposes of the story, and I didn't have to worry that I'd get some detail wrong and a knowledgeable Cape Codder would call me out on it. Accuracy is important to me in all my stories, and I wanted everything to be just right. So, I took the easy way out and created my own village. Now I want to go there, for real, as do many of my readers, and I can't. What a dilemma. When I'm on the Cape, in every town I pass through, I look for a house that looks like the Blue Hydrangeas I conjured, or is named "Blue Hydrangeas", but I haven’t found it yet. Still looking.
Early on I planned for Jack and Sara's crisis to occur back in their hometown in upstate New York. Given the fact that the real Jack and Sara successfully made a 1,000-mile drive from Florida to upstate New York I thought it feasible for my characters to drive from Cape Cod to New York, a four-hour ride. But as I considered this I thought it was a bit extreme, so I decided they'd escape to Provincetown, the little town on the outermost tip of the Cape, instead. It was less than two hours away from their home.
It's here that Jack revisits the horrible incident that happened one summer. Which meant I had to come up with a horrible incident and I conjured the worst: The drowning of their teenage daughter. On the way to Provincetown, Jack experiences a revelation that changes everything.
This is just a small amount of insight into my thought and creative processes surrounding the writing of this book. It took eleven years for me to see it published (another story), and two years after publication, I started living my story when my stepfather was diagnosed with three types of dementia. I became his Health Care Proxy, Power of Attorney, and advocate, navigating the healthcare system and social services on my own journey. He has since passed away and now I am my 90-year old mother's advocate. Thankfully, she does not have dementia.
As I write this it's late June, we're having a heat wave, and I'm wrapped up in Christmas as I put the finishing touches to my soon-to-be-released novella Christmas at Blue Hydrangeas, a prequel to Blue Hydrangeas. So many readers were fascinated with the bed and breakfast, and wanted more stories about Jack and Sara, that I just had to write one with a Christmas theme (one of my favorites!), set in 1978, long before Sara's Alzheimer's. I plan to publish in July. Please join my mailing list to receive an email when it's available or follow me on my Amazon page (see below.)
Connect with Marianne Sciucco:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarianneSciucco
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marianne.sci...
Website: http://mariannesciucco.blogspot.com/
Amazon Page: amazon.com/author/mariannesciucco
Mailing List: http://eepurl.com/dkqhs9
There’s a reason this book is so captivating and believable. The author has seen more than her share of tender love stories and the pain of an Alzheimer’s diagnosis. What she shows us is that love can continue to thrive, even in the face of an uncertain future. Her story is faithful, evocative, enchanting, and ultimately hopeful. To live with love and courage no matter what is in store for us is a credo for our time.
It is my pleasure to give you Marianne Sciucco:
Perhaps it seems only natural that I'd write a book about Alzheimer's. I had three beloved aunts succumb to the disease, and for years I'd worked with people living with Alzheimer's and dementia. As a nurse, I had a lot of experience with these patients and their confused, distraught, heartbroken families, but the idea of writing a book about them never crossed my mind.
Then I met the lovely couple who inspired the characters Jack and Sara in my debut novel Blue Hydrangeas, an Alzheimer's love story.
I was a case manager in a rehab unit at the time, and in the middle of trying to put together my first novel, which was going nowhere. I was making my rounds one afternoon and ended up with conversing with this sweet couple, who captivated me at "hello."
She was 86, very pretty, with a friendly smile, deep dimples, and long white hair pulled back in a tidy chignon. She also had Alzheimer’s. Throughout our conversation she kept saying, "Oh, I'm so mixed up," which became my heroine Sara's line. Her husband was a frail, thin, elderly man with a bemused expression on his weathered face. How he adored her! He hung on her every word and told me they were fine, everything was all right.
The amazing thing about them was that they’d driven from Florida to New York by themselves without any incident. Unfortunately, once home she fell and broke her pelvis, and landed in the hospital. That’s where I came in, to assist with the discharge plan. She was supposed to go to a local nursing home for continued rehab and her son planned to drive her and his father there on discharge day. He asked me to make sure his parents, skeptical about this plan, did not leave the hospital without him. This was not unusual and I agreed.
I completed their plans and said goodbye, but couldn’t stop thinking about them, wondering what would happen if they somehow left the hospital without their son and did not go to the rehab. Where would they go? What would they do? My wild imagination took off, I abandoned my work-in-progress, and the seeds for the novel took root. Eighteen months later I had a complete manuscript.
