FEATURED AUTHOR: ROY M. GRIFFIS

ABOUT THE SERIES

The first two books in a four-volume Historical Fiction series (Book Three coming out in May), called By the Hands of Men. The series begins in the trenches of France during The Great War, and will conclude in California in the mid-thirties.

Book One: The Old World

Lieutenant Robert Fitzgerald has managed to retain his sanity, his humanity, and his honor during the hell of WWI's trench warfare. Charlotte Braninov fled the shifting storm of the impending Russian Revolution for the less-threatening world of field camp medicine, serving as a nurse in the most hopeless of fronts. Their friendship creates a sanctuary both could cling to in the most desperate of times. Historical fiction about life, loss, and love, By the Hands of Men explores the power that lies within each of us to harm - or to heal - all those we touch.

Book Two:  Into the Flames

Charlotte Braninov, traumatized by loss and her service as a frontline nurse, returns to war-torn Russia to find her family. Captured by the Red Army, she exchanges one hell for another. Her still-loyal Lieutenant, Robert Fitzgerald, believing the woman he loves is dead, struggles to recover from the ravages of combat and typhus. In a desperate bid to rediscover himself, he commits to serve his country as a pawn in distant Shanghai. Forging their destinies in a world reeling after The Great War, Charlotte and Robert will learn anew the horror and the beauty the hands of men can create when they descend into the flames.

INTERVIEW WITH ROY M. GRIFFIS

Roy, how did you get started writing? 
The earliest story I recall writing was when I was 7, something about being part of a pack of coyotes. No idea where that came from.

What's your favorite thing about the writing process?  
Suprising myself. This sounds egotistical, but sometimes you’re writing and an insight or a moment emerges from – I swear – outside of you and you go “I didn’t know I was that smart.”  The other really fun is when characters just show up.

Do you have a writing routine? 
Alas, the paycheck job has me on Graveyard Shift, 12 hours at a time, which has kind of killed my previous routine. I’m still struggling to find one (as an aside, I’ve discovering the Graveyard Shift is where ambition, motivation, and hope go to die).

Do you write every day? 
No, I do try to work on the writing every day, but that could be copyediting (just finished BTHOM3 edit, and now it’s off to face the cruel-to-be-kind pen of the final copy-editor) or marketing, which I dislike, as it keeps me from actually, you know, writing stuff. Much easier to write every day when that’s all I’m doing.

What do you think is hardest aspect of writing a book? 
What you have to give up. Everything costs (even salvation was paid for by Somebody). You want to write a novel, but be a decent dad to your kid at the same time? Goodbye sleep. You have to give up something to make space in your life for the book.

What’s more important – characters or plot?
Ah, man! I guess I’m more of a plot guy . . . I want to know what happens to the characters I’ve grown to care about. (Did I manage to slip “both” in?)

Yes, you did! How often do you read?   
Varies a lot these days. Because I am writing either historical fiction or alternative history type fiction, when I am working on those, I end up reading a lot of non-fiction. I want my work to have verisimilitude, to have that “telling detail” that makes the novel feel of the time and place factually and emotionally. Right now, I have a working shelf of 16 non-fiction books/memoirs that I’ll be reading before and as I work on By the Hands of Men Four.  But once in a while, I’ll throw on a fiction audio book for the commute to work, just to cross-train my brain a little.

What is your writing style?
I write heartbreaking works of staggering genius? Oh, wait, that’s been done. I don’t know if I could sum up my “style,” exactly, but I’ll tell you want I’m attempting to do: I want to transport the reader, convincingly, to another time and place, while telling them a story that will move them emotionally, and, who knows, maybe even change their life for the better, even if just a little. I have no time for nihilistic “life is awful and people suck” kinds of stories. That’s completely wussy writing by people who don’t believe in the power of individual choice (or perhaps fear the responsibility that confers upon them). I know that’s not an academically beloved point of view, but it’s true. Our choices determine our lives, allow us to rise about our circumstances. Look at Dr. Ben Carson – son of mentally ill single mother in the projects, and now a guy changing people’s lives in a serious, positive, amazing way. Choices.


