Aug 29, 2024 | Crime, Historical, Memoir |
Marla Morris is a lifelong native of Columbus, Ohio. She is a relatively new indie author writing fictionalized accounts of actual murders and misdeeds that happened in central Ohio.
In my upcoming novel, Treva, a poor, young black woman hails from the historic Poindexter Village Housing Projects. It was one of the nation’s first public housing complexes nestled in the near eastside King-Lincoln Bronzeville neighborhood. The Village, as it is affectionately called, was where my maternal grandmother lived. It’s also where I spent the majority of my time growing from tot to tween to teen under the watchful eye of my grandma. It holds so many fond memories. Most of the Village has been torn down and new residences occupy the site. Today, the remaining two buildings are set to become the Poindexter Village Museum and Cultural Center. I’ve been told our family will be listed as one of many honored residents.
I approach writing as a revealer. I explore the protagonist’s back story and what makes them tick. I hone in on how a series of seemingly inconsequential experiences lead my character to the ultimate decision, whether praiseworthy or shameful. The Village is a prominent backdrop not only for my yesteryear but also for the main character in this story.
In my upcoming novel, Treva Racine faces a myriad of life challenges. Her first bully is her mother. She doesn’t choose her romantic partners wisely. She has an ever-growing gaggle of children. When she finally stands up for herself, the results are catastrophic.
Redemption From the Dark, From Prison to Peace is the first of four slated titles in my FEFA series. The series is named after my mother. Her childhood nickname was Fefa. In this instance, FEFA stands for Feminine Energy Forever Abounds. I didn’t start writing as a novelist until after my mother’s death in late 2020. In a nutshell, grief made me do it. Writing is cathartic for me. I release pent-up fears and anxieties through my characters. Some of my protagonist’s triumphs are things I wish I had done given a chance to relive the situation.
One way I conduct book research is by participating in my local library’s book club. The feedback about others’ writings helps gauge the reader’s expectations. It is especially helpful in character development. My main takeaway is readers are genuinely savvy. Whatever I present has to be believable, realistic, salient, and plausible. Your reader wants all the loose ends tied up by the end of your narrative. You can’t fail to deliver, or you’ve failed your reader.
When I am not writing, I am in my bling studio diamond painting. It is a mindful, therapeutic, and yet another creative activity. Portraits of people of color are my mainstay. This past spring, my collection, Heart of the Matter, showcased fourteen of my bedazzled canvases. Occasionally, I dabble in jewelry making, collage, and night photography. One of my pictures graces the cover of my new book. I made it into a diamond painting. It shows the Trinity Episcopal Church located in Downtown Columbus Capitol Square. It was a beacon of hope and a welcoming hub supplying food and personal hygiene for the homeless who could no longer be served indoors due to Covid-19 restrictions. Being one of the City’s oldest churches, Trinity is listed on both the National Register of Historic Places and the Columbus Register of Historic Properties. It makes a guest appearance in Redemption at the end.
My books are available on Amazon. Redemption From the Dark is set to be released the day after Labor Day. My Instagram account, morris_marla, is an online journal of my artistic endeavors. I also have author pages on Goodreads and Facebook. All of my socials are encapsulated at linktr.ee/marlamorris.
Click on my author page here.
Aug 22, 2024 | Action & Adventure, Crime, Historical, Mystery, Westerns, Young Adult |
Michael A. Black is the award winning author of 50 books, most of which are in the mystery and thriller genres. He’s also written in the sci-fi, western, horror, and sports genres. A retired police officer from the Chicago area, he did everything from patrol to investigating homicides to conducting numerous SWAT operations. Black was awarded the Cook County Medal of Merit in 2010. He is the author of over 100 short stories and articles and wrote two novels with the late television star Richard Belzer (Law & Order SVU). He wrote eleven novels under the name Don Pendleton in the Executioner series and numerous westerns the Gunslinger series under the name A.W. Hart (Killer’s Choice, Killer’s Brand, Killer’s Ghost, Killer’s Gamble, and Killer’s Requiem).
