Featured Interview With Ed Protzel
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
The unique perspective of a mixed-heritage Jew-Cherokee, who lived for a time in an orphanage and later as a teen runaway, gives me special insights into characters that are outsiders, men and women on lonely quests seeking justice, love, and fulfillment against society’s blindness.
The Lies That Bind, a darkly ironic antebellum South multiple-mystery/drama, is the first book in my DarkHorse Trilogy. I have also written five original screenplays for feature film and developed scripts/projects for 20th Century Fox.
I earned a master’s degree in English literature/creative writing from the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a bachelor’s in English from the University of Hawaii-West Oahu.
The final two books in the DarkHorse Trilogy will include many of the same major characters as the original: Honor Among Outcasts, set in Missouri during the Civil War, and Something in Madness, set in California.
My other novel-in-progress is The Antiquities Dealer, a genre-stretching, ostensible mystery/thriller about a Jewish gallery owner drawn by his former lover into a scheme to clone the great minds of history—having begun with Jesus Christ. Millennial religion, futuristic biotechnology, and human evolution collide in a cauldron peopled by a TV evangelist, a former NFL tackle, Middle East conspiracies, and radicals of major religions.
I am married and live in St. Louis, Missouri, where I write full time and teach college English.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I can’t remember not being fascinated with books – maybe that’s why I majored in English. I started writing seriously in high school, but it’s taken a lifetime of learning to get to this point.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My expertise as a novelist and screenwriter was influenced by the American tragicomedy movement (Faulkner, Twain, Tennessee Williams, Flannery O’Connor), science fiction, Shakespeare, and a variety of historical periods, including World War II, the American Civil War, and Fourteenth Century Europe.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
The Lies That Bind – DarkHorse Trilogy, Book 1 is a twisted tale of intrigue in the antebellum South.
1859, Mississippi. Visionary charlatan Durksen Hurst encounters a dozen hungry slaves stranded in the wilds. Desperate, they scheme to build an egalitarian plantation, with Hurst acting as figurehead master and his partners, led by Big Josh, pretending to be slaves. Nearby live the Frenches: the reclusive widow who manipulates the region’s bankers and cotton brokers, and her frail, rebellious heir-apparent, Devereau. They “legally” adopt a child from New Orleans to carry on their legacy. Now, Antoinette, the mother, has come for her son and gets much more than she expected.
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