What do you think makes a good story? 
For me, it’s a compelling story that makes me ask “what’s going to happen next” about people that that I can understand in some way, who have the ability to grow and change. I hate “victim” books, and there are some authors I’ve read that I’ll never read again (James Elroy and Thomas Harris come to mind) because of their reveling in the depravity of their characters and their conditions.
 
What books do you currently have published?
The Big Bang, Volume One of the Lonesome George Chronicles
By the Hands of Men, Book One:  The Old World
By the Hands of Men, Book Two:  Into the Flames


What do you know now that you wish you knew then? 
Hold on, I have to refill my margarita if we’re getting this confessional . . . when I was younger (and allegedly dumber, the jury is still out) I had this stupid mental construction that all I “was” was a writer. So that if a story was rejected (as they often were), it meant I was a failure. Took me a long time to get past that to where I recognized that, yes, I was a writer, and a writer writes. If I was fortunate (in the Louis Pasteur sense of “fortune favors the prepared mind”), I might get published, even have some success. But I could live a decent, fulfilling life without needing the “seal of approval” from outside sources. But it’s nice to have, don’t get me wrong.

For what would you like to be remembered? 
Great question. At my wake there’s going to be a margarita machine, and everybody will get to stand up and tell funny stories about me. I’d like to be remembered as a decent, hard-working guy, a good father, and somebody who told some good stories.

I bet that will be one helleva wake! Would you make a good character in a book? 
Ah, hell, yes. I’m a renaissance man, but I think I’d be the guy to die toward the end of Act Two. Useful, but not the main character, probably.

What’s one thing you never leave the house without?
I have an all-purpose survival knife, EMT worthy. Has a webbing cutter (seat-belts), glass-shattering point, that kind of stuff. I like to be ready.

What’s your favorite thing to do on date night? 
Gad, I get to admit how boring I am. Pepperoni pizza, a movie, and, well, night-time adult gymnastics.

What drives you crazy? 
Lack of dependability. Don’t tell me you’re going to do something and then never follow through.

What do you like to do when there’s nothing to do? 
Catch up on movies.

Where is your favorite place to visit? 
United States: San Francisco. Overseas: London. Both places I would love to live.

What would you name your autobiography?
White Boy from Nebraska.

I'd read that! What’s your least favorite chore?
Any chore that involves cleaning up other people’s messes. I already have two jobs, don’t want another, and I have already been a janitor. Don’t care to repeat the experience.


Would you rather be a movie star, sports star, or rock star?
Of the three, movie star. I love film . . . closest thing we have to a shared dream. A great film can take 500 strangers on a similar emotional voyage. I think film has great power to uplift (see: Babe) or debase (see: Pulp Fiction).


What is the most daring thing you've done? 
Probably when I was twenty-six, deciding to be a Rescue Swimmer in the Coast Guard. I’d never been a physical kid (I was a drama geek in high school), but I desperately needed a challenge, a rite-of-passage. So I went and found one where I could actually help people at the same time, but it was incredibly challenging physically, and especially mentally.

What is your most embarrassing moment?
Gack, not enough terrabytes on my PC to list all of those.

What choices in life would you like to have a redo on? 
You know, there are moments I would like to go back and act with more graciousness or kindness, but redo completely? Nah. Even the cruddy stuff was part of the forging of who I am.

What’s one of your favorite quotes? 
“A little of something is better than a lot of nothing.”

If you had a talk show who would your dream guest be? 
Shucks, most of them are dead. Desmond Doss, for one. Was a WWII Medal of Honor winner . . . never picked up a weapon. He was a 7th Day Adventist, had a religious exemption, but he knew other people were fighting and dying for him state-side. Joined the Army, who couldn’t figure out what to do with him. Became a medic in the Pacific, saved a hell of a lot people. Showed you can be incredibly brave without the prop of a weapon, and that guts can be measured in a lot of different ways.


