Hank Garner's Blog, page 4
April 8, 2020
Author Stories Podcast Episode 848 | A. P. Murray Interview
Today’s author interview guest is A. P. Murray, author of Greedy Heart.
[image error] For Delia math just makes sense—more sense than people, anyway.
It’s 2006, and Delia Mulcahy is living in a shabby apartment and facing crushing student debt. Suddenly, she’s plucked from obscurity to work for Wall Street’s top hedge fund. Determined to make her millions, Delia must master the cutthroat world of big-stakes trading and profit off of the cataclysm of the looming crash.
In the underbelly of finance, no one is who they say they are. Delia finds herself embroiled in devious schemes and duplicitous deals as her recklessness threatens every relationship in her life: family, friends and especially the two rival CEOs vying for her genius.
It’s a high-risk game and she is a better player than most. When her soul is on the line, how much is enough for her greedy heart?
A.P. Murray’s sprawling Irish Catholic family has roots in New York City going back four generations. Her industrialist great grandfather, Thomas E. Murray, Sr., co-founded Consolidated Edison, was second only to Edison the number of patents attributed to him, and is credited with creating the mass distribution of electricity in New York City. Murray descends from this lace-curtain heritage and also from a working-class mother who rose to international fame as a fashion model.
A technology consultant by day, Murray began her career as a teacher and journalist before founding an early stage web company, which built many national brands’ first websites. The firm, tmg-emedia, later expanded into broad-ranging technology consulting. Murray has won multiple awards for her technology leadership and as a woman tech entrepreneur. She lives in New York with her husband and business partner, Christos Moschovitis, and her whippet Orpheus. Her horse, Hershey, resides separately in Connecticut. Greedy Heart is her debut novel.
April 7, 2020
Author Stories Podcast Episode 847 | Megan Campisi Interview
Today’s author interview guest is Megan Campisi, author of Sin Eater: A Novel.
Author photo credit: Gates Hurand
[image error] The Handmaid’s Tale meets Alice in Wonderland in this gripping and imaginative historical novel about a shunned orphan girl in 16th-century England who is ensnared in a deadly royal plot and must turn her subjugation into her power.
The Sin Eater walks among us, unseen, unheard
Sins of our flesh become sins of Hers
Following Her to the grave, unseen, unheard
The Sin Eater Walks Among Us.
For the crime of stealing bread, fourteen-year-old May receives a life sentence: she must become a Sin Eater—a shunned woman, brutally marked, whose fate is to hear the final confessions of the dying, eat ritual foods symbolizing their sins as a funeral rite, and thereby shoulder their transgressions to grant their souls access to heaven.
Orphaned and friendless, apprenticed to an older Sin Eater who cannot speak to her, May must make her way in a dangerous and cruel world she barely understands. When a deer heart appears on the coffin of a royal governess who did not confess to the dreadful sin it represents, the older Sin Eater refuses to eat it. She is taken to prison, tortured, and killed. To avenge her death, May must find out who placed the deer heart on the coffin and why.
“A keenly researched feminist arc of unexpected abundance, reckoning, intellect, and ferocious survival” (Maria Dahvana Headley, author of The Mere Wife) Sin Eater is “a dark, rich story replete with humor, unforgettable characters, and arcane mysteries. It casts a spell on your heart and mind until the final page” (Jennie Melamed, author of Gather the Daughters).
Megan Campisi is a playwright, novelist, and teacher. Her plays have performed in China, France, and the United States. She has been a forest ranger, sous-chef in Paris, and a physical theater specialist around the world. She attended Yale University and the École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. In 2019 she received a Fulbright Specialist award to travel to Turkey and give master classes at Tatbikat Theatre. Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Megan lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.
April 6, 2020
Free Software Alternatives For Authors And Publishers
Greetings from the Author Stories Podcast quarantine bunker. This is a tough time for a lot of people and folks find themselves home from work and possibly with a lot of time on their hands. With being home from work for an extended period of time, there are a lot of folks that are experiencing a temporary pinch in finances. As writers and publishers, we depend on our computers and the software that runs on them to get the job done. When you’ve been stuck at home for an extended period of time and finances begin to get tight, some of the first budget cuts you may be tempted to slash are software subscriptions.
