fiction Archives - Page 8 of 12 - Trisha Sugarek, Author, Playwright & Poet

‘Her Majesty’s Hope’ a Review of Susan E.MacNeal’s new book

Review of Her Majesty’s Hope Rating: (5 out of 5 quills)

Yesterday Susan Elia MacNeal’s latest Maggie Hope mystery was released. It’s no surprise that I have been eagerly awaiting the release of His Majesty’s Hope by this accomplished writer.

Each of MacNeal’s books are ‘stand alone’ stories but to get the most pleasure from them, I highly recommend you read them in order. Starting with Mr. Churchill’s Secretary, we follow Maggie as she works as a lowly typist in a typing pool at #10 Downing Street in spite of her knowledge and natural ability with languages. She is a master of cryptology and codes but in the 1930’s it was unheard of for a woman to be used in that capacity.

She quickly rises in Mr. Churchill’s government and trains with the British CIA. I have to give a nod to Princess Elizabeth’s Spy because if you love the ‘royals’ (as I do) this is an amazing look into Windsor Castle when the now Queen was just a young girl. It’s a surprising and fascinating mystery.

The most current in this series takes a harsh, horrifying look at Hitler’s ethnic cleansing. Maggie is dropped into Germany as a spy and also to confront the mother she never knew and thought had died in a car crash years ago.

Seventy-five years later, the systematic destruction of the Jewish population is chilling and this gifted writer puts it in a context that is both horrifying and heart-breaking. MacNeal’s characters are full and rich with several story lines weaving through this period in our history. And then she neatly ties all the ends together, leaving you wanting more….which her fans will get with a little patience.

I was so pleased to have interviewed Susan a couple of months ago and if you missed it, click here.

(review at the request of author/publicist)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! A SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner”

I have had a wonderful response from other authors and will feature an interview once a month . I have invited such luminaries as: Ann Purser, Susan Elia MacNeal, Maya Angelou, Mark Childress, Rhys Bowen, Dean Koontz, Sheryl Woods, Jo-Ann Mapson, Jeffrey Deaver, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amber Winckler, Robert McCammon, Walter Mosley, Nora Roberts, and many others.

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Mark Childress is our April author. Robert McCammon is scheduled for May. Caroline Leavitt is June‘s author. July features Rhys Bowen. Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander. Slick mystery writer, Andrew Grant will join us this winter. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To receive my posts sign up for my Go to the home page; On the right side you’ll see a box where you can enter your email address. Click on “join my blog”. You need to confirm in an email from ‘Writer at Play’ . Thanks!

Pull the Covers Up Over your Head…an Interview with author, Robert McCammon (part 2)

Part II…… an interview with Robert McCammon (part I)

Robert McCammon, born July 17, 1952 in Birmingham, Alabama, have written nineteen books, working on his twentieth now. Some titles are SWAN SONG, MINE, MYSTERY WALK, BOY’S LIFE, STINGER, SPEAKS THE NIGHTBIRD, MISTER SLAUGHTER, THE PROVIDENCE RIDER.

Q. Do you have a set time each day to write or do you write only when you are feeling creative?

A. I start work about 10 or so at night and work until 2 or 3. When I’m finishing up a book, I “double up” and work in the daytime as well.

Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing and for how long?

A. “Lost” in the writing? Well…I guess it’s a matter of concentration. The harder you concentrate, the more you become “lost” in the writing, I suppose. Doesn’t happen all the time, but it does happen.

Q. When did you begin to write seriously?

A. When I was about 25 and realized my job at a newspaper was a dead-end.

Q. How long after that were you published?

A. About two years later.

Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like?

A. What does it look like? Well, it looks like extreme concentration, hard work and problem solving. Also sticking with it until it’s done. Does that answer your question, sorta kinda, or have I misunderstood it?

Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters ?

A. In my mind. I’m doing a series right now where some of the characters are ongoing, but others have to be made up from whole cloth. Still…are any characters made up totally from “whole cloth”? Probably not. They’re probably put together by the writer’s attitude and impressions of the world, people he or she have met…many influences there in creating characters.

Q. What inspired your story/stories ?

A. I like to read. I don’t write with an outline, so it’s like I’m reading my own work as it goes along. I want to know what happens. Also, I want to create a world the reader will enjoy living in for a little while.

