Check out our latest Writing in the Modern Age guest article here.

Check out our latest Writing in the Modern Age guest article here.

Marie Lavender (host): You've been a working actress for many years. How has writing fit into your life, or how did you transition to writing?

 

Emilia Ares: Funnily enough, I began writing while on one of my sets. I was doing a film and sometimes we have to wait for hours in between takes. In those situations, it’s best to do something to take your mind off the scene in order to keep the acting fresh and the reactions surprising. Reading is a great go-to, but there had been this story and these characters – Oliver and Mina ­– who were living in my head and nagging at my brain. I just had to get them on paper, so to speak. I wrote a chapter of their story into my notes on my iPhone and I also jotted down what else would probably happen later on in the story. When I got back to town, I wanted to show it to my younger sister, Sofia, who was reading a lot of YA at the time and ended up becoming an English major. She’s the one who encouraged me to keep writing and turn it into a book. She said she loved it and couldn’t wait for more. I don’t think Love and Other Sins would have existed without her encouragement.

 

Marie: What have you learned about storytelling from TV projects you've acted in like American Horror Story and Bosch?

Emilia: I’ve learned a ton about storytelling from the TV and film projects I’ve acted in, especially the importance of a strong emotional connection with my characters. Creating a backstory for my characters on and off the screen was vital. More times than not, my character’s backstory was not provided to me either because the project was high profile and the full script was kept under wraps or because I was playing a guest star whose history was not explicitly discussed or mentioned in the script itself. So, I’d have to invent the backstory.

 

That process is very similar to writing characters in a book. I used my knowledge of how the character was described in the breakdown that was provided during the casting process including any traits, qualities, strengths, weaknesses, quirks. I would then make an educated guess about what this person ultimately wants/needs from life, taking into consideration the character arc in the scene/overall story to create a reasonable history for them. In the case of American Horror Story, I would ask myself where does Princess Anastasia Romanova come from? What makes her tick? What life events shaped her? Empowered her? Scarred her? What are her secrets? And how do those things effect how she walks, talks, speaks, et cetera? The backstory is usually never discussed, but always exists in the thoughts of these characters, which ultimately informs their actions. The more specific the backstory, the richer, what actor’s call 'the life' of the character is.

 

This was great practice for when it came time to create Oliver and Mina’s backstories. I would just pretend they were characters I was going to play. I entered their minds the way I would when I played my characters on set. This might be a different approach than most traditional writers and it’s most likely why I wrote in first person. I was documenting the moments as if they were happening to me in real time. Later, I rewrote the novel into past tense to give the storytelling and pacing more flexibility.

 

Marie: Why was it important for you to write young people who are independent and self-reliant, not dependent on parental support to go after their goals?

 

Emilia: I honestly didn’t set out with the goal to write independent and self-reliant characters. I just wanted them to be interesting and, as it turns out, self-reliant people interest me. But I’m glad Oliver and Mina developed into the people they became because there are plenty of teenagers out there who are on their own and could use someone like Oliver to identify with.

 

Mina is actually very reliant on her mother for moral support when we first meet her. However, this novel begins during the part of her life when she starts to break free from that support and she ventures off to discover who she is and what she wants. She will have many hardships ahead. We get to follow her down that tumultuous road and witness her slay the dragons or succumb. Oliver, on the other hand, built himself up from the most terrible circumstances and found his own silver lining. He doesn’t have any family. He’s alone, therefore he’s independent out of necessity, not choice. I hope his story is inspirational to the youth who feel hopeless.

 

Marie: How did your own young adulthood prepare you to write this book?

 

Emilia: My time as a teenager was as dramatic and angsty as anyone else’s. Everyday there was drama, rumors, gossip, bullying. No matter how hard I tried to keep my head down, it felt as though it was inescapable. When I talked to my adult friends about their high school experiences, I came to understand that we all felt that way. You know, it’s funny ... as trivial as everything seems now, in the grand scheme of things some of those moments really did matter and did shape me into who I am today. The most painful moments became my biggest life lessons. I knew what I had to do to never feel that way again. I learned who I had to stay away from and who I had to gravitate toward. It wasn’t all bad, though; I had some great friends to get me through the tough parts. Those were the parts that were most similar to my life. Nyah was written based on a combination of a few of my friends and my sister. Lily was inspired by my mom.

 

Marie: What books and authors inspired you in your writing?

 

Emilia: The Stranger by Albert Camus because it challenged everything I ever knew or thought I knew about the hero of a story and made me feel so uncomfortable reading it.

