Interview with author Chuck Redman

Author Chuck Redman joins me today. We’re talking a little bit about his new satirical literary fiction, A Cottonwood Stand (A novel of Nebraska).

Bio:

Chuck Redman was born and raised in small-town Nebraska, a place that still gives him chills even though the scenery is less dramatic than the goosebumps on his arm. But he eventually rambled east for undergrad at Michigan and law school at NYU. Then he marched west to practice criminal and immigration law in Los Angeles for 40 years. In his spare time, he wrote a little. He’s retired now, freeing him to enjoy his wife, his kids, his reading, his writing, his worrying about the future of the planet.

His novel A Cottonwood Stand, set in Nebraska, takes a satirical look at the way our nation has chosen to evolve, in terms of values. Mr. Redman’s daughter, a musician and artist, created a beautiful needlepoint of the story’s “legendary” cottonwood, and his son, a musician and community activist, adapted the needlepoint for the book cover.

His short fiction or humor have appeared in Writer’s Digest, Lowestoft Chronicle, Hemlock Journal, Jewish Literary Journal, and The Jewish Magazine.

Welcome, Chuck. Please tell us about your current release.

Well, A Cottonwood Stand tells two stories simultaneously. There’s an ancient story of a young Sioux woman called Lark who rebels against her people’s traditions and sets out to save her adopted sister from a bad marriage proposal and return her to the Pawnee village from which she was abducted in childhood. And the modern story of Janet Hinderson, who runs a small town newspaper and crusades against a proposed slaughterhouse that will destroy the fabric of the town along with its landmark cottonwoods. Two stories, four hundred years apart, wound into one by a very unusual narrator, who brings to life the theme of the environment, the theme of personal freedom, and the women who take a stand against the powers that continue to threaten those values.

What inspired you to write this book?

Part of the idea for the book came from the town where I live, in southern California. It’s a town that is committed to protecting its native oak trees. I started to think about the possibility that someday these stately oaks might all be chopped down to make way for more freeways, malls or luxury residential tracts. I thought about these things but I realized that Nebraska was the place that I really wanted to write about, so instead of the oak tree, it’s the cottonwood.

What exciting story are you working on next?

Most of the stuff I write comes out satire, for some reason. But, yeah, I guess a healthy jaundiced skepticism about our fellow human beings can be pretty exciting. This next story is set in California, not Nebraska. It’s about a retired couple confronted with the loneliness of too much togetherness. They begin to realize that, sometimes, two’s not company, it’s a crowd. She wants to make new friends, but he has grander ideas. So one half of this retired couple goes off the deep end with a certain guilty promise he makes and an obsession to keep that promise. I just have to figure out, as the story unfolds, whether he sinks or swims when he cannonballs off that diving board.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

In the 11^th grade every kid in the class had to write their autobiography. You would think that 17 is not old enough to have much of a life to write about. But I really worked hard on mine, and naturally, it mostly turned out satirical. I think it may have been the best thing I’ve ever written. Downhill since then. The school said they would keep all our autobiographies in their records. My rough draft is sitting inside an old box somewhere in my closet, which I haven’t opened since the early ‘70’s (the box, not the closet).

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?

Since the end of December I’ve been a full-time lazy bum—er, retired person. Believe it or not, most of my time now goes to promoting A Cottonwood Stand. But I’m trying to write when I find the time, or make the time. Retirement comes with certain responsibilities, like housework, paperwork, so forth. Also comes with fringe benefits, like going to yoga class with my wife, spend more time with my kids, catch a matinee if we feel like it. Lots of reading. Sounds like a pretty soft life, now that I reflect on it!

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

So far, my quirkiest thing is that I write very slowly and painstakingly, constantly revising as I go along. Then, when I get to THE END, that’s pretty much my final draft. It’s silly, it’s wrong, it goes against everything I’ve ever heard about the writing and revision process. I really need to work on my craft, as they say.

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

Always wanted to be a lawyer. The only time I wavered at all was my senior year of college when I thought about becoming an English professor. But I knew I’d regret abandoning my original dream, so I went full steam ahead to law school and I really don’t have any regrets. The Law’s been a worthy master.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

I worry that technology is robbing us of our human nature, our humanity. Some aspects of science and technology are beneficial and beautiful (I’m kind of partial to modern plumbing). But I’m not so sure that cars and television haven’t done way more harm than good. Don’t get me started on those sinister gadgets you put on your kitchen counter and you call them by name and ask them who invented mouthwash or to tell you a joke about St. Patrick’s Day. I wouldn’t want my kids to end up having a best friend that you plug in, instead of one you can play hide and seek with in the park. Sorry to end on a preachy note, but this sort of goes back to the reason I wrote the book in the first place: trees and nature, good. Big screens and pollution, bad.

