Welcome to the Saturday Spotlight, a weekly feature at TBR's highlighting Indie, self-published and debut authors. This week I have the pleasure of introducing readers to:
GENE TWARONITE
~Q&A~
Hi Gene and welcome to the blog. So what inspired you to write The Family That Wasn't?
Much of my inspiration came from James Thurber, especially his semi-autobiographical book, My Life and Hard Times, in which he wrote about family members who were so wacky that you knew he had to be making some of it up. I began thinking about my own family (which was perfectly normal and stable, at least most of the time) and wondered what it would be like to grow up in a truly crazy family. This led me to the idea for a story about a boy whose family is so impossibly crazy that he can’t stand to live with them another moment. So what does he do? He escapes into a fantasy of his own creation – his new and improved family.
Did you grow up always wanting to be a writer?
No, it wasn’t until my early 30’s that I started to keep a journal and dream of becoming a writer. I self-published a short collection of essays from my journal about my relationship to a local “mountain” (more of a hill actually) where I grew up. Later I started writing a weekly nature column about the White Mountains of New Hampshire, which became another book of essays. I really caught the bug, however, when I sold my first short story to Highlights for Children, followed by two more sales. The rest is history.
What authors or books have inspired your work, or inspired you personally?
In addition to James Thurber, I have also been inspired by Mark Twain, E.B. White, Kurt Vonnegut, Woody Allen, Steve Martin, Roald Dahl, J.R.R. Tolkien, Steven Millhauser, and Magnus Mills, to name a few.
What are you reading right now?
As usual, I’m reading three books at once (for different reasons). I am laughing out loud as I reread The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. I am also savoring the early novels of Kurt Vonnegut in the new Library of America volume of his Novels & Stories 1963-1973. And because I recently started experimenting with poetry, I am trying to educate myself with a new book entitled Beautiful & Pointless {A Guide to Modern Poetry} by David Orr.
Can you share any future work with us?
While it was not a major theme of the book, there is one part in the story where John is sexually abused by his fake “Uncle” Vinnie. I felt that I just couldn’t leave John or my readers hanging there with this unresolved issue. Though I have never experienced such abuse, I still tried to imagine some of what John must have felt, including the rage, powerlessness, and self-hatred of abuse victims. And I wondered how he might try to deal with it. The result is a much longer novel, My Vacation in Hell, in which John embarks on yet another journey of the imagination through the hell he has created within himself. And, yes, Vinnie does play a major role.
I am currently on the third draft and hope to finish it this year. Because of its darker theme and the fact that John is now 15, this will definitely be a young adult novel. Hopefully it will be published by the end of this year. I also write adult short stories and my latest one, “The Woman Who Came for Lunch,” has just been published by the online literary journal Avatar Review. You can read it at the following link:
http://avatarreview.net/AV13/category/prose/gene-twaronite
Thanks Gene for stopping by and best of luck to the hopeful success of The Family that Wasn't. Learn more about Gene his book and read the first chapter HERE!
GIVEAWAY
Today Gene is offering one of my readers an e-book copy of his book The Family that Wasn't. Open to everyone, just please leave a comment. Winner will be drawn July 30, 2011.
The Family That Wasn't by Gene Twaronite
August 24, 2010 by i-universe.com
A humorous fable of how our families live inside us. Geared for middle grades (ages 8-12), it will also appeal to readers of all ages. The 13-year-old narrator, John Boggle (whose real name is John Bazukas-O'Reilly-Geronimo-Giovanni-Li Choy-Echeverria), finds his family so impossibly crazy that he cannot stand living with them another moment. He invents a new perfect family so convincing that he suddenly finds himself living inside this imaginary world. But John finds that he too has changed. He sees his too perfect image in the mirror and begins to wonder if it is all some kind of mistake. Only trouble is, now he can't remember who he is. He only knows that he must leave this family at once. His sole clue is the name, John Boggle.To find his true family he embarks on a cross country quest. Along the way he encounters other characters who have also lost touch with their families. Together they must find a way to reconstruct the connections to bring back the family that once was......
Ooh, that blurb sounds really intriguing. I love a good fantastical reality book, and this sounds like it does so nicely. Might have to check this one out further. Thanks for the rec!
ReplyDeleteSmiles!
Lori