Over the last few years, the trend has gradually gone toward subscription-based software. Microsoft word has gone from a standalone package to a bundle of software that is packaged with cloud storage, team collaboration, and much more. While possibly helpful, the bloat has gotten out of control. Not to mention that if you subscribe on a month-to-month basis, that ten dollars might be better spent on food or toilet paper in the near future.
I thought it might be a good time to look at some free alternatives for authors to consider installing and getting familiar with. The last thing you want to happen is to be locked out of software because you can’t continue to pay. As authors, we should always be in control of our data and not held hostage.
LibreOffice
LibreOffice is a powerful and free office suite, a successor to OpenOffice(.org), used by millions of people around the world. Its clean interface and feature-rich tools help you unleash your creativity and enhance your productivity. LibreOffice includes several applications that make it the most versatile Free and Open Source office suite on the market: Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts), Base (databases), and Math (formula editing).
LibreOffice is compatible with a wide range of document formats such as Microsoft® Word (.doc, .docx), Excel (.xls, .xlsx), PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx) and Publisher. But LibreOffice goes much further with its native support for a modern and open standard, the Open Document Format (ODF). With LibreOffice, you have maximum control over your data and content – and you can export your work in many different formats including PDF.
Download LibreOffice for free at https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/
Available for Windows, Mac, and Linux operating systems.
I like to write in a plain text editor, and there are a few that are free and offer the ability to have multiple tabs open. I use Gedit and Notepad ++ for a lot of my day to day work, including drafting blog posts, show notes for podcasts, taking notes from and article that might come in handy in my writing, notes during a podcast interview, daily to do list, and much more. I like working in a text editor because I just need to capture text, not worry about formatting. Plain text is the universal standard and it’s very difficult to corrupt plain text. The files are super lightweight and portable. Most computer operating systems come with a text editor built in with basic features, but I find the upgrade to a tabbed editor worth the time to download.
If you’re an author/publisher that designs book covers, or maybe you just need to make some text changes to a cover, then you more than likely use the Adobe suite of software including Photoshop. Adobe moved to a subscription model for their current software a few years ago, therefore here are a few options.
Gimp
GIMP is a cross-platform image editor available for GNU/Linux, OS X, Windows and more operating systems. It is free software, you can change its source code and distribute your changes.
Whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, or scientist, GIMP provides you with sophisticated tools to get your job done. You can further enhance your productivity with GIMP thanks to many customization options and 3rd party plugins.
GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed program for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. The terms of usage and rules about copying are clearly listed in the GNU General Public License. There is a nice Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page.
YouTube help for Photoshop users to move to Gimp
There are stacks of open source programs for word processing and other office tasks, but far fewer for desktop publishing. Thankfully, Scribus is the only one you need. It’s packed with all the features you need for creating your own magazines, newsletters, posters and many other document types.
In fact, Scribus is so packed with professional-quality tools, it could even replace Adobe InDesign in the toolbox of indie designers and publishers.
Scribus has been in constant development for 13 years, and its powers include professional typesetting and color management (but not Pantone colors due to licensing, although you can add Pantone yourself) as well as online publications such as interactive forms and PDFs.
Download Scribus for Free here
I hope this is helpful in some way. Consider sharing this with someone that you think could benefit from it. Writing is supposed to be all about the words, and sometimes it’s easy to let our tools become more of a hindrance than the help they should be. It never hurts to do a checkup to see if there is some way to streamline what we do and how we do it.
Do you have a tip for cutting costs and streamlining your process during this shelter in place time? Share it in the comments.
Author Stories Podcast Episode 846 | Lian Dolan Interview
Today’s author interview guest is podcaster and author Lian Dolan, author of The Sweeney Sisters: A Novel.
[image error] An accomplished storyteller returns with her biggest, boldest, most entertaining novel yet—a hilarious, heartfelt story about books, love, sisterhood, and the surprises we discover in our DNA that combines the wit of Jonathan Tropper with the heart of Susan Wiggs.