Q. Have you? Or do you want to write in another genre`?

A. I’ve written in horror/suspense/mystery/historical. I’d like to do some “science fiction” writing, as well…whatever the definition of that might be.

Q. Anything else you’d like to share with us?

A. I was pleased to do this, and thank you for the questions. http://www.robertmccammon.com/

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Come back May 23rd when I review McCammon’s newest book, ‘I Travel the Night’

Don’t forget to sign up to receive my BLOG! It offers advice, encouragement and support to other writers.
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Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. The NEW SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner” INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS!

I have had a wonderful response from other authors and plan on featuring an interview once a month . I have invited such luminaries as: Ann Purser, Susan Elia MacNeal, Mark Childress, Robert McCammon, Rhys Bowen,Dean Koontz, Sheryl Woods, Jo-Ann Mapson, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sue Grafton, Walter Mosley, Nora Roberts, Amber Winckler, Jeffrey Deaver and many others.

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Mark Childress is our April author. Caroline Leavitt is June‘s author. July features Rhys Bowen. Sue Grafton is August‘s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander. Slick mystery writer, Andrew Grant will join us this winter.
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To receive my posts sign up for my Go to the home page; On the right side you’ll see a box where you can enter your email address. Click on “join my blog”. You need to confirm in an email from ‘Writer at Play’ . Thanks!

More Insights from Great Writers…and me

“The difference between the right word and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and the lightning bug.” ~~ Mark Twain

“Planning to write is not writing. Outlining a book is not writing. Researching is not writing. Talking to people about what you’re doing is not writing. None of that is writing.
Writing is writing.” ~~ E.L. Doctorow

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” ~~ Jack London

“Every novel is an attempt to capture time, to weave something solid out of air. The author knows it is an impossible task. That is why he/she keeps on trying.” ~~ David Beaty

“Books choose their authors; the act of creation is not entirely a rational and conscious one.” ~~ Salman Rushdie

“invent yourself and then reinvent yourself, don’t swim in the same slough.
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself and stay out of the clutches of mediocrity.
invent yourself and then reinvent yourself, change your tone and shape so often that they can never categorize you. Reinvigorate yourself and accept what is, but only on the terms that you have invented and reinvented.

be self-taught.

and reinvent your life because you must; it is your life and its history and
the present belong only to you.” ~~ Charles Bukowski

*My club is all polished up and is hanging just inside the door of my studio.
** ‘the right word’….it’s a recurring theme with authors and I seek it as if it were Midas’ gold.
*** I reinvented myself exactly four times, during my seventy years of life; far too few, but four times more than some.
**** my creation is neither rational nor conscious most times–my latest novel was written by the characters early on and I was happy to let it happen!! ~~ Trisha Sugarek
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Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! A NEW SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner”

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Mark Childress is our April author. Robert McCammon is scheduled for May. Caroline Leavitt is June‘s author. July features Rhys Bowen. Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander. Slick mystery writer, Andrew Grant will join us this winter.
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Interview Thursday with author, Robert McCammon

Don’t Miss It! Thursday, May 2nd we begin an interview with
spine-chilling author, Robert McCammon.

If you love vampires and particularly a hero-vampire you’ll love this visit with Robert. And later in the month I was invited to write a review of McCammon’s new release, “I Travel By Night” .

A fan commented: ‘Whether it’s aliens, vampires, parasitic twins, or LSD crazed baby snatchers, no one will be disappointed by this fine author.’

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Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! A SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner”

I have had a wonderful response from other authors and will feature an interview once a month . I have invited such luminaries as: Ann Purser, Susan Elia MacNeal, Mark Childress, Rhys Bowen, Dean Koontz, Sheryl Woods, Jo-Ann Mapson, Jeffrey Deaver, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amber Winckler, Robert McCammon, Sue Grafton, Walter Mosley, Nora Roberts, and many others.

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Robert McCammon is scheduled for May. Caroline Leavitt is June‘s author. July features Rhys Bowen. Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander. Slick mystery writer, Andrew Grant will join us this winter.

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You live to write, You stop! You Die!

