Welcome to the TRB Lounge, the section of TRB that helps authors and publishers promote their titles.
Today, we are featuring Maggie Latecomer, one of the lead characters in author Rich Marcello’s The Latecomers, for a Character Interview.
About The Author
Rich Marcello
Rich is the author of four novels, The Color of Home, The Big Wide Calm, and The Beauty of the Fall, The Latecomers, and the poetry collection, The Long Body That Connects Us All. He also teaches creative writing at Seven Bridges’ Writer Collaborative. Previously, he enjoyed a successful career as a technology executive, managing several multi-billion dollar businesses for Fortune 500 companies.
The Color of Home was published in 2013. Author Myron Rogers says the novel “sings an achingly joyful blues tune, a tune we’ve all sung, but seldom with such poetry and depth.” The Big Wide Calmwas published in 2014. The US Review of Books stated, “Marcello’s novel has a lot going for it. Well-written, thought-provoking, and filled with flawed characters, it meets all of the basic requirements of best-of-show in the literary fiction category.” The Beauty of the Fall was published in 2016. The Midwest Review of Books called it “a deftly crafted novel by a master of the storytelling arts” and “a consistently compelling read from cover to cover.” The Long Body That Connects Us All was published in 2018. Publishers Daily said, “Fathers and sons have always shared a powerful and sometimes difficult bond. Rich Marcello, in a marvelous new collection of extraordinary verse, drinks deeply from this well as he channels the thoughts and feelings of every father for his son.”
As anyone who has read Rich’s work can tell you, his books deal with life’s big questions: love, loss, creativity, community, aging, self-discovery. His novels are rich with characters and ideas, crafted by a natural storyteller, with the eye and the ear of a poet. For Rich, writing and art making is about connection, or as he says, about making a difference to a least one other person in the world, something he has clearly achieved many times over, both as an artist, a mentor, and a teacher.
Rich lives in Massachusetts with his family. He is currently working on his fifth and sixth novels, Cenotaphs and In the Seat of the Eddas.
YOU CAN CONNECT WITH THE AUTHOR HERE
The Interview
Welcome to TRB! We are really excited to have you over. Please give our readers a brief introduction about yourself before we begin.
I’m Maggie Latecomer. I live in Northampton, Massachusetts with my husband, Charlie. We’ve been together for twenty years now, and I’m looking forward to a long and prosperous retirement with him.
What is your age and what do you do for a living?
I’m fifty-five years old, and I’m retired, not by choice. I was told I lost my job as an executive at a big pharmaceutical company because of the economy, though I think it has more to do with ageism.
What are your hobbies?
I love to paint, and I’m good at it. Mostly abstract stuff done in oil, and lately, Charlie is a subject in all of them.
Please share some of your beliefs (can be religious or political or anything really that will help you get to know you better), morals and principles that you like to adhere to. Do you have any theories regarding things around you?
I’m a big believer in moais, an Okinawan word defined as a circle of people who purposely meet up and look out for each other. Mine consists of Charlie and me though I often think about adding some of our close friends. Maybe this is the year.
Tell us something about your family and childhood.
Our marriage a second marriage for both of us. I have two sons from my first marriage, twins, and Charlie has a daughter from his first marriage. We don’t see them as much as I would like because we all live far from each other.
When I was young, I loved to protest for just causes like the Equal Rights Amendment and the climate crisis. I was idealistic, full of passion, and still believed I could change the world.
Tell us something about your dreams and aspirations? Were you able to achieve your dreams or are you planning to?
For me, our Northampton life in our moai exemplifies life at its best, a life filled with love, with self-expression, with presence, with friends, with the community. Isn’t that everyone’s dream of gracefully growing old?
What is your biggest fear in life?
Losing all that we’ve worked so hard to build.
How would you like to describe your life at present?
It’s good. Though Charlie has been a little restless this last year.
What is the worst thing that has happened to you?
My divorce from my first husband was hard, especially given the age of my boys at the time. But we got through it. Also, I didn’t much like losing my job a few years back. I was so committed to my company.
Did it change you for the better or the worse?
I would say, over time, it changed me for the better and led me to what’s been a good and generative life in Northampton.
What are you planning for the future?
More of the same. I hope Charlie and I have another thirty years or so in front of us. I hope we spend all of it in Northampton.
Thank you, Maggie, for all your answers. It was an absolute pleasure to have you with us!
About The Book
The Latecomers
AN AGING COUPLE AND THEIR CLOSEST FRIENDS PIECE TOGETHER A LIFE-CHANGING PLAN FROM AN OTHERWORLDLY TEXT.
Maggie and Charlie Latecomer, at the beginning of the last third of their lives, love each other but are conflicted over what it means to age well in a youth-oriented society. Forced into early retirement and with grown children in distant cities, they’ve settled into a curbed routine, leaving Charlie restless and longing for more
When the Latecomers and their friends discover a mystical book of indecipherable logographs, the corporeal world and preternatural world intertwine. They set off on a restorative journey to uncover the secrets of the book that pits them against a potent corporate foe in a struggle for the hearts and minds of woman and men the world over.
A treatise on aging, health, wisdom, and love couched in an adventure, The Latecomers will make readers question the nature of deep relationships and the fabric of modern society.
You can find the book here:
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