Links:

Website | Facebook

Thank you for joining me today, Chuck!

Interview with novelist William Luvaas

My special author guest today is William Luvaas and we’re talking about his new literary satire, Welcome to Saint Angel.

Bio:

William Luvaas has published three novels, The Seductions of Natalie Bach (Little, Brown), Going Under (Putnam), and Beneath The Coyote Hills (Spuyten Duyvil)—a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Award—and two story collections: A Working Man’s Apocrypha (Oklahoma Univ. Press) and Ashes Rain Down: A Story Cycle (Spuyten Duyvil), which was The Huffington Post’s 2013 Book of the Year and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Awards. His new novel, Welcome To Saint Angel, comes out with Anaphora Literary Press on March 15, 2018. His honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, first place in Glimmer Train’s Fiction Open Contest, The Ledge Magazine’s Fiction Contest, and Fiction Network’s 2^nd National Fiction Competition. His work has appeared in dozens of publications. Luvaas has taught writing at San Diego State University, U.C. Riverside, and The Writers Voice in New York, and is Online Fiction Editor for Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Lucinda, an artist and film maker.

Welcome, Bill. Please tell us about your current release.

Welcome to Saint Angel is a story of development gone mad. In the bucolic So-Cal valley of Santa Rosa de Los Angeles (Saint Angel), townsfolk split into warring camps. Developers want to turn the valley into a sprawling bedroom community and appropriate its meager water supply to grow lawns in the desert. Al Shar­pe and his allies want to preserve its natural beauty and rural character. He and his scrappy friends halt development with their madcap high jinks and the help of local Indians, ancient demon Tahquitz, and Mother Nature. T­­he battle between them is both comic and tragic. The story of one man’s fight to save the place he loves and a rural community’s struggle to preserve its way of life and tight-knit community­, the novel speaks to the impact of unbridled development and suburban sprawl on the natural environment and on people’s lives.

I would call it a “comic, environmental novel, with a flavor of the apocalyptic.” My favorite blurb for the book comes from author and grizzly bear defender Doug Peacock:

“In the mildly apocalyptical near future, a community of colorful high desert characters fight off developers and water thieves during CA’s worst drought, a danger as recent as last year and as old as Chinatown. These decent whackos are often shot in the ass with human frailty but transcend their flaws with hilarious courage. SA is a painful, redemptive belly laugh and well worth it.”

            - Doug Peacock, Environmental Activist, Author of Grizzly Years

Welcome to Saint Angel comes out on March 15, 2018 from Anaphora Literary Press.

What inspired you to write this book?

I was living in the high desert in Riverside County, California and writing short stories focusing on the scrappy, inimitable characters that often occupy desert country, who are as rugged as the environment itself. I’ve always been attracted to outsiders and social rebels in my work, and they abound in the high desert. Moreover, I often set books and stories in places where I am living when I write them, which have included Oregon, New York City, Upstate N.Y., Mendocino, CA, San Diego and recently the SoCal high desert. In a sense, my work grows out of the local soil and is compelled by the people and issues of the region. I wrote the first draft of S.A. during those lunatic years of the subprime housing boom; Riverside County was one of its epicenters. Heedless developers were throwing up houses all sides without a thought for the local people or the fragile environment, turning the chaparral country into a suburban nightmare, with huge, ugly houses crowded together cheek by jowl where had once been farms and orchards and open country, guzzling up our meager water supply. I was angered and heartbroken by this intrusion and felt compelled to write about it. Mankind’s threat to the environment has long been a major theme in my work—and here it was happening around me. Moreover, at that time I was engaged in an effort to stop greedy developers from building a huge housing tract in our neighborhood, which would destroy its rural character, chase off the owls and coyotes, and knock down palms and olive trees. We successfully fought them off. That effort, too, helped inspire the novel and provided grist for the mill.

Excerpt from Welcome to Saint Angel, Chapter 8:

Pulling up to Sam Jenson’s place off Indian Springs Road, I heard the whunkety-whunk of well-drilling rigs nearby. Three giant new water tanks stood atop rocky knolls behind his place. Two bedraggled palm trees at top of his drive were generally decorated with Christmas lights by now, as were the chain-link fence and junker cars, and white and blue icicle lights usually outlined the chassis of a ‘37 Chevy flatbed and his decrepit trailer. Not this year. Generally, the lights summoned gawkers from town, and Sam bitched, “You’d think I was Santy Claus.”