I have been obsessed with Charles Bukowski for weeks now. I sort of randomly discovered him, fell in love, ordered his book of poems, ‘The Pleasures of the Damned’ and now I’m his forever! (March 14th)

One day, much to my amazement, I found tucked away in my very messy bookcase, a movie based on Bukowski’s life starring Matt Dillon. I’m ashamed to say that a friend had given me the DVD as a gift and I never bothered to watch it. (in my pre-Bukowski days) “Factotum” is a disturbing and fascinating look into Bukowski’s early years as an alcoholic, unknown writer who was frequently homeless as he went from job to job, from bar to bar, from woman to woman, from job to job, from bar to……

Bukowski writes about the raw, and sometimes ugly, world in which he lived. A world that you and I may never experience, a world of the downtrodden, poor, weak, drunk, and doped up, (and what polite society would call) losers.
The saving grace of this man was the PURE TRUTH in which he wrote!

This book reads like an autobiography of his life…all in prose. I was struck by this piece in particular . Bukowski knew exactly who and what he was.

a clean, well-lighted place ©

the old fart, he used his literary reputation
to reel them in one at a time,
each younger than the last.
he liked to meet them for luncheon and wine
and he’d talk and listen to them talk.
whatever wife or girlfriend he had at the moment
was made to understand that this sort of thing made him
feel ‘young again’.
and when the luncheons become more than luncheons
the young ladies vied to bed down with
this
literary
genius.
in between he continued to write,
and late at night in his favorite bar
he liked to talk about writing and his amorous adventures.
actually, he was just a drunk who liked young ladies,
writing itself and talking about writing.
it wasn’t a bad life.
it was certainly more interesting than what most men were doing.
at one time he was probably the most famous writer in the world.
many tried to write like he did
drink like he did
act like he did
but he was the original.
then life began to catch up with him.
he began to age quickly
his large bulk began to wither.
he was growing old before his time.
finally it got to where he couldn’t write anymore.
“it just wouldn’t come” and the psychiatrists couldn’t do anything
for him but only made it worse.
then he took his own cure, early one morning,
alone
just as his father had done
many years before.

a writer who can’t write any
more is dead
anyhow.
he knew that.
he knew that what he was killing
was already dead.

and then the critics
and the hangers-on
and the publicists
and his heirs
moved in like vultures.
*****************************************************************************************************
‘Everything you need to know about life are in these pages by Bukowski. He knew when it was all over. He was used up; he had given all that he could, he had nothing more to say. So he left……the screen door slapping softly shut behind him.’ ~~T.Sugarek
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Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! A NEW SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner”

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Mark Childress is our April author. Robert McCammon is scheduled for May. Caroline Leavitt is June‘s author. July features Rhys Bowen. Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander. Slick mystery writer, Andrew Grant will join us this winter.
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What does it Look like? From No book to Finished book…55 days

This past Sunday I finished the first draft of my second novel. 74,000+ words and 365 pages. This was possibly the purest writing I have ever done and almost an out-of-body experience. WHY? You ask?

I let go!

As most of my friends will tell you, I am a double ‘A’ personality with control issues. Okay! Call it what it is; I’m a control freak!
But this time, I started with only a loose outline in order to keep my historical facts straight and to track where I thought I was going with the story. I had written the prologue months ago. On February 19th I marked my calendar that this was the day that I would begin writing it in earnest.

By the second chapter the characters took the story away from me and told me to hang on and start typing.
They told me who they were, where they were going, who they loved, why they had failed and all about their flaws.

Now! Other than the fact that I am in excellent company, I would agree with you when you mutter, “She’s just plain nuts!” But according to the authors that I am now interviewing on a monthly basis, this is not bat-poop crazy but rather a condition that most writers dream about and when it does happen they don’t question it….they just let it happen and they give thanks!

During long, long days of writing (sometimes until my fingers refused to work any longer) I spent my non-writing, quiet time surrounded with great authors. Either posting their interviews, reading their poetry, or curled up with a good book. I believe that reading makes us better at our writing.

I am so inspired by other good writers.

So let go! Open your hearts and minds and let it flow. Don’t force the direction of your story…it will never be exactly like you planned and that’s a GOOD thing!
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Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! A SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner”

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Mark Childress was our April author. Robert McCammon is scheduled for May. Caroline Leavitt is June‘s author. July features Rhys Bowen. Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander. Slick mystery writer, Andrew Grant will join us this winter.

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To receive my posts sign up for my Go to the home page; On the right side you’ll see a box where you can enter your email address. Click on “join my blog”. You need to confirm in an email from ‘Writer at Play’ . Thanks!

