Author Spotlight: Geoffrey Girard

Remember your high school English teachers? One of them was the strict grammarian, right? He seemed like he was always on the edge, ready to break into a million jagged pieces if you wandered just a little bit from the tidy corner of Strunk & White. There was the classic lit teacher—she was at least 100 years old and could quote Shakespeare and Dante better than Shakespeare and Dante. And what about the grizzled fireplug who taught you bits and shards about Twain and Hemingway and Faulkner when he wasn’t investing way more energy coaching the school football team, visions of state championships and college sidelines swirling in his head.

But then there was the other English teacher. The cool one, as cool as you dared believe any high school English teacher can be. He seemed to get you, and you seemed to get him, and even though neither of you had a clue about what the other did off school grounds, to this day you smile when you remember what he taught you about reading and writing that matters.

That man is our guest today on the Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight. His name is Geoffrey Girard, and his new scary thriller Cain’s Blood is fresh of the presses. When he’s not teaching English at a prestigious private boys’ high school in Ohio, he’s writing, and winning awards and accolades for what he writes. Exemplifying the latter, no less an authority than the National Book Examiner calls Cain’s Blood, "Compelling and repulsive… A page-turner par excellence."

It appears our esteemed authorial colleague Mr. Girard copes masterfully with the grisly, and the macabre. Cain’s Blood is exhibit one on that score, trust us. Perhaps it’s too much to hope that the piercing beams from our array of unforgiving klieg lights will make the man sweat, or squirm a bit. But hope o we will, as we get this edition of the Author Spotlight underway.

Gazala:    In my omnipotence, I've sentenced you to be stranded alone on a desert island for offenses best left unnamed. In my beneficence, I've decided to allow you a limited amount of reading material to make your stay a little less bleak than it would otherwise be. I'll spot you your religious text of preference, and the collected works of William Shakespeare. In addition to those, name the one fiction book, and the one nonfiction book, you'd choose to take with you, and tell why you choose them.

Girard:    Literary practicality wins here. There are perfect books I’ve reread a dozen times (e.g., A Prayer for Owen Meany, Shadowland, Dubliners), but the idea of having to read only one of them for the rest of my life is not appealing. And while The Lord of the Rings is probably the most pivotal fiction of my life, the writing itself ain’t all that hot. So… I’m gonna go with Infinite Jest. I think Wallace is a brilliant writer and thinker. I reread his shorter work often just for the language, but have only tackled Jest once. At 1000+ pages, that’s a lot of ground still to cover a few more times. Broken up, Infinite Jest can be hundreds of stand-alone stories/scenes.  It’s my generation’s The Divine Comedy in a way, I think. So, plenty to think over there.

Since you’ve stranded me alone on a desert island, under those circumstances there is no nonfiction book I’d ever want to re-read other than 1000 Ways to Cook a Seagull. (Ed. note:  despite valiant effort, to date Gazalapalooza’s crack staff of expert librarians has been unable to confirm the existence of this book. The closest they’ve gotten is 1001 Ways to Cook Jonathan Livingston Seagull.)

Gazala:    Your latest book is an excellent and gripping novel titled Cain's Blood, centered on the U.S. Defense Department's use of cloned DNA from nefarious serial killers to develop a new breed of terrifying bioweapon. I've read it. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us something about Cain's Blood, and why its potential reader should make the leap and become its actual reader.

Girard:    Thank you for the endorsement.

For thriller/horror fans: Cain’s Blood is Jurassic Park with serial killers. If you’re a serial killer aficionada, you might enjoy. They’re all here: Gacy, Bundy, Dahmer, Fish, etc. And they’re all teens, some of who would scare the shit out of their genetic forefathers. There’s some dark fun to be had. The Ruins author (ed. note: Scott Smith) called Cain’s Blood “deeply twisted,” and R.L. Stine says it “still creeps him out.” Coming from those guys…

For you English-class lovers:  Cain’s Blood is something more like Huckleberry Finn, or On the Road. Two broken characters (a war vet not quite home yet and a teen who’s just discovered he’s the clone of Jeffrey Dahmer) make their way across America (and all that means), figuring out how to deal with each other and themselves, and hopefully come out okay on the other side.

Gazala:    What are books for?

Girard:    Easier than finding a cave to paint on, I suppose. I teach high school English and am always reminding the guys that Art is Art: be it a book, song, painting, dance, video game, movie, etc.  Even when it’s “just” entertainment, there’s usually a legit and worthwhile portrayal/ examination of “being human” within that entertainment. And for those books, songs, etc., that strive to dig a little deeper, all the better. Books are simply one way to do that.

Gazala:    W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Do you agree, or disagree, and why?

Girard:    I might make it ten rules to writing to muck it up even more.  Yes, I agree no one knows what these rules (three, ten, or 50) are. I believe Twain has some line to the effect that the three rules are:  write, write and… write.  Other than that, who knows? I’ve been doing this seriously about ten years and have met a hundred other authors, each with his or her own style, methods, voice, habits, weaknesses, craft, etc. And even once you’ve tied it down to one writer, they’ll change it up too. Cain’s Blood was written in an entirely different way than Project Cain (a spinoff I wrote for teen readers). I changed up the devices used, voice, story structure, mechanics, etc. Wanted to try something new for that particular wall painting.  Part of the fun of writing (and reading) is trying new things, even it proves personally unsatisfying in the end.

Gazala:    I'm knee-deep in a robust philosophical argument about nature versus nurture with a weird guy who calls himself Tad Bundy. This may take a while. Ask yourself a question, and answer it.

Girard:    Q: Do you think the science in Cain’s Blood is possible? A: We went from cloning sheep to cloning monkeys in just three years. And that was 15 years ago. You’re asking me to believe we haven’t gone from monkey to human in those ensuing 15 years? That’s absurd. Furthermore, America spends more money researching weapons than it does on medicine, agriculture, manufacturing, education, and transportation combined. And most all of that research is conducted via black budgets with 0.0 regulation or public accountability. I’d say “possible” is fair.