After he left the hospital, one or another of us stopped by daily to check on him, brought him casseroles. Sam complained that we were coddling him and threatened to shoot the next person who stepped on his property uninvited. Likely meant it. With Sam, you never knew. I was yelling from the moment I parked in the dusty yard and approached his trailer on foot. “It’s me, Sam, don’t shoot.” No sign of him. Odd. Sam always heard and recognized cars the moment they turned off Yucca Road into his long drive, would be awaiting you on his front porch with your own personalized coffee mug in hand, filled with java boiled at five a.m., black and tarry as used motor oil.

“You hear me, Sam? I’m not here about your heart. As far as I can tell, you don’t have one.” Approaching the trailer gingerly. “I’m here about your well.”

Another thing: curtains were drawn. I heard a frenzied electrical buzzing as I stepped onto the porch and feared Sam had electrocuted himself via the ancient toaster which he regularly washed with other dishes. “You home, Sam?” I called softly. An odor of putrefied flesh chased me off the porch. I feared I’d find Sam covered in a glistening carpet of blow flies. Fucking doctors had sent him home with a bad ticker. But it wasn’t Sam I was smelling, rather rotting jack-rabbit carcasses pinned by their veiny ears to a clothesline. Flies roiled over them, flashing silvery blue in turmoiling light. “Crissake, Sam—” I stepped back onto the porch and rapped on the screen door “—you plan to eat those, you old bastard?”

I couldn’t make out much in the dark interior, only a bare foot extending stiffly off the sofa, artificial and ghostly, illuminated by a shaft of light in which dust motes danced and spun.

“Sam!” I called imperatively.

No answer. Sam in one of his misanthropic moods.

“I’m here, Jenson, you just as well get used to it.” Stepping inside, I let the screen door slam behind me. Sam lay stretched out on the couch in khaki shorts and shirt, one arm thrown across his chest, a foot splayed awkwardly on the floor. I prodded his arm. “You got rabbits

rotting on the line and a world of opportunity passing you by.” His pale eyes stared past me into space.

Death’s feel is as unmistakable as its smell: Sam’s arm was cold and wooden. I leapt away. “What did they do to you, old fellah?” Then I remembered his bad ticker and heard Sage’s water baby, that whimpering pa?akniwat. I couldn’t bring myself to close his eyes. I worked a slip of paper out of fingers which clutched it in a death grip. A penciled line: Don’ dring the water. A nauseating rotten-egg smell lingered about him, protecting Sam’s corpse from predatory flies that covered the screen door in a fierce, buzzing pellicle. At the hospital, he’d asked me, “Have you smelled your water lately?” I smoothed that note across his chest.

They’d killed the old bastard all right: Cal, Ches, TexHome, one or another of them.

Driving into town to inform Charlie Haynes, I saw a white van trailing me in the rearview, keeping its distance. Though I couldn’t see them, I knew there were two faces watching me from beyond the windshield.

What exciting story are you working on next?

Something altogether different. A woman and her adolescent son escape an abusive husband and flee from place to place across country, staying just ahead of him. He is a Deputy District Attorney in L.A. and has all the surveillance capabilities of local police forces and the FBI at his disposal—in this age of GPS tracking, CCTV cameras, license plate scanners, facial recognition software, and all the other hi-tech tools of personal invasion when it has become nearly impossible to get off the grid, as they must. They have many adventures along the way; her husband just misses cornering them a couple of times. But I don’t want to give it all away. She is also battling depression and opioid addiction that so often accompanies it. I started writing this in early 2016 before the “Me Too” movement and in the midst of the debate about high-tech invasion of privacy and opioid addiction. For whatever reason, I often find hot button issues creeping into my work, sometimes just before they become popularized.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

I wrote a little poetry in college—awful stuff! Didn’t start writing seriously until I was well into my thirties, although I did write a dreadfully long, terribly flawed novel in my late twenties about a group of hippies living in the redwoods in Mendocino County, CA, a picaresque book that a NY agent actually showed an interest in—if I could cut it by 2/3rds. I had no idea how to do that in those early years, so it died and remains a corpse buried at the back of my manuscript closet. It wasn’t until I was well into my first published novel, The Seductions of Natalie Bach, that I dared call myself a “writer.” It is always a huge leap to make such a declaration. You ask yourself: Am I really? Will I be able to pull it off? Will I stick with it?