Maggie, Eliza, and Tricia Sweeney grew up as a happy threesome in the idyllic seaside town of Southport, Connecticut. But their mother’s death from cancer fifteen years ago tarnished their golden-hued memories, and the sisters drifted apart. Their one touchstone is their father, Bill Sweeney, an internationally famous literary lion and college professor universally adored by critics, publishers, and book lovers. When Bill dies unexpectedly one cool June night, his shell-shocked daughters return to their childhood home. They aren’t quite sure what the future holds without their larger-than-life father, but they do know how to throw an Irish wake to honor a man of his stature.
But as guests pay their respects and reminisce, one stranger, emboldened by whiskey, has crashed the party. It turns out that she too is a Sweeney sister.
When Washington, DC based journalist Serena Tucker had her DNA tested on a whim a few weeks earlier, she learned she had a 50% genetic match with a childhood neighbor—Maggie Sweeney of Southport, Connecticut. It seems Serena’s chilly WASP mother, Birdie, had a history with Bill Sweeney—one that has remained totally secret until now.
Once the shock wears off, questions abound. What does this mean for William’s literary legacy? Where is the unfinished memoir he’s stashed away, and what will it reveal? And how will a fourth Sweeney sister—a blond among redheads—fit into their story?
By turns revealing, insightful, and uproarious, The Sweeney Sisters is equal parts cautionary tale and celebration—a festive and heartfelt look at what truly makes a family.
Lian Dolan is a writer and talker. She’s the author of two Los Angeles Times best-selling novels, Helen of Pasadena and Elizabeth the First Wife published by Prospect Park Books. Her next novel, The Sweeney Sisters, will be published in 2020 by William Morrow. She’s a regular humor columnist for Pasadena Magazine and has previously written monthly columns for O, The Oprah Magazine and Working Mother Magazine. She’s also written for TV, radio and websites.
Lian is the producer and host of Satellite Sisters, the award-winning talk show she created with her four real sisters. On Satellite Sisters, she’s interviewed everyone from Nora Ephron to Madeleine Albright to Big Bird. Satellite Sisters began life as a syndicated radio show and is now a top-rated podcast for women. The recent book by the Satellite Sisters, You’re the Best: A Celebration of Friendship, is popular with book clubs.
A popular speaker who combines humor and heart, Lian has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CBS Sunday Morning and The Today Show and many local TV stations. She’s been a featured speaker at the LA Times Festival of Books, the Santa Barbara Celebrity Authors Lunch, the Literary Guild of Orange County Festival of Women Authors and dozens of other events at libraries, book stores, schools and women’s organizations across the country. In 2020, she’ll be on the faculty of the Erma Bombeck Writers Workshop.
Lian graduated from Pomona College with a degree in Classics. She lives in Pasadena, California with her husband, two sons and a big German shepherd.
April 5, 2020
Author Stories Podcast Episode 845 | Max Barry Interview
Today’s author interview guest is Max Barry, author of the new novel Providence.
From the ingenious author of Jennifer Government and Lexicon: a brilliant work of science fiction that tells the intimate tale of four people facing their most desperate hour–alone, together, at the edge of the universe.
The video changed everything. Before that, we could believe that we were safe. Special. Chosen. We thought the universe was a twinkling ocean of opportunity, waiting to be explored.
Afterward, we knew better.
Seven years after first contact, Providence Five launches. It is an enormous and deadly warship, built to protect humanity from its greatest ever threat. On board is a crew of just four–tasked with monitoring the ship and reporting the war’s progress to a mesmerized global audience by way of social media.
But while pursuing the enemy across space, Gilly, Talia, Anders, and Jackson confront the unthinkable: their communications are cut, their ship decreasingly trustworthy and effective. To survive, they must win a fight that is suddenly and terrifyingly real.
