http://www.amazon.com
http://www.barnesandnoble.com
http://www.JWLBooks.com
~~~Author Interview~~~
What inspires you to write?
A combination of ideas. Words have an infinite capacity to help us think of things in ways we have not thought of them before. Working to assemble thoughts and views on one level as a story and on a subtler level, the story as a mirror or metaphor and even more levels as cautionary tales or repetitions of history, effort of this kind is very rewarding. I love cognates among languages. Most words have roots in other languages, so employing them as messengers is fun. In Virginia's War, I set the scrumming characters in a town named 'Tierra.'
That could be the Spanish word for earth, just the place where people plopped down and built another town on the prairie. It could be a synonym for everywhere, much as early as modern literature devised characters as Everyman, a hometown everyone would recognize or it could be a play on Tiara, since Virginia and Shirley have some princess in them-at first.
Did you enjoy reading as a child?
Very much. I read the Encyclopedia Britannica, beginning around age eight, just because it had so many stories about so many things.
Who is your favorite author?
Evelyn Waugh, by a very wide margin. I'm very impressed with David Mitchell. Jonathan Frantzen is brilliant. Donna Tartt is very, very good. For non-fiction, if there is such a thing, Simon Schama and Rick Atkinson are writers of such high caliber, that one cannot put them down. I reserve thirty-six hours in case a new Lauren Hillenbrand book is rumored, since it is start to finish, with no breaks. But, in the end, I always return to Evelyn Waugh.
How important is a book cover?
It is like a free throw in basketball. Hitting free throws probably will keep you in the game, missing them will cost you the game. A single color cover with no more than a title is better than a bad cover with a poor graphic.
Do you have current work in progress?
Yes. 'Children Of A Good War' is in progress. I am heartened by the term progress. I continually work on a Novel Approach, a frequent essay on writing topics and on essays about writing, episodes of historical concern, biographical notes for newspapers and magazines.