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 am able to write full-time now as I could not for years while I was teaching, although I always kept the work going, mostly on days when I didn’t teach and wasn’t overwhelmed with class prep. or other matters. In my early days as a wanna-be writer, I became friends with Frank Dunlap, a Chicago writer who’d moved to Northern California and the first real writer I’d ever known. Frank gave me some much-valued advice: “Always put your writing first.” I have tried to do that, but it hasn’t always been easy.

I am something of a workaholic, as is my wife, an artist and filmmaker, so that works well for us. I can’t imagine sharing life with someone who doesn’t understand artistic obsession and doesn’t realize it’s not just that we “want” to create; we “must” create. For both of us, it is a passion. Other than this, I work out, love to hike, love movies, travel some, visit friends; I always have some project going around the house. I worked for years as a carpenter and like to keep my hand in. Next comes landscaping our new place in L.A.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

Likely my wacky characters. I love to write what my father called “oddballs.” Those who live outside the mainstream and face the challenges of an idiosyncratic life. Glimmer Train editor Linda Swanson-Davies has said of them: “Luvaas manages to make such swerving and impossible lives feel utterly true and real and maybe–incredibly–even normal.” Then, too, I have an imagination that refuses to behave itself. It seems there is no line it won’t cross, no place it won’t take me.

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

I had no idea. Rather I had no interest in growing up. Growing up was for grown ups, who didn’t seem very contented to me. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life until I had passed through my tumultuous youth: working as a VISTA Volunteer in Alabama, living in the redwood forest, traveling around on the cheap, making soapstone hashish pipes, living in a refurbished chicken coop, doing odd jobs, trying my damnedest not to get stuck in the grind. This was the Sixties, after all, the Age of Aquarius, when anything seemed possible. John Lennon’s “Imagine” was our national anthem. Then, in my early thirties, my wife and I moved to New York where she grew up, and I was forced to decide what I was going to do with myself.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

My work, as agents and editors have often told me, isn’t easy to classify; it doesn’t fit into any particular genre. It does what I suppose I have done in my life: wanders along back roads, trying to find its way. There is no fixed itinerary, no reliable map, no certain destination. There is just the journey.

Links:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon | Anaphora Literary Press

Thanks for being here today, Bill.

Interview with satirist and author Douglas Wells

Author Douglas Wells is in the hot seat today. He’s talking with me about his new mystery farce, The Secrets of All Secrets

Bio:

Douglas Wells was born in Seattle, Washington. His father was an officer in the U.S. Army, and by the time Douglas finished high school he had lived in Hawaii, North Carolina, Texas, Okinawa, South Carolina, Alabama, and Florida. He earned his B.A. and M.A. in English from the University of South Florida and has taught English and Literature at several colleges.

Douglas has a unique interest in and perspective on the comical and absurd foibles of the human race, which inspires his writing. The imaginative pillar of his novel, The Secrets of All Secrets, released by TouchPoint Press on May 12, 2017, is built on Groucho Marx’s line, “Humor is reason gone mad” and the Roman poet Juvenal’s declaration that “It is difficult not to write satire.”

Douglas is a Professor of English at Gulf Coast State College in Panama City, Florida. He is the father of two grown sons, and he lives with his wife and cat in Panama City Beach.

Please tell us about your current release.

The Secrets of All Secrets lampoons government, corporate, and extremist entities, while also casting a satirical eye on “the stuff that dreams are made on.”

I have written some previous works, but I needed to find my own style. What to write, what to write? I asked myself. Just in the nick of time, before I fell into a full-blown existential crisis, before I ended up as a couple of splotches on the drop cloth of life—okay, those are exaggerations—I decided to write something humorous and satirical because everyone knows humor, satire, and irony are my bread and butter, and I’m hip as to which side of my butter is breaded. Based on a thought I had about USB drives, I developed the beginning of a story. Zane, my central character receives a USB device by a mysterious, cloaked figure on a bridge at night. When Zane takes it home and inserts it into his laptop, an unknown entity speaks to him via writing on the screen. The entity tells Zane he has been anointed, so to speak, to seek The Secrets of All Secrets, which will confer upon him unlimited knowledge and power, the confirmation of the meaning of life itself, and we’re not just talking about unveiling the mysteries of how to properly fold a fitted sheet and how to program a TV remote. Out of this nucleus, the entire story flowed.