Compelling and repulsive though it surely sounds, we still can’t track down a copy of 1000 Ways to Cook a Seagull. We’re not often stumped—it’s quite disturbing. How can we make this up to you, our very gracious and stunningly attractive reader? By positioning you with the merest mouse click to get your own copy of Geoffrey Girard’s Cain’s Blood right from Amazon.com, that’s how. We overpay our debts, here. You’re welcome.

Author Spotlight: Glenn Shepard

In this edition, our Author Spotlight is aimed squarely at Dr. Glenn Shepard. Shepard is an esteemed medical doctor and retired surgeon whose debut thriller, Not for Profit, was recently released to stellar reviews. As a matter of fact, one of Not for Profit’s hearty endorsements comes from none other than Layton Green, who’s not only a fellow thriller author, but an alumnus of the Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight. Green calls Shepard’s novel “slick and intelligent.” After you read Not for Profit, you’ll see Green made the right call.

Every author’s journey from blank page to published work is unique. For example, if memory serves Shepard is the first combination M.D. / thriller author we’ve hosted at the Spotlight. Shepard wrote his first novel decades ago, while his surgical practice was in full swing and his free time was far scarcer than it is now. At its end it was 1,000 pages long, but that first book was never published. Nonetheless, that book taught Shepard invaluable lessons about the art and craft of writing. Those lessons, combined with the wisdom and professional expertise he gained from his medical practice plus his abiding love for the written word, culminated in the publication of Not for Profit.

In an interview about his new book and writing generally, Shepard said, “All fiction is real life and all real life is fiction.” We’ll advise him to use that thought for a mantra as we strap him into the Spotlight’s unforgiving wooden chair and beam the glaring white heat of our klieg light array at him. Not to worry if the conditions are harsh – there’s a doctor in the house. So with no more ado, we’ll get this Author Spotlight underway.

Gazala:    In my omnipotence, I've sentenced you to be stranded alone on a desert island for offenses best left unnamed. In my beneficence, I've decided to allow you a limited amount of reading material to make your stay a little less bleak than it would otherwise be. I'll spot you your religious text of preference, and the collected works of William Shakespeare. In addition to those, name the one fiction book, and the one nonfiction book, you'd choose to take with you, and why you choose them.

Shepard:    The nonfiction work I'd choose is Gray's Anatomy. In med school, there was so much to cover in a limited amount of time that just the highlights were spot-lighted. In between these were millions of bits of overlooked minutia that are quite fascinating and worthy of study. I'd love to have unlimited time to enjoy this. David Foster Wallace's book, Infinite Jest would be my work of fiction. It takes time to read and understand this work. Each time I start it, there are many things occupying my mind and I always put it down to pursue pressing objectives.

Gazala:    Your new book is an excellent and gripping novel titled Not For Profit. It follows plastic surgeon Dr. Scott James as he struggles to clear his name of two murders of which he's been falsely accused, in a setting deftly spiced with love, violence, sex, mystery, orchids, and renegade drones. I've read it. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us something about Not For Profit, and why its potential reader should make the leap and become its actual reader.

Shepard:    Three things motivated me to write this book. The first and principle one was that some not for profit hospitals have used their tax exempt status to enter markets in hospital services and even in areas remote from hospital care and compete successfully with tax-paying individuals and groups, in many instances claiming the bulk of the market share. I can understand that the price the hospitals pay for buildings, equipment, and products necessary to run the acquired properties and services are tax deductible for hospitals as well as private individuals, but what the public doesn't know is that the out flow of dollars to these entities magnifies the unrelated cost each patient pays for the hospital services. And the salary paid to the executives may not be the $250,000 the newspapers report as their salaries (the figure given in the book for the salary of the fictitious chief administrator), but a figure hidden in the multitude of corporations within a single hospital group. This is a work of fiction. I am not blowing a whistle on any group as no individual can stand in court and face any billion dollar hospital. But I call attention to the high cost of hospital services that in my belief relates to the expensive expansion of hospitals beyond primary patient care that has the potential of ballooning the executive compensations of the hospital leadership.

The second thing I want people to be aware of is the importance of drone warfare in protecting America from terrorists. I applaud the headlines telling almost daily of the accomplishments of our drones.

Thirdly, I want my readers to share with me the horrors of terrorism. I used the character Ethel Keyes to convey this message. A brilliant woman’s fear of the torture she would face if she disobeyed her bosses led her far beyond the limits imposed on her by her own conscience. Several readers objected to the violence I portrayed. Describing what terrorists did to the book characters, in my belief, equates to the actions of real life. But we don't want to see this violence. Like in the recent Boston bombings, people read headlines and are mad that people died and many were injured. The close-up images of the horrible injuries at the scene are purged from the TV reporting. People don't want to see the anguish and suffering at the scene. They're happy to gloss over the actual horrors and just count the numbers dead and wounded. So with terrorist attacks all over the world. The suffering is censored from our eyes. I did no censoring. I hope people were horrified and will open their eyes.

Several readers objected to the book's sexuality. Ethel Keyes' prior sexual experiences were all tainted by her poverty and the wealth promised to her by the terrorist, Omar Farok. I showed a real, romantic relationship that changed her negativism about sex. I felt it necessary as the first step in her recovery. I thought it important for readers to be with her in this part of her journey. You'll see this in my future books. I plan to use her again. You'll see how this talented woman has benefited from the positive sexual experiences of Not For Profit.   

Gazala:    What are books for?