 

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky, not only for the revelation this novel brought to literature but also for the story behind writing it. Dostoevsky didn't write it because he wanted to, he wrote it out of necessity. He wrote what he knew, the conditions and ramifications of a sick, drunk, impoverished Russia.

 

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins because by the time 2008 rolled around, so much had already been written and said about a potential post-apocalyptic nation but somehow, Collins was able to put forth a fresh take on dystopia. I admire that very much. There is always more room for your voice, your perspective, your story.

 

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe because, again, it was very critically controversial. People didn't know how to feel about it. On the one hand, Achebe ended up writing it in English, the language of colonialism which caused disagreement amongst many African critics in regards to the ultimate message of the novel. On the other hand, this was a novel that went against most of what was written about African culture at the time. It showed European colonialism from a different perspective portraying Igbo life from the point of view of an African man, a rich and sophisticated culture with a deep history, language, and beliefs.

 

But some of the first books and authors who inspired my love for storytelling were The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, and Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson.

 

Marie: Great! It was such a pleasure to have you here today.

 

Emilia: For myself as well. Thank you for inviting me!

 

Marie: Of course!

Check out our latest Writing in the Modern Age guest article here.

Check out our latest Writing in the Modern Age guest article here.

Hi, readers! We have a real treat in store for you today, a new release by Michael Aronovitz, a talented author! 
 
Congratulations on your latest book! 
 
Let's check out the details, shall we?

 

Here is the book blurb for The Sculptor.

At age seven, Michael Leonard Robinson commits his first murder, turning tragedy into an aesthetic. By the time he turns eighteen, he has become an expert with computers, gaming systems, and the art of video imaging. And now in his forties, fully realized, he has long erased his digital footprint. He is thirty years ahead of our most advanced scientists, military ops tacticians, and elite information tech specialists. He is a master of disguise. He can invent projected realities.

Of course, Michael Leonard Robinson could work his dark vision on a global scale, yet he doesn’t need “the world” for a fetishistic thrill, just a police captain, his receptionist, a detective, a rookie junior officer, his sister and mother, and a lot of dark theater. 

Robinson appears to these characters in disguise, film clips, and flashes as he torments them. Their multiple viewpoints are puzzle pieces.

When they fuse to finish the puzzle, the final sculpture becomes clear.

Release Date:  E-book - September 7, 2021 /Paperback - October 12, 2011

Genre:  Serial Killer Mystery

 

Publisher Link:  https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781949102543/the-sculptor/

Universal Reader Link:  https://books2read.com/u/mdDdAw

 

Here is an excerpt...

 

Chapter 24

Beauty in the Eye of the Ripper’s Beholder

 

Captain Canfield ran into the storm. Cold stingers to the face, the front lawn was muddy, his clothing lay on him like lead. It was dark, the wind shaping the rain in what looked like the billowing cloak of some massive dark horseman, with intermittent moonlight coming through the road foliage and cemetery border trees.

Canfield took a position in the grass, gun leveled. He didn’t have a clear shot, not as a sniper would have had with a rifle with a scope.

Across the street on the sidewalk was the huge figure. He was smiling. His feet were spread, his left arm clamped around Erika’s waist, his right palm pressed to her mouth. She was straining hard, arms pinned to her sides, feet kicking insane bicycle pedals against his thick legs. Her T-shirt had ridden up; you could see the shape of her waist. Her ponytail had come loose, and wet strands were plastered to her forehead and jawline like skull-fissures.

The big man spoke. His hat pushed a shadow across his forehead, but below that his skin looked bad—spoiled and cracked like a leper’s. It was the caked-on makeup. The moisture out here had begun to erode it.

“Captain,” he called. “Advantage perp. You can’t risk discharging your firearm. And your prerogative is clear. As the first officer on the scene, you are to look after the safety of the victim before securing the arrest. And if the citizen endures physical harm at the crime scene, you are obligated to care for the injured before arresting the offender.” His grin became monstrous.

“Officer,” he said, “I’d like to report an injury.”

He took the hand covering her mouth and groped it up the side of her face. She squirmed, kicking harder, and he pawed at her, fingering. She jerked her head, and he smeared the cat’s eye makeup in a hash-mark up her left temple. He pulled back across, and she let loose a gargled scream, kicking like a frenzied horsefly held by the wings. He mashed his hand-heel into the other side of her face, slipping down along the bone like wet marble, and this time he streaked thick mascara onto her cheek, hooking down like an athlete’s smeared eye-black. He made an adjustment, and with the base of his thumb, his ring finger, and pinkie he cupped her chin, holding her still. He had to work it like the old Spock Vulcan “live-long-and-prosper” sign, but he spread his middle and index fingers back across the bridge of her nose, then started spider-crawling them up toward her right eye.

