Contest with Jennifer Carson

Mortimer is the best squire in Sir Emberly's troops, but his liege refuses to recommend him for promotion to knighthood. When Mortimer demands to prove his Knight-worthiness, Sir Emberly charges him with an impossible task-- finding a wonder in five days. With the help of his faithful mare, a scatterbrained wizard, a frog prince and a very special vegetable, Mortimer creates his own wonder-- the first dragon to ever breathe fire! How much trouble could one fire-breathing creature cause anyway? Mortimer certainly discovers and learns along the way that being a knight is more than being talented with a sword.

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Jennifer Carson lives in New Hampshire with her husband, four sons and many four legged friends. She grew up on a steady diet of Muppet movies, and renaissance faires and would occasionally be caught reading under the blankets with a flashlight. Besides telling tales, and being an editor for Faerie Magazine, Jennifer likes to create fantasy creatures and characters and publishes her own sewing patterns. Her artwork and patterns can be seen online at thedragoncharmer.com. To Find A Wonder is her first published work of fiction. More about Jennifer and To Find A Wonder at http://www.findawonder.com.

Jennifer is giving away a copy of To Find A Wonder to one lucky commenter. To enter the contest, you need to leave a question or comment for Jennifer. Then to finish your entry, you must either leave your email address in your comment or send a message to contests.bookblog@gmail.com. The winner will be chosen on Thursday, August 12.

Interview with J. Conrad Guest

Jen: Today we are happy to welcome J. Conrad Guest to Romancing the Book. J. Conrad, will you please share a short bio with us?
J. Conrad: My first novel, January's Paradigm, was published by Minerva Press, London, England. Current Entertainment Monthly in Ann Arbor, Michigan, wrote of January's Paradigm, “(readers) will not be able to put it down.” I have two other novels based on the Joe January character, One Hot January and January’s Thaw. Both have been picked up by Second Wind Publishing, with One Hot January set to be released later this year.

In 2008 I completed Backstop: A Baseball Love Story in Nine Innings. I’m currently shopping for publication Chaotic Theory, a novella that explores the conjecture of how the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil might result in a tornado in Texas, and just completed my fifth novel, The Cobb Legacy, a murder mystery that spans two centuries written around baseball legend, Ty Cobb, and the shooting death of his father by his mother.

My fiction and essays appear in various online and print publications, including Cezanne’s Carrot, Saucy Vox, River Walk Journal, 63 Channels, The Writers Post Journal, Redbridge Review, and Blood and Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine. I am also a contributing writer to Impact Times and am cofounder of The Smoking Poet. My sports writing can be found at Bleacher Report.

I live in Northville, Michigan, have been married once, now divorced, have no children and I’m available and why does this suddenly sound as if I’m writing a profile for a single’s Web site?

Jen: Tell us about Backstop: A Baseball Love Story in Nine Innings and where it's available.
J. Conrad: Having lived my entire life in the Detroit area, my dad took me to my first Tigers game when I was seven—a Tigers win over the Angels, during a time when the Angels played for the whole state of California and not just Anaheim. I dreamed of a pro ball career, but when I turned 40 I realized that dream was no longer in the future but instead the past. It was inevitable that at some point I’d write a baseball novel.

In Backstop, I combined my love and knowledge of baseball with romance and the heartbreak of betrayal. Not your typical romance novel, Backstop can perhaps best be described as a literary Bull Durham, sure to appeal to purists of the game as well as those who enjoy a good love story. Backstop is available from Second Wind Publishing, as well as from Amazon in both book and Kindle formats.

Jen: At what age did you discover writing and when were you first published? Tell us your call story.
J. Conrad: I’ve always loved to read and I’ve always had a love of language; but in my youth I didn’t have the patience to devote to writing—a very solitary endeavor.

My first novel, January's Paradigm, was born of a broken heart. At age 39, I found the process very therapeutic in my recovery. Paradigm grew out of a short story an old friend asked me to write for her as a birthday gift. Sadly, I no longer have a copy of the short, but during the process I began to think of expanding it to novel length. The finished manuscript bore no resemblance to the short save as inspiration.