His Executioner novel, Fatal Prescription, won the Best Original Novel Scribe Award in 2018. His recent novels are in the ongoing Trackdown series, most recently Devil’s Lair. His most recent works are Concho: Border Blood (written as A.W. Hart) and Where Legends Lie under his own name.
You write in more than one genre. What brought you into writing? I’ve been writing all my life. I wrote my first short story in the 6th grade. The class laughed, and the teacher admonished me to never do it again, but I didn’t listen.
Tell us about your writing process. What’s the most challenging part? The challenge is to write something that’s entertaining and will hold the reader’s attention. My process is just to put my butt in the chair and write. Sometimes, I think beforehand, too.
All right, I’ll accept that. Do you outline, or are you a pantser? I’m a staunch supporter of outlining. I’ve done it both ways, and while you have to figure out the method that works best for you, an outline helps you stay on track. Pantsing is fun, but you end up going off on tangents and wasting a lot of words. It’s like trying to build a house without any blueprints.
Your latest book, Where Legends Lie, is a western set in both 1913 and 1880. What kind of research did you do? I did extensive research on this one. I’ve written a lot of westerns so I was familiar with a lot of the weaponry of the times, but this one also has scenes involving the Philippine Insurrection and the early days of motion pictures. The Philippine Insurrection was one of our bloody and tragic little wars, and back then, our society knew next to nothing about the effects of PTSD. I dedicated the book to our fallen military members, many of whom came back as walking wounded due to what they went through.
You also have a historical figure in the book. Tell us about him. Ambrose Bierce was a Civil War veteran who went on to become one of the best-known writers of his time. I read his stories in high school and always admired him. When I was plotting out Legends, I suddenly knew I had to include him as a character. He perished in Mexico in 1913 during the revolution. It’s conjectured that Pancho Villa’s men executed him, but the actual circumstances are unknown. I wanted to give Mr. Bierce one more great adventure before his untimely end.
What obstacles do you face when writing about historical figures? My mentor, Stuart Kaminsky, once told me, “You’re better off writing about them if they’re dead.” I followed Stuart’s advice because, like I said, Bierce died during the Mexican Revolution. I did copious research on him, however, and tried to use some of his actual quotes in the story.
Let me get this straight… It’s set in two different time periods? Right, it opens in the Philippines during the last battle of what was termed the Moro Rebellion. It was bloody and violent. Then the story shifts to a few months later, and returning veteran Jim Bishop lands a job with a fledgling motion picture company in southern California. They’re filming a version of a famous, or infamous, shootout that occurred thirty years before. Next I do a shift and go back to the site of the actual shootout in 1880. The two stories evolve in tandem until they finally coalesce at the end. It’s billed as two stories told as one, which I guess it is.
You’ve also got a couple of other books out, correct? I do. One of them is Devil’s Lair, which is the 8th book in my Trackdown series. It’s about ex-army ranger Steve Wolf, who spent time in prison for a war crime he didn’t commit. Upon his release, he becomes a modern-day bounty hunter or bail enforcement agent. He’s also a mixed martial arts fighter and is struggling to clear his name. There’s a common thread of intrigue and betrayal that runs through the series, starting with the first one, Devil’s Dance. Devil’s Lair is the eighth one in the series and, at this point, might be the last. I’ve managed to tie up almost all the major plot threads, but I wouldn’t be averse to penning a few more. I think Wolf still has his legs, as they say in boxing.
What about the book you wrote as A.W. Hart? Ah, yes, Concho: Border Blood. A.W. Hart’s a house name for Wolfpack Publishing, and I’ve written numerous books under that pseudonym. Old A.W. is an Amazon Bestseller, so I owe him a lot. Concho is a half Black, half Indian Texas Ranger. The books are set in modern times, and I touched upon our border mess and human trafficking in this one. I should add that the other ten books in the series were written by different authors.
