Featured Interview With C.R. Hurst

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was raised in southern PA and lived there most of my life until my husband and I retired early and moved to the mountains of North Carolina. We have one pet, a tuxedo cat called Miss Molly that I rescued from an animal shelter years ago.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I can’t remember the age, but I do remember the first book that I loved, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine LEngle. I started writing when I was in college, mostly short fiction and poetry, but I didn’t publish much until after my retirement from teaching. I guess that shows we are never too old to return to an earlier passion!

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I really don’t have a favorite author, but I do love those who write well, who develop a fluid prose style as well as craft an entertaining story. I read many genres, from classic sci-fi to memoirs to historical fiction. Again, the how is more important to me than the what. Any author who has a distinctive style I will read.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest published book is the final installment of my Jane Digby’s Diary series called White Lady. The series is written as a fictional diary about Jane Digby, a 19th century English aristocrat who led a unconventional life and traveled the world in search of freedom and true love. The entire four-part series took me nearly five years to write.

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Featured Interview With Theo Faurez

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
Theo Faurez is the pseudonym of Paul-Dominique Masiclat, o.p., a friar of the Dominican Order (aka Order of Preachers, aka Blackfriars) in France. Currently based in Sweden, he has lived in several countries in Asia, Europe and North America, and still travels extensively.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
Books became my passion at a young age, not just reading but writing. I can recall making up new adventures for the characters of my favourite books, for example Babar the Elephant and Tommy Turtle. I began writing short stories at 13 or 14 using characters from television series – what would be called fan fiction. I joined a book club and would read just about anything. The book club helped me to branch out into history, books on nature, dinosaurs of course, and biographies.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
The first Agatha Christie I ever read hooked me for life on the murder mystery genre. My interest in ancient history, especially that of the Roman Empire, also grew at this time, and I taught myself Latin. Then I discovered the authors who married ancient Rome with murder: J. Maddox Roberts, Steven Saylor, Lindsey Davis, R. Magrì, Danila Comastri Montanaro and others. Their work has been a beacon. Other writers who’ve taught me about the crime genre are John LeCarré, P.D. James, Ian Ranklin, Robert Galbraith, Anthony Horowitz.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
Rome already had its detectives, I wanted to diversify. I chose the Greek-speaking sphere, namely the city of Antioch, the proud, prosperous, decadent capital of the eastern Roman Empire. The sleuth (ancient Rome had no police force, much less the notion of a detective) is Captain Antonius Sabas, a Syrian Greek with Roman citizenship who patrols the city for fires and, by extension, criminals. In this first novel, he is called to the scene of an attack in broad daylight. Is it banditry or premeditated murder? Faithful to the classic “rules” of the whodunit, the reader is given all the clues. Captain Sabas uses physical clues and rational deduction to find the murderer – no internet or forensics doing the thinking for him! I also wanted to plunge the reader into another time and culture, guided as much as possible by verisimilitude to bring the Roman Empire to life. Thus the characters are somewhat alien in their mindset, share our common humanity, but without the ideologies or neuroses of 21st-century society! All my writing was done in my spare time, some of it in English, some of it in French. What with other jobs and responsibilities, it took me nearly a decade to complete this one. The next one won’t take as long, rest assured!

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Featured Interview With Teresa Vale

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born in Mozambique in the sixties and lived there until I was twelve, but the revolution and regime change in Portugal that led to Mozambican independence, as well as the civil unrest that followed, forced me and my family to leave Africa for good. I’ve lived in Lisbon, Portugal, with my family, ever since.
I pursued an executive career in the financial area but have always loved to write. For a few years now I’ve run the blog The Many Stories of a Woman. At this point in my life I have many stories to tell – stories lived and shared… And all these memories of places I love, music that moves me, books that have inspired me. These are a few of the reasons I began writing.
I love going to the beach and spending time with my sons and my friends. And, like most Portuguese, I would be entirely unable to exist without my cup of espresso!

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
My love of books reaches far into my earliest memories, with Granny and Mom reading bedtime stories to me. Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” was a huge favorite. As soon as I was able to read and write I began my attempts at storytelling and journaling, even tried to draw comics. In my mid-teens, other concerns took precedence: mostly juggling the demands of a social life and the pressures of school work and all the expectations around it. Later on came a marriage, a career, and children, which all proved extremely time-consuming. Only in my fifties did I resume the habit of writing. I tentatively began a memoir which then became my first novel. At the same time, I started blogging, publishing small, fictionalized vignettes about real life, about struggles and victories shared by women I knew or admired, and of course my own.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I would only mention a few. Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Emily Brontë, Barbara Erskine, Juliet Marillier, Yrsa Sigurdardottir, Joanne Harris… regarding genres, I would say historical fiction and non-fiction, fantasy and nordic thrillers.