Canfield screamed “No!”

The monster’s two fingers were poised like a claw, uneven tongs.

He pushed in, over the eyeball, deep into the socket. Blood squirted up over his middle knuckles. She screamed herself raw, her kicking went nuclear. He let go of her mouth so he could work in the thumb, forming a pincer-grip. For a bare moment it cleared the horrific sightline; he dug in his fingers, and Canfield could see Erika’s eyeball slip from one side of the socket to the other as the monster worked in deep, trying to get to the back of it. Blood wept down his wrist, but the rain washed it away, making the effect seem ghostlike and illusory. He yanked, her head jerked forward, give, but no climax. He couldn’t pull it home, stubborn muscles and nerve fibers proving their elasticity, and he re-angled his elbow, bunched, set, and ripped that eye straight out of its socket.

She stopped kicking.

Thick blood welled in the dark crater and poured down her cheek. The rain doused and diluted it, ebbing down her face with the beat of her heart, tendrils and threads gyrating there on her cheekbone like algae floating off coral in a current. She was twitching, hanging there in his arms. He slapped her cheek and she jolted awake, shrieking incoherently, body in spasm, the broken doll, the lunatic stage-puppet.

He set her on her feet in front of him, bending his knees so she was still mostly blocking the line of fire. Both big hands moved to her hips to steady her, and he walked her back to an oak tree.

He whispered something in her ear. It took a moment. Then he smacked her hard on the ass and barked:

“Go!”

He ducked behind the wide tree and she ran, faster than one would have ever expected, moaning and crying, lumbering desperately away toward Sproul Road.

Canfield pounded after her, grass to driveway. Cutting across the corner of the neighbor’s lawn, he noticed quite academically that they had been gardening, planting shrubs. Passing through the line of them at the perimeter, he stepped on a trowel. It hurt, fucked his rhythm, and his ankles banged together; he went down. He hit the street, skinned an elbow, quick-rolled, and somehow managed to cradle the gun without having it blow a hole in his stomach. He didn’t allow himself time to recover. He sprang up and broke into a straight sprint, thinking, “Knees high, push hard, strong kick, arms in sync,” and by the time he caught up, she was almost to the streetlamp. She stumbled and collapsed, trying to grab hold on her way down, and he caught her from behind just in time to save her from falling onto her face. He went to the ground with her, held her, turned her so he could look at her.

She’d been truly violated, disfigured, it was real, no illusions. She had two faces now, the left profile all sleek cuts and angles, the makeup bird-winged up off her left eye giving her a futuristic look like a runway model, yet turned to the right, her profile was that of a ghost-witch, her long skull and jawline accented by the rough crater peering at you with blank recognition. She looked very much like the kind of thing you bought in an island hut, stuck on a voodoo stick with beads hanging off of the fist-guard. She was sobbing, still convulsing.

Canfield wanted to comfort her, but he didn’t know the words. He wanted to give her some kind of gentlemanly reassurance, but he didn’t know that song either. What came out was mechanical, almost programmed.

“What did he say to you?” he said softly, flatly. He felt terribly about it, but he was who he was.

“What?” she said. “What? When, Bill, what?”

“Easy,” he said. “What did he say to you in your ear? Just now. I’ll catch him, but I need all the data.”

She started weeping again and buried her face in Bill Canfield’s chest, shoulders shaking.

“He told me,” she said, voice muffled, “that I had to run hard, I had to run like the wind, toward Sproul Road. He said that I had to run straight into traffic. He said he was going to flush my right eye down a toilet, and if I didn’t run as fast as I could he’d hunt me down, find me at the hospital, at work, in the parking lot, the grocery store, my apartment.”

She pulled back and looked up at Canfield with her left eye.

“He promised he would give me round two,” she said. “He promised he’d rip out the other one.”

 

So, what are readers saying about this book?

★★★★★ “The Sculptor is one of the most grimly terrifying serial killers in recent literature.” - Horror scholar and editor ST Joshi

 

Whoa...what a disturbing teaser!

Get your copy of this serial killer mystery today, readers!