Shepard:    Good books serve for self-understanding. I become one with the main characters and try to see the world as they see it. Sometimes, it is not with the same perspective as mine, and a good book gives me a better knowledge of differing points of view. Some flow with my points of view, and reinforce and sometimes even modify my way of thinking. I like books that make me think. I hope Not For Profit makes people think beyond the "yellow brick road" of the plot.

Gazala:    W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Do you agree, or disagree, and why?

Shepard:    This statement says a lot about the manner of Somerset Maugham. It makes me think. Think deeply, as do his writings. His is a rare talent. I enjoy reading him over and over again. Another of his great quotes is, "Life isn't long enough for love and art." And it really isn't.

Gazala:    An unmarked black drone has been circling a couple hundred yards over my rooftop for the past 15 minutes. While I'm dusting off my sniper rifle, ask yourself a question, and answer it.

Shepard:    A black drone! At a hundred fifty yards! It's small. I can take it with my .223! A well placed shot in the engine will knock it out of the sky! But wait. Is it on an intelligence mission tracking a terrorist group working in this area? Or is it controlled by a terrorist group surveying the military establishments in eastern Virginia? Or, just maybe, it's from a Not For Profit outfit that didn't like my book? I take aim on the unmanned aircraft. My finger is on the trigger. If it fires a rocket toward me, I'll pull the trigger. Maybe, I'll be killed. But at least, I'll take that sucker with me!

“All fiction is real life and all real life is fiction.” Based on his last response alone, it seems Doc Shepard may be onto something. You’ll think so too, after reading Not for Profit. We’ve made it easy for you to get your very own copy of the book from Amazon. All you have to do is click here. Happy reading.

The Dragon That Devours Originality

Peek at the list of the highest-grossing box office receipt for movies playing in your local theaters tonight. You'll see that four of the top 10, and seven of the top 20 of those movies are outright sequels, or feature iconic characters like Superman, Wolverine, or the Lone Ranger. Perhaps the most glaring example of this rinse-and-repeat business model in film is Ian Fleming's creation, James Bond. Beginning with his cinematic debut in 1962's "Dr. No," Bond has shot up the silver screen 25 times in one guise or another, his appearances never separated by more than four years while grossing over $6 billion to date. (The next Bond film is scheduled for release on October 23, 2015.) There are eight Harry Potter movies, and J.K. Rowling's creation has raked in even more movie dollars than 007. We can't kid ourselves into thinking the current box office returns are anything extraordinary when it comes to sequels and retreads. The same is true for any given week for this year, and for many years past.

You shrug and say, so what? The dearth of meaningful creativity in Hollywood is a corpse long ago buried. Even back in Hollywood's so-called "golden age," the Mummy returned more times than once, as did his creepy colleagues Frankenstein's monster and the Wolfman. Dashiell Hammett's "The Thin Man" had a six-movie run, too, before leaping onto television. So there's nothing to see here. Shove your hands in your pockets and keep whistling as you saunter past orginality's gravestone on your way to the cineplex.

But there's an important difference between the "why" of Hollywood's golden age, and the "why" of Hollwood now, that keeps the lid slammed firmly on original thought and execution in American cinema. And that "why" applies just as much to books and authors as it does to movies, television (Syfy's "Sharknado 2" has its hotly-anticipated American television debut on August 22, 2013, only 42 days following the hit premiere of "Sharknado" on July 11), and popular music. Accordingly, this "why" is just as relevant, and crucial to understand, for authors as it is for their compatriots toiling in other mainstream entertainment ventures.

The golden age's "why" and the current one of course share their bedrock obsession--amassing as much money as possible. But it's the journey that has changed, not the remunerative destination. In the golden age, thinking about sequels was not particularly sophisticated. Rather, it went along the lines of, "Hey, people seem to like this werewolf guy and we made some bucks off it, so let's do it again and see if we can squeeze some more dough from their wallets and purses." What was Hollywood's competition back then? With rare exceptions, nothing offered up by radio, books, prize fights, horse racing, and baseball could compete with Hollywood's bright lights and big stars.

The world is very different now. Flatter, Thomas Friedman correctly calls it.

We all know about globalization. Globalization impacts the entertainment industry with the same brute force it does any other commercial endeavor. Globalization is fathered in significant part by the virtually ubiquitous, instantaneous and incessant information and communication made possible by the Internet. In turn the attention span of a potential target audience for any product or service, no matter how (un)worthy those products or services may be, is increasingly torn and frayed among literally limitless options; options far in excess of only radio, books, prize fights, horse racing, and baseball. And in a globalized market, what will play well in Dubai and Beijing matters as least as much, and often far more, than what will make bank in Peoria.

So enters the cursed globe-trotting dragon, and its name is "pre-awareness." The rubes in Dubai and Beijing know James Bond, Superman, the little blob people in "Despicable Me," and the speed demons of "The Fast and the Furious" as well as the rubes do in Peoria. There's no need to educate any audience domestic or foreign about these characters, or the kinds of movies they populate. The rubes are all pre-aware, which mitigates mightily against the risk of a flopped film, while increasing just as mightily the potential reward of foisting yet another Spider-Man series on the world when Toby Maguire's Peter Parker isn't even cold yet.

On this subject I can't recommend highly enough a new book by renowned Hollywood movie producer Lynda Obst. As it says on her website, "For the past 20 years, working with some of the most talented filmmakers in Hollywood, Lynda Obst Productions has nurtured over a dozen film projects from the early development and writing stages, through principal photography, post-production, and finally to theatrical release." Those projects include "Flashdance," "Sleepless in Seattle," "Contact," "Hope Floats," "The Siege," "How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days," and "The Invention of Lying," among many others you've at least heard of and likely seen. Obst is no slouch. She knows what she's talking about. And she's talking about it in her new book, Sleepless in Hollywood: Tales from the New Abnormal in the Movie Business.

