FEATURED AUTHOR: CARL HARE

ABOUT THE BOOKS


Odysseus: On the River of Time, book 1


Odysseus begins where Homer's Odyssey leaves off, and recounts the Greek hero's final quest to settle his debt with the god Poseidon. He must travel to many cities carrying a wooden oar, find a land that knows no salt, and offer a sacrifice to the god on the site where a stranger asks the purpose of the oar. During his perilous journey he becomes involved in the intrigues swirling among the great Trojan War veterans and their heirs, and must also protect his own family and kingdom. Written in a poetic style reminiscent of the Homeric past, Odysseus is Book One of the epic trilogy, On the River of Time, which examines three figures - one mythical, one historical, and one fictional - from different time periods spanning almost three thousand years: Odysseus in Greece; Spenser, the poet, in Ireland; and Archer, a renegade actor/director in Canada.

Spenser: On the River of Time, book 2

Spenser portrays the last four turbulent months of Edmund Spenser’s life as he and his family are caught up in the Munster Revolt in Ireland in 1598. As he fights to survive the invasion of his home, his life as a refugee in Cork, and his return to England, his memories and thoughts trace through the sweep of his life, he continues to work on the last book of The Fairie Queene, and a treatise he writes about the Irish rebellions turns out to have far-reaching consequences.

Written in the form of his own Spenserian stanzas, Spenser evokes the sense of the Elizabethan Period and is Book Two of the epic trilogy On the River of Time, taking us to the second time-period of the three thousand years spanned in the trilogy and the second figure of the three—Odysseus, the mythical hero, in ancient Greece; Spenser, the poet, in Ireland, and Archer, the fictional renegade actor/director in present-day Canada.

Through their journeys and struggles we explore the nature of human perceptions and drives, our use of the Mask in our lives, encounters with the Other, acceptance or denial of the consequences of our actions, and the continuity over the millennia of the universal human attributes.

Book Details:


Title: Odysseus, book 1, Spenser book 2


Author: Carl Hare


Genre: ancient and classical poetry, epic poetry


Series: On the River of Time


Publisher: Quattro Books (April 1, 2017)


Page count: 550 pages

LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT WITH CARL HARE

Things you need in order to write: my workbook, one of a variety of Sharpies, no distractions.
Things that hamper your writing: too many other things to do, including emails, etc.

Easiest thing about being a writer: letting the imagination take over.

Hardest thing about being a writer: editing what I’ve written.



Things you never want to run out of: that wood product that was bought up in the early days of the plague.
Things you wish you’d never bought: a carton of cans of chick peas.


Words that describe you: pleasant, witty, imaginative, loquacious.
Words that describe you but you wish they didn’t: old (88 in 2020), fixated, story-ridden.


Favorite music: any music by Mozart.
Music that make your ears bleed: heavy metal.


Something you’re really good at: talking.
Something you’re really bad at: talking.

Something you wish you could do: swim a mile in my pool, play the piano.
Something you wish you’d never learned to do: never learned to shut my mouth.


Something you like to do: listen to classical music.

Something you wish you’d never done: spent more time with P.K. Page.


Last best thing you ate: blueberries in maple syrup.

Last thing you regret eating: burnt toast.

Things you always put in your books: the meaningful sounds of words together.

Things you never put in your books: racism.


Things to say to an author: “I want to read you work again.”
Things not to say to an author: “So why is she the main character?”


Favorite places you’ve been: Jasper, Banff, Victoria.

Places you never want to go to again: Disneyland, Disney World.


People you’d like to invite to dinner: Stephen Fry, RH Thompson.

People you’d cancel dinner on: Doug Ford.

Favorite things to do: read, watch good things on TV or elsewhere.

Things you’d run through a fire wearing gasoline pants to get out of doing: killing an animal, laughing at a disadvantaged person.


Things that make you happy: my family, writing.

Things that drive you crazy: my family, writing.


Proudest moment: Seeing my children graduate from university.
Most embarrassing moment: when I forgot to mention that it was my wife’s birthday when I received an award.


Best thing you’ve ever done: marrying my wife.
Biggest mistake: not finishing my thesis before I went to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.


The last thing you did for the first time: write an epic trilogy.

Something you’ll never do again: write an epic trilogy (I don’t have another twenty-seven years, which is what the first trilogy has taken).

BOOK TRAILER

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Carl Hare in his long career has been a professor, actor, director, playwright, and poet. Odysseus, Book One of his trilogy On the River of Time, was published in the spring of 2017. Other work includes performances of his play The Eagle and the Tiger and his adaptation of Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman; the setting of six of his children’s poems to music by Canadian composer Malcolm Forsyth; a commissioned poem for Forsyth’s A Ballad of Canada, performed by the National Arts Centre Orchestra;  A Weathering of Years, a collection of poetry published in 2015; Odysseus, Book One of On the River of Time in 2017;  and Spenser, Book Two of On the River of Time, in 2019.  


Connect with Carl:

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