 

About the Author:

 

Michael Aronovitz is a college professor, rock critic, and author of dark fiction. His published novels include Alice Walks, The Witch of the Wood, and Phantom Effect, his collections – Seven Deadly Pleasures and The Voices in Our Heads. Aronovitz has published more than forty short stories, and has appeared in magazines and anthologies such as Weird Tales, Searchers After Horror, and Apostles of the Weird. His short story titled “How Bria Died” was featured in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror, 2011, Prime Books, and currently, Aronovitz has much of the above-mentioned work being translated into German and re-released by Firma Edition Barenklau. His lifetime collection of novellas and short stories, titled Dancing with Tombstones, will be published by Cemetery Dance Publications in the fall of 2021, and his fourth novel titled The Sculptor will be released by Night Shade / Skyhorse in the fall of 2021.

Author Links:

Website: michaelaronovitz.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michael.aronovitz

Twitter: https://twitter.com/michaelaronovi2

Amazon Author Page: http://amzn.to/2yprVlr

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/551323.Michael_Aronovitz

FictionDB: https://www.fictiondb.com/author/michael-aronovitz~99909.htm

Check out our latest Writing in the Modern Age guest article here.

My guest today is DJ Swykert. Hello, DJ! Welcome back to Writing in the Modern Age! It’s such a pleasure to have you here again.

Can you tell us a little bit about your latest book? When did it come out? Where can we get it?
  

My new book, The Death of Anyone, introduces readers to a DNA search technique not in common use here in the U.S., Familial DNA. A lot will be written on this subject as the real life trial of Lonnie David Franklin, The Grim Sleeper, unfolds in California this year. The book also introduces a new character for me, a female homicide detective. It's not the first time I've written from a female POV, but she's the first in this role. I’m hoping the book will appeal to an even broader audience than Children of the Enemy, or Alpha Wolves. There is a romance along with the mystery in the plot and some real science.

The Death of Anyone was released by Melange Books in Minneapolis the end of February. It’s available at: Melange Books, Lulu, Amazon, and Bookwire.

Is there anything that prompted your latest book? Something that inspired you?

I first heard about Familial DNA Searches while working as a 911 operator in 2006. It came up in a conversation with officers. I thought at the time it would make an interesting premise for a book. I began writing the mystery some three years later after leaving the department. I had just finished editing a first draft of The Death of Anyone in the summer 2010 when news of The Grim Sleeper’s capture in Los Angeles was released. I read with interest all the information pouring out of L.A. regarding the investigation and the problems confronting prosecutors. All of which are explored in The Death of Anyone.
 
This sounds fascinating!

So, when did you know you wanted to write? Or has it always been a pastime of yours?

I don’t know if I ever actually 'decided' to be a writer. I remember the first thing I wrote, a bad poem to a pretty girl, I was a teenager, and Tennyson’s "Flower in the Crannied Wall" gave me the idea to try my hand at poetry. I still recite Tennyson’s poem. I think my desire to try writing novels came from reading them, in particular Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and when I was younger, Mark Twain. I simply enjoyed the storytelling, and think I inherited a little storytelling ability from my grandfather, who was really good at spinning a tale. 

My grandmother did the same thing.  LOL. 

Do you have any favorite authors?

I’ve already kind of answered this; Tennyson, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Mark Twain. You can add Byron, Auden, Chekhov and Annie Proulx to the list. Oh, hell, there’s a host of great writers, my list could go on for pages. But these always have stuck in my head. 

I know what you mean.  I have WAY too many to count.  

So, do you write in a specific place? Time of day?

Currently, I write mornings on a desk in the garret, as my girlfriend calls it, on the third floor of our townhouse. But I’ve written just about anywhere I can find something to write with, even on a bunk in the Houghton County Jail, er… that was just once, for a short while on a traffic violation. 

Are there any words you'd like to impart to fellow writers? Any advice?

Keep typing, and submitting. I believe in the old Hindu saying: Given enough time, coincidence is inevitable. There is a measure of coincidence in finding a home for your writing. You have to have skill, a good story, but also some luck. You can improve your odds by applying The Law of Large Numbers, which allows prey species to survive by reproducing in large numbers. Your writing can survive in the same way, get it out there, and keep putting it out there. Be productive. And keep your fingers crossed.

Good advice. 

So, readers, here is the the blurb for The Death of Anyone.

Detroit homicide Detective Bonnie Benham has been transferred from narcotics for using more than arresting and is working the case of the killer of adolescent girls. CSI collects DNA evidence from the scene of the latest victim, which has not been detected on the other victims. But no suspect turns up in the FBI database. Due to the notoriety of the crimes a task force is put together with Bonnie as the lead detective, and she implores the D.A. to authorize an as yet unapproved type of a DNA Search in an effort to identify the killer. Homicide Detective Neil Jensen, with his own history of drug and alcohol problems, understands Bonnie’s frailty and the two detectives become inseparable as they track this killer of children.