My book is set on Cape Cod, where blue hydrangeas, my favorite flowers, are abundant and gorgeous. It's one of my favorite places. I often call it "my home in my heart." Cape Codders are known for giving their homes whimsical names, and I wanted my characters, Jack and Sara, to name their home. I tossed around several ideas, such as "By the Sea," and "Sea Breeze," then had the epiphany to name it "Blue Hydrangeas," with a long driveway leading to the house with two dozen hydrangea bushes on both sides. You can't get more Cape Cod than that! Then I started thinking: Who are the people most likely to name their home? Innkeepers! So, Jack and Sara became innkeepers, with a twelve-room house they built for their retirement, a replica of an 1860's captain's house.
On Cape Cod, there are 15 distinct, unique towns and I know many of them very well after living there for a few years back in the '80's, and vacationing in many of them almost annually for the last 25 years. Plus, my mother lives in Wareham, the "Gateway to Cape Cod," and I'm there all the time. I could have chosen any one of these towns for the setting of this story. Instead, I created the village of Falmouthport, which I placed in the southernmost tip of the peninsula, and made a part of the town of Falmouth proper.
Creating my own special place was useful in many ways: I could make it the way I needed it to be for the purposes of the story, and I didn't have to worry that I'd get some detail wrong and a knowledgeable Cape Codder would call me out on it. Accuracy is important to me in all my stories, and I wanted everything to be just right. So, I took the easy way out and created my own village. Now I want to go there, for real, as do many of my readers, and I can't. What a dilemma. When I'm on the Cape, in every town I pass through, I look for a house that looks like the Blue Hydrangeas I conjured, or is named "Blue Hydrangeas", but I haven’t found it yet. Still looking.
Early on I planned for Jack and Sara's crisis to occur back in their hometown in upstate New York. Given the fact that the real Jack and Sara successfully made a 1,000-mile drive from Florida to upstate New York I thought it feasible for my characters to drive from Cape Cod to New York, a four-hour ride. But as I considered this I thought it was a bit extreme, so I decided they'd escape to Provincetown, the little town on the outermost tip of the Cape, instead. It was less than two hours away from their home.
It's here that Jack revisits the horrible incident that happened one summer. Which meant I had to come up with a horrible incident and I conjured the worst: The drowning of their teenage daughter. On the way to Provincetown, Jack experiences a revelation that changes everything.
This is just a small amount of insight into my thought and creative processes surrounding the writing of this book. It took eleven years for me to see it published (another story), and two years after publication, I started living my story when my stepfather was diagnosed with three types of dementia. I became his Health Care Proxy, Power of Attorney, and advocate, navigating the healthcare system and social services on my own journey. He has since passed away and now I am my 90-year old mother's advocate. Thankfully, she does not have dementia.
As I write this it's late June, we're having a heat wave, and I'm wrapped up in Christmas as I put the finishing touches to my soon-to-be-released novella Christmas at Blue Hydrangeas, a prequel to Blue Hydrangeas. So many readers were fascinated with the bed and breakfast, and wanted more stories about Jack and Sara, that I just had to write one with a Christmas theme (one of my favorites!), set in 1978, long before Sara's Alzheimer's. I plan to publish in July. Please join my mailing list to receive an email when it's available or follow me on my Amazon page (see below.)
Connect with Marianne Sciucco:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarianneSciucco
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/marianne.sci...
Website: http://mariannesciucco.blogspot.com/
Amazon Page: amazon.com/author/mariannesciucco
Mailing List: http://eepurl.com/dkqhs9
June 21, 2018
The Story Behind the Story: Alligators in the Trees
The fun thing about being an author is not knowing when or where inspiration will strike. For anyone who’s decided they wanted to write a book and gone as far as sitting in front of their computer with absolutely no idea what to say, I’m sure you can appreciate the caprices of creativity. It likes to sneak up when you least expect it and usually when you’re least prepared to grab it by the horns.
The premise for “Alligators in the Trees” came to me in an idle musing and slowly developed over a few weeks’ time. It started while listening to a song from the ‘70s. Besides holding up remarkably well, the lyrics got me to thinking about the band, particularly the singer. “Give her some funked up music, she treats you nice…” Personal observation? I thought so. I then pictured the scene he was describing—the life of a rock star, pre or post stardom? Had success changed him and his partner? What was his life like outside the glare of public scrutiny?
Instead of being a fleeting thought, musings about this musician stuck around in my head, popping up at random moments to offer additional insights or speculations. Then one day when my husband and I were having lunch at a roadside diner, I became intrigued by our waitress. I can’t say what about her caught my interest, but there was something about her that made me wonder what her life looked like, outside of her job.
