Search Results for: Day After disaster

Featured Interview With Sara F. Hathaway

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
As a child, I grew up in rural Michigan. I fished the Great Lakes with my family, gardened and canned with my mother, shot rifles and shotguns with my grandfather, and learned to bow hunt, skin and gut animals with my neighbor. I also had a horse that was my best buddy and we spent many days in the woods together.

I moved to California at the age of sixteen and still live here today. I graduated from The California State
University of Sacramento with a business degree but realized my heart was not in business. It rested in my love for nature and the ideas my imagination could create. So I started extensively researching and practicing survival techniques and forgotten life-sustaining methods of the generations past. This inspired my first novel, Day After Disaster.

My family is comprised of my wonderful husband and two sons. My animal family includes my beloved dog, Sawyer, three cats and three chickens.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I have always loved to read. Some of the books that influenced me the most at a young age were C.S. Lewis’s series, including The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. Also, Mary Stewart’s Hallow Hills Series. I love the King Author Stories.

When I started writing my own material it was mostly poems and journals. Writing was a way for me to express my feelings. I never actually intended to publish my work. I wrote my first novel, Day After Disaster, simply because I had the story in my head and it needed to become reality.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favorite books to read are books that have a fascinating story but also have information to be learned from them at the same time. As an adult, the books that have influenced me the most in my personal writing are Jean M. Auel’s books from The Children of the Earth Series. These book have historical references, anthropological information, survival information, herbal healing information and an awesome storyline to tie it all together. After I read those books I knew I had to write my own.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
Day After Disaster is an apocalyptic, adventure novel, featuring a dynamic young woman, mother and wife, Erika, who is thrust into a world turned upside down by a series of natural disasters. Finding herself alone in a city mutilated by this disastrous situation, she must save herself. Once free of the city confines, she desperately tries to navigate through the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains to get back home to her family. Not knowing if they are alive or dead she must call on all of her survival instincts to plot a course through this broken environment.

Buy the book on Amazon.

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Sara F. Hathaway’s Website

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Featured Interview With Ahuva Batya Scharff

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I am the daughter of Jewish pork producers (Truth!) and spent the first 11 years of my life on a hog ranch outside of Fresno, California. We also had raisins, but that’s perhaps not as interesting as Jews raising pigs.

When my parents divorced, I moved to Oregon with my mother and brother to live on a hobby farm in the Willamette Valley. Though I lived in Los Angeles for 15 years after university, I prefer rural areas with lots of trees and make my home in NW Washington, near Bellingham, in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. I live in what is essentially a writer’s retreat filled with folk and tribal art from my travels, with two cats and a miniature schnauzer. My animals all have Hebrew names and love to sleep in the bed while I’m writing.

By training, I am a mental health researcher with a doctorate in the transdisciplinary field of transformative studies. Transformative studies looks at how change occurs–in humans, systems, organizations, etc. Our research is generally focused on solving a problem rather than “advancing the knowledge base” of a field. I don’t look at a problem through the lens of psychology or anthropology to advance our understanding of psychology or anthropology. Instead I use information from many fields to find solutions to sometimes very complex issues. In my case, I look at how we can improve wellbeing and resilience in humans around the world.

To that end, I am the founder of and principal investigator for the Institute for Complementary and Indigenous Mental Health Research. I am an explorer who travels to some of the most remote communities in the world to learn how non-Western, indigenous, and often marginalized groups address mental health concerns. It has been a fascinating area of inquiry that has given me the opportunity to learn from wonderful people in every part of the world. These encounters not only inform my writing, but have given me opportunities to learn new ways of connecting with the world around me and appreciating human resilience and courage.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
When I was a little girl growing up on the farm, I dreamed of being a writer and an anthropologist. I longed to travel to far off lands to meet the people who lived there, and write about my adventures. And that’s what I do. While I write fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, my “work” is to learn about complementary and indigenous mental health practices to improve overall wellbeing among people worldwide. I’m particularly interested in the relationship between trauma and climate change.