Jen: How does your family feel about your career?
J. Conrad: Sadly both my parents are now deceased. When I first told my dad, in 1991 or 1992, that I was writing a novel, he asked me what I was doing wasting my time on such an endeavor—this from a man who named me for Joseph Conrad, his favorite novelist. At the time I was unemployed and in the process of changing careers, so he thought I should be devoting all my time to that. When he read the second draft of January's Paradigm, he was pleased. He lived long enough to know it was to be published but had passed on before I received my author’s copies.

I have no children, but my friends all enjoy my work. A former colleague adores my work and I’ve taken to affectionately calling her Annie Wilkes, a reference to Stephen King’s character in Misery who refers to herself as Paul Sheldon’s “number one fan.”

Jen: How do you approach your writing? Do you plot or go with the flow?
J. Conrad: I rarely plot. I start with an idea, a beginning and an ending and write to that ending. Of course everything in between is a surprise as I go with the flow, where the story and characters take me. The exception to that rule was Cobb. I had no ending in mind when I started, and as I approached the 70,000 word mark, I still had no vision for how it would all tie up. But I trusted myself and the ending just sort of came to me when the time was right (sort of like giving up on finding love—the moment you do, it somehow finds you). I went with it and found it as much a surprise as I think my readers will, although I think it suits the story very much.

Jen: What kind of research did you do for this book?
J. Conrad: Backstop required little in the way of research. My boyhood dream was to play major league baseball, but my parents steered me away from that. For the book, I started with my own childhood and wrote the biography I envisioned for myself as a boy, sans the infidelity part. Backstop’s parents, too, tried to dissuade him from a career in baseball; but where I allowed my parents to influence me, Backstop ignores his parents and makes his dream come true.

Jen: Do you feel as if the characters live with you as you write? Do they haunt your dreams?
J. Conrad: I won’t say my characters haunt my dreams, but I often feel as if they live within me as I’m writing. I act as a sort of channel as they relate to me their stories.

Jen: Do you have a favorite character or one you most identify with?
J. Conrad: I don’t really have a favorite; or maybe they’re all favorites, at least during the time I spend writing about them. I draw on personal experiences, so I identify with all of them.

While I was writing about Joe January, I was in a vulnerable place in my life, so I created a character who was strong and stoic; but like Raymond Chandler’s Phillip Marlowe, he has a big heart and hides behind a mask. There’s a tertiary character in January's Paradigm, my protagonist’s creative self who described as a gargoyle—hideous with coke bottle glasses and halitosis so foul as to peel paint. A very dark character, he was a fun character, his actions and dialogue bringing so much to the story; imagine creating your own alter ego, able to speak aloud those words you, in your own reality, only think and wish you could say. Backstop and I share a love of baseball, and he, too, is creative—sees the art in baseball and shares my love for literature. At the end, it’s implied that he, in first person, is the author of Backstop. In Cobb, Cagney Nowak is a writer who is questioning his talent and ability as a writer, as I often do.

Jen: Is there a genre that you’d like to write? Is there a genre you’ll probably stay away from and why?
J. Conrad: I try to stay away from labels or genre. In fact, I tend to mix and match them and try to sell them as literary or mainstream novels.

I was dismayed when Second Wind accepted Backstop under their Beckoning Books romance imprint. I’d never read Danielle Steel, and the only romance novel I ever read was A.S. Byatt’s Possession, which is not your typical romance formula. But I got over it. I figured the romance genre has a large following, so it would be to my benefit. Besides, there is enough baseball in Backstop to appeal to baseball readers, too.

Jen: Who has inspired you as an author?
J. Conrad: As a boy I loved the science fiction of Samuel R. Delany, and later Gene Wolfe (who also writes science fiction). It was Delany and Wolfe I emulated early on, eventually developing my own style, which I’ve been told is very distinct. That’s high praise in this modern era of publishing that seems to reward the formula and eschew art.

Very few writers today are stylists in the way Raymond Chandler was, and emerging writers are advised against style for fear of “pulling the reader out of the story.” I understand what that means but I don’t agree with it. I love to read artistically crafted prose, it connects me to the author, and I think nothing of rereading a passage a second or third time if it moves me. So what if it takes me out of the story momentarily? So does having to answer my telephone or responding to Nature’s call.