Now, I'll concede there are fundamental reasons why the movie business has sacrificed originality on the dollar's altar that aren't analogous to what's going on in the current book industry. In turn, you'll concede that when you check the fiction bestseller lists on any given Sunday, the majority of titles on those lists are the latest installments in one series or another written by authors whose names aren't strange to you. As Obst recently tweeted me, "The book biz, music biz and movie biz have all been swallowed by the same black hole: pre-awareness."

I was struck hard by Obst's premise in contemplating the rosy fortune of new British crime author Robert Galbraith, and his debut novel, The Cuckoo's Calling. Despite receiving consistently good professional and consumer reviews, Galbraith's book sold not many copies anywhere. As a matter of fact, it sold less than 8,500 copies in all of England from the day of its release last April until the day it leaked that "John Galbraith" is a pen name for the afore-mentioned J.K. Rowling, of Harry Potter fame. Within hours of the leak, sales for The Cuckoo's Calling skyrocketed 507,000% (that is not a typo) on Amazon, and John Galbraith found herself the most popular author in the English-speaking world.

Is what's between the covers of The Cuckoo's Calling any different, better, or worse whether you read the novel thinking it the work of Robert Galbraith, or of J.K. Rowling? No. It's the exact same book, identical in every detail of plot, structure, narrative technique, setting, character, and dialogue.

The difference between Galbraith's sales and Rowling's has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of The Cuckoo's Calling. It's only Obst's "pre-awareness" dragon breathing its fiery power on the necks of readers on both sides of the Atlantic.

It's all well and good for authors to bemoan traditional publishing houses' and general readership's shared wariness of anything even mildly less than formulaic from an author without commercial pedigree. Our compatriotic scribes in Hollywood bemoan the same. Well, excepting the ones who understand and embrace that Galbraith was nothing until he was Rowling.

Author Spotlight: Ron Felber

Today we welcome author Ron Felber to the comfy confines of the Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight. Understandably, Felber’s been a busy man since the recent release of his new thriller, A Man of Indeterminate Value.  We’re pleased our guest was able to carve out some time from his full schedule to visit with us for a while and share some thoughts about his new book, and writing generally.

Many of you recognize Felber’s name from his association with the popular Fox television program, "The Mob Doctor." His 2004 nonfiction book, Il Dottore: The Double Life of a Mafia Doctor, tells the story about a kid from the Bronx who grew up to become a Mafia insider and physician to top New York Mafia dons such as John Gotti, Carlo Gambino, Paul Castellano, and Joe Bonanno. Il Dottore was the inspiration for that show.

Gelber’s follow-up to Il Dottore was 2011’s The Hunt for Kuhn Sa, the true story of American authorities’ battle against an international heroin kingpin whose misanthropic reign at the end of the 20th century had the U.S. State Department calling him "the most evil man in the world." American law and drug enforcement needed to take down this drug lord, as much to rid the world of his trade as because Kuhn Sa’s savage rise to power couldn’t have happened without an assist from the CIA.

Felber brings the same hard-nosed research and meticulous attention to detail that make Il Dottore and The Hunt for Kuhn Sa enthralling reads to his brand new novel. A Man of Indeterminate Value is as much a gripping contemporary thriller as it is a riveting exposé of brutal American corporate greed, corruption and myopia. Felber draws on some of his own experiences as CEO of a U.S. manufacturing company, a former deputy sheriff, and a competitive boxer, to bring to life his new book’s main character, an anti-hero Jack Madson. Madson learns the hard way that despite what he thought he knew, happiness and money have little to do with one another, and quite often more of one inevitably equals less of the other.

Now that our guest’s deep background has been laid bare for your education and entertainment, it’s time to strap Felber tightly into the Spotlight’s hard wooden chair, flare up our battery of unforgiving klieg lights, and get this interview underway. Felber seems like a pretty tough guy. He should come through this Spotlight with flying colors. Without further ado, let’s rev this Spotlight up and see.

Gazala:    In my omnipotence, I've sentenced you to be stranded alone on a desert island for offenses best left unnamed. In my beneficence, I've decided to allow you a limited amount of reading material to make your stay a little less bleak than it would otherwise be. I'll spot you your religious text of preference, and the collected works of William Shakespeare. In addition to those, name the one fiction book, and the one nonfiction book, you'd choose to take with you, and why you choose them.

Felber:    Tough question, Richard. For fiction, I think it would be All the Pretty Horses, by Cormac McCarthy. For someone who's never read the novel or is unfamiliar with McCarthy's writing, the title might be a little off-putting, even prissy sounding. But make no mistake about it, this book is as terse and gritty as anything you'll ever read, with prose that seeps through your pores and into your soul. Also, I'm very fond of the themes that he writes about—truly American themes that capture what it means to be an American in its most ideal sense. The simple justice and intense honor of his protagonist, John Grady, captures something very special about the American experience, something I delve into deeply with Jack Madson, the main character in A Man of Indeterminate Value.

So far as non-fiction, I'm very partial to Norman Mailer's books, like Armies of the Night, and Of a Fire on the Moon. But I would go with Mailer’s The Executioner's Song, if forced to pick just one. Just as McCarthy shows us the American ideal in his character, John Grady, Mailer in his novelistic non-fiction rendering of murderer and death-row inmate Gary Gilmore, explores the American dream gone awry. Like Frankenstein's monster, we see Gilmore’s dark rise and death, with wires and shorted-out electrodes set sputtering out from the sides of his head. Eerie and surreal, it's about as close as most of us will ever get to understanding the mind of a killer and his interactions with the society we live in.

Gazala:    Your latest book is an excellent and gripping novel titled A Man of Indeterminate Value, featuring ex-cop Jack Madson, a disgraced Wall Street take-over artist and target of a failed suicide scam that leaves him the "most wanted" man in New Jersey. I've read it. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us something about A Man of Indeterminate Value, and why its potential reader should make the leap and become its actual reader.