Listen to an audiobook excerpt here
Max Barry is an Australian who pretended to sell high-end computer systems for Hewlett-Packard while secretly writing his first novel, Syrup (1999). In fact, he still has the laptop he wrote it on because HP forgot to ask for it back, but keep that to yourself. He put an extra X in his name for Syrup because he thought it would be a funny joke about marketing and failed to realize everyone would assume he was a pretentious asshole. Jennifer Government, his second novel, was published in 2003 with no superfluous Xs and sold much better.
Max’s third novel, Company, was published in 2006, and his fourth, Machine Man, in 2012, was based on a real-time interactive web serial written and delivered in real-time one page per day from this web site. It made more sense than it sounds.
Max’s fifth novel, Lexicon, was named one of the Best 10 Books of the Year by Time.
Max also created the online political game NationStates, for which he is far more famous amongst high school students and poli-sci majors than his novels.
He was born March 18, 1973, and lives in Melbourne, Australia, where he writes full-time, the advantage being that he can do it while wearing only boxer shorts.
April 3, 2020
Author Stories Podcast Episode 844 | John Bishop, MD Interview
Today’s author interview guest is John Bishop, MD, author of Act Of Murder.
[image error]Doc Brady became an orthopedic surgeon to avoid being surrounded by death. But now it’s everywhere around him.
One spring day in 1994 Houston, Dr. Jim Bob Brady witnesses his neighbor’s ten-year-old son killed by a hit-and-run driver. An accident, or an act of murder? After the death, Brady enlists the help of his twenty-year-old son J. J. and his wife Mary Louise in chasing down clues that take them deeper and deeper into a Houston he never imagined existed. In the process, they discover a macabre conspiracy stretching from the ivory towers of the largest teaching hospital in Texas, to the upper reaches of Houston’s legal community, to the shores of Galveston.
Doc Brady soon realizes that the old adage remains true: The love of money is the root of all evil.
About John Bishop M.D.
As an author, I find it difficult to write about myself. Others seem so much more interesting to me.
I was born and raised in Waco, Texas. My mother worked as a secretary to the dean of the music school at Baylor University. My dad worked for the MKT Railroad and was very active in the U.S. Army Reserve. Mine was a very conservative household, with mandatory church attendance Sunday morning and Sunday and Wednesday nights. Eventually, I recovered from that aspect of my childhood, although it took quite a few years. What I observed growing up in a Pentecostal church environment—speaking in tongues, rolling in the aisles—was quite frightening for a kid. Seems I spent a great deal of my time at church hiding under the pew. I did learn to play the piano and organ during those formative years, and when I wasn’t playing official church music or going to school, I would sneak off and play blues, R & B, and gospel at the local taverns and churches on “the other side of the tracks.”
I graduated from La Vega High School and moved on to Baylor University. I became interested in medicine during college, changed my course curriculum, and ended up with a B. A. in chemistry and acceptance to Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. I spent three and a half years in medical school before I came across a specialty I enjoyed, which was orthopedic surgery. I ruled out OB-GYN, pathology, and psychiatry early on. It seemed to me the medical specialties were full of patients that were chronically ill and/or dying. The thing I liked about orthopedics was that most of the patients were healthy and well. They were, however, temporarily injured, and both patient and doctor could expect a recovery after an appropriate healing time following surgery.
I spent the next six years learning to be an orthopedic surgeon and acquired specialty training in orthopedic foot and ankle surgery. My training led to a position in Houston as a faculty member of the Orthopedic Department of Baylor College of Medicine, where I taught med students, residents, and fellows, and handled a large volume of private patients as well. All went along fairly well for about fourteen years.
Some of my colleagues and I became disgruntled with the academic system and its challenges, to the extent that we left our college home and opened our own facility, the Texas Orthopedic Hospital. I still had a very busy practice, but without the teaching and academic responsibilities, I found myself with—shock and amazement—free time. I started playing with an R & B band, Bert Wills and the Crying Shames, on the weekends. That was a wonderful experience for me, until the road travel became more than I could handle. Shortly thereafter, I began to write. I can’t say where the desire came from. I finally had a sense of peace, perhaps, because of a solid marriage to Joan Berry, who provided me with a loving and supportive partner.