Anything else you’d like to say, Mike? George, I appreciate being on your excellent blog. We know each other from the PSWA (Public Safety Writers Association), and you’ve always been a great friend and an inspiration to me, brother.
Contact Info:
Email: DocAtlas108@aol.com
Phone: 708-903-7458
Buy Links:
Blood Concho – Amazon
Devil’s Lair – Amazon
Where Legends Lie – Amazon
Jun 13, 2024 | Crime, Historical, Mystery, Romance, Thriller, Young Adult |
Piano-playing, multi-award-winning author Mariko Tatsumoto immigrated to the U.S. from Japan with her family when she was eight. She was detoured from her passion of books by becoming the first Asian woman lawyer in Colorado. But like a pebble in a shoe, she couldn’t let go of her childhood dream and began writing novels. She lives in a small town in the Rocky Mountains, where she’s often found outdoors.
She is a member of the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, Colorado Authors League, Historical Novel Society, and Romance Writers of America.
What is your latest book? BLOSSOMS ON A POISONED SEA is a
thrilling coming-of-age romance based on the actual events of one of history’s most shocking industrial mercury poisoning disasters and corporate coverups that inspired Johnny Depp’s film Minamata. Two young people must fight a powerful corporation and the government to save their townspeople from a horrific neurological disease.
What made you write it? I recalled my mother showing me photojournalist W. Eugene Smith’s pictures of Minamata Disease victims in Life Magazine when I was young and wondered whatever happened to those people. I was horrified to learn there was no cure, and they kept suffering. I had to tell the world about the tragedy, which led to years of research. Ultimately, I decided to tell the story through two fictional characters.
What is it about? Yuki is the daughter of a poor fisherman. Kiyo is the son of a senior executive at Chisso. In 1956, they become friends, then gradually fell in love. But then all living things in the once beautiful Minamata Bay suddenly die. The impoverished people living around it begin suffering from a terrifying disease that causes agonizing pain, paralysis, and death … including Yuki’s family. As the sole wage earner, Yuki is reduced to low-paying, backbreaking work as a laborer and then as a housekeeper.
The city dwellers turn their backs on the dying fisherfolk. The corporation stonewalls, denying culpability. As the suffering spreads, Kiyo helps researchers find answers to the devastating neurological disease. But they’re blocked by the government and the corporate-influenced media.
Together, Yuki and Kiyo must fight the Japanese government and a powerful and ruthless corporation to save her family and the Bay.
Do you write in more than one genre? Yes. I published several middle-grade and Young Adult novels before turning to adult fiction. Without planning to do so, my books turned out to be primarily historical set in Japan or with Japanese protagonists, and often based on actual events:
AYUMI’S VIOLIN – set in 1959, drawing from my immigration experience
ACCIDENTAL SAMURAI SPY – set in 1868, inspired by the bloody political warfare to unify Japan under one rule
SWEPT AWAY – set in 2011, recounting the devastating tsunami in Japan
KIDNAPPED AT THE ICEFALL – contemporary novella set in Colorado
BLOSSOMS ON A POISONED SEA – set in the late 1950s in Minamata, Japan
I’ve also written two nonfictions: The Colorado Bed and Breakfast Guide and How To Write A Middle-Grade Book Kids Will Love
What kind of research do you do? Because my books are often based on actual events, I spend months or years studying the incidents, history, culture, politics, styles, and fashion around that time. This involves reading books and Internet sites and watching videos and movies made around that time. I sometimes need to learn a new sport. In Swept Away, I had to study sumo wrestling in order to write the lifestyle the protagonist must endure at a sumo training center. In Accidental Samurai Spy, I needed to learn the principles, techniques, and styles of sword fighting. A climber friend showed me the ropes of rock and ice climbing for Kidnapped at the Icefall. These sports were fascinating to learn.
What obstacles do you face when writing about historical figures? Despite painstaking hours of research, gaps in historical records pose challenges. In those instances, it may mean revising a part of the plot or a scene. I exercise creative license but try to maintain authenticity the best I can.