That’s where my novel, “The Path to God’s Promise” was born. How might people deal with potential hardships related to climate change, and are we willing to make changes–including radical changes–to prevent the worst outcomes? Fiction gives me room to explore those themes and ideas in a way that nonfiction doesn’t.

Funny story. When I was in kindergarten in the late 1970s, we were taken to the school library weekly for a reading circle. Kindergarteners were not allowed to check out books. It was assumed that we couldn’t read. I didn’t understand that we were only at the library to hear stories, not get books. I had been to the public library and thought that libraries were a place where you chose books you wanted to read. What I failed to grasp was the concept of the library card, that one had to have permission to take books, to check them out. I thought that if you were taken to the library, you had permission to take a book. I was five; what did I know? I was caught “stealing” a library book. In point of fact, I was returning a book I had borrowed. The principal wanted to expel me. Can you imagine expelling a kindergarten student for stealing a library book? My mom was called. I should probably mention that she spent more than 30 years as an elementary school teacher. Long story short, I was not expelled and the following day, there was a small reading group set up for the handful of kindergarten students who were already readers.

My first published work was in the fourth grade. I was taken on a school trip to the zoo and asked to write a poem about any animal that caught my fancy. I wrote a poem about a pygmy hippo. The poem was deemed so good that it, and a drawing of a hippo, were put into the school’s newsletter. My first brush with literary fame!

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Margaret Atwood. Barbara Kingsolver. Neil Gaiman. Stephen King. Octavia Butler. Alexander McCall Smith. Jorge Luis Borges.

I like fantasy, often choosing stories that are about our contemporary world with a little magical overlay. Or books with ghosts. Or jinn. Or witches. Seanan McGuire does an excellent job of mixing the contemporary with the completely fantastic in the Wayward Children series.

I love stories centered on people from other cultures. I love folklore and learning about people who have vastly different lives and worldviews. How do the characters see the world? What are their motivations? Do they inspire me to action? Plus incorporate an angel or mad scientist if it works with the context. That’s what I like about Borges, a South American take on fantasy.

I like stories about wonderful characters. While not fantasy, I’m crazy about Alexander McCall Smith’s Mma Ramotswe and Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. They’re brilliant people who I would love to meet in “real” life. I am not alone in wanting to have tea and fat cakes in Gaborone with Mma Ramotswe. While I might not want to meet her in my home or my dreams, Butler’s Shori Matthews is an interesting take on the vampire (and prejudice). I want to read characters who become alive through the telling of their story.

I love Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, especially “Oryx and Crake.” I love the way Atwood draws on science, history, and the genuinely possible to create her dystopian worlds. My outlook is more hopeful than Atwood’s, but I aspire to her masterful world creation.

I don’t generally like when authors read their own works, with the notable exception of Neil Gaiman. “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” is an even more intriguing story when read by Gaiman. The oddity of his voice is the perfect match for the strangeness of his tales. Too, Gaiman’s ability to add magic to anything is exceptional. I am simply crazy about “The Graveyard Book.”

I also like that many of these authors talk about the process of writing. I know he isn’t the originator of the idea, but I consistently remind myself of King’s, “Kill your darlings…” as I edit. I read “It” on a canoe trip down a river in Oregon with a group of Girl Scouts and was pretty sure that a clown was going to come out from under the canoes and kill us all. “The Stand” is one of my favorites among King’s works. I also really enjoyed “Needful Things.”

Tell us a little about your latest book?
If God asked you to be a prophet, would you do it? Before you say yes, consider that doing so likely means giving up your goals for yourself and almost certain ridicule in your community. I mean really, if someone got on TV and said they were speaking on God’s behalf, wouldn’t most people laugh?

Yet that’s exactly what God asks of Elinor Simentov in “The Path to God’s Promise.” God’s request is loaded for Elinor. Prophecy is not accepted in contemporary Jewish practice. And Elinor isn’t “special.” She’s a recovered alcoholic and a trauma survivor who has no exemplars to recommend her for the job, except that she talks with God, and despite how she sees herself, God believes she’s exactly the right person to share His message.