Felber:    Thanks for the compliment. I'm glad you enjoyed A Man of Indeterminate Value. For those who need a nudge to go out and read it themselves, I'd say first, it's one of those novels you read in a sitting and then are disappointed that you've finished and can't spend more time with the characters you've gotten so close to. Jack Madson may not be the nicest fellow you'll ever run into, but he may be the most captivating because once you buddy-up with Jack, you're in for the ride of your life. Trapped in a loveless marriage and in a job at a Wall Street "churn ‛n’ burn" takeover house that guts American companies and spins them at huge profits to Asian firms, all the while drowning in the debt his socialite wife is racking up, Madson wants out. How to do it? Fake your own death in a Jersey Shore boating accident. Let your wife and daughter collect the $4 million in life insurance money. Then leave the east coast; you’re a dead man headed for Queretaro, Mexico, where the Chin Chou Triad has stashed a cool $2.5 million in a bank account for you in return for the intellectual property you've been stealing and secretly selling to them for the past five years. A foolproof plan? Not if you've attracted the interest of Martin Phials, the obsessive insurance investigator who is convinced Jack Madson never really died! Murder, intense drama, and then there’s also Jack's beautiful mistress, Tomi Fabri, from the Head2Toe escort service…

Gazala:    What are books for?

Felber:    Let me, if I may, Richard, slightly re-phrase the question to, "What are good books for?" I'll start with bad ones, anyway. If the author's intention is to tell a story that is meaningful to readers, even if it's not as entertaining as one would like, I give that author credit for trying. But writing, like anything else—painting, music, soccer, for that matter—requires practice and study in order to cultivate the skills necessary to write a "good" or "great" book. A good or great book in my opinion is both entertaining (riveting is even better!), and tells a story that is pertinent to the lives of readers. By pertinent, I mean the story, or plights of the characters, provide an insight into the way life operates and the consequences/rewards one might expect in living a certain way. Also, I believe good books, fiction or non-fiction, elevate the worth of being human. They inspire people to live a considered life based on choices and a person's own philosophy about how this time we have here on earth can best be lived. Books bring dignity and meaning to us in a world where human dignity seems diminished daily.

Gazala:    W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Do you agree, or disagree, and why?

Felber:     By the way, if you asked me about my favorite short story, it would be "Rain," by Somerset Maugham. But since you asked about his statement on the three rules of writing a novel, I'd say there are three rules or so. One, write for your audience, not yourself. Two, know how to entertain your reader. Even in tribal days, the tribe's story teller conjured tales that were captivating, not boring. Three, have something to say that means something to your audience. A writer needs to provide insight into the topic he or she has chosen to write about. The work should be in some way instructive while entertaining at the same time. One of the aspects of Rod Serling's work that I admired as a kid growing up was that through his fascinating sci-fi teleplays, he told us something about ourselves and the society we live in.

Gazala:    A sketchy Wall Street banker is slinking around my front door, and I best go see what he's up to before something unpleasant happens. Ask yourself a question, and answer it.

Felber:    Q: Would I be worried to find a sleazy Wall Street banker slinking around my house? A: Yes, because as we have to lawyers, we have turned over to Wall Street the power to destroy a person's wealth with a phone call or the push of a button. Though I am in business myself and run a large manufacturing company, the dependence of the individual on systematized global computer networks makes anything Orwell envisioned in his novel 1984 appear child's play. Just recently, we learned that IRS audits were made on groups unfriendly to the current administration in order to take them out of operation during key moments of the last election. Of course, this harkens back to the Nixon years; but the capabilities of governments domestic and foreign, not to mention the mafia, for example, to wipe out an individual's wealth and/or identity with the stroke of a computer key has never been more genuine than today. The expression is "speed kills," but they got it wrong. In the end, it is "greed" that kills entire civilizations.

Generally speaking, we concur with Felber that greed is usually bad. At times, though, it’s not necessarily bad. For example, if your greed is to get yourself a copy of Felber’s A Man of Indeterminate Value from Amazon.com, we don’t think that’s bad greed. As a matter of fact, we support that greed, by putting a link to help you feed your greed right here. You're welcome.

Author Spotlight: Layton Green

We’re fortunate all sorts of intriguing authors visit us here. We choose them carefully to enlighten and entertain you. We’re very appreciative not only for our authors’ taking the time to join us, but for you, our readers, doing so too. We can’t say that often enough. We’ll grab this opportunity to say it again now as we bring you the latest installment in our Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight series, this time featuring the considerable talents of Layton Green. Green stops by today to share some insights about himself and his writing, and to shed a bit of light on his brand new paranormal thriller, The Diabolist.

Some Greenian background is in order. Green is a recovering attorney, deeply afflicted by wanderlust. In addition to writing, Green graduated from law school in New Orleans, and spent several years practicing law. He has traveled through more than 50 countries. To his enduring credit, many of them would let him return if he asks nicely enough. Besides lawyering and writing, Green has earned his bread and board in activities as disparate as interning at the United Nations, being an ESL teacher in Central America, tending bar in London, selling cheap knives on the streets of Brixton, and delivering telephone books door-to-door. After that point on his long and winding curriculum vitae, Green says, "the list goes downhill from there."

In his writing, Green combines his incisive descriptive skills with his plethora of travels and employments. The result is a lucky reader who can’t avoid finding herself sucked into the twisted geographic and psychological vistas Green creates in The Diabolist and his other books, whether in the Dominic Grey series, or otherwise.

The Diabolist is the third entry in Green’s deservedly well-received series of enthralling paranormal thrillers featuring Dominic Grey and his partner, Viktor Radek. In it, the duo combat a fearsome, ancient evil driving a seemingly super-powered madman's scheme to wipe out all competitors in uniting the world's Satanist factions to displace humanity's major religions.