All the authors I admire have influenced and motivated me in some way, but life itself, with all its nuance and complexity has proved the greatest inspiration behind every word that ends up on the page.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
I have recently published my first book, “Love Secrets Lies”.
Teresa, the protagonist, is a young woman born in Africa, where she had begun to dream of love, and felt her heart racing for the first time. As a colonial dictatorship falls in the cold, distant land of Portugal, Teresa’s country gains independence. Danger mounts, and Teresa’s family are forced to flee Mozambique, danger champing at their heels.

Her childhood paradise is gone. She plunges into a wintry landscape of wan faces and gray apartment blocks. On the first day of school she wears green sneakers to school and her classmates jeer. Teresa feels out of place, and realizes she must adapt to a new, alien environment.

But even here romance can thrive. Girls her age share her fancies and expectations. First, Teresa sings the praises of her imaginary boyfriend, Fernando, the tall basketball player she left behind in Mozambique, who is too busy to write to her.

But fantasies fall away. From party to party Teresa makes new friends and learns the new taboos that surround her while her grandparents scrutinize her life, imposing rules and fears she finds unfair and outdated. She’s not supposed to go anywhere without adult supervision. Heavens forbid Teresa’s grandparents even suspect she dreams of romance!

One after another come the Princes Uncharming, the Knights of Broken Armor: Mendonça the Field Test, Rui the Indecisive, Paulo the Almost-Perfect and Diogo, the Riding Coach, a man with soul ablaze, whose flames Teresa is ill-equipped to extinguish.

Each one of them asks for more than she can give, demanding her freedom, pieces of her being. Time and again Teresa must decide whether to surrender — to grandparents, friends, boyfriends — or say “No”, regardless of the personal cost.

From tropical Mozambique to drab, 1970s Lisbon, from the golden beaches of Durban to five-star holidays in verdant, mountainous Madeira, and even the Moroccan Kasbah, Teresa makes mistakes, stumbles and falls, and picks herself up again.

She tries to forge her own path in a country that struggles to emerge from fear and taboo, evade her grandparents’ unrelenting surveillance, and negotiate the terms of her involvement with the boys that come into her orbit. That’s not always easy, and sometimes her insecurity gets in the way, exacting a heavy toll. “Love Secrets Lies” is not a daydream about teenage crushes; it is the story of a woman in the making.

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Featured Interview With Richard R Becker

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was raised by my grandparents in Milwaukee, Wisconsin after my father was killed in a car accident. They were poor and my grandmother suffered with cancer. Just before she died, I was relocated to live with my mother and her new family in Burnsville, Minnesota, and later Las Vegas. I left Las Vegas to attend school, but fate led me back. I don’t have any pets because my daughter is a travel softball player, but I’m pretty sure I will have a dog someday.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
While I was always a storyteller, I wasn’t always a writer. I was more of an artist. I told stories with drawings and struggled as a reader. Things started to change in junior high school when my reading teacher introduced me to Dune by Frank Herbert because I aced my book report by picking the thinnest book in the library. It was in junior high that I also started writing some poetry and wrote a serial for the school newspaper. Aside from that, it wasn’t until college that I learned to write well.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
At first, I started reading John Jakes and Sidney Sheldon because they were on my mother’s bookshelves, but then I discovered J.R.R. Tolkien, Terry Brooks, Lloyd Alexander, and Roger Zelazny. By high school, I felt like I cheated myself somehow and started reading all the classics I had missed in between science fiction and horror novels. Nowadays, my reading is eclectic like my writing. I do have an affinity for Hemmingway and Updike, but I’m told my style is more like a mix between David Baldacci and Heather Graham.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
50 States is a debut collection of 50 short stories that take place across the American landscape over the last 60 years — the kind and the cruel, the heroic and the criminal. Each story is set in a different state. This idea originally evolved out of a project to write 50 stories in 50 weeks.

While there is no set genre, all of the stories are character-driven. There is a farmer who is snapped out of his self-imposed reclusive prison, an alcoholic vigilante, a secret witness protection enrollee, a man gifted with the ability to see alternate destinies, and a few runaways. Most, though, are people like those you meet every day, with secret joys or pains that we never notice.

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