Here's an excerpt from The Death of Anyone. 

Benham arrived first, no sign of Russo or Jensen. She got a table and told the maitre de to send them over when they arrived, and that there would be a third party, a Detective Lagrow. As he seated Benham, the maitre de informed her, “The show starts at about 12:30 pm. We have a couple of new dancers."

Benham screwed up her nose, gave him a curious eye. “Dancers?”

The maitre de nodded. “Yes, belly dancers. We have a new one I’m sure your friends will appreciate. She’s very good-young, friendly.”

Benham just shook her head. ”I’m sure they will,” she said as she sat.

“Can I get you something to drink?”

Whoa, the brake in her head told her. You know you, you know your history. You know what a slip can do to you. Doctors, psychologists, treatment, rehab, counselors, AA, each and every one of them flashed across her head as her mind absorbed the offer. “Just a coke, or, actually, would you just bring me a black coffee.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Benham sipped her coffee and looked through her brief notes of the case. They were very brief, there was little to put in them. A young girl, perhaps ten, dead, strangled, almost for certain assaulted, lying in an alley for a few hours. And it had only been a few hours—Pierangeli seemed pretty sure she hadn’t been there long. She was found at around nine-thirty am, so she died maybe around eight am. She lay there, choked, defiled, beautiful, and dead, and nobody was looking for her. She had to have been taken pretty early this morning, so it’s been about five hours she’s been gone, and nobody loves her enough to miss her. Benham could feel the anger rising from within, from the source where feelings come from, from deeper but inclusive of the stomach, from the birthplace of emotion.

A hand touched her shoulder and startled her. “Me and Jensen are here, bring on the dancing girls,” Dean Russo bellowed, joyous almost, and that irritated Bonnie a little. There was nothing to be happy about this day.

“You’ll get your wish. The belly dancers will be here in a few,” Benham said, with a bit of obvious disdain that Russo picked up on.

“You picked the place.”

“Yeah, I know,” Bonnie answered, feeling a little sorry now she sounded so disapproving. “Yeah, I picked it. Didn’t think about belly dancers, but, hey, we’re here, and I love pastitio, and they have the best. Sorry if I sound pissy, it’s only because I am. Once you see the girl, you won’t be dancing in the street either.”

Russo quit laughing. “How long you been in homicide, Benham?”

Bonnie could see she rubbed something, “A couple of months.”

“You were in narcotics?”

“Yeah, I was in narcotics. I was in it and it—I was narcotic.”

There was a pause. Jensen looked across at Russo, glared a little, trying to shut him up with a look. And out of the corner of his eye let Bonnie know he saw her, too. He wanted her to keep this cool.

But it was a little late, and Bonnie was a bit volatile. “You know fucking well I was in narcotics. And you fucking know why I’m in homicide. I got myself transferred out for becoming more narcotic than narc. Quit beating around the bush. What’s your point?”

Universal Reader Link:  https://books2read.com/u/4A52gA

 

Author Bio
 

I’m a blue collar person from Detroit. I’ve worked as a truck driver,dispatcher, logistics analyst, operations manager, and ten years as a 911operator, which was the very best job of them all. I write stories like you’d watch a movie and put them down on paper. I have written in different genres; crime, romance, literary and The Death of Anyone, which is a
mystery/suspense story with romance and science in it. 

The last sentence in my writing bio is always: He is a wolf expert. I am not a biologist. I raised two arctic hybrids, had them for eleven years, and have written two books in which the wolves join the other protagonists. 

I have been fortunate enough to have my writing appear in: The Tampa Review, Monarch Review, Sand Canyon Review, Zodiac Review, Scissors and Spackle, Spittoon, BarbaricYawp and BULL. The other books I have written are Children of the Enemy, a novel from Cambridge Books, and Alpha Wolves, a novel by Noble Publishing.

Links:

Blog: www.magicmasterminds.com

Facebook:  http://www.facebook.com/david.swykert?ref=ts&fref=ts

LinkedIn:  http://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=193494247

Other Links:  http://www.gypsyartshow.com/2013/03/the-death-of-anyone-by-dj-swykert.html

http://www.omnimysterynews.com/2013/01/please-welcome-novelist-dj-swykert.html

 

Check out our latest Writing in the Modern Age blog article here.