The Writer’s Corner.. an Interview with Mark Childress (part 2)

Part II ….Mark Childress

Q. Do you ‘get lost’ in your writing and for how long?

A. All the time, when it’s going well. I actually get kind of impatient with the demands of real life when the imagined life really gets up and cranking.

Q. When did you begin to write seriously?

A. In high school, after I won an “honorable mention” in a short story contest and Miss Eudora Welty herself put the plaque in my hand.

Q. How long after that were you published?

A. I was published as a journalist starting just two years later but it was nine years before I got my first novel published.

Q. and the all important: What does the process of going from “no book” to “finished book” look like?

A. Assuming you have found an agent who has found an interested publisher, most of the process is directed by the writer. Despite what people think, publishers don’t generally force novelists to stick to strict deadlines or to stop editing the book before they’re finished. They want you to write the best book you can. First you write the book. Then you rewrite it a few times or a few dozen times for yourself.

Then a few more times for the editor. Then another time for the copy desk. After that, it is waiting, longing, hoping, and having Oprah dreams. Then publication happens and is both much better and much worse than you ever expected. Then you face the blank page and start the next one. Rewriting is the core of what writers do – so if you can’t stand rewriting and being edited, choose another profession.

Q. Where/when do you first discover your characters ?

A. It is different for each book. Sometimes it is an idea, or a place, sometimes it is a character. It’s important to keep listening for that little bell when it rings.

Q. What inspired your story/stories ?

A. Life, pain, a happy childhood that was also miserable. A weird family. Being from Alabama.

Q. Have you? Or do you want to write in another genre`?

A. The one problem my agent has always had is that I like to write a completely different novel each time. I don’t stick to one theme or one type of book. I love writers like Graham Greene who can do a little bit of everything, and I’ve always wanted to be like that.

Q. Please feel free to share more with us.
A. “I love my readers. They have made it possible for me to have the life I dreamed of back when I started out. If you are one of them – my thanks.”

http://www.crazyinalabama.com/
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Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! A NEW SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner”

I have had a wonderful response from other authors and plan on featuring an interview once a month . I have invited such luminaries as: Ann Purser, Susan Elia MacNeal, Mark Childress, Rhys Bowen, Dean Koontz, Sheryl Woods, Jo-Ann Mapson, Jeffrey Deaver, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amber Winckler, Robert McCammon, Sue Grafton,Walter Mosley, Nora Roberts, and many others.

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Robert McCammon is scheduled for May. Caroline Leavitt is June‘s author. July features Rhys Bowen.
Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander.
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To receive my posts sign up for my Go to the home page; On the right side you’ll see a box where you can enter your email address. Click on “join my blog”. You need to confirm in an email from ‘Writer at Play’ . Thanks!

The Writer’s Corner…Interview with author, Mark Childress (part 1)

This blogger is so pleased to have this interview with Mark Childress. Author and screen writer of the movie, “Crazy in Alabama” starring Melanie Griffith, David Morse, Rod Steiger, Robert Wagner. Mark has kindly shared his writing world with us and his tongue-in-cheek wit.

Q. Where do you write? Do you have a special room, shed, barn, special space for your writing?

A. I cannot upload a picture of my desk because my Mom would be ashamed of me.
It’s really messy. Like the inside of my brain. For only the second time in my life, I live in a house which has an actual
separate office in my house where I work. Usually I’ve worked at a desk in my bedroom because I’ve lived in tiny apartments. Having a separate space is such a luxury and it means I get to leave it as messy as I want and NOT publish photos of it! However, I wrote most of my first two novels on a typewriter in various motel rooms while traveling for a magazine, so I know you can do it anywhere if you apply yourself.

Q. Do you have any special rituals when you sit down to write? (sharpened #2 pencils, legal pad, cup of tea, glass of brandy, favorite pajamas, etc.)

A. Water. Chair. Butt in chair. Turn off the internet. Do not move until you can’t do any more.

Q. What is your mode of writing? (long hand? Pencil? Computer?)

A. Computer. I remember typing 11 complete drafts of my first novel on an old IBM Selectric and boy oh boy was
I glad when they invented cut-and-paste. In college, I made beer money as a typesetter for our college paper
on an ancient “computerized” machine that had a tiny led screen with a three-word display. So these machines do
not intimidate me.