How freaky is that? Trust us, it’s very freaky. And it’s very good, too.

Our esteemed guest is already sitting on the hard wooden chair under the unforgiving glare of our klieg light army, chomping at the bit to get this Spotlight fired up. See him fidget? We like his eagerness. Without further ado, let’s get this edition of the Author Spotlight underway. Our fingers are tightly crossed Green doesn’t summon anything underwordly to pop in for a spell while he’s under our care. Our interrogation room’s not sufficiently spacious to accommodate that.

Gazala:    In my omnipotence, I've sentenced you to be stranded alone on a desert island for offenses best left unnamed. In my beneficence, I've decided to allow you a limited amount of reading material to make your stay a little less bleak than it would otherwise be. I'll spot you your religious text of preference, and the collected works of William Shakespeare. In addition to those, name the one fiction book, and the one nonfiction book, you'd choose to take with you, and why you choose them.

Green:    A lot of really cheeky answers ran through my mind, but I’ll go with the following: for fiction, even though my favorite novel is The Magus, by John Fowles, I’m going to go with 1,001 Arabian Knights for its sheer volume and entertainment value. For nonfiction, I’m going with the amazing book Why Does the World Exist? An Existential Detective Story, by Jim Holt. This is probably my favorite work of nonfiction, and, well, the name pretty much says it all. I think it would take me a lifetime to fully absorb and ponder the contents of this book.

Gazala:    Your latest book is an excellent and gripping novel titled The Diabolist, the third entry in your deservedly well-received series of intriguing paranormal thrillers featuring the private investigative team of former Diplomatic Security Agent Dominic Grey and his partner, religious phenomenologist and cult expert Viktor Radek. I've read it. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us something about The Diabolist, and why its potential reader should make the leap and become its actual reader.

Green:    Well, Richard, let’s hope your powers of online persuasion move mountains of readers! And I sincerely appreciate the shout out. I write books that I would like to read, and the reason I would pick up The Diabolist is because it contains elements I love in my novels: suspense, exotic travel, mystery, romance, action, history, philosophy, occult esoterica, quasi-supernatural happenings, and religion. And with this particular novel, I wanted to explore the themes of the origin of evil and the history of the Devil. In particular, I was fascinated by the question of theodicy, which, simply put, is this: if we accept that evil exists, then either God is omnipotent and responsible for evil, or someone or something else is.

Gazala:    What are books for?

Green:    I think books serve different purposes for different readers: entertainment, education, enlightenment, and escapism seem to be the most obvious suspects, and the ones I can vouch for. I recently read something (I can’t remember where) that said that the classic novels are a one on one conversation with some of the greatest minds in history. I loved that and think it is true.

Gazala:    W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Do you agree, or disagree, and why?

Green:    Ha ha, I love that one. Completely agree. I’ve never had a (fiction) writing class and quite honestly, though I made good grades, I was not a good student. But there are many ways to skin a cat, as they say (though I confess I don’t know why they say that), and I think everyone’s journey to becoming a novelist is different, whether it’s an Iowa MFA, being a lifelong reader before spending 15 years tearing up drafts and studying authors far more talented than myself (my journey), or sitting down and rattling off a great work of literature and then calling it quits, like Harper Lee.

Gazala:    A shadowy, black-robed figure is peering through my window, and I best go see what he's up to before something heinous happens. Ask yourself a question, and answer it.

Green:    Q: The question is, what have I been involved in to warrant the attentions of such an ominous, mysterious figure? A: I search my memory but can’t recall anything out of the ordinary. Then I remember that antique shop I visited in the Garden District of New Orleans, with my friend Lou. Lou is a linguist and was asked to examine a piece of unknown origin for the owner of the antique shop. The owner was a little off, to be honest. He kept his shop dimly lit and had a bunch of religious and occult pieces scattered about. The piece he had Lou inspect was a small wooden box with a flowery, rune-like script flowing down one side. Lou recognized the runes as Ogham, a long-forgotten Celtic language, and a few days later he translated the inscription as, roughly, “God Path.” (Ogham contained no prepositions.) The problem was, nothing else about the box suggested a Celtic origin. I had forgotten about the box and the inscription, though the owner’s assistant, a young East Indian woman with an accent I couldn’t quite place, had lingered in my mind. Didn’t matter. I could figure it out later. I ran to grab my cell in case I needed to call 911, but when I returned to the window, the only thing I saw was the cemetery brooding across the street, silent and empty.

See? It’s like we said earlier, very freaky, and very good. And that’s without anything underworldly popping in for an authorial assist. (At least, none we noticed…) Now you’ve had such a tasty sip, we know you’re thirsty for more of Green and his writing. We’ve made that easy for you. All you need do to grab yourself a copy of The Diabolist from the good folks at Amazon.com is click here. You're welcome.

The Proper Use and Care of Writing Prompts

I'm asked often about a writing prompt -- what one is, how it works, is heeding one a worthwhile endeavor? In my estimation, so long as its definition is sufficiently stretchy, I'm a writing prompt's ardent fan.

Back at creation's dawn when I was in school, a slew of teachers and professors insisted a writing prompt was a thing that lived in fairly tight borders. This was particularly so in my assorted English and writing classes, where we were instructed that such a prompt occurs solely in the form of a short question designed to spur authorial effort about a specific topic for a given writing task. Nowadays, I believe that's called "teaching to the test." Regardless whether theirs was a sound definition for a writing prompt, it surely served my teachers and professors well when reading and grading writing assignments so narrowly prompted. If nothing else, it was a time-saver for my eternally overburdened educators. Say, just for a random hypothetical example because certainly this could never have actually happened, I was asked to write a thoughtful exploration in response to the prompt, "Why can a woman's patience endure?" Say, also, my plainly brilliant responsive submission focused instead on something infinitesimally (if at all) off-topic. For example, perhaps on whether a drunken myopic chimpanzee could maneuver a clown car skillfully enough on Manchester's streets to pass the same road test that resulted in my idiot friend Rudolfo's obtaining a driver's license before I got mine from the geniuses at the New Hampshire DMV. It didn't take Professor Sally Shakespeare too long to slap a big red F on my answer, not much reading required.