I’ve been blessed with three wonderful children, all adults now, and four grandsons. My son Jim is a successful software engineer; daughter Kellie is a retired graphic artist and wife and mother extraordinaire; and daughter Bonnie is a singer/songwriter who has been awarded a Grammy for her songwriting talents.
I have always read voraciously, especially crime fiction and medical mysteries. My best paper friends were Robin Cook and Michael Crichton, two M.D.s that were very successful in the writing business. My first novel was called Act of Murder, the central character of which is Dr. Jim Bob Brady, Houston orthopedic surgeon. Joan, a former Saks and Hallmark executive, had extensive connections in New York due to her business dealings there. She found an agent, a well-known husband-and-wife team that had represented John D. MacDonald and Kurt Vonnegut. In spite of their best efforts, a publisher that would take the book could not be found. However, the writing “disease” had overtaken me, and I continued to write. Between 1993 and 2000 I wrote four more novels: Act of Deception, Act of Revenge, Act of Negligence, and Act of Fate. Nothing got published.
Out of frustration, I abruptly quit writing and took up, at the behest of friends and colleagues, golf, which mitigated somewhat the frustration of publication failure. I continued on with the practice of orthopedic surgery until my retirement in 2007, after which I became a golf junkie. My son Jim would periodically ask me about my writing and the novels. All three of my children remember the days of me holed up either in my home office or upstairs in the loft of our beach house in Galveston, pounding the Mac keyboard all hours of the day and night. Ultimately I discarded the manuscripts, keeping only the five tiny floppy disks, all that remained of my passion of seven years.
In 2019, my son again asked me about writing. I told him I had only the disks left, and that I had tried a few times to get the data on the disks converted to a CD so that I could at least read what I had written twenty-odd years earlier. He wanted me to let him try. Even after all that time, I was reluctant to part with those disks—they were a reminder of my past passion for writing—but I gave them to him and moved on.
Then on Father’s Day that year, he gave me a nicely wrapped gift. I opened it, and there is a beautiful red-and-black cover, in large-paperback format, was Act of Murder, published by Amazon. I was so emotional, I had to leave the room. When I recovered, he was able to tell me the process by which he had reclaimed the data from the disks and reformatted it, through much time and trouble, and that after all those years, my book was in print. Words could not and cannot express my joy nor my appreciation for the work involved to produce the book. Of course, Joan was in on it the entire time, never saying a word until Father’s Day.
I read all five books—he had put all five into bound novels but not ready for publication—and I decided that at least back then, I had some stories to tell. I then wondered if I still had “the juice,” and I started writing again. Act of Atonement, the sixth book in the Jim Bob Brady series, is the product of that long respite from writing.
I’m still writing, working on the seventh novel in the Jim Bob Brady series, and now you readers can decide if I still have some stories to tell.
April 2, 2020
Author Stories Podcast Episode 843 | Jan Eliasberg Interview
Today’s author interview guest is Jan Eliasberg, author of Hanna’s War.
[image error] A “mesmerizing” re-imagination of the final months of World War II (Kate Quinn, author of The Alice Network), Hannah’s War is an unforgettable love story about an exceptional woman and the dangerous power of her greatest discovery.
Berlin, 1938. Groundbreaking physicist Dr. Hannah Weiss is on the verge of the greatest discovery of the 20th century: splitting the atom. She understands that the energy released by her discovery can power entire cities or destroy them. Hannah believes the weapon’s creation will secure an end to future wars, but as a Jewish woman living under the harsh rule of the Third Reich, her research is belittled, overlooked, and eventually stolen by her German colleagues. Faced with an impossible choice, Hannah must decide what she is willing to sacrifice in pursuit of science’s greatest achievement.
New Mexico, 1945. Returning wounded and battered from the liberation of Paris, Major Jack Delaney arrives in the New Mexican desert with a mission: to catch a spy. Someone in the top-secret nuclear lab at Los Alamos has been leaking encoded equations to Hitler’s scientists. Chief among Jack’s suspects is the brilliant and mysterious Hannah Weiss, an exiled physicist lending her talent to J. Robert Oppenheimer’s mission. All signs point to Hannah as the traitor, but over three days of interrogation that separate her lies from the truth, Jack will realize they have more in common than either one bargained for.