Other characters came to life: four quirky government agents who hunt Zane and The Secrets after intimidating Zane’s friend Hazim into revealing Zane’s mission. Dali appeared. She has also been given a USB. She and Zane meet up in Florida and combine forces. Quarrelsome with each other at first, a romance slowly blossoms

More characters arrived: a corporate megalomaniac fond of quoting Von Clausewitz’s On War and Inazo Nitobe’s Bushido: The Code of the Samurai, who sends his right hand woman, Magdalene, to pursue The Secrets. She hires Speque, a hit man/tracker, to assist her. They make quite a pair. She’s 6 foot 2. He’s 5 foot 6; naturally, they’re made for each other. Then there are brothers Jonah and Jeptha, crazy, fringe-element, anti-government separatists determined to get The Secrets in order to form a new Amerika—“Amerika with a k,” as Jonah asserts. Off they all go, chasing Zane and Dali pell-mell across the state of Florida. Zane and Dali become the contemporary Everyman and Everywoman, hounded by nefarious, zealous forces. Zane, Dali, and their pursuers encounter an armadillo festival, visit a nudist resort, and hang out with a presumed dead 60s rocker. Pandemonium occurs at each venue, with Zane and Dali one step ahead of everyone until all parties convene for a climactic confrontation over The Secrets.

What are The Secrets? Well, I hope people will read the book and find out.

What inspired you to write this book?

As a college professor, I store my courses and assignments on USB drives. One day it occurred to me that it would be interesting if all knowledge was on one USB, and the question arose: Who would most likely be obsessed with getting it?

Excerpt from The Secrets of All Secrets:

The next morning, Washington awoke first. He threw on some clothes and entered the kitchen area to make some coffee. Once the coffee maker stopped gurgling, he poured a cup, took it to the living area, and sipped while he checked his phone for messages, pleased that there were none. He looked out the windows to assess his whereabouts, but darkness hadn’t lifted. All he could tell was that they were in an RV park. He sat and drank his coffee, relishing the warm black liquid and the solitude until the others staggered in one after the other and poured coffee for themselves. They all joined him in the living area as dawn ascended.

            “So where are we?” he asked Adams.

            “In Tadmor.”

            “This is Tadmor? Tadmor is an RV park?”

            “Tadmor is a resort,” Madison said. “Paradise Pines. The target, or should I say targets, are here.”

            “They’re in a cabin on the other side of the resort,” Adams said.

            “Where did you get the intel?”

            “From the lady at in the registration office. I employed a ruse.”

            “He employed a ruse,” Madison said.

            Washington glowered at him. “Oh, great. It’s infectious, and if any one of you repeat that it’s infectious I’m shipping you back to DC with a termination recommendation.”

            “He’ll ship us back to DC with a termination recommendation,” Adams said.

            Washington stared at Adams, fury flashing from his eyes. “Didn’t you hear what I said?”

            “I did,” Adams retorted. “You said if any of us repeated that it’s infectious you would ship us back to DC. I only repeated the shipping back part. Once again, I was only reinforcing your authority, which I respect.”

            Washington allowed the fury to subside and nodded in reluctant acceptance.

            Jefferson got up and peered out the windows. “Should we go out and reconnoiter the resort? Check that the targets are in their cabin?”

            “Good idea,” Washington said. “You and Madison take a look around and confirm the targets are present.”

            Madison and Jefferson left the RV and began walking toward the cabin area. The sun was up now. As they moved along, two joggers, a man and a woman, overtook them from behind, and as they passed by, they shot Adams and Madison hostile glances. “I know this is a private resort,” Adams said, “but they shouldn’t be doing that.”

            “Jeez,” Madison said. “Someone might report them and they’ll get kicked out. I’m sure it’s against the rules.”

            They made their way over to the cabins and stopped before they reached Cabin seven, spotting Zane’s Explorer out front. “The car is there,” Madison said. “Let’s assume the targets are inside.”

            “Right. We’ll go back, convey the info, and establish a protocol for surveillance.”

            They swung about. A group of a half dozen power-walking women moved towards them.

            “There’s something odd here,” Madison said as the walkers approached.

            When the walkers reached them, one of the women said, “You must’ve just arrived, but you need to read the brochure.”

            “Uh oh,” Adams said after the walkers were far away.

            “What’s wrong?” Madison asked. “Other than joggers and walkers exercising naked.”  

            “See those people doing yoga over there?”

            “Uh huh. Oh.”

            “You don’t think—?”

            “I’m beginning to.”

            “Maybe that’s why the woman said something to us—because we’re wearing clothes.”

            “You mean as they came abreast?”

            Adams halted. “That’s a good one,” he said, laughing.

            Madison waited until Adams stopped laughing. “Damn, though. This means if we’re going to watch the targets, we’re going to have to be naked too.”

            “You mean while we tail them?”

            They laughed together this time.

            “We’d better get back and brief Washington. Plus read the brochure.”

            “Are you kidding me?” Washington asked after Adams and Madison reported. “This is some kind of nudist colony?”

