You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
He’s been the loyal, stay-at-home son and brother for all those years, cooking in the family restaurant. I could see Cassia’s uncle Barney in my novel What’s Left plagued by a dark intensity I imagine building up over the years.
Tell us about somebody you’ve seen erupt and run off in strange directions. How did things end?
~*~
the verdict, about time, no more dry and warm she who had been urging me to attend to be together again instead gave me the brush off with no explanation (and still none) but another led into the time and place of a heavy collision, no, things weren’t collecting dust on a shelf or even a one-night stand, these rejections add up without candlelight, fancy linen, or the wine and here it’s gone forecasting brutal winter and not much in the way of mountaineering
When Cassia ventures out into the executive ranks of high-stakes corporate intrigue, as she does in What’s Left, she sometimes resembles Jaya in my tale Nearly Canaan.
What does it mean to be a woman in the world of management? Are there any advantages?
~*~
My novels are vailable at the Apple Store, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, Scribd, Smashwords, Sony’s Kobo, and other fine ebook distributors and at Amazon in both Kindle and paperback.
In my novel What’s Left, Cassia’s aunt Nita continues her ongoing role of knowing just about everyone and what they’re up too. It’s a vital social role that a few rare individuals seem naturally inclined to fill, as my novels Daffodil Uprising and Hometown News demonstrate.
Tell us about somebody you know who serves as the “switchboard operator” in your circles.
though I did see a moose along the Kancamagus and the next day, at sea, three humpbacks, including a mother and calf we followed more than an hour as the wind blew their misty exhalations across us a week before a perfect ocean sailing and that was about it, except for my annual Labor Day trek up the rails along the Merrimack and a brisk swim before the pool closed yet any view says there’s something out there you’re not getting
In my novel, What’s Left, Cassia becomes a rising executive with half of the country as her territory. The experience of growing up in the family restaurant gives her a head start over her colleagues, but she’s also much more vulnerable in a highly competitive, often hostile, financial world, than she’d ever been back home.
What are the biggest threats in being a woman in management? How would you avoid them?
~*~
Using skills and connections he acquires working in a shipyard in Greece, Aristotle relocates to Indiana in my novel What’s Left.
How did your grandfather wind up pursuing the work he did?
fittingly ends spooky summer mostly continuous deluge (four Yuppieback novels and a collection of essays) a Labor Day weekend reading binge as its best of thee often . hoping for all perfection, write sometime, OK? I never could keep up with developments / Everlastingly
Let me repeat, What’s Left is my final novel, even though it’s appeared before several earlier ones — or their later revisions. That doesn’t mean I might not rework some more of my earlier books, but I have no intention (at this point, ahem) of undertaking such an ambitious project.
Still, if it’s ever successful, there can be a demand for a sequel. There are many possibilities that point to further development.
One plot twist I considered was this:
A handful of the Erinyes’ grandchildren rebel by returning to attend college across the street from Carmichael’s. Perhaps it’s inevitable that they apply for jobs in the restaurant.
Can they work? We’ll let them decide about becoming cousins.
This could have opened considerations about rebalancing the ownership, for one thing. Or more dimensions to our understanding of what it means to be a family. Or even their own reasons that parallel those of Cassia’s father in moving way back in the early ’70s.
~*~
It’s a big book, admittedly. But it could be a lot bigger.
Where would you take the story of What’s Left from what’s already there? What would you like to have answered?
~*~
more complex than I’d suspected / morally rigid but sensual: her garden a clue, not straight rows but clusters and clumps with small surprises inserted wherever, all kinds of colorful dimensions, some of them tasty or sweet along with some bitter /
Jnana's Red Barn 