Off my soapbox: I also draw inspiration from Joseph Conrad, who was born in Poland, moved to France at an early age, and found himself in England. Having learned three languages, I marvel at his choice to write in English.

Jen: What has been your highlight of your career to this point?
J. Conrad: The memoir I wrote of my mother’s battle with Parkinson’s disease. It was picked up by Blood and Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine. I’ve since posted it to several blogs and have gotten a flood of comments from Parkinson’s patients and caregivers for my insight into what is a very unpleasant disease. I’ve learned to enjoy the creative process, as solitary as it is, but writers write, I think (or at least speaking for myself), in part to connect with readers and it’s always a rush when someone sends you an email to tell you they connected with something you wrote.

Jen: What do you do in your free time?
J. Conrad: I watch too much TV—mostly baseball, hockey and movies, in addition to TV dramas—and read and write. Reading inspires me to write, and I write on a host of topics in op-ed pieces, memoirs, book, movie and CD reviews, and sports.

Jen: What's next for you?
J. Conrad: I just commenced my next novel project. The working title is A Retrospect in Death. The story begins with a man’s death and the reader is taken to the other side where the narrator encounters his higher self—the part of him that is immortal and is connected to the creator. The protagonist, as yet unnamed—he could be any man or every man—learns (much to his chagrin) that he must return to the lifecycle, but without any of the wisdom or lessons learned in his previous life. But first he must be “debriefed” by his higher self, and so they set about discussing the man’s previous life—in reverse chronological order: knowing the end but retracing the journey, searching for the breadcrumbs left along the way to uncover the origin, or birth, of his cynicism.

Jen: Where can you be found on the web?
J. Conrad: I have a website and can also be found around the Internet—just Google J. Conrad Guest.

Jen: Is there anything you’d like to ask our readers?
J. Conrad: Who are your favorite writers? Are you an aficionado of Jane Austen, a proponent of Edgar Allan Poe, a connoisseur of Conrad? Or do you prefer contemporary writers—James Patterson, Mary Higgins Clark, Patricia Cornwell? Or maybe it’s an emerging writing who’s on the brink of becoming the next best seller. Let us know your favorite writer and tell us why. I’ll select responses at random to receive an inscribed copy of Backstop: A Baseball Love Story in Nine Innings. Limited to residents of North America only. Winners will be picked on Friday, August 6.

Excerpt from "Backstop" by J. Congrad Guest

I’d come to love Darlene for many reasons, not the least of which was her ability to avoid avoiding confrontation. I called her from a hotel that night, but she let the answering machine take my call. I left my number, reminded her I was leaving for Detroit for the start of our playoff series with Minnesota, and told her again we needed to talk.

Then I called my mother to tell her what I’d done, and Nestor, to apologize.

The room was cavernous, yet the walls seemed to close in on me. Not knowing what else to do, I called Hart.

“Hello, John,” I said into the phone.

“Backstop,” John said from the other end of the line. “How did Darlene take it?”

“Not well, and neither am I. She asked me to move out of the house.” I heard John sigh.

“I understand your pain.”

“Do you? Do you really, John?” I wondered again if he, too, had been a casualty of a similar seduction at some point during his career, but I refrained from asking. There are some questions a man doesn’t put to a buddy let alone a teammate.

“No, I guess I don’t understand it, not from a personal perspective,” he said, surprising me with the warmth in his voice. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t empathize.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to take this out on you.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

When I said nothing, Hart went on: “What’s to come?”

“She told me she needed time to think.”

“Give her time, Backstop.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what she asked me for—time. We can’t work through this apart, John.”

“No, but you need to give her time to consider whether she wishes to work through it.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“Of course not. Yet the choice is hers, Backstop. You have no right to decide for her.”

“I suppose you’re right.” I’d given up everything the result of one stupid act. I sighed, told Hart that I’d called Darlene’s father.

“I know you were very close to him.”

“He was like I wish my father could’ve been. I needed to apologize to him.”

“How did he take it?”