            “Resort,” Adams said.

            “Whatever. Where’s the brochure?”

            Madison picked the brochure up from the driver’s seat where Adams left it and handed it to Washington who set it on the table in the living area and began reading. He read silently for five minutes. The other three exchanged anxious glances. Washington closed the brochure, inhaled a rumbling breath, exhaled, and said. “This is a nudist resort.”

            “Right,” Madison said. “Resort.”

            “Rule number one: clothes are not permitted when guests are outside of their cabins or RVs or trailers. Guests wearing clothes will be asked to return to their cabin or RV and remove them if they wish to participate in resort activities. Refusal to comply will result in the guests being ejected from the resort.”

            “What’s rule number two?” Jefferson asked.

            “Rule number two: guests are required to carry a towel with them for sanitary purposes when sitting on resort furniture.”

            Adams addressed Washington. “What are your orders for us?”

            Washington arose. “We have to stay with the targets, so we’ll have to blend in. I don’t like it any more than you do.”

            “I never said I didn’t like it,” Jefferson said.

            Washington ignored him. “’Rule number three: lewd, harassing, and/or any sexual behavior are not permitted. This includes staring and any unwanted physical contact. Any violations of this policy will result in immediate ejection from the resort.’ Like it or not, when you joined this organization you signed an oath that informed you of the sacrifices you’d have to make. We have to do our jobs, gentlemen.”

            “Well,” Madison said. “It’s going undercover without the cover.”

            Adams gave Madison a glance of solidarity. “It’s a cloak and dagger operation without the cloak or the dagger.”

            Madison and Adams giggled.

            “At least we won’t have to wear those gaudy shirts,” Jefferson added.

            “Enough,” Washington said. “Additionally, you are under strict orders not to experience tumescence. We cannot have undue attention paid to us. You are trained, highly skilled, highly disciplined, veteran operatives. Along with making sacrifices, your oath stipulated you would likely experience physical pain and deprivation. Now is the time to fulfill your oath. Are we agreed?”

            “Excuse me,” Madison broke in. “Our country expects us not to have erections, not even on the first day before we acclimate ourselves to rampant nudity?”

            “America is counting on you not to have an erection, Madison. Once again, are we agreed?”

            “Yes sir,” Jefferson said.

            “Yes sir,” Madison said.

            “We are agreed,” Adams said.

             Eyes rolled once again.

            “Gentlemen,” Washington announced, “take off your clothes.”

What exciting story are you working on next?

I’m working on a satire of political correctness.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

As an adolescent, when I wrote sappy poems about being lovesick.

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 have a full-time teaching job, which does afford me some time to write, but I accomplish the bulk of my writing in the summer when I’m not teaching. I usually write in the morning, eat a bite of lunch, relax for a bit, take a nap then get up and go back at it until late afternoon. When I’m not writing, I’m daydreaming my story forward.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I type with two fingers--pretty fast and pretty accurately—and I get up and pace a lot.

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

Actually, I was always dismayed that I would have to grow up. I’m still not sure I’ve made it there yet.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

I like to think the kind of novels I (and others) write are needed now more desperately than ever. Our culture is rife with such ideas as post-truth, fake news, and alternative facts. It’s ironic that one of the places we can find truth is in fiction.

Links:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Amazon | Barnes and Noble

Thank you for being here today, Douglas.

Interview with dystopian novel writer Jonah Kruvant

The special feature today is an excerpt from dystopian fiction novel, The Last Book Ever Written by Jonah Kruvant.

During his virtual book tour, Jonah will be giving away a $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble gift card (winner’s choice) to a randomly drawn winner, along with a digital copy of the book (US only). To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit his other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:

A writer, teacher, and student of the world, Jonah Kruvant received his Bachelor's degree from Skidmore College, his Master's degree in Teaching from Fordham University, and his MFA degree in Creative Writing from Goddard College. After living abroad in four different countries, Jonah settled in New York City.

Welcome, Jonah. Please tell us about your current release, The Last Book Ever Written.
Imagine a futuristic America where people have chips in their brains, shoot needles into their veins to enter a virtual reality, and creativity is illegal and punishable by death. This is the setting of my novel, which follows a detective who goes undercover to expose a community of creators, but finds himself compelled to write.

What inspired you to write this book?
When the iPhone was released, my best friend, always the first to embrace technology, brought it to my house. My friends and I sat around my kitchen table playing cards and chatted about things we had always talked about since high school. Except something was different: my best friend didn’t seem to be listening. He hadn’t taken his eyes off his new toy the entire night. He was so detached from reality that it disturbed me. Most of our communication is nonverbal (one famous study by Dr. Mehrabian in the 1970s found it to be 93%), and this is lost in virtual interactions and text messages. To me, a future with less effective communication between our fellow human beings is very scary, and I felt the need to write about it. The story grew from there.