As I would have hypothetically explained at some length to my disgruntled parents, this big red F was in no way my fault. It was the fault of Professor Shakespeare's writing prompt being obliged to toil under harshly restrictive definitional parameters.

(You see, Rudolfo and I had the same road test administrator. She was a surly woman named Helga. From her indecipherable command of English, Helga was very likely imported into New Hampshire late one stormy Cold War night from some profoundly slipshod village called Nastygrad, deep behind the Iron Curtain. In any event, Helga's patience was clearly as unreasonably skimpy in my case as it was unflaggingly generous in that grinning fool Rudolfo's.)

(Hypothetically, mind you.)

Am I digressing? I can never tell.

So what is a writing prompt? With due deference to Professor Shakespeare, a writing prompt is anything that incites a writer to write. It can be anything at all, from a whispered welcome on Wednesday to a shrieked midnight curse to the impossibly small "My Little Pony" tee shirt on that improbably fat guy with the wheelbarrow and shovel over there in the bulk candy aisle at Whole Foods. A writing prompt can be a song, or a cloud, or the ragged murder of crows winging slowly west over your roof at dusk. It can be the first sentence from your favorite book, or the last one from a book you hate. It can be a lyric from some terrible song you heard at the drug store, or an epitaph. It can be the strange smell you recall seeping from beneath the door of that apartment next door that wasn't supposed to have anybody living in it. It can be a simple photograph, like this one:

Yeah, I know. How much fun can you have with that? It practically writes itself.

Once you've got your writing prompt, what do you do with it? Well, that's not unlike staring at a weight at your favorite gym -- the answer depends on what kind of a workout you've got in mind. Maybe you're in the mood for something light and brisk, or quick and dirty. Then you'd use your writing prompt to spur a short burst of authorial glory, such as a pithy tweet. Perhaps you're in the mood for a more robust challenge, where your writing prompt is the spark you seek to fire up a short story, or a one-act play, of a few thousand words. Or you might be hankering for some real heavy lifting, where the very same writing prompt launches you on the long and winding road that's end is a novel 100,000 words long. A writing prompt is what you make it. The choice of what to do with it is yours alone.

Sure, the deceptively plain "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..." were the dozen simple words that vivified one of the greatest and most enduring works of English fiction, Charles Dickens' 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities. But that phrase could serve also to inspire a one-act tragicomedy about a Kardashian wedding at the foot of a feisty volcano, or a philosophical rumination on the Boston Red Sox winning the 2004 World Series to kill a curse 86 years old that was only trying to mind its own business.

And what about this similarly-inspired tweet? "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. My life will be sucky unless and until verily I learn to distinguish between those two."

So much delicious angst in only 140 characters, birthed by a classic turn of phrase. Thanks be to Dickens.

Do you see? Viewed correctly, anything can be a writing prompt. Now it's your turn. Not to cramp your style in the hunt for writing prompts particularly inspiring to you, I've assembled below a modest array of prompts to get you started. See where they take you, or where they don't. Have fun.

Gazalapalooza's Writing Prompts Volume 1, Number 1:

It started after I went down to see Madam X, and let her read my mind.

He told me there's one thing you've got to learn, and that's not to be afraid of it.

"It's not so simple as she'd have you believe," she said, "separating fact from friction."

I thought about marrying for love, but marrying for help paying my student loans seemed wiser.

There, painted on the stone in ancient red so faded it was hardly visible in the dusk, was the face again.

He was very wrong, thinking there would be a next time.

When's the last time you made a bank teller blush like that, with just a wink?

She bit her lower lip a little harder than she had intended, and tasted raw anticipation.

Getting my kids to school on time is like organizing a lunar landing for feral cats.

Eye contact is more dangerous on some nights than others.

I keep a diamond ring in my glove box for exactly these situations.

She shook her head and looked at her watch again, but the second hand was still ticking backwards.

Sometimes, the person you'd take a bullet for ends up being the one behind the gun.

If there's not a play or an essay or a novel or two in this collection of prompts, then you're not writing freely enough. Take your time, breathe deeply, and whatever you do, don't wait for your muse to show up. Let the prompt be your muse. That will make her jealous, and there's not a lot more inspirational to an author than a jealous muse in a huff.

Uh-oh. I think I just came up with another writing prompt...

Author Spotlight: David Morrell

Let's say you're assembling your authorial curriculum vitae — not for any particular reason, just something to tickle your fancy in a moment of periodic self-reflection and personal professional assessment. Keeping up with your inner Joneses, if you will. On your clean sheet of paper, you jot down your professorship in the English department of the University of Iowa for a decade and a half. You list your extensive training in firearms, hostage negotiation, assuming identities, executive protection, and anti-terrorist driving skills, plus your FAA pilot's license. You note the 1972 publication of your debut novel, First Blood, the book introduced the world to iconic Vietnam War veteran John Rambo, a character later featured in a quartet of international blockbuster movies starring Sylvester Stallone. After writing down the titles of 28 novels, six nonfiction books, 40 published short stories, and numerous analytical essays for film magazines, you'll find yourself with hardly any room left on your formerly pristine sheet of paper to squeeze in that you're a co-founder of the International Thriller Writers organization, which honored you with its prestigious career-achievement Thriller Master Award. With a satisfied sigh, you realize your piece of paper would have to be a scroll to contain all your other career highlights, only some of which are being an Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity nominee, and a three-time recipient of the distinguished Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association. Oh, yeah, plus you have 18 million copies of your books in print, in 26 languages.