Hannah’s War is a thrilling wartime story of loyalty, truth, and the unforeseeable fallout of a single choice.
Jan Eliasberg is an award-winning writer/director. Her prolific directing career includes dramatic pilots for CBS, NBC, and ABC, such as Miami Vice and Wiseguy; countless episodes of television series, including Bull, Nashville, Parenthood, The Magicians, Blue Bloods, NCIS: Los Angeles, Supernatural, and dozens of others; as well as the feature film Past Midnight, starring Paul Giamatti, the late Natasha Richardson, and Rutger Hauer.
Eliasberg also has a storied career as a screenwriter, writing films driven by strong female leads, including Fly Girls about the Women Air Service Pilots in WWII for Nicole Kidman and Cameron Diaz at FOX 2000, among many others.
April 1, 2020
Author Stories Podcast Episode 842 | Loretta Nyhan Interview
Today’s author interview guest is Loretta Nyhan, author of The Other Family.
[image error] From the bestselling author of Digging In comes a witty and moving novel about motherhood, courage, and finding true family.
With a dissolving marriage, strained finances, and her life in flux, Ally Anderson longs for normal. Her greatest concerns, though, are the health problems of her young daughter, Kylie. Symptoms point to a compromised immune system, but every doctor they’ve seen has a different theory. Then comes hope for some clarity.
It’s possible that Kylie’s illness is genetic, but Ally is adopted. A DNA test opens up an entirely new path. And where it leads is a surprise: to an aunt Ally never knew existed. She’s a little wild, very welcoming, and ready to share more of the family history than Ally ever imagined.
Coping with a skeptical soon-to-be-ex husband, weathering the cautions of her own resistant mother, and getting maddeningly close to the healing Kylie needs, Ally is determined to regain control of her life. This is her chance to embrace uncertainty and the beauty of family—both the one she was born into and the one she chose.
Loretta Nyhan lives in the Chicago area with her family. THE OTHER FAMILY is her sixth novel. Previous titles include DIGGING IN, ALL THE GOOD PARTS, HOME FRONT GIRLS, EMPIRE GIRLS, and her novel for young adults, THE WITCH COLLECTOR.
March 31, 2020
Author Stories Podcast Episode 841 | Dean Koontz Interview
Today’s author interview guest is Dean Koontz, author of multiple New York Times bestsellers, and the new book Devoted.
[image error] From Dean Koontz, the international bestselling master of suspense, comes an epic thriller about a terrifying killer and the singular compassion it will take to defeat him.
Woody Bookman hasn’t spoken a word in his eleven years of life. Not when his father died in a freak accident. Not when his mother, Megan, tells him she loves him. For Megan, keeping her boy safe and happy is what matters. But Woody believes a monstrous evil was behind his father’s death and now threatens him and his mother. And he’s not alone in his thoughts. An ally unknown to him is listening.
A uniquely gifted dog with a heart as golden as his breed, Kipp is devoted beyond reason to people. When he hears the boy who communicates like he does, without speaking, Kipp knows he needs to find him before it’s too late.
Woody’s fearful suspicions are taking shape. A man driven by a malicious evil has set a depraved plan into motion. And he’s coming after Woody and his mother. The reasons are primal. His powers are growing. And he’s not alone. Only a force greater than evil can stop what’s coming next.
When he was a senior in college, Dean Koontz won an Atlantic Monthly fiction competition and has been writing ever since. His books are published in 38 languages and he has sold over 500 million copies to date.
Fourteen of his novels have risen to number one on the New York Times hardcover bestseller list (One Door Away From Heaven, From the Corner of His Eye, Midnight, Cold Fire, The Bad Place, Hideaway, Dragon Tears, Intensity, Sole Survivor, The Husband, Odd Hours, Relentless, What the Night Knows, and 77 Shadow Street), making him one of only a dozen writers ever to have achieved that milestone. Sixteen of his books have risen to the number one position in paperback. His books have also been major bestsellers in countries as diverse as Japan and Sweden.