Strangely, those dual musings somehow meshed in my head, and before I knew what was happening, the two characters from very different backgrounds were bouncing off each other. They were as different as snow and sand, and aside from speaking the same language, they had almost nothing in common. Well, that’s not entirely true. Both possessed a remarkable talent for writing lyrics, though Priscilla had never shared hers with anyone. And though Tobias Jordan figured his half-hearted disguise concealed his identity, Priscilla knew immediately who she was serving two poached eggs on dry wheat toast to—someone responsible for lyrics that had struck deep chords in her psyche.
Okay…so now I have two people loitering in my head. By this point, they were too vivid to dismiss. They had my attention and I had to take the scenario further, find out what would come of such an interaction.
But there was something missing. I needed another dynamic, something to save the story from being some quirky kind of romance novel. Then one night while out to dinner, we ran into an acquaintance, a talented architect with his head in the clouds and a dreamy expression on his face. As we stood there talking to him, it hit me I had the third element my story needed. A once famous—now infamous—architect, a bad-boy ‘90s rock star in need of a comeback, and a coffee shop waitress who puzzles out life’s conundrums in spiral-bound notebooks that no one’s ever seen.
From this vantage point, it seems so unlikely that anything could come from such meager musings. Yet, once I typed out the first sentence, the story was up and running and couldn’t be stopped. I honestly didn’t know where I was going, so I just surrendered the reins to the three stars of the show and followed them individually and as their lives became tangled together. It was a fun book to write, mainly because I stayed out of the way and let the characters call the shots.
As today is the official first day of summer, I decided to kick it off with a fun summer read, available today and tomorrow—the 21st and 22nd—for free downloading on Amazon. Grab your ereader and check out “Alligators in the Trees” and let me know what you think!
https://amzn.to/2BctwJu
Wishing everyone a fun, relaxing summer with an endless supply of great reads!
Until next time,
Very warmest regards,
Cynthia
The premise for “Alligators in the Trees” came to me in an idle musing and slowly developed over a few weeks’ time. It started while listening to a song from the ‘70s. Besides holding up remarkably well, the lyrics got me to thinking about the band, particularly the singer. “Give her some funked up music, she treats you nice…” Personal observation? I thought so. I then pictured the scene he was describing—the life of a rock star, pre or post stardom? Had success changed him and his partner? What was his life like outside the glare of public scrutiny?
Instead of being a fleeting thought, musings about this musician stuck around in my head, popping up at random moments to offer additional insights or speculations. Then one day when my husband and I were having lunch at a roadside diner, I became intrigued by our waitress. I can’t say what about her caught my interest, but there was something about her that made me wonder what her life looked like, outside of her job.
Strangely, those dual musings somehow meshed in my head, and before I knew what was happening, the two characters from very different backgrounds were bouncing off each other. They were as different as snow and sand, and aside from speaking the same language, they had almost nothing in common. Well, that’s not entirely true. Both possessed a remarkable talent for writing lyrics, though Priscilla had never shared hers with anyone. And though Tobias Jordan figured his half-hearted disguise concealed his identity, Priscilla knew immediately who she was serving two poached eggs on dry wheat toast to—someone responsible for lyrics that had struck deep chords in her psyche.
Okay…so now I have two people loitering in my head. By this point, they were too vivid to dismiss. They had my attention and I had to take the scenario further, find out what would come of such an interaction.
But there was something missing. I needed another dynamic, something to save the story from being some quirky kind of romance novel. Then one night while out to dinner, we ran into an acquaintance, a talented architect with his head in the clouds and a dreamy expression on his face. As we stood there talking to him, it hit me I had the third element my story needed. A once famous—now infamous—architect, a bad-boy ‘90s rock star in need of a comeback, and a coffee shop waitress who puzzles out life’s conundrums in spiral-bound notebooks that no one’s ever seen.
From this vantage point, it seems so unlikely that anything could come from such meager musings. Yet, once I typed out the first sentence, the story was up and running and couldn’t be stopped. I honestly didn’t know where I was going, so I just surrendered the reins to the three stars of the show and followed them individually and as their lives became tangled together. It was a fun book to write, mainly because I stayed out of the way and let the characters call the shots.
As today is the official first day of summer, I decided to kick it off with a fun summer read, available today and tomorrow—the 21st and 22nd—for free downloading on Amazon. Grab your ereader and check out “Alligators in the Trees” and let me know what you think!
https://amzn.to/2BctwJu
Wishing everyone a fun, relaxing summer with an endless supply of great reads!
