Authors and Their Books: NEW- JAMES MASON ONLY -GIVAWAY- 3 COPIES TO FIRST TO MSG ME! A HANDFUL OF DUST- JUDGE CRATER AND MORE!! BY MEMBER ROBERT J. PRAJER

[Rick-Founder JM CM BOOK CLUB]

Robert J. Pajer was born in Yonkers, New York. He has been a correspondent for Mini-World Magazine written in English for Japanese readers, and has written articles for American magazines that dealt with religious topics in American culture. A Handful of Dust is his first novel. He spent over 10 years researching the book while working a full-time job. A Handful of Dust is an incredible journey through the streets of 1930 depression-stricken New York City.


The Evolution of a Story
A Handful of Dust, my first novel, evolved from a conversation I heard between my parents when I was a boy. The conversation was about a Judge, who stepped into a cab after leaving a Manhattan restaurant and drove off into oblivion never to be seen or heard from again. Judge Joseph Force Crater became an urban legend, an American missing person myth firmly embedded in the collective memory of our nation, and as a young boy, I was captivated by the mysterious disappearance. The memory of that conversation resonated for years in my psyche until it finally emerged as the focal point of the plot for, “A Handful of Dust.”
As most writers know, novels evolve over time. Characters, intentionally created to serve an author’s whims, suddenly take on a life of their own and demand changes to the original plot. This “creative process” is actually one of the joys of writing and is what compels writers to keep pounding the keyboard. In “Dust” there were two characters that decided to take a different plot path than the one I originally intended. My initial desire was to have the entire novel focus on the Judge Crater disappearance, but because Matt Wells (the protagonist) and Walter Kinlaw (the antagonist) decided (through the creative process of course) to evolve along their own path, the Crater angle became less prominent (although it was still an integral part of the plot). The new path developed into a clash between Wells and Kinlaw that ultimately leads to a planned assassination of New York Governor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
What was originally intended to be a strictly historical novel morphed into a confrontation of 20th and 21st Century characters. Wells and Kinlaw, men from the 21st Century, are thrown together in depression-riddled 1930 Manhattan to do battle and preserve the 20th Century timeline we all know and love.
One of the difficulties novice writers experience is breathing life into characters so they become relevant to a reader. Character relevancy is what nudges the reader into the fictional dream keeping them connected to the story and eventually evoking the words all writers love to hear, “I couldn’t put it down.” Sol Stein, in his Fiction Master software program, suggests writers take all their main characters, sit them down in their living rooms, and interview them. Ask them questions that will embarrass, frighten, anger, humor, and force them to ponder the deeper mysteries of life. What emerges after these sessions are intriguing characters that will keep readers engaged.
Another problem new writers often face is characters that are stereo-typical. In "A Handful of Dust," I had initially created some qualities in two characters that might seem stereotyped. One was a Marine Colonel, William Schraeker, who had classic Marine characteristics, tough, authoritarian, an acerbic tongue, and a pure military mentality. I decided to soften these qualities by having him play the violin and enjoy chamber music. Schraeker, in some of the scenes, reveals facets of his personality that one can no longer consider stereotyped.
The other character was particle physicist, Arnie Saffle, a brilliant physicist from MIT (that's stereotyped!!). I purposely had Saffle come from a middle-class blue collar family, his father a construction worker, and to give him some human qualities, I made his marriage a mess and that results in clinical depression and Saffle's use of marijuana. One person who read the novel chided me for having an MIT physicist smoke weed. I guess some people love stereotypes?

A Handful of Dust

[Rick-Founder JM CM BOOK CLUB]

Rick wrote: "Robert J. Pajer was born in Yonkers, New York. He has been a correspondent for Mini-World Magazine written in English for Japanese readers, and has written articles for American magazines that deal..."

very facinating and original book! I truly enjoyed reading it!