Going back in time half a century or more means that information at the time was all in print. If the place or incident is not well known, not many articles or books may have been written about it.
Do you ever kill a popular character? If so, what happens to your story? I often kill a likable character in a book. Sometimes several. These events force the protagonist to rethink life, learn, and make changes they would never have made. Readers remember and tell friends of these memorable moments. Shocking scenes stay with them, which is what writers want.
What are you currently working on? It’s another history fiction set in a World War II internment camp where Japanese Americans were incarcerated. Mine is different from other books written about the imprisonment because the subject matters I delve into were too shameful for the internees to have disclosed. That’s the part I like.
marikotatsumoto.com
marikotatsumoto@gmail.com
Instagram: @marikotatsumotoauthor
FB: MarikoTatsumotoAuthor
Twitter (X): @MarikoTatsumoto
Jun 6, 2024 | Action & Adventure, Historical, Mystery |
Alice Fitzpatrick has contributed short stories to literary magazines and anthologies and recently retired from teaching in order to devote herself to writing full-time. She is a fearless champion of singing, cats, all things Welsh, and the Oxford comma. Her summers spent with her Welsh family in Pembrokeshire inspired the creation of the Meredith Island Mysteries series. Secrets in the Water is the first book in the series. Alice lives in Toronto but dreams of a cottage on the Welsh coast.
People who read the early drafts of Secrets in the Water 
often searched the internet for my Welsh island setting, expressing surprise when they couldn’t find it. Even though I insisted it came from my imagination, they weren’t entirely convinced. So, is Meredith Island fact or fiction? The truth is it’s a bit of both.
When I decided to write a traditional British mystery series, I wanted an isolated location. An island was perfect since I’ve always lived near large bodies of water and love the sea. While I feared using an actual location would involve endless hours researching minutia to avoid irate e-mails from readers saying I got it wrong, with a fictional setting, I could control everything—the geography, the weather, the flora and fauna.
I didn’t have to look far for inspiration. When I was a child, my British family moved to Wales, and each summer would welcome me to Tenby, a popular seaside resort on the south Pembrokeshire coast. It was during this time that I fell in love with the country and its people.
Like most places in the UK, Tenby has a long history. With evidence of settlement dating back to the Iron Age, the town was founded in 1093. To defend against opposing Welsh forces, the Norman Earl of Pembrokeshire ordered a fortifying wall to be built in 1245, much of which is still standing. The following seven hundred and fifty years saw Tenby’s rise and fall, including its success as a busy port, the site of an English Civil War battle and a plague epidemic, as well as the temporary hiding place of the fourteen-year-old future King Henry VII during the War of the Roses. The Victorians flocked to Tenby’s beaches and bath houses for the benefits they believed sea bathing provided, making it the popular holiday spot it is to this day.
On the other hand, Meredith Island has been uninhabited for most of its history. It wasn’t until the mid-nineteenth century that American industrialist Artemis Faraday, obsessed with all things British and the capital to indulge that obsession, bought the island, renaming it in honor of his young English bride, and built his vision of a Gothic manor house. When his wife died in childbirth, he abandoned the island to his workers. Except for a few incomers, all islanders can trace their family history to the Faraday estate.
While Meredith Island doesn’t have the elegant Georgian and Victorian row houses that overlook Tenby’s beaches, cozy stone cottages line the island’s cliffside road, which runs down to the harbor. There, you’ll find The Fish and Filly pub, The Sea Breeze restaurant, Craggy’s grocery store, a wharf for the ferry that connects the island to the mainland, and a shelter for fishing boats.
Because I visited Tenby during my teenage years, many of my memories are tinged with wonder and innocence. It was where I had my first crush and heartbreak when a young man took my address, promising to keep in touch but never did. It was also the location of my aunt and uncle’s hotel, where we often sat in the large kitchen and drank tea—sherry for my aunt—ate buttered scones and shared jokes. So my island became a place of young love and friendship, warm kitchens full of sweet smells, and a pub where people gather for a natter and gossip. But it’s also a place where people are murdered. It’s this jarring juxtaposition that sets the tone of the book as protagonist Kate Galway digs deep into the islanders’ memories of their youth to unearth clues about the identity of her aunt’s killer.
