Welcome to TRB Lounge. Today, I’d like to welcome author James Gilbert, from Atmosphere Press, for an author interview with The Reading Bud.
About The Author
James Gilbert
James Gilbert is a historian and novelist. While a professor at the University of Maryland, he published eleven books on American culture, and one of which was selected as a New York Times Notable Book. He has lived and taught abroad in Paris, and with year-long Fulbright Fellowships in Australia, Germany, and the University of Uppsala, Sweden, where he received an honorary doctorate degree. His fiction titles include The Key Party, Tales of Little Egypt, and Zona Romantica. Murder at the Olympiad is the second book in the Amanda Pennyworth Mystery series. He currently lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, outside of Washington, D.C. Find more at jamesgilbertauthor.com.
You can find author Gilbert here:
Author Website | Facebook
Interview
Welcome to TRB! Please give our readers a brief introduction about yourself before we begin.
My career was a long detour to my calling as a fiction writer. Very early on, I wrote plays for puppet and marionette shows. And then I wrote a few stories and poems in high school. After attending university, I spent a long and fruitful career as an American historian, publishing a number of books on culture and always edging closer and closer to literature. During these academic years, I spent considerable time living abroad trying to understand what were, for me, alien cultures. One of my favorite pastimes was to sit in a café observing people, inventing stories of their lives. I suppose what I like best is to watch and imagine. So everything I have experienced, even the smallest observation, is in the sourcebook for my fiction.
Please tell us something about your book other than what we have read in the blurb?
While murder is certainly a serious business and death always a tragedy, life has many lighter, humorous moments which I also try to incorporate into my mystery books. Not everyone is serious all the time or focused for every minute. Life goes on, unexpectedly, even in the most solemn whodunits.
What is that one message that you’re trying to get across to the readers in this book?
My message is plural: life is remarkably complicated; motivations are complex; relationships often difficult and explosive; and the unanticipated should always be expected.
Who is your favorite character in this book and why?
I love this question because it allows me to say what I think most writers feel, and what I do especially. That is: every character I am currently writing about; living in their space; expressing their thoughts; observing their actions—that character is always my favorite. I should add, however, that in retrospect, in this novel my favorite is Amanda Pennyworth, the American Consul to Puerto Vallarta, and the sleuth who solves the mystery. Why? Because she is the most complicated and I inhabit her character the longest.
What inspired you to write this book? An idea, some anecdote, a dream or something else?
I was inspired to write Murder at the Olympiad in part because I was looking to create a sequel to my first Amanda Pennyworth book: Zona Romantica. But the immediate motivation came during a ramble in the trendy part of the resort city, Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I passed by a doorway, with a staircase leading up into the dark, with a rainbow flag over the entrance. I was pretty sure this was a gay sauna and the thought occurred to me: what about a murder there? And so I started with that.
How long did it take you to write this particular book?
I spent about six months drafting the novel and an additional half-year revising and editing—so I lived with this story and its characters for close to a year.
What are your writing ambitions? Where do you see yourself 5 years from today?
My ambition is not unusual. I would love to publish all of the other manuscripts I have completed. But above all, I hope that my creative energy and inspiration will to continue to allow me to write novels and immerse myself in the imaginary worlds that I love to create.
Are you working on any other story presently?
I have just completed a collection of integrated short stories depicting a very unusual area of Appalachia and the people who live there. My aim was (and is) to understand these folks whom the nation has seemed to have forgotten. By writing about them, I have tried to understand their motives, their fears and aspirations, and especially their dilemmas of living in a place that progress appears to be passing by.
Why have you chosen this genre? Or do you write in multiple genres?
I have always been a writer delving into one genre or another, from the childhood plays I wrote (and performed), to stories and poems I wrote as a teenager, to the many history books and articles I authored, and finally, to the short stories and longer fiction that engage me now. I am particularly drawn to mystery stories because they allow me to explore a variety of characters all linked together by one event or a singular place. And who doesn’t like a puzzle?
