Subscribe to one of Suzanne's online bookclubs and receive her daily
column at: DearReader.com
Sample Suzanne's book at:
Muffins and Mayhem, Recipes for a Happy (if disorderly) Life
AUTHORBUZZ: Discover new books, "meet" the authors and enter to win: Goto: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader
Dear Reader,
What triggers an author's inspiration to write about a particular subject? Today's guest author, Carolyn Hart, says it's "Bits and Pieces." And she knows what she's talking about, since next spring will mark the publication of her 50th book, Dead, White and Blue, the 24th in the popular Death on Demand series.
You'll love Carolyn's column. Please email and welcome her to the book club and you'll also be entered in a drawing for one of five copies of her book, What the Cat Saw. Email Carolyn at: chart@carolynhart.com
Thanks for filling in for me today, Carolyn.
BITS AND PIECES
I was a child during WWII. The war dominated our lives. It was many years before I realized 'for the duration' meant for the duration of the war. To a child, it was yesterday, now, and forever. The impact of the war led me to read widely about the war as a teenager and adult. Ultimately I would write four novels set during or shortly after WWII.
Escape from Paris was inspired by the journal of an American woman and her British friend who became part of the Underground smuggling British airmen out of Occupied France. My protagonists are two American sisters who join in that desperate effort with the Gestapo only as a step behind. Brave Hearts, another WWII story, grew out of my admiration for the American nurses trapped on Corregidor after the Philippines fell to the Japanese. I drew on their experiences in chronicling the adventures of a diplomat's wife and an American newspaperman fleeing the Japanese. Letter from Home combined the newspaper background with a recreation of the home front in the summer of 1942 in a small Oklahoma town.
WWII sparked my fascination with newspapers. Even a child soon realized that the bigger and blacker the headlines, the more important the story. I decided there could be no more important role in life than to be a newspaper reporter. As it turned out, I was a reporter for only a short while, but that lifelong love of journalism led me to create to use newspaper reporters and background in many books. I return to that love of newspapers, especially small town dailies, in this fall's suspense novel WHAT THE CAT SAW.
Sometimes the memories are those of another. When my husband was a second grader, the teacher divided the readers into three groups, the blue birds, the red birds, and the yellow birds. He was a blue bird, the happy students with a facility for language. Red birds were average readers. As for the yellow birds... He never forgot the forlorn faces of those who had been yellow birds. More than a half century later, his memory led me to create this passage in Dare To Die when Buck recalls his murdered classmate Iris who had been his fellow yellow bird.
In a novel, the story is what matters. But there are bits and pieces of the author's life there for the reader to find.
Carolyn Hart
www.CarolynHart.com
Email Carolyn at: chart@carolynhart.com
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
www.muffinsandmayhem.com
AUTHORBUZZ: REARVIEW MIRROR (NonFiction) by Alana Stewart
Many believe I have lived a charmed life as a former model and wife of celebrities, George Hamilton and Rod Stewart. But it's my less-publicized experiences--poverty, abandonment, drug addition, and violence--that have truly shaped me, and set me on a journey toward healing through AA, therapy, and spirituality, which especially helped me through the death of my friend, Farrah Fawcett. I share my challenges, heartache, and recovery--to help anyone trying to make sense of their struggles in their search for peace.
Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader click on REARVIEW MIRROR to find out more about the book and the author, Alana Stewart. Send her an email, she'd love to hear from you.
*Fun, free books and meet authors. Ask questions, they'll reply and read samples from their books. Visit AuthorBuzz at: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader
(Fiction)
AN OUTLAW'S CHRISTMAS by Linda Lael Miller
(MYSTERY)
POSTCARDS FROM THE DEAD, A Scrapbooking Mystery by Laura Childs
(Fiction)
WITH EVERY LETTER by Sarah Sundin
(NonFiction)
REARVIEW MIRROR by Alana Stewart
(Thriller)
KILL SWITCH by Neal Baer and Jonathan Greene
Go to: http://authorbuzz.com/dearreader
* This month's Penguin Classics book is THE TUNNEL by Ernesto Sabato. Start reading now and enter to win a Penguin totebag. Go to: http://tinyurl.com/Sept12Classics
Comments