Q. Do you have a set time each day to write or do you write only when you are feeling creative?

A. I sit down every day about 9 or 10 and write until I can’t any more.

Biography: I was born in Monroeville, Alabama. Shortly thereafter Miss Nelle Harper Lee made
our town famous with “To Kill a Mockingbird.” So, for me, being a novelist was always a dimly
achievable goal. Everybody admired Miss Lee and I wanted to be like her. When I read her book,
I really wanted to be like her. I wrote my first novel when I was 15. It was awful but I finished it,
and thus learned the most important thing: if you keep going, you can finish. Also,
did you hear about the writer with severe attention deficit disorder? He……
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Don’t miss part II of this interview on Thursday, April 4th.
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Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! A NEW SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner”

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Mark Childress is our April author. Robert McCammon is scheduled for May. Caroline Leavitt is June‘s author. July features Rhys Bowen. Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander.
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Do You Doubt Yourself?….Your Writing?

I ran across a description of one of my enemies….DOUBT! Author, Jacqueline Winspear wrote: “Doubt. Was it an emotion? A sense? Or was it just a short stubby word to describe a response that could diminish a person in a finger snap?”

I wrote earlier about my being in good company. Regardless if we writers are obscure or famous, we all doubt ourselves and our work. What if Henry Charles Bukowski, or Ernest Hemingway, or John Steinbeck had let DOUBT win? Put away their pen, dumped their scribbles into a shoe box and made a trip to the attic, got a day job and never wrote another word? It doesn’t bear thinking about.

J. Michael Straczynski: “When in ‘doubt’, blow something up.”

F.Scott Fitzgerald: “All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath.”

E.M. Forster: “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?”

Tapani Bagge: “Everything that doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. And later on you can use it in some story.”

Maya Angelou: “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”

Elinor Lipman: “Critics have been described as people who go into the street after battle and shoot the wounded.”

Leo Rosten: “The only reason for being a professional writer is that you just can’t help it.”

Let’s see …..when were my worst moments? DOUBT clawing at me, whispering in my ear, crawling up my spine. Telling me that I’ll never make it, I’ll never finish a whole novel, that I don’t know the first thing about writing poetry. Writing play scripts was relatively easy for me. After all I had been in theatre reading scripts for over thirty years. And the stories simply fell out of the sky and into my brain when writing a script.

When I could no longer resist the urgency of writing about the women who wait outside prison walls, I researched the length of the average novel; number of pages and words. Yikes! Over 300 pages and 70,000 words. DOUBT was screaming in my ear: ‘you’ll never be able to write that many pages.’ ‘you’re a playwright; not a novelist’, ‘who do you think you’re kidding?’ But I had a true story (several of them, in fact) and all I needed to do was flesh those stories out. Write one page at a time.
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Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! A NEW SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner”

I have had a wonderful response from other authors and plan on featuring an interview once a month . I have invited such luminaries as: Ann Purser, Susan Elia MacNeal, Maya Angelou, Mark Childress, Rhys Bowen, Sue Grafton, Dean Koontz, Sheryl Woods, Jo-Ann Mapson, Jeffrey Deaver, Elizabeth Gilbert, Amber Winckler, Robert McCammon, Walter Mosley, Nora Roberts, and many others.

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Mark Childress is our April author. Robert McCammon is scheduled for May. Caroline Leavitt is June’s author. July features Rhys Bowen. Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander.
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Don’t Miss it! an Interview with Charles Bukowski on Tuesday

I would give much to interview great authors like Steinbeck, Bronte, Hemingway, Austen, Twain, London, Service, Chekov, Shakespeare. But at the top of my bucket list would be Henry Charles Bukowski {1920-1994}. So I asked myself would it be so very strange or inappropriate to imagine what it might have been like and then write an interview with “Hank” Bukowski?

Imagine that I am sitting with him, in a corner booth, in some neighborhood dive. Old die-hard drunks sit up at the bar and……………………
March 19th, Tuesday, don’t miss my interview with Henry Charles Bukowski.

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‘You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics.’ ~~Bukowski
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Start your month off right!! DON’T MISS UPCOMING BLOGS. INTERVIEWS with other best-selling AUTHORS! A NEW SERIES, “The Writer’s Corner”

So come along with me; we shall sneak into these writers’ special places, be a fly on the wall and watch them create! Mark Childress is our April author. Robert McCammon is scheduled for May. Caroline Leavitt is June‘s author. July features Rhys Bowen. Sue Grafton is August’s author and September will feature Tasha Alexander. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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