Until next time,
Very warmest regards,
Cynthia
June 14, 2018
The Story Behind the Story: Rafael Amadeus Hines
In the same way some films take you by storm and don’t let up until the last frame, “Bishop’s War” explodes right off the page and never gives you a breather. My taste in books is all over the place, but I’ve always loved crime, espionage and war movies—anything with good guys vs. bad guys. I personally have never seen a stage so full of both elements; it almost boggles my mind that Rafael was able to keep them all straight in his head. But now I know that he drew his inspiration from people he knows, from a lifetime of close relationships and world-altering events that changed all of us to some degree.
What Rafael serves up in Bishop’s War is an all-you-can-eat feast of every imaginable threat a country or civilization or individual could ever face. And every situation he flings both characters and readers into is startlingly believable and arrestingly intense. It’s got MOVIE written all over it!
But until that blockbuster hits the theaters, we’ve got the book and the up-coming sequel(!) to tantalize us, plus Rafael’s own very fascinating and moving story behind Bishop’s War. Take it away, Rafael!
Cynthia, thank you for inviting me to talk about Bishop’s War- the story behind the story.
My inspiration for writing Bishop’s War came in four parts, the first being 9/11, but let’s call that tragic day a catalyst rather something that inspired me. My office was in the South Tower and in the days following 9/11 many of us in New York City were bracing for follow up low tech attacks that thankfully never happened. I started having very vivid dreams for months afterwards and one night a hero named John Bishop appeared out of nowhere and stopped an imaginary attack in a park near my house. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but the name and the dream would pop back up from time to time over the years.
Fast forward a decade later and I’m flying from New York to Houston for work and reading a bestselling airport thriller on the plane to pass the time. I’ve always been an avid reader and would often finish two or three novels a week, but I just couldn’t connect with this one. I finally put the book down in frustration and sat there thinking about the author’s choices and about writing in general and at that moment I opened my laptop and decided to write a novel. So, I guess you can say the second thing that inspired me to write Bishop’s War was reading a book that I really didn’t enjoy! :-)
I’d never written anything before and I had no idea where to begin or even what the book was going to be about so I started by writing about all the insane experiences that me and my friends went through growing up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side (LES) during the rough and bloody 70’s and 80’s. The story was really just a bunch of random scenes without a plot or an outline. That said, the more I wrote, the more I enjoyed it and then one night a few months later the hero John Bishop reappeared only this time as a Green Beret returning home from Afghanistan to stop a terrorist attack in Manhattan’s Union Square Park.
This brings me to part three. A great friend of mine from my LES neighborhood joined the Army with his son during the summer of 2001. Yes, that’s right, father and son went to basic training together! My buddy’s plan was to share the moment with his boy, get some extra benefits and earn a few extra dollars as an Army reservist. That all changed after 9/11 and now seventeen years later he’s a highly decorated Special Ops warrior with multiple deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa. He’s a true American hero and although I don’t write about his actual missions out of respect for the men and women he’s served with who have been killed or injured on the battlefield, he definitely inspired me to write action-packed Military thrillers with an LES badass as the main character.
The last and most inspirational part of this journey was my mother. As I said, I had never written anything before and even though I couldn’t wait to fire up my laptop every night, Bishop’s War was just a late-night hobby and I was writing purely for my own enjoyment. But not long after I “finished it” we found out Mom was terminally ill with only a few months to live. Before she passed she sent me a bunch of links on how to self-publish and made me promise her that I would “finish-finish Bishop’s War,” throw a cover on it, then post it on Amazon and see what happens.
Even after I self-published I fully expected to sell a few hundred copies to friends and family and that would be the end of it. Promise to Mom check. Box on my bucket list of having a book I actually wrote strategically placed on my shelf next to Elmore Leonard, Tom Clancy, Stephen Hunter and John Sandford… check-check. Needless to say, the old cliché, Moms know, definitely applies here and I feel she’s right here with me on this surreal journey that’s connected us with hundreds of thousands of readers from all over the world.