What’s one thing that very few people know about you? 
I hate to admit it, but I have a soft spot for romantic comedies. Some people report the good ones have been known to make me tear up.


What is the wallpaper on your computer’s desktop? 
Incredible and borderline lunatic underwater photography taken in the Pacific, I think at the graveyards of some WWII battles, with women in flowing gowns posing like ethereal spirts on the broken vessels crusted with coral and seaplants. Very trippy yet tasteful.


Do you have any hidden talents?
I’m not a bad cook.


Describe yourself in 5 words.
Smolderingly sexy yet quietly humble
.

A winning combination. What’s your favorite song?
"Sentimental Hygiene" by Warren Zevon. Great and underheard song.


What’s your biggest pet peeve about writing? 
Marketing. Just . . . shudder. One of the reasons I wanted an agent, would gladly fork over the ten percent, just so they could shill my work and I could do the work.


What is your favorite movie? 
I have favorites in different genres. But Starman with Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen is up there. 


Do you have a favorite book? 
Watership Down. Re-read it every year or so. Damn, it’s powerful.


If you had to choose a cliché about life, what would it be?
TANSTAFL: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.


What are you working on now? 
I’m editing Book Two of the Lonesome George Chronicles, The Fire This Time for my publisher. Really aching to get to work on By the Hands of Men, Book Four. I never intended to write a series, but the story I heard in my head just kept going. I’m pretty sure that will be the last book in this series, though.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR FROM THE AUTHOR

Born in Texas City, TX, the son of a career Air Force meteorologist. Attended a variety of schools at all of the hot spots of the nation, such as Abilene, Texas and Bellevue, Nebraska. Sent to my grandparent’s house in Tucson, Arizona when things were tough at home. I was pretty damn lost, as my grandparents were largely strangers to me. My older brother, a more taciturn type, refused to discuss what was going on. Fortunately, like so many kids before me, I was rescued by literature. Or, at least, by fiction.

In a tiny used bookstore that was just one block up from a dirt road, I discovered that some good soul had unloaded his entire collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “John Carter of Mars” series in Ballantine Paperback. Moved by some impulse, I spent my RC Cola money on the first book, A Princess of Mars. I think what struck me was how these books were possessed of magic: they were able to transport me far from this dusty land of relatives who I didn’t know and relatives pretended not to know me to another dusty land of adventure, heroism, nobility, and even love. It was the first magic I’d encountered that wasn’t a patent fraud, and when I closed the stiff paperback with the lurid images on the cover, I decided it was the kind of magic I wanted to dedicate the rest of my life to mastering. And, thus, I was saved.

Since then, I’ve never looked back. I’ve written poems, short stories (twice runner-up in the Playboy college fiction contest), plays (winning some regional awards back East and a collegiate Historical Play-writing Award), and screenplays. I’m a member of the WGAw, with one unproduced screenplay sold to Fox Television. Along the way, I’ve done the usual starving artist jobs. Been a janitor, a waiter, a clerk in a bookstore. I was the 61st Aviation Rescue Swimmer in the Coast Guard (all that Tarzan reading wasn’t wasted). I’m also not a bad cook, come to think of it. Currently, I’m a husband, father, and cat-owner. I’m an avid bicyclist and former EMT.

I live in Southern California with my lovely wife. My friends call me “Griff,” my parents call me “Roy,” and my college-age son calls me “Dadman.” It’s a good life. By the Hands of Men, Book Three: The Wrath of a Righteous Man will be released in May, 2016.

Connect with Roy:

Website  | Amazon 
 

Featured Author: Christoph Fischer

Christoph Fischer was here in April to talk about his first novel, The Luck of the Weissensteiners. Christoph is a great supporter of indie authors, and I'm happy to have him back to tell us about his newest release, Sebastian, a historical fiction novel.

About the book:

Sebastian is the story of a young man who has his leg amputated before World War I. When his father is drafted to the war it falls on to him to run the family grocery store in Vienna, to grow into his responsibilities, bear loss and uncertainty and hopefully find love.

Sebastian Schreiber, his extended family, their friends and the store employees experience the ‘golden days’ of pre-war Vienna and the timed of the war and the end of the Monarchy while trying to make a living and to preserve what they hold dear.

Fischer convincingly describes life in Vienna during the war, how it affected the people in an otherwise safe and prosperous location, the beginning of the end for the Monarchy, the arrival of modern thoughts and trends, the Viennese class system and the end of an era.

Interview with Christoph Fischer:

Welcome back, Christoph. Tell us about Sebastian.

Sebastian is based on an image I have always had about my grandfather, whom I unfortunately never met. He was alive much later than the setting of Sebastian, but his story is that of my protagonist, a young man with an amputated leg, an injury that is not war related, and someone who has to rise to the challenge that a war brings to his life.

A friend of my father had a wooden leg and I was scared stiff of it when I was younger. My grandparents divorced in 1933 and he re-married. He and his family lived on the other side of the Berlin Wall and we never met any of them until the late eighties, by which time my grandfather sadly had already passed on. I only learned a little about him from my aunt, who adored him.

Much of the details she gave me about his life and his rather philosophical and wonderful outlook on life have found its way into the actual grandfather figure in the book, Oscar.

Do you think you're like any of your characters?

I am afraid in this book I am not like anyone at all, but many of the characters have small parts of me. I was a bookworm like Sebastian is as a child, and I shared some of his insecurities in my early twenties. 
I used to go to séances and see Spirit Mediums just like Mathilde Glueck, and I have an interest in Psychology like her mother Theresa Glueck.
I am a hard worker like Ingeborg, maybe that is a Germanic connection….


If you could be one of your characters, which one would you choose?

Well, as Northern European I am often told I am too stuck up, often even viciously referred to as the character ‘Monica’ in the TV series “Friends.” I would go for Eva, the Hungarian help, because she has such a relaxed attitude towards life and work, yet achieves so much so easily. I could do with a dose of that….apparently.


A lot of my other characters have a hard lot in my book, and I would rather not swap with them.



Understandable. Tell us about your favorite scene in the book.

The scene when Sebastian’s mother does or does not (I can’t tell you which, you have to read the book yourself) find out that her husband has an affair with one of the assistants. It was so much fun to write, I just could not make up my mind whether her husband should get away with it or not. That whole sequence was great fun from a writer’s point of view.


As a reader of my own novel I enjoy the scenes between the Glueck women and Vera, Sebastian’s mother, as they try to cheer Vera up and make her their pet project, the whims of rich women trying to chase away their boredom.

With what five real people would you most like to be stuck on an island?

You, Amy, because you ask such fun questions!
Many celebrities have a bad reputation for off-screen behavior, but I will “settle” for:
Tina Fey – to keep you company with the jokes
Ewan MacGregor – an adventurer with charisma
Barbara Streisand – to entertain us with her singing and tales about Hollywood
Ola Rapace (Swedish James Bond actor) or Robert Downey Jr., to go hunt and gather for us.

Cool. I'm totally there--and honored to be one of your five. You were serious, right? Who are your favorite authors? (Besides me, of course.)


You, Amy, I learned from my mistake. Only you.

Nice try, buddy. But I'm not buying it! So...try again.

Well maybe Ty Patterson, Paulette Mahurin, Suneeta Misra, and Bernice L. Rocque.

I'm crushed. Just kidding. How long is your to-be-read pile?

It is endless. The kindle is deceptive as to how many books are hiding on the next page in the inventory. I also have a huge pile of paperbacks, secretly stashed away in the loft. I bring them in from my trips into town and my partner does not know that I spent half the grocery budget on such luxury, particularly when I never get round to reading them all. Please don’t tell on me.

Your secret is safe with me. You get to decide who would read your audiobook. Who would you choose?


Laura Linney, that woman can read the local telephone directory and I would listen.


Your two published books are historical fiction. Do you ever see yourself writing in another genre?

Yes, absolutely. I have a few books in draft form waiting to be edited and they are not historical at all. Temporary issues are just as important, and I have written about mental health, Alzheimer's, and escapism. I just need to find the time to tighten them up and publish them.


Maybe your manuscript on Alzheimer's should meet my manuscript on Alzheimer's. It's quite a subject. Tell me some of your favorite quotes.

“Only the development of compassion and understanding for others can bring us the tranquility and happiness we all seek.” ― Dalai Lama XIV

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.” ― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 5: A Game of You


"You don’t expect the Spanish Inquisition." -- Monty Python

I would have to agree with all of those. Good choices. Where’s home for you?

Home is currently near Bath in Wiltshire, UK. I am still sentimentally attached to my home town in Bavaria but my family itself is spread across the continent and due to the vast amount of travelling in my last day job, I am shamefully lazy in making the effort and going there more often.

Because my family was not ‘proper’ German or Bavarian, I have developed a slight sense of homelessness. After 7 years with my partner in Wiltshire I am settled in the relationship but location wise I could move to somewhere in Wales or even to Goose Pimple Junction tomorrow.

Wow. You just put Goose Pimple Junction in the same category as Wales. That's so cool. I

think I could live either of those places too.

Okay...tell us about the puppies!

Aw, yes. They are our third litter of Labradoodles. We have three adult girls, Molly, Greta and Wilma. Molly had 9 and 12 and has retired from birthing. Greta was never inclined to have ‘relations,’ and Wilma, our youngest ‘adult’ just had 6 gorgeous, charming heart breakers.


They are 8 weeks old at the moment and an absolute delight. All different colours and playful characters, they will soon have to leave the family and make other people happy.


And that they will. I have a Labradoodle, and they're great dogs. In fact, this picture of your Molly looks like my Cooper. I wonder if she could teach him to read.
Your last meal would be…Haloumi Cheese and Spinach Curry

If you could only keep one book, what would it be?

Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. It is an epic book of 900 pages, I have read it several  times, and I enjoyed it every single time. It would provide the maximum benefit from only one book.

Would you rather work in a library or a bookstore?

That is a tough call. Can I go 50/50 on that one?

Sure.

I love the peace and quiet of a good library but also the buzz of a great bookstore.

You just won the lottery. What’s the first thing you would buy?

I am not very materialistic. I think I would hire people to market my books and those of others I think are really good, maybe even found an independent publishing house. Know any authors looking to publish? ;-)

I would be your first query. I hope you win the lottery! You’re given the day off, and you can do anything but write. What would you do?

Sunbathe in a hammock in the garden and read. Maybe a book set in Goose Pimple Junction?

Excellent. If you could be any fictional character for one day, who would you be?

Maybe a character in a Murakami novel, they seem to have great and bizarre adventures.

Name one thing you couldn’t live without.

Dogs. I used to be scared of them, now I wouldn’t want to live without them.

You have very literary dogs! If only they could write reviews...

What would your dream office look like?

Spacious with lots of clear surfaces (will never last) and a great view of the countryside. Dogs resting at my feet (also never lasts) and several assistants.

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

Playing with the puppies, spending time with the older dogs, reading in the bath tub, watching silly TV (currently hooked on the 1970s show “Soap”), going to the gym and sitting in the garden.

All worthy past times. Okay, spill it...what are you currently working on?

Another historical novel, set in Denmark, Finland, and Lapland, about a group of idealists during the Finnish Civil War, when Finland broke away from Russia during the revolution.

Sounds great. You will be back to tell us about it, right? I want first dibs!

About the author:

Christoph Fischer was brought up near the Austrian border in Bavaria and has since lived in Hamburg, London, Brighton and Bath. He always loved books and one of his first jobs was in a library. Sebastian is his second book and is part of the Three Nations Trilogy. The Luck of The Weissensteiners was published in November 2012 and has a thematic connection but no direct link to the plot of Sebastian.


Since becoming an author, Christoph has begun to support other authors and has joined several internet author groups.



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

Buy the book!
Amazon US | Kindle | Amazon UK | Kindle |