The New York Times has called his writing “psychologically complex, masterly and satisfying.” The New Orleans Times-Picayune said Koontz is, “at times lyrical without ever being naive or romantic. [He creates] a grotesque world, much like that of Flannery O’Conner or Walker Percy … scary, worthwhile reading.” Rolling Stone has hailed him as “America’s most popular suspense novelist.”
Dean Koontz was born and raised in Pennsylvania. He graduated from Shippensburg State College (now Shippensburg University), and his first job after graduation was with the Appalachian Poverty Program, where he was expected to counsel and tutor underprivileged children on a one-to-one basis. His first day on the job, he discovered that the previous occupier of his position had been beaten up by the very kids he had been trying to help and had landed in the hospital for several weeks. The following year was filled with challenge but also tension, and Koontz was more highly motivated than ever to build a career as a writer. He wrote nights and weekends, which he continued to do after leaving the poverty program and going to work as an English teacher in a suburban school district outside Harrisburg. After a year and a half in that position, his wife, Gerda, made him an offer he couldn’t refuse: “I’ll support you for five years,” she said, “and if you can’t make it as a writer in that time, you’ll never make it.” By the end of those five years, Gerda had quit her job to run the business end of her husband’s writing career.
Dean Koontz lives in Southern California with his wife, Gerda, their golden retriever, Elsa, and the enduring spirit of their goldens, Trixie and Anna.
March 30, 2020
Author Stories Podcast Episode 840 | Matt Ruff Interview
Today’s author interview guest is Matt Ruff, author of Lovecraft Country, and the new novel 88 Names.
[image error] The critically acclaimed author of Lovecraft Country returns with a thrilling and immersive virtual reality epic—part cyberthriller, part twisted romantic comedy—that transports you to a world where identity is fluid and nothing can be taken at face value.
John Chu is a “sherpa”—a paid guide to online role-playing games like the popular Call to Wizardry. For a fee, he and his crew will provide you with a top-flight character equipped with the best weapons and armor, and take you dragon-slaying in the Realms of Asgarth, hunting rogue starships in the Alpha Sector, or battling hordes of undead in the zombie apocalypse.
Chu’s new client, the pseudonymous Mr. Jones, claims to be a “wealthy, famous person” with powerful enemies, and he’s offering a ridiculous amount of money for a comprehensive tour of the world of virtual-reality gaming. For Chu, this is a dream assignment, but as the tour gets underway, he begins to suspect that Mr. Jones is really North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, whose interest in VR gaming has more to do with power than entertainment. As if that weren’t enough to deal with, Chu also has to worry about “Ms. Pang,” who may or may not be an agent of the People’s Republic of China, and his angry ex-girlfriend, Darla Jean Covington, who isn’t the type to let an international intrigue get in the way of her own plans for revenge.
What begins as a whirlwind online adventure soon spills over into the real world. Now Chu must use every trick and resource at his disposal to stay one step ahead—because in real life, there is no reset button.
Lovecraft Country will be a series on HBO
I was born in New York City in 1965. I decided I wanted to be a fiction writer when I was five years old and spent my childhood and adolescence learning how to tell stories. At Cornell University I wrote what would become my first published novel, Fool on the Hill, as my senior thesis in Honors English. My professor Alison Lurie helped me find an agent, and within six months of my college graduation Fool on the Hill had been sold to Atlantic Monthly Press. Through a combination of timely foreign rights sales, the generous support of family and friends, occasional grant money, and a slowly accumulating back list, I’ve managed to make novel-writing my primary occupation ever since.
My third novel, Set This House in Order, marked a critical turning point in my career after it won the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, a Washington State Book Award, and a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award, and helped me secure a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. My fourth novel, Bad Monkeys, also won multiple awards; it is currently under development as a Universal Studios film, with Margot Robbie attached to star. My sixth novel, Lovecraft Country, is being produced as an HBO series by Jordan Peele, Misha Green, and J.J. Abrams.
In 1998 I married my best friend, the researcher and rare-book expert Lisa Gold. We live in Seattle, Washington.