The first photo shows the remains of the medieval fortifying wall around Tenby, and the second is the church beside my cousin’s house, which inspired the church on my island.
Tenby is an ancient town with curious streets like Merlins Court, Upper and Lower Frog Street, Tudor Way, Crackwell Street, and Paragon. My fascination with these names led me to bestow upon my islanders similarly unconventional names, such as Basil and Peregrine Tully, Old Alred, Drucilla Cragwell, and Feebles, Gooley, and Smee.
But it wasn’t just the town that inspired me. All along the Pembrokeshire coast, jagged cliffs rise high above the water, creating a menacing seascape where I imagine Kate’s aunt drowned over fifty years ago. The church next door to my cousin Jim’s house is the inspiration for the island church presided over by the Reverend Imogen Larkin, and its graveyard is the islanders’ final resting place. At St. Govan’s Head, a long flight of stone steps leads down the steep cliff face to a 14th-century chapel built over the cave where St. Govan lived and preached seven centuries before. I took the liberty of reducing a similar building to ruins so that in A Dark Death, the second book in the series, a team of archaeology students can excavate it, only to discover something a lot more interesting than foundation stones.
Tenby has long been a vacation spot and inspiration for writers, including Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Beatrix Potter, and Dylan Thomas. Likewise, for this humble crime writer, Tenby was the inspiration for an idyllic island community where everyone is family and life is celebrated with whiskey, tea, and home baking.
To learn about upcoming tales of the eccentric inhabitants of Meredith Island and to sign up for my newsletter, please visit www.alicefitzpatrick.com.
I belong to:
Crime Writers of Canada,
Sisters in Crime (including the Guppy and Toronto chapters),
Crime Cymru – a group of Welsh crime writers
Here are the buy links to my book:
Amazon.com: https://tinyurl.com/3hdme96k
Indigo: https://tinyurl.com/4shmb7fz
May 23, 2024 | Historical, Memoir |
I’m the product of a Midwest upbringing, but I’ve lived on both coasts as well as in Ireland. As a registered nurse, I’ve had the opportunity to work in many facets of nursing. Once officially retired, I began volunteering with the local coroner—part of the sheriff’s department—in northern California.
My favorite books have always been mysteries.
What brought me to writing? I first decided to try my hand at writing when I discovered there were so few books written about or by nurses and nothing for young readers since the student nurse mysteries of the 1950s. I started with three young adult mysteries modeled on those early works. I liked the writing process—of having a character tell me where the story would go—and when I decided to bring my student nurses into adulthood, I began writing for an adult audience, and now I have an additional three mysteries and two standalones.
New Book My newly released novel, TOOTS, is a historical stand-alone work based on one of my great aunts, one of my grandmother’s sisters. Growing up, I only knew my aunt as living with my grandmother. She was quiet but warm and generally retreated to somewhere quieter in the house when my family of eight kids arrived. I don’t remember ever having any extended conversation. We were told that her husband and children had died in a fire, and she had come back to her family in Chicago from wherever they had been living. I began thinking about this story several years ago, and I wanted to know more, but there was no one from that generation left to ask. And so I began trolling the memories of my siblings and cousins, but they were no wiser
Research TOOTS required spending a lot of time with Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com and my local genealogy people at the library. The amount of information out there is amazing. My grandmother and her sister, Toots, came over from Ireland by themselves at ages 12 and 10. They came to work as servants—first in New York and later in Chicago. My grandmother married and stayed in Chicago, but Toots met and married a homesteader from Nebraska. So many questions! I began by tracking down the ship manifests. Census reports, marriage records, obituaries, and homestead records. Finally, I made a road trip to Nebraska to see the homestead for myself. But then…what happened after Nebraska?