Originally, I was going to write a nonfiction book about climate change, but with all the anti-intellectual pushback against climate scientists as propagating “fake news,” I decided instead to write fiction. Writing a fictional story allowed me to look at climate change from a different angle than nonfiction. I got to jump into the “what ifs” by taking Elinor through past historical and mythological (depending on your religious views) events, and potential futures, so that we could learn together what might happen if we indulge the best and the worst in us.

In Elinor, we have an unlikely hero. But then, aren’t we all unlikely heroes? The story doesn’t work if Elinor is exceptional. If she is, then there’s little hope for humankind. If we’re going to stave off the worst impacts of climate change, we’ll have to take collective action, not wait for the best and brightest to “save” us. Elinor has to look at herself–her feelings of low self-worth and the negative stories she tells herself that limit what she can accomplish. As much as the book is a climate change warning, it’s also about the deeply personal struggles we have to see the best in ourselves. If we’re going to change anything, climate/politics/community, we have to stop hoping solutions will come from outside. Elinor shows a path for us to become more empowered versions of ourselves.

It took me a decade to write the book. I dove deep into the history in and of the Torah, Jewish mysticism, and the roles of prophets and angels in Jewish stories. I studied Talmud and Jewish folktales. I also researched climate change projections and recent examples of extreme storms, fires, and other natural disasters in various parts of the world. Whether she was in the distant past or here and now, I wanted the world in which Elinor lives to become real.

Books take on a life of their own after they are published. Sometimes new themes develop that I didn’t initially see as the author. What surprised me is how much of the waves of antisemitism that are part of the book have played out since the novel was published a few months ago. “The Path to God’s Promise” came out only days after the October 7 massacre in Israel. It has been disheartening to see this particular potential future come to pass.

While it may be difficult to be a Jewish author at a time when antisemitism is at an unfortunate high, I have genuinely enjoyed the feedback I’ve gotten from readers, including and especially those who are not Jewish. What I call “service oriented” Christians and Catholics have rallied behind the story. By service oriented, I mean people who see their expression of faith to be through acts of service. At a book signing, one Christian reader shared that she fell in love with Elinor precisely because she was so broken. She appreciated the ways in which Elinor fights through her deficits in a commitment to her relationship with God. It’s a spiritual story I’m told inspires those of us who might need a boost. As an author, such feedback is heartening.

Because the book has moved so many Christian and “spiritual but not religious” readers, I feel I must underscore what prophecy is in a Jewish context. Prophecy is a warning, not a reading of a predestined future. It’s a parent saying to a teen, “put on your sunscreen so you don’t get burned.” We don’t force them to act, but do warn of potential consequences. The best prophets are those who are heeded and horrific outcomes averted. I hope that Elinor does not become a fortuneteller. I hope that like Job, she is able to be one of the voices to whom people listen and motivate all of us to create change.

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Ahuva Batya Scharff’s Website

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Ahuva Batya Scharff Twitter Account