Excerpt from The Last Book Ever Written:

The Chief had a mustache that moved while he talked. He combed it regularly. It was sharp, pencil thin, and as expressive as a man’s eyebrows. He kept an electric razor in his front pocket, which he would use in front of the mirror before important meetings. His office shelves held an impressive collection of razors of all kinds: from the microscopic that could pluck away at the root of the smallest hairs, to the wide and exotic, which could give a man a perfect shave in a single stroke. Although he was sixty-five, he looked much younger. “Appearance is success,” he was known to say.

What exciting story are you working on next?
I’m working on a science fiction story where people turn into smartphones. It follows the first three people who “transform”: a middle-school student running a bootleg smartphone operation in the Bronx; an iPhone mechanic and businessman in Tokyo; and a PhD student who is writing her dissertation on the effects of technology on the human psyche in Tel Aviv.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
I’ve always loved to write, but I didn’t consider myself a writer until college, where a professor, the author Steven Millhauser, inspired and encouraged me to write.

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 work in real estate development. It’s very different from writing in that it is a business of numbers, but it also similar to writing in interesting ways. I write whenever I can: before and after work, on the weekends. I wrote much of The Last Book Ever Written on retreats, and in the evening. My best writing comes when I am isolated from all distractions, smartphone turned off.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
It is impossible for me to type any new writing. I have to handwrite it first, and then type it after. This may seem more laborious, but I find it essential. The subconscious leaks out onto the page when I write with a notebook and pen. I find that the act of typing engages the conscious mind and is more conducive to revision. When I print it, I write on the printed pages with a pen, and then type it up again. I repeat this process until the piece is ready.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
In high school, I wanted to be a filmmaker. I come from a screenwriting background, so plot, structure, and dialogue are engrained in my head. It prepared me for creating the book trailer for The Last Book Ever Written, which is on YouTube, and is a film in itself.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
It is my hope that The Last Book Ever Written can have a real positive impact - that others can discover something within themselves by reading my work, or try to improve something in society that needs fixing.

Links:

Website | Amazon | Facebook

Thanks, Jonah!

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Interview with author Sean DeLauder

Today’s interview is with author Sean DeLauder. He’s talking about his new sci-fi/fantasty/adventure/satire/philosophical novel, The Least Envied.

During his virtual book tour with Goddess Fish Promotions, Sean will be awarding $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble gift card to a randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit his other tour stops and enter there, too.

Bio:

This author has held several positions in recent years, including Content Writer, Grant Writer, Obituary Clerk, and Staff Writer, and is under the false impression that these experiences have added to his character since they have not contributed much to his finances. He was awarded a BFA in Creative Writing and Journalism and a BA in Technical Communication by Bowling Green State University because they are giving and eager to make friends. He has a few scattered publications with The Circle magazine, Wild Violet, Toasted Cheese, and Lovable Losers Literary Revue, and resides in the drab, northeastern region of Ohio because it makes everything else seem fascinating, exotic, and beautiful.

Welcome, Sean. Please tell us about your current release.

The Least Envied is a hero, mystery, science fiction, adventure story set on a world reduced to a wasteland. Into this world is cast a writer tasked to detail the events of a history gone unrecorded, a boy who wants to be a hero, and a grizzled and cynical winged man who must complete his mission before he can go home. All of these tasks are complicated by the existence of tiny monsters named wogs, a disheveled beast called the Forest Monster, and a being bent on the destruction of what little remains of humanity.

The book presents itself as a humorous adventure in a desolate world, but it shifts, gradually, into something more serious as it becomes apparent that the stakes are much higher than they seem.

I think there are themes in this book everyone can relate to. Not the standard, hackneyed (yet still effective) themes of the importance of friendship and believing in yourself. Rather, there are themes of how one deals with abandonment, by your family, those you care about, even the omnipotent being that created you. How do you respond to that situation? What do you do with yourself? Do you succumb to cynical paralysis? There are themes of frustration with a task that is seemingly impossible, as though designed with failure in mind to shatter one’s faith in oneself. What would a person be like who received such a task and, more importantly, what would they be like if they managed to accomplish it?

I attempt to raise these questions subtly, throughout the book, and they become more prominent as the story wears on, but they are not a distraction. They are merely another lens through which to view the tale and a component of my characters’ development.

What inspired you to write this book?