I discovered that there is also a ton of information to be found in obituaries. A good example: I knew my grandfather was a train conductor on the Northwestern railroad, but I had always thought of him as a passenger conductor (he had passed before I was born); his obituary stated he was a freight conductor! Tracking down the routes—possibly through Nebraska—that his train would have taken in 1915 led me to the tiny town of Albion in Nebraska, where my aunt’s husband’s homestead happened to be. There is no one alive to verify my guess, but I’d say my grandfather played matchmaker for his sister-in-law!
Setting the Location: I think it’s important to know something about the setting of one’s story, which is why I felt the need to see Nebraska. How many people plan to visit Nebraska? It was, however, a great experience—visiting the Homestead museum and learning something about the Dust Bowl period, of which I knew little beyond The Grapes of Wrath. It is beautiful farm country; the cover for TOOTS is a photo of their homestead. Similarly, I lived in San Francisco and northern California for some time, as well as in Boston, so I enjoy adding bits of local color to stories set in those locations.
Writing Process My writing process is changing. I’ve always felt most creative in the early morning hours, but not so much now. I do my own editing and preparation for publishing, and the more I write, the more time it takes to complete these non-creative tasks. I’ve discovered that my head doesn’t work for editing in the early morning. So now, I have coffee, walk, have breakfast, and then work on editing. But as I finish those tasks required by a new book, I think I’m almost ready to start writing something creative again. We’ll see.
Current Project Before turning to the final edits and publishing aspects of TOOTS, I finished the first draft of a mystery that spans the two coasts and centers on an arson group of firefighters in Boston. In the first re-read of that draft, I saw some serious problems, and now I’m looking forward to seeing what can be done to fix those problems. After that, I have the start of a black widow murder mystery.
Please visit my website and sign up for my newsletter at https://www.meroche.com, where I am now adding a section for Book Clubs with questions and personal recipes.
Apr 25, 2024 | Action & Adventure, Historical, Mystery |
Michael Cooper writes historical fiction set in the Middle East; Foxes in the Vineyard, set in 1948 Jerusalem, won the 2011 Indie Publishing Contest grand prize, and The Rabbi’s Knight, set in the Holy Land in 1290, was a finalist for the CIBA 2014 Chaucer Award for historical fiction. In December of 2023, Wages of Empire, set at the start of WW1, won the CIBA 2022 Hemingway first prize for wartime historical fiction and the grand prize for young adult fiction.
A native of Berkeley, California, Cooper emigrated to Israel in 1966, studying and working there for the next decade; he lived in Jerusalem during the last year the city was divided between Israel and Jordan and graduated from Tel Aviv University Medical School. Now a pediatric cardiologist in Northern California, he travels to the region twice a year on volunteer missions for Palestinian children who lack access to care.
Do you write in more than one genre? I write in the historical fiction genre with added elements of mystery, action-adventure, mysticism, coming of age, and a dash of romance. Having lived in Israel during my formative years (between the ages of 17 and 28), I fell in love with the immediacy of history that awaited you around every corner—especially in Jerusalem. This comes in handy since all my novels are, at least in part, set in the Holy Land, and having lived and traveled extensively throughout Israel, Jordan, and Egypt, I have a wealth of first-person knowledge of the physical topography of this part of the world.
What are you currently working on? That’s easy. I’ve already completed the next book in
the “Empire Series,” Crossroads of Empire, which immediately follows Wages of Empire and is also set at the beginning of WWI. This will be published in the Fall of 2024.
How long did it take you to write your first book? I began writing Foxes in the Vineyard and finished in about eight years. It took a while since I was also working full-time.
How long to get it published? It took about the same amount of time to write as to get published. Having finished Foxes in the Vineyard in 2003, it was published by being the grand prize winner in the 2011 San Francisco Writers Conference Indie Publishing Contest. The grand prize was a complete publishing package from iUniverse.
