Interview with novelist Alan S. Kessler

Welcome, readers. I’m kicking of a new week with author Alan S.Kessler. He’s sharing a bit about his new novel, Gables Court.

Welcome, Alan. Please tell us a little bit about yourself.

Married, with four children and a cat that likes me to pet her so she can take a bite out of my hand. When I’m not writing I teach karate, many of my students on the autism spectrum

Please tell us about your current release.

Samuel Baas is a romantic and virgin who wants love and marriage before sex. After moving from staid New England to the hothouse world of Miami, he falls in love with Kate, the college girl he wants to marry.

She isn’t interested in becoming anyone’s little wife. For her, sex is recreational.

A lawyer, Baas represents an accused Nazi war criminal and Haitians who, if deported, face retribution from the murderous Tonton Macoute. Head of a crime family, his father takes a special interest in his son’s legal career. In this complicated world, Baas dates and tries to answer the central question in his life, “Is love for someone else?”

Loneliness isn’t gender specific nor is alienation just a phase.

Over a span of ten years, Samuel Baas journeys toward intimacy--and his people.

This novel isn’t erotica or faith-based fiction but as romance, with a small r, it is about the resilience of the human spirit in our quest to find love. Although the language is adult, the scenes of intimacy aren’t graphic. I appreciate how Pearl S. Buck handled sexual matters in The Good Earth with the simple sentence: she taught him.

Gables Court also isn’t intended to moralize about what is right or wrong. Without borders or mass, a mixture of joy, heartache, confusion, and mystery, love follows its own rules.

What inspired you to write this book?

Central to the story is what I, a male author, perceive as a gender stereotype: the young male as sexual hunter, interested in copulation and if love follows it's an unintended consequence. Samuel Baas isn't religious. His motivation for wanting love and marriage before intercourse isn't a value rooted in faith or family values. God for him is an abstraction. His father is valueless, a murderer; his mother loves cocktails and parties at her country club. No, Baas' quest comes from only one place. His heart.

I wanted to write about innocence, about a young man who, perhaps like many young women, searches for romance and in his journey finds heartache, joy, disappointment, mystery, while hoping if he finds love he will possess the courage, wisdom, and strength to accept it.

What exciting story are you working on next?

A post apocalyptic novel called The Butcher.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

Not even now. I am just someone who likes to tell stories.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

I write in the morning. Teach karate in the afternoon.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

Sitting at a desk without taking a break.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I never thought that far in the future.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

Without readers, we write only for ourselves which although guaranteeing wonderful feedback isn’t much fun.

Thanks for joining me today, Alan!