When did you decide to become a writer? Was it easy for you follow your passion or did you have to make some sacrifices along the way?
To be a fiction writer was for me perhaps the most difficult, most frightening, and now the most rewarding thing I have ever done. It took me a very long time to gain the confidence and the recklessness to write fiction, because I understood full well, that the writer has nothing to stand behind except the writing itself. A novel or short story is, despite its disguises, much like a naked ego, and inviting criticism is invariably provoking criticism of oneself. So I began tentatively, writing a book of stories that I sent to a literary friend who saw enough in it to encourage me to continue. And suddenly that opened a new life for me and an unexplored part of myself that I have since discovered.
What is your writing ritual? How do you do it?
My writing schedule is both very mundane and then, sometimes, surprising. Every morning I like to go over the previous day’s work, editing, changing words and sentences, adding and subtracting, until I find myself extending the text, almost automatically, into new sentences, paragraphs, scenes and situations.
The really odd part usually occurs as I am settling in, reading, late at night. A sudden thought will come to me, an urgent metaphor, a name, a situation, and I have to write it down on the pad I keep next to my bed…lest I forget. Sometimes these brief notes will occupy my whole writing time the next day.
How do you prefer to write – computer/laptop, typewriter, dictation or longhand with a pen?
I have written several books and articles and stories in longhand when the only other technology was an electric typewriter. But now I prefer the computer because it is easy to correct and edit and because I like to see how the text appears on a page.
What are your 5 favourite books? (You can share 5 favourite authors too.)
- James Baldwin for his remarkable prescience and beautiful Biblical cadences.
- Isaac Asimov (I, Robot) for his realization that the problems of controlling technology are the same as the age-old ethical problems that humans have always faced.
- Alice Munro for her incisive, remarkable novellas and short stories.
- Dona Leon, in any of her mystery novels set in Venice because of her realization that a crime once solved is never solved.
- Elena Ferrante (My Brilliant Friend), for making it possible to understand a culture that is utterly different yet entirely plausible and comprehensible.
How do you deal with Writer’s Block?
The only time I experience writer’s block is when I am conceptualizing a story—never once I am immersed in it and the characters have come alive.
What advice would you give to aspiring non-fiction writers?
I would advise any writer to follow these suggestions—more or less:
- Write about what you know. Let memory spur your story-telling. It will happen anyway, so embrace it.
- Don’t be afraid to put people you know (or yourself) into your stories. You will inevitably change them, but it’s a wonderful place to start.
- Do research. Find out what things look like, how they operate, how history and contemporary society function.
- Surround yourself with images, maps and other visual aids.
- Start small with short stories so that you learn the rhythms of writing fiction and especially, how to end a piece of fiction.
- For every character you create, no matter how difficult or unpleasant or reprehensible you wish to portray them, try to find something you like about them or that amuses you in their personality or behavior. It will make them come alive.
Thank you, author Gilbert, for your honest answers!
About the Book
Murder at the Olympiad
An American tourist is murdered in a Mexican gay sauna, and Amanda Pennyworth, the American consul to Puerto Vallarta, risks her career and her life to find the culprit.
Amanda Pennyworth works with a junior officer of the Tourist Police in search of suspects in the secretive underworld of a beautiful resort. When a young Mexican boy is arrested on flimsy evidence, Amanda is convinced it is a terrible mistake. But no one is willing to listen to her: not the arrogant chief of police; not the boy’s parents who seem to blame her for the murder; and not the cynical American Ambassador who only wants to avoid an international incident. It’s up to her.
In Murder at the Olympiad by James Gilbert, we travel to the popular resort city of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and follow Amanda as she is drawn into the search for the killer of a young American. When she finally identifies the killer, she also discovers some very unpleasant truths about the Foreign Service in which she serves.
You can find Murder At The Olympiad here:
Goodreads | Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Atmosphere Press
If you are an author and wish to be featured as our guest or if you are a publicist and want to get your author featured on TRB, then please get in touch directly by e-mail at thereadingbud@gmail.com
The Reading Bud 