In writing historical fiction, how do you strike the right balance between history and fiction? The wonderful thing about crafting historical fiction is that historical events and characters provide the scaffolding for stories that are at once incredibly old and still being written since “history” is a continuum and flows from the past into our present.
It’s also invigorating to create compelling fictional characters—for their nobility, humor, brilliance, passions, human failings, and interesting, ingenious, and sometimes evil designs. These fictional characters allow me to play within the historical scaffolding.
I will leave it to the reader to determine if I’ve hit the “right balance” of historical and fictional characters in my current book, Wages of Empire.” But what is true for me in writing about all my characters—historical and fictional—are those wondrous times when the character takes over, dictating the action and dialogue. At these times, all I have to do is transcribe.
How did you research the novel, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you? I researched the historical backdrop for the book by reading iconic histories about the roots and initial months of the First World War. To capture the essence of the historical figures and to inform the development of the fictional characters, I devoured everything I could find in the way of autobiographies, biographies, and collected letters. For the reader, I’ve included some of these references at the end of the book in a section called “Suggestions for further reading.”
As to surprises I’ve experienced during research, I was often astonished by fascinating elements of hidden history, unsolved mysteries, and interesting, even bizarre, character traits of some historical characters. I also encountered some engaging and bizarre characters that insisted on being included in the final draft.
In this manner, storylines arose organically from the historical timeline and the historical characters themselves—creating a portrait that could be enhanced by the fictional characters who allowed for additional surprises, plot twists, betrayals, loves, and alliances. And as the book progressed, I loved watching the weave tighten as storylines were drawn together.
Regarding elements of hidden history that I uncovered during my research for Wages of Empire, I don’t want to issue any “spoiler alerts.” Still, one extraordinarily rich trove of evidence implicated Kaiser Wilhelm II as having acted in many ways to bring on the First World War. Though I would hasten to add, he certainly wasn’t singly responsible for it. However, as a narcissist in control of a global power, his unpredictability, his need to be acknowledged, his arrogance, his hypersensitivity to perceived slights, his excitement at the idea of flexing his muscles, his sense of entitlement, his clumsy and often insulting personal diplomacy—all these raised tensions in Europe, combining to bring Germany closer and closer to war.
What do you hope readers take away from the story? Wages of Empire is a novel about war that is being published in a time of war—both in Europe and in the Middle East. I hope the reader can appreciate the richness of this historical wartime setting since it offers all the elements for a compelling story: drama, heroism, conflict, tension, intrigue, action, betrayal, heartbreak, and romance. Indeed, the effect of armed conflict on history is itself dramatic since war accelerates history, often with dramatic changes in human and natural topography.
I also hope the reader feels the compelling tension between knowing and unknowing as they engage with the historical characters in the grip of their threatening present, infused with their anxiety at the uncertain outcome, their unknowable future. And that the reader, knowing their future, might be touched by the poignancy of their ignorance.
Michael’s Editorial Assistant
Lastly, I hope that Wages of Empire, a novel about war, will hold up a mirror to time past that reflects on current wars and present uncertainties. I hope the reader will ask questions—what do present wars have to do with the past? What do our present travails have to do with history? Because the answer is…everything.
You can learn more on his website, which also includes links to a variety of platforms where his books can be purchased: https://michaeljcooper.net/
If I may quote you:
“Whatever I present has to be believable, realistic, salient, and plausible. Your reader wants all the loose ends tied up by the end of your narrative. You can’t fail to deliver, or you’ve failed your reader.”
Sage advice for all authors. Sounds like you have some great stories in you!
My new favorite acronym!!!
Glad you find writing cathartic. A lot of us do.
Feminine Energy Forever Abounds!! Yes, it does. Great article.
Hi Marla: having lived in Columbus, I’ll be looking for your books. Good luck!
Marla, it sounds like you have some interesting stories to tell. Congratulations on your book and best of luck to you with your writing.
Thanks for this, George and Marla. My favorite… “I approach writing as a revealer.” I love that.