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Author! Author! An Interview by Veronica Jorge with A.J. Sidransky

March 22, 2021 by Veronica Jorge in category Write From the Heart by Veronica Jorge tagged as A.J. Sidransky, Author Interviews, Forgiving Mariela Camacho, Forgiving Maximo Rothman, Forgiving Stephen Redmond, Veronica Jorge

Veronica Jorge: Greetings, A Slice of Orange readers. We have the pleasure of speaking today with A.J. Sidransky whose works have received much critical praise. His novel, Forgiving Maximo Rothman, reviewed on this site December 22, 2020, was a finalist in Outstanding Debut Fiction by The National Jewish Book Awards in 2013. Forgiving Mariela Camacho was awarded the David Award for Best Mystery of 2015. The third book in the trilogy, Forgiving Stephen Redmond was released Jan 16, 2021. A.J.’s works are a combination of mystery and historical fiction. A topic in which he excels is the Dominican Republic and the lives of the refugees who arrived there when they fled Nazi Europe. So let’s find out more about this prolific author and his unique stories.

Veronica Jorge: Welcome, A.J. You describe yourself as a dyed in the wool New Yorker, born in the Bronx, and life-long Yankees fan. So how did you develop such a deep interest in the Dominican Republic?

A.J. Sidransky: My interest in the Dominican Republic began when I was a boy. My grandfather’s brother, my uncle Max, had lived there during World War 2. He and my aunt had escaped there when there were no other clear options to leave Europe. My uncle and aunt didn’t have children of their own. My mother was very close to him, and I followed suit.

As a child I studied Spanish starting in the fourth grade. My uncle spoke Spanish, which was a special treat for me. I was able to communicate with him in a language my English and Hungarian speaking family didn’t know. Many years later, as an adult with a wife and child, we moved to Washington Heights in upper Manhattan. Washington Heights is home to the largest Dominican community outside of the island republic.

I joined a gym in the neighborhood that was popular with Dominican weight lifters. I also lift weights. I established friendships with several of the guys there. One in particular, became my best friend. He has a home in the capital, Santo Domingo, where he spends the winters. I spend 3-4 weeks each winter with him at his home, deep in the barrio. I have come to love the people and the country. I often wonder why my uncle left. My love for the country and the culture is best demonstrated in Forgiving Mariela Camacho.

A.J. Sidransky: My emotional attachment to both my aunt and uncle, and to how their experiences touch my emotions and influenced my writing are very much on display in Forgiving Maximo Rothman and Forgiving Stephen Redmond. My uncle Max was my maternal grandfather’s younger brother. They were 2 of 9 children. My grandfather came to the United States in 1923. My uncle escaped from a Hungarian speaking region of Slovakia in 1940. The rest of the family, their mother, brothers, sisters, nieces and nephews as well as over 50 other family members died in the Holocaust in death camps. I am named for two of their brothers.

As I grew older I began to ask questions about the people in the photos on the walls of my grandparents’ home. As I learned about their stories, and about my uncle Max’s escape I became determined to tell their stories. That led first to Forgiving Maximo Rothman. The Interpreter, published in March 2020 also is based on the experiences of another relative who escaped. I believe every story that comes out of the Holocaust needs to be told. I’ve made it my purpose to try to bring some of those to life.

Veronica Jorge: You travel on a regular basis to the Dominican Republic. So I take it you really love the island. Do you also identify with Maximo because of the friendships you’ve made with Dominicans?

A.J. Sidransky: The short answer is yes. The truth is that while the historical aspects of the stories are based on Max’s experiences, the friendships between Maximo and Jose in Forgiving Maximo Rothman, and the friendship between the detectives Tolya Kurchenko and Pete Gonzalvez in all three novels are based on my friendship with my best friend William Cruz. He is, truthfully, the best friend I have ever had. We are like brothers. We look very different. I am very fair-haired and light-skinned. He is dark in both skin and hair coloring. I’m a good six inches taller than him, and he is much more athletic than me. We work out together five days a week; at least we did before COVID-19 arrived. The people at the gym refer to us as los mellizos, the twins.

Veronica Jorge: Two recurring themes in your novels are forgiveness and the relationship between fathers and sons. Why are these of such importance for you?

A.J. Sidransky: Let’s start with fathers and sons. First of all, I’m both a father and a son, and I can say with some certainty that my most rewarding experience in life has been parenting. Being a father also made me view my own father and my relationship with him in a very different way than I did before I became a father. Much has been written about the relationships of women; mothers and daughters, sisters, etc. Not much has been written about the relationships between men. Perhaps because men aren’t supposed to show their emotions.

As a man, I wanted to explore those relationships. And not to limit them to fathers and sons, and what we do to each other and why, but also to male friendship, and how difficult it is to establish genuine friendship for adult men. I wanted to demonstrate the fragility of men and how much trust is required for men to let other men see that fragility.

As to forgiveness, well, who hasn’t had conflict in their life? And the key is to resolve it, not to carry it around, because it will destroy you. We all do things that we might wish we hadn’t. We all experience the reverse as well, a betrayal or severe disappointment from someone we love deeply. The only way out is to forgive. But, as another dear friend of mine, a pastor of a church in Harlem has told me, forgiveness isn’t free. We must forgive, but hopefully those we forgive will own their mistakes as well.

Veronica Jorge: What do you want the reader to come away with after reading your novels?

A.J. Sidransky: LOL, first of all, a good cry! And I hope a laugh as well. I write about ordinary people faced with extraordinary circumstances. How do they stand up and confront the unimaginable? I want my readers to be in their minds, to experience their emotions, to feel what they are feeling.

Most of all, I want my readers to come away with an understanding of what brought about the extraordinary circumstances to begin with, and to be vigilant not to let history repeat itself, to learn from our collective mistakes, to create a better world going forward. If you read my books and you feel what my characters feel you’re more likely to feel compassion for those today who are faced with similar circumstances. I often tell people to really understand my work they need to read the short story The Lottery, by Shirley Jackson. It’s the most important short story ever written. It used to be required reading in high schools. It should be again. Jackson’s message was very clear. Don’t be so certain of your ideas until you’re the one facing the extraordinary circumstance. That’s what I hope for my readers. Soften your heart, don’t harden it.

A.J. Sidransky: Sure, I’d love too. I have a novella and a collection of short stories that I plan on publishing late in 2021 or early in 2022. The title of the novella is The King of Arroyo Hondo. It’s set in the Dominican Republic today and is based on my observations traveling there over the past 10+ years. It’s a departure for me. No dead bodies, no dead Jews. I hope my readers will enjoy it.

I’m currently working on the second book in my ‘Justice’ series, which began with The Interpreter. The Intern is set in 1953. It’s a thriller and plays out against the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. I hope to publish that in late spring 2022. I have two projects planned after that.

The first is called Cuba no Falta Nada, which means in English, Cuba is missing nothing. While the title is Spanish, the book is in English. Based on a real story