Featured Interview With Cortez Law III

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’m Cortez Law III. I was born in the nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., a long ago! But I spent most of my formative years in Northeastern Ohio in the Portage County seat of Ravenna. I graduated from Ravenna with college prep courses that prepared me for enrollment at Kent State University six miles down the road. I earned a B.A. in Telecommunications or TV/Radio production. I’m back in Northeastern Ohio and remain pet free.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
While I concentrated on getting my degree, the writing bug hit me with the screenwriting course I took in my next to last semester. I kept writing after that through all the employment stops but still couldn’t crack Hollywood for years. Through query letters and cold-calling LA agents, I submitted scripts. I schmoozed those agents to give me shots at submitting scripts for a few rising stars like Halle Berry and Michael Biehn there, but the scripts weren’t good enough. I got better near the time I decided to change mediums to books in the early to mid-nineties. Now, the New Jack Swing was in full effect with the black film renaissance, but at the same time, the publishing industry found out, thanks to Terry McMillan, that black folks read! Say what?! That whole black literary boom did just that, BOOM! Right off the hinges went that door. Again, it takes time to develop your craft. Now we’re talking a 200, 300, or 400+ page book compared to a 100–120-page screenplay. I wrote, studied books on writing, and read numerous novels. It remains a continuous learning process.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I started writing and self-publishing a Christian African American romance novel, My Brother’s Keeper, in 2001. I thought that was my genre. Then, enter September 11, 2001. A light bulb went off. That tragedy galvanized a nation, and many people expressed their patriotism for this country via songs, music, movies, etc. I was no different, and looking back, I wasn’t surprised either. My screenplay offerings consisted of small-budgeted urban dramas but also police/crime stories as well. I like the Hero Myth of storytelling, so I feel comfortable with mysteries, suspense, and thriller stories. The person I miss who filled this niche before he passed in 2001 and was a Chicago Police Captain was author Hugh Holton. I read most of his work. Other favorites I’ve read more than once include Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Walter Mosley, Ridley Pearson, Jeffery Deaver, and Ted Dekker. It’s good to see additional African American mystery/suspense/thriller authors such as Tracy Clark, Rachel Howzell Hall, Kellye Garrett, Aaron Philip Clark, and Charles Prandy. The Christian Mystery/Suspense marketplace doesn’t have many, if any, African American authors. I hope to bridge that gap between the two markets.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
I was looking for the challenge of writing a mystery where mostly the reader wouldn’t know any more than the detectives. Within that framework, I could explore the themes of love, faith, forgiveness, second chances for several characters, and hopefully, a compelling mystery/drama the readers couldn’t put down.

It’s the sixth book in the Atlanta X-Men Homicide Squad series. It tells the story of Sergeant Malcolm Hobbs and his elite X-Men Homicide Squad stretched to their investigative limits to uncover a shocking conspiracy of race, greed, power, and murder during Atlanta’s Civil Rights Era. The book reads or feels like a true crime or historical mystery novel that shifts the investigation from the past to the present and back again.

But I survived a near disaster last August. I cracked open the Atlanta Homicide Squad Book #5 via a read-through. I couldn’t and didn’t resist the urge to do some light editing along the way. Well, that morphed into some semi-major rewriting on some parts. I accidentally deleted 5% of the story by mistake. I didn’t read through the book before I rewrote that 5%. Amazingly, I recalled the deletions! So, that part wasn’t as hard to write as I thought. Plus, some additional story points emerged that made the new pages better! The best part of writing a first draft is getting it done, but also the surprises you encounter along the way.

It takes about three to six months for a first draft. It depends upon how steadfast I am every day with my writing schedule. Then, I could write eight to twelve drafts after that to get it as close as possible to perfection. The key for me to do that is to take breaks from the book between each draft. That may last anywhere from a month minimum to two or two and a half months. A writer needs that separation from the story to get some distance from the words, which surely needs additional editing. So, that’s about nine months on the low end to about 12 months maximum.

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Cortez Law III’s Website

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Featured Interview With Jo-Anne Duffett

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I am a naturalized Capetonian having lived here longer than anywhere else, but I grew up in Johannesburg and spent my early teens in the Amazon where my parents were medical missionaries. I am married for 18 years. We have a tank full of tropical fish and feed the wild birds but regularly have to chase the guineafowl out as they scratch up the garden. No lion’s do not roam the streets in Africa, but we are blessed with many national parks where you can find them and the elusive leopard. I love travel, running and photography. You will find photos of RSA and my travels on SmugMug.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
As a kid I mostly read non-fiction to satisfy my insatiable curiosity. It was only after I finished my masters degree that I discovered the joy of fiction and then I was hooked. I read copiously. I have published a number of scientific articles in the field of sports medicine, but Surf n Turf is my first fiction work.