“He was as disappointed in me as my mother was when I told her the news. Maybe more.” I felt the tears threaten to spill over, gave up the fight, let out a great sob.

“It’s okay, Backstop,” Hart said, probably because he could think of nothing else to say.

“No, it’s not,” I argued. “I can only imagine how my own father would’ve reacted. Nestor was much more civil than my father would’ve been, but he was angry, too. I’m not his flesh and blood. I hurt his little girl.”

I waited for Hart to say something. When he didn’t, I cursed myself, said, “All those months during our courtship I told her she could trust me, and all the years I spent building that trust. All a lie.”

“No, Backstop. Not a lie.”

“Then what?”

“The human condition. We’re not perfect, far from it.”

“Not every man has cheated on his wife. I imagine I’m in the minority. Nothing to be proud of, certainly nothing in which I should take solace, that I’m not the first. Nor that I’ll be the last.”

“Only God knows what’s in a man’s heart.”

I thought about that for a moment, what John was intimating. “I don’t imagine Rosalynn Carter took Jimmy’s admission that he’d lusted after women in his heart as hard as Darlene took my news.”

“Perhaps not. But we’re all capable of failing.”

“Not something I’m used to, John, failure. I’ve always tried to live to a higher code.”

“You know what God says about pride, Backstop.”

“One of the deadly sins.”

“Lucifer was exiled from Heaven over pride. Perhaps God intended this as a lesson to you, about pride.”

“I have Him to thank for this? I was perfectly happy in my marriage, content with my career, with walking away from the game in a few years, maybe finally starting a family. He couldn’t be happy for me? He had to test me, knowing, omnipotent as He is, that I would fail?”

John was silent in my ear. Was he unable to refute my argument or just letting me vent? Certainly he couldn’t be questioning his own faith, or what he believed to be God’s plan.

I felt as if I were about to be exiled from the Eden that had been my marriage. “It’s better I put out my own eyes than to lust,” I said, paraphrasing one of Christ’s teachings. “It’s sinful behavior to envy, to give in to gluttony. Yet it’s just as sinful to take pride in our accomplishments, a life well-lived. Life truly is a lose/lose situation.”

“The man who wishes to follow Christ must give up everything.”

I shook my head, fully aware Hart couldn’t see me. “I won’t pretend I understand what that means.”

“Jesus told Matthew, ‘Follow me and let the dead bury their dead.’ He meant, in the first instance, the spiritually dead. To win eternity, Backstop, we must give up everything of this earth.”

I didn’t hear Hart’s explanation. “You have no idea how sorry I am.”

“I know you are. And God knows, too.”

I snorted. “Yes, you, John, and God. But the one person who matters most will never believe another word that comes out of my mouth.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I love Darlene. More than I love baseball, more than life.”

“She loves you, too, Backstop. Even now. Give her time to miss you, your life together.”

“I know I’ve broken her trust, but I fear that if too much time goes by, she may decide she no longer loves me.”

“Sadly, that’s for her to decide, alone. You can only tell her how sorry you are, and try to reassure her of your love from a distance.”

“I know, John,” I said. “But what if it’s not enough?”

“Time will tell.”

“Yeah, time.” I thanked John for use of his ear, and for his advice, and hung up.

I turned on the TV to catch a rerun of All in the Family on some cable channel. It was the episode in which a waitress flirts with Archie and she entices him to meet her at her apartment. Once there, his guilt forces him to flee after they kiss. When he confesses to Edith, she is devastated. That Archie couldn’t go through with the encounter meant nothing to Edith; in her mind he committed adultery the moment he returned the waitress’s flirtation.

Sighing, I turned off the tube grieving for poor Edith. Archie was the one thing she always counted on, and he had let her down. In that moment, I realized that infidelity comes in many forms. A flirtation, as Archie and I both discovered, is never innocent. That night at McSorley’s, I’d enjoyed the flirtations of a stranger. By participating, I’d even encouraged it. Add to the mix that I considered withholding from Darlene the events at McSorley’s, and I was guilty even before the morning after.

I could do nothing more but wait for sleep, painfully aware that Darlene hadn’t called back. It seemed she knew something of the art of avoidance after all.