And now that I actually am an author (I smile every time I say that!) and I’m nearly finished with book two in the Bishop series I want to give a huge shout out to all the Bishop’s War fans out there, but especially to the Veterans, Active Duty and Deployed men and women who really seem to enjoy it. Since we’re talking about inspiration here, there is nothing more inspiring than reading emails sent from soldiers on the front lines in Forward Operating Bases and Combat Outposts telling me about how a book I wrote helped them get through their day. Your personal messages have forever changed my life and as someone who’s never served, I’m honored and humbled by your outpouring of support and encouragement. I’m no longer writing just for me anymore, but for all of you as well. Thank you for all you do and may God bless and protect you.
www.rafaelhines.com
https://amzn.to/2t9IZrD
https://twitter.com/RafaelWrites
What Rafael serves up in Bishop’s War is an all-you-can-eat feast of every imaginable threat a country or civilization or individual could ever face. And every situation he flings both characters and readers into is startlingly believable and arrestingly intense. It’s got MOVIE written all over it!
But until that blockbuster hits the theaters, we’ve got the book and the up-coming sequel(!) to tantalize us, plus Rafael’s own very fascinating and moving story behind Bishop’s War. Take it away, Rafael!
Cynthia, thank you for inviting me to talk about Bishop’s War- the story behind the story.
My inspiration for writing Bishop’s War came in four parts, the first being 9/11, but let’s call that tragic day a catalyst rather something that inspired me. My office was in the South Tower and in the days following 9/11 many of us in New York City were bracing for follow up low tech attacks that thankfully never happened. I started having very vivid dreams for months afterwards and one night a hero named John Bishop appeared out of nowhere and stopped an imaginary attack in a park near my house. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but the name and the dream would pop back up from time to time over the years.
Fast forward a decade later and I’m flying from New York to Houston for work and reading a bestselling airport thriller on the plane to pass the time. I’ve always been an avid reader and would often finish two or three novels a week, but I just couldn’t connect with this one. I finally put the book down in frustration and sat there thinking about the author’s choices and about writing in general and at that moment I opened my laptop and decided to write a novel. So, I guess you can say the second thing that inspired me to write Bishop’s War was reading a book that I really didn’t enjoy! :-)
I’d never written anything before and I had no idea where to begin or even what the book was going to be about so I started by writing about all the insane experiences that me and my friends went through growing up on Manhattan’s Lower East Side (LES) during the rough and bloody 70’s and 80’s. The story was really just a bunch of random scenes without a plot or an outline. That said, the more I wrote, the more I enjoyed it and then one night a few months later the hero John Bishop reappeared only this time as a Green Beret returning home from Afghanistan to stop a terrorist attack in Manhattan’s Union Square Park.
This brings me to part three. A great friend of mine from my LES neighborhood joined the Army with his son during the summer of 2001. Yes, that’s right, father and son went to basic training together! My buddy’s plan was to share the moment with his boy, get some extra benefits and earn a few extra dollars as an Army reservist. That all changed after 9/11 and now seventeen years later he’s a highly decorated Special Ops warrior with multiple deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa. He’s a true American hero and although I don’t write about his actual missions out of respect for the men and women he’s served with who have been killed or injured on the battlefield, he definitely inspired me to write action-packed Military thrillers with an LES badass as the main character.
The last and most inspirational part of this journey was my mother. As I said, I had never written anything before and even though I couldn’t wait to fire up my laptop every night, Bishop’s War was just a late-night hobby and I was writing purely for my own enjoyment. But not long after I “finished it” we found out Mom was terminally ill with only a few months to live. Before she passed she sent me a bunch of links on how to self-publish and made me promise her that I would “finish-finish Bishop’s War,” throw a cover on it, then post it on Amazon and see what happens.
Even after I self-published I fully expected to sell a few hundred copies to friends and family and that would be the end of it. Promise to Mom check. Box on my bucket list of having a book I actually wrote strategically placed on my shelf next to Elmore Leonard, Tom Clancy, Stephen Hunter and John Sandford… check-check. Needless to say, the old cliché, Moms know, definitely applies here and I feel she’s right here with me on this surreal journey that’s connected us with hundreds of thousands of readers from all over the world.
And now that I actually am an author (I smile every time I say that!) and I’m nearly finished with book two in the Bishop series I want to give a huge shout out to all the Bishop’s War fans out there, but especially to the Veterans, Active Duty and Deployed men and women who really seem to enjoy it. Since we’re talking about inspiration here, there is nothing more inspiring than reading emails sent from soldiers on the front lines in Forward Operating Bases and Combat Outposts telling me about how a book I wrote helped them get through their day. Your personal messages have forever changed my life and as someone who’s never served, I’m honored and humbled by your outpouring of support and encouragement. I’m no longer writing just for me anymore, but for all of you as well. Thank you for all you do and may God bless and protect you.
www.rafaelhines.com
https://amzn.to/2t9IZrD
https://twitter.com/RafaelWrites