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I love historical romances to escape. No cars, no phones and lots of horses is the best. Jane Austen is my all time favourite but I also enjoy Georgette Heyer, Barbara Cartland for a quick read, and Julia Quinn, Erica Ridley, Glynnis Campbell and Bree Wolf.
In other genres, I love James Herriot and Gerald Durrell; if you want to laugh till your sides hurt read “Rosy is a relative.” For mystery Ellis Peters and for classic Sci Fi cum Fantasy Edgar Rice Burroughs. There are so many amazing authors past and present.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
Surf n Turf is set in South Africa between Cape Town (surf) and the Karoo (turf). London born Sarah’s mother was from the Karoo but she never visited it while her mom lived. She is feeling confused by a hasty marriage proposal from her boyfriend who works for her dad and is desperate for a friendly neutral viewpoint, but her best friend hates Blakes guts.
The girls holiday in Cape Town and Sarah sets off by bicycle to find her heritage and her heart. It’s 600km to the place she thinks her mom came from. As she peddles along she keeps thinking about a surfer she saw in Cape Town but did not even talk to. This frustrates her no end.
She is nearly at her destination when disaster strikes and Sarah loses her memory as well as identification documents. She is rescued by a handsome sheep farmer Luan (pronounced Loo-Ahn) who seems to be haunted with pain.
If you love sweet, clean romances with a HEA this is for you.
The karoo is a large arid region in South Africa’s interior and provides the tastiest mutton in the world! At the time of writing, my sister owned a sheep farm in the klein-karoo.
Working full time as a medical doctor means I get very little time to write, sometimes just a sentence or a paragraph at a time. That said my work is my inspiration.

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Jo-Anne Duffett’s Website

Featured Interview With Rick McCann

Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I’m a simi-retired Merchant Mariner that has been on the water professionally since I was 17. Started out in the US Navy then after my hitch was up, I sailed deep sea then moved ashore to sail for the Cape May Lewes Ferry in Cape May, NJ. This is my hometown and I still live here today with my wife and our 2 Labs. So far, our 5 children have provided us with 5 beautiful grandchildren to spoil and love.

At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
My interest in books took hold while out to sea, as there wasn’t much to do on any down time. This is where the snippet of an idea that I could write a book began, but soon life got in the way of most of my dreams such as owning my own airplane and living on a Caribbean Island were replaced with many ours working and raising the family. As the kids got more independent and time restrictions eased, I began writing Standard Operating Procedures and policy manuals for my employer which brought back that little orphaned idea that I could write a book! It didn’t hurt that a lot of people had told me that I should write a book, of course the book I wrote isn’t the book they wanted me to write! About 20 years ago I started to put pen to paper but found that the only time I could really write was while on vacation, which is why it took 20 years to go from idea to publication. Of course the last 5 years were spent looking for an Agent/Publisher with an awful lot of rejection emails thrown in. So on October 10th 2021 my book, Two If By Sea was published!

Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
My favorite authors to read are Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, and Stephen Coonts. Which all relate to my favorite genre to read is the Thriller/Suspense genre. I believe that the above three have combined to inspire my writings so far.

Tell us a little about your latest book?
My 20 year quest to bring Two If By Sea to publication was rewarded on October 10th 2021. It is a mystery/suspense/thriller set in a contemporary maritime theme that keeps you on the edge of your seat and the pages turning. The characters come to life, and you are rooting for some while loving to hate others, but never do you lose interest in their ordeals they must live through. The plot has many intertwined sub-plots that all begin with the captain of the ship taking a few precious moments to watch a sunset that brings back her childhood memories. This moves to more involved areas that take international terrorist, Columbian drug cartels, most of the ABC agencies in Washington DC to try and keep a nuclear disaster from happening on the shores of the USA. There is budding romance and relationship conflicts in the lives of the characters that add to the overall complexity of the situation they find themselves.

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Rick McCann’s Website