FEATURED AUTHOR: SCOTT KAUFFM

ABOUT THE BOOK

After his wife's death, reporter Jeremy Michaels concentrates on writing news stories that try to bring justice to the underdogs of the world, until an announcement by Buckingham Palace shatters his glass cocoon. The village hermit from the hometown Jeremy fled is to be knighted for still-classified services during World War II, a man Jeremy knows well from a certain childhood adventure. The editor of the newspaper Jeremy writes for sends him back home to find out why, but he is scooped by the hometown paper's revelation that the man worked inside the French Resistance. Yet the knighthood is refused, and Jeremy's chance to save his job—and an old friendship—lies in discovering the truth.

Book Details

Title: Saving Thomas

Author: Scott Kauffman

Genre: historical suspense

Publisher: The Wild Rose Press (February 21, 2022)

Print length: 306 pages

LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT WITH SCOTT KAUFFMAN

A few of your favorite things: books, Van Gogh prints hanging on my walls, collection of fountain pens, house plants (I go in for the jungle look).
Things you need to throw out: all those annoying letters from the IRS. They really need to think about saving the trees.

Things you need in order to write: coffee, quiet, my writer’s sweaters, music.
Things that hamper your writing: noise.

Things you love about writing: how I transport myself into another world.
Things you hate about writing: never enough time.

Easiest thing about being a writer: letting my imagination soar.
Hardest thing about being a writer: ignoring criticism.

Things you love about where you live: Southern California along the coast probably has the best weather in the world. Seldom above 80 degrees or below 40 in winter. Usually in the 60s and 70s with 300 days of sunshine. More rain, however, would be welcome. Humidity usually very moderate except when the summer monsoons drift over the mountains up from Mexico. Then there is the Hollywood connection: off my patio I can see Shirley Temple’s house later sold to Buddy Ebsen (think The Beverly Hillbillies) who in turn sold it to Joey Bishop, member in good standing of Frank Sinatra’s Rat Pack. Humphrey Bogart once harbored his boat here. A house over on Balboa Island was featured in the movie Jaws. John Wayne and Nicholas Cage both once owned homes in the same gated community where John Wayne every afternoon walked his granddaughter across Pacific Coast Highway for ice cream. Not a mile from my writing office I can see Kobe’s house up in the hills of Newport Coast.
Things that make you want to move: cost of living, congestion, lack of civility.

Things you never want to run out of: coffee, whiskey.
Things you wish you’d never bought: I’m pretty conservative when it comes to money (some nay sayers would call me cheap) so I give a lot of thought before opening my wallet.

Words that describe you: quiet, thoughtful, open.
Words that describe you but you wish they didn’t: impatient.

Favorite foods: pizza and beer.
Things that make you want to throw up:  nothing really. I’m pretty easy-going.

Favorite music: classical, especially sacred choral music from the baroque and renaissance eras.
Music that make your ears bleed: rap will do it.

Favorite beverage: Irish whiskey.

Something that gives you a pickle face: liver.

Favorite smell: the smell of horse.
Something that makes you hold your nose: someone who hasn’t bathed for the last seven days so I try to make sure I at least bathe every six days.

Something you’re really good at: I don’t know if I am a good writer but it is something I work very hard at and enjoy.
Something you’re really bad at: housecleaning.

Something you wish you could do: play the violin.
Something you wish you’d never learned to do: nothing. Good judgment is the result of bad judgment that comes from the mistakes we’ve made along the way.

Something you like to do: drive north on Pacific Coast Highway through the Central Coast and Big Sur.
Something you wish you’d never done: nothing. I’ve learned from it all.

Things you’d walk a mile for: a cup of coffee if my percolator went on the fritz first thing in the morning.
Things that make you want to run screaming from the room: snakes.

Things you always put in your books: the only subjects worth writing about are love, loss and death.

Things you never put in your books: erotica.

Things to say to an author: constructive criticism is always welcome.

Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: “I gave you a one-star review and was being generous at that.”

Favorite places you’ve been: California Central Coast and Big Sur.

Places you never want to go to again: with a few exceptions, just about anywhere in Los Angeles.

Favorite things to do: writing, reading, listening to music, horseback riding. Rock climbing back in the days when I was young and stupid.

Things you’d run through a fire wearing gasoline pants to get out of doing: housecleaning.

Things that make you happy: writing.
Things that drive you crazy: not being able to write.

Proudest moment: getting admitted to law school.
Most embarrassing moment: one (or more) too many glasses of Champaign at our wedding reception.

Biggest lie you’ve ever told: “Of course I love you.”
A lie you wish you’d told: “Of course I love you.”

Best thing you’ve ever done: giving hours and hours of pro bono legal services with no hope of payment.
Biggest mistake: being too impatient to listen.

Most daring thing you’ve ever done: rock climbing without a rope.
Something you chickened out from doing: skydiving.

The last thing you did for the first time: baking cookies.
Something you’ll never do again: baking cookies.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR  

Scott is an attorney in Irvine, California, where his practice focuses upon white-collar crime with his clients providing him endless story fodder. His short story “Cat Dance” was short-listed for the 2018 Adelaide Literary Award. He is the author of the coming-of-age novel Revenants, The Odyssey Home (Moonshine Cove Publishing) and the legal-suspense novel, In Deepest Consequences (Medallion Press) and is the recipient of the Mighty River Short Story Contest and the Hackney Literary Award. His short fiction has appeared in Big Muddy, Adelaide Magazine, and Lascaux Review.

Connect with Scott:
Website  |  Blog  |   Facebook  |  Twitter  |   Goodreads

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