I’ve always been fascinated by myths and heroes, and by association what Joseph Campbell called “monomyth”, that overarching story arc that forms the backbone, however subtle, of every hero myth. At the same time, I’ve always been one to put a kink in cliché, or eschew it entirely. You’ll definitely see that play out in my book.

Excerpt:

“That statue,” said Andrew. He gave the stonework a quick look, then looked back to Hobert. “It's a hero?”

Maybe the statue represented a hero who came before this era of desperation and despair.

Hobert cast a somber gaze into the street and nodded.

“A hero. Yes,” he answered. “He's very tall.”

Andrew found himself suddenly interested. This was the story he wanted to write. A story about a hero, the obstacles he faced on his path to heroism, his guides, his arch enemy, the ultimate goal of being a hero, and, of course, whether the story continued or had an end.

“What made him a hero?”

Hobert shrugged, removed the pipe, and gestured toward the statue with the stem before poking it back into the corner of his mouth.

“He's very tall,” he repeated.

Andrew paused, waiting for Hobert to continue, but that was all.

“Tall... and what else?”

Hobert's smile faded and he faced Andrew, somewhat irritated. Two gray trails of pipe smoke jetted from his nostrils.

“What else what?”

“Beside being tall,” Andrew clarified. “To be a hero.”

Hobert fixed Andrew with a hard, querulous stare, then shook his head as though the question didn't make sense.

“Being tall is being a hero,” he answered.

Andrew grimaced.

“What?”

“What what?” Hobert replied. “What don’t you understand?”

Andrew spread his arms.

“Everything.”

“Oh,” the fellow replied. He leaned back in his chair and pulled his hat down over his eyes. “Then you’re hopeless.”

What exciting story are you working on next?

I’m working on the sequel to this book, A Hero, and then I’ll write the book that comes before this one, A Villain. Highly appropriate and illuminating titles. Where The Least Envied followed the path of a boy who wants to be a hero, A Hero follows the exploits of a hero in the process of discovering the nature of himself and the world he knows, and learning his knowledge is false.

Those familiar with the series will note that I started with book two, am proceeding to book three, and will finish with book one. I promise this is not simply a deliberate effort to aggravate people with obsessive compulsive disorder. It was more out of necessity. The second book is the essentially the trunk from which all the other stories grow. However, I couldn’t list them in the series in the order I was writing them because that wouldn’t make sense. And I couldn’t write the first book that clarifies much of what appears in the second because that wouldn’t make sense either. So I’m writing them in the order that makes the most sense to the person who is most familiar with the material.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

Despite a long-established propensity for writing, being a writer is something to which I will always aspire. I don’t think it’s up to me to determine whether or not I am a writer. I am not who I think I am; I am not who you think I am; I am who I think you think I am. Or so the saying goes. My goal is to make you believe I am not just a competent writer, but a clever and convincing one. At which point I’ll believe it too.

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?

Writing is my job, yes. Storytelling is something I have to find time to do, however. I’ve done technical writing, course writing, newspaper and magazine articles, and more. Storytelling is my preference, but it’s the one aspect of my writing career that doesn’t create much revenue. Fortunately, the practice of creating people and worlds, and examining their struggles, both internal and external, is rewarding in and of itself.

I also have a wife and two boys, which are my after-work past time. So how do I find time to write? Simple. I don’t sleep. This, as you might expect, has some unfortunate but easily anticipated consequences.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I very much enjoy anthropomorphism. Objects and environments are conscious, or have a purpose suited to their nature. A rock, for example, might revel in its heaviness and do its best to resist being picked up. The sun might hunt for shadows and unload quivers of sunbeams in an effort to penetrate them. This might come through in their depictions or, as in the case for one character in The Least Envied, they may speak to him directly.

I’m not a shaman or Shinto, but I find bringing the world to life around my characters interesting. It’s so much more engaging to think of the inanimate as alive, and it adds a way to explore and understand the world.

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

I never had a clear idea of a specific career, only that I wanted to be great at something—it seemed like a perfectly acceptable, absolutely nebulous goal, but one I never surrendered. I wanted to be good at the things I did, and I was, with varying degrees of success and recognition. I always excelled at writing, so it made sense that I would gravitate towards a field in which I felt comfortable and competent.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

It’s important that you read my book. Then reread it. No, don’t reread the copy you already own, buy a new one. They need to be… ah… fresh.

Also, I sneeze in threes. When I sneeze more or fewer times I wonder, fleetingly, if it’s a sign that there is something out of balance in the world.

Links:

Goodreads | Facebook | Twitter | Amazon

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