None of that even includes the release today of your brand new thriller, Murder as a Fine Art, a work as eagerly anticipated as it it is highly acclaimed. Early reviews of Murder as a Fine Art include the Associated Press deeming it, “A literary thriller that pushes the envelope of fear.” The Providence Sunday Journal declares the book "a masterpiece." Publishers Weekly calls it "brilliant." Suspense Magazine says, "This is one thriller that is beyond thrilling.”

David Morrell is the only author whose curriculum vitae the foregoing could be. And we're pleased that Morrell has joined us today at the Gazalapalooza Author Spotlight. Without further ado, let's get Morrell seated under the Spotlight's blazing klieg glare, and get this interview underway. 

Gazala:    In my omnipotence, I've sentenced you to be stranded alone on a desert island for offenses best left unnamed. In my beneficence, I've decided to allow you a limited amount of reading material to make your stay a little less bleak than it would otherwise be. I'll spot you your religious text of preference, and the collected works of William Shakespeare. In addition to those, name the one fiction book, and the one nonfiction book, you'd choose to take with you, and why you choose them.

Morrell:    The non-fiction book is easy. Thoreau’s Walden contains a wealth of wisdom that deepens with each reading. I never fail to marvel at how he compares the veins in a leaf to those in a human hand to those in a cliff side to the Milky Way. The interconnection of the universe. As for fiction, my interest in Victorian history prompts me to choose Charles Dickens’s Bleak House from 1853, one of the many Victorian novels that I read during my research of Murder as a Fine Art when I was trying to trick my mind into believing that I was actually in London in the 1850s. Dickens’ complex plot and period details become more fascinating with each reading. 

Gazala:    Your latest book is an excellent and gripping thriller titled Murder as a Fine Art, where gaslit London becomes a battleground between controversial Victorian literary star Thomas De Quincey and a demented murderer whose lives are linked by secrets long buried, but never forgotten. I've read it. I enjoyed it immensely, and recommend it highly. Shockingly enough, however, from time to time my bare recommendation doesn't always motivate a book's potential reader to become a book's actual reader. Tell us something about Murder as a Fine Art, and why its potential reader should make the leap and become its actual reader. 

Morrell:    Murder as a Fine Art is based on the first publicized mass murders in England, the infamous Ratcliffe Highway killings in London in the early 1800s. Because of improved roads and the newly invented English mail-coach system, London’s 52 newspapers spread news of the murders throughout England within two days, terrorizing not only London but the entire nation, rivaling the fear caused by Jack the Ripper much later in the century.  My novel’s main character, Thomas De Quincey, was a brilliant author who wrote obsessively about the killings in the third part of an essay, “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” He invented the word “subconscious,” and anticipated Freud’s theories of psychoanalysis by a half-century.  He was the first person to write about drug addiction in Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. He influenced Edgar Allan Poe who in turn influenced Sir Arthur Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes. Put all this together, and the reader will experience a detective of a rare type. Going to 1854 London is like going to Mars. The era is so weird that the details alone are worth reading the novel.  For example, how much did a middle-or-upper-class woman’s clothes weigh?  Thirty-seven pounds—because the hoop beneath the dress needed to be covered with ten yards of ruffled satin.  No wonder women kept fainting. 

Gazala:    What are books for? 

Morrell:    Horace said that the purpose of literature was to teach and delight.  Let’s focus on fiction.  Its vividness can take us out of our every-day lives and spark our imaginations. If our lives are dull, we are transported to a more interesting place. If our lives are burdened with pain, a novel can provide distraction. Beyond that, the characters in novels can help us to understand human nature, which is a form of teaching as well as delighting. Important novels change the way we perceive the world. 

Gazala:    W. Somerset Maugham said, "There are three rules for writing the novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." Do you agree, or disagree, and why? 

Morrell:    The rules keep changing.  During the 19th century, there was an accepted way of writing novels. Then Flaubert, Henry James, Hemingway, and other writers came along and changed the rules. Dickens was fond of the 3rd person omniscient narrator, a technique that is hardly used anymore, because fiction writers are taught that showing is better than telling, which is what the omniscient voice does. But sometimes telling is in fact better than showing, and I work with that concept in Murder as a Fine Art. Providing my version of a Victorian novel, I began each chapter with an omniscient narrator (a sin in some creative writing classes), mixing it with a first person narrator (a combination that is also a sin in some creative writing classes). But Dickens used both in Bleak House, and the combination worked wonderfully.  London in the 1850s was so strange that I decided the only way to express its strangeness was by providing a guided tour throughout the novel. 

Gazala:    A long, loud, and canorous peal of laughter coming from the heavy fog pushing against my front door seems an ominous thing worth my immediate attention. Ask yourself a question, and answer it. 

Morrell:    Q: What’s your favorite Thomas De Quincey story? A: Because of his compulsive book collecting and his opium use, De Quincey was constantly in debt. One of his landlords held him prisoner for a year (that’s right — a year), forcing him to keep writing until he paid his lodging bill. De Quincey described his room as becoming snowed over with manuscript pages. He asked his publisher to smuggle in some laxative salts with his weekly supply of ink and blank pages to write on. Overdosing on the salts, he spent two days in the lodging house’s privy, prompting the other lodgers to complain to the owner, who reluctantly set De Quincey free so that his lodgers could use the privy. 

Wow. We're not sure how to comment appropriately on that anecdote, other than to say that clearly, Morrell's research for his excellent new book left absolutely no stone unturned. You've no need to take our word for that. Find out for yourself by getting your very own copy of Murder as a Fine Art. To order yours from Amazon, all you have to do is click here, and then settle back to enjoy the read.