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  • Amy's Bookshelf Reviews

Featured Author: James Musgrave


Q: In one sentence, tell me something that describes you as a person?

A: For a Lacto-Ovo Vegetarian, I don’t sweat much.

Q: How many books have you written? How many of those are published?

A: 3 non-fiction, 1 published at Harcourt-Brace, 2 self-pub. 12 self-pubbed novels. 3 self-pubbed short fiction collections.

Q: Do you have an upcoming release? If yes, tell me the title and impending release date.

A: The Spiritualist Murders (Portia of the Pacific Historical Mysteries, #2), July 18, 2018.

Q: Tell me about how you come up with your titles for your stories. Do you create the title before or after you write the book, and does it ever change from the initial title?

A: Most titles are given following completion of the book. A minority are given before, as in the case of choosing a title of a short story to serve as the title of the collection.

Q: Out of all your characters in all of your books, who/what (sometimes a setting can also be an important “character”) do you think is the most interesting and why?

A: In the Nineties, I was enthralled by the work of Thomas Harris and his Hannibal Lecter series. Therefore, my creation of the character of historical serial killer, Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo, was quite interesting to me as an historical mystery and thriller author. In my novel Russian Wolves, I was using a foreign setting (the old USSR), and I tried to create a child-killer who was actually, in the end, quite noble, compared to the political realities going on around him. Chikatilo was used by others (like Lecter); however, Chikatilo was not used to solve crimes. He was used by the Russian Mafia to commit assassinations.

Q: If you could “create” your own genre of what you write, what would you call your books?

A: That’s quite an interesting question, Ms. Shannon. We indie authors love those kinds of queries because we’re pretty much rogues by nature. Since I love to mirror the socio-political issues going on today in my so-called “historical mysteries,” I would like my books to be categorized as “Historical Mirror Mysteries,” or something to that effect. I want my readers to understand they’re getting a good dose of reality in the “fiction” that truly duplicates the same activities going on all around them. If they would simply, as the great philosophical dark fiction author, Thomas Ligotti, says “become awake” to them, instead of trying to escape all the time, perhaps they could change the reality by changing themselves.

Q: Without quoting your back cover synopsis, tell me about the last book you published.

A: In The Spiritualist Murders, Clara Shortridge Foltz, Esq., and her entourage, must use a pseudo-religious movement in order to network with other suffragists about the personal issues that concern them. In this case, spousal abuse, the sexist patriarchy in society, and other Feminist causes. When a “spiritualist” male misogynist begins using abused wives of wealthy husbands to extract wealth, by controlling them through drugs and hypnosis, Clara Foltz and her intrepid corps “go rogue” in order to track him down. They have at their disposal a teenage orphan who has clairvoyant skills of her own, and this proves to be the key to this killer’s ultimate undoing inside none other than the original Winchester House in San Jose. I must say, I believe I used this historic house in a more creative way than the recent film Winchester did, but I’ll let my readers decide that.

Q: Tell me something about yourself that is separate from writing.

A: I also help other indie authors learn to self-publish if they want to go down that long road, mostly alone. At 72, my road is getting shorter, so I want to help all I can before my exit is upon me.

Q: Who is your favorite Author?

A: Thomas Ligotti.

Q: What is the last book that you read? (Not counting anything you wrote)

A: God is a Bedlamite, a fantastic historical novel about the brother-sister act of Friedrich and Elisabeth Nietzsche, by the great indie author, Katie Salvo. She did a whooping good job at recreating that time period and those two miscreants.

Q: When writing, do you have a system or something you plan, or do you just write?

A: Mysteries, in my mind, are meant to surprise, so no, I don’t plan. I want to surprise myself. Therefore, why should I already know what’s going to happen? I hate it when commercial publishers require such absurdities as outlines! They love planning everything. Where’s the spontaneity in that?

Q: Why do you write?

A: I guess I always liked what Flannery O’Conner said. I write “to find out what I think about something.”

Q: Do you read your own work a lot? If so, what does it do for you?

A: Probably too much. I’m not exactly Norman Mailer, who “bragged” that he never read anything other than what he wrote, but I do get-off on my own stuff quite a lot. Also, there’s that “editing thing.”

Q: What is your favorite type of music? Is there one genre (or song, band etc...) that brings out your creativeness more than others?

A: I listen to classical instrumental as I write. Nothing with words. Too distracting. Jazz, I like, but with coffee? Nope.

Q: As an author, I find that the hardest thing to write (for me) is the synopsis that will be on the back cover or book’s description. When you write, what is the hardest line to write, the first line, the last line or the synopsis for the book?

A: I’m with you. The synopsis, I am certain, was invented by some little advertising guy sitting in his office, his feet up on the desk, his eyes riveted upon sales numbers of those books that he insists “made it” because of a marvelously crafted blurb on the cover.

Q: If you could sit down and have a coffee (or whatever beverage) with anyone, living or dead, from any era, any time, who would it be and why? (You can pick up to 3 persons).

A: Thomas Ligotti because he created “philosophical horror stories” better than anybody I’ve ever read, and I’d like to pick his brain (not literally). J. D. Salinger, because I’d like to ask him about carrying around the hand-written pages of Catcher in the Rye as he slogged all over Europe chasing Nazis. Finally, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., as he made me laugh out loud so many times that I wanted to reach into the book and hug him!

Q: What does it mean to be a “successful” writer?

A: A writer who is alive to see the last punctuation mark placed at the end of his creation.

Q: What do you want to accomplish, so when you look back at your life, you can say “I did that”?

A: I want to get my son, Christopher, to stop smoking.

Q: Any final thoughts that you want to give to your fans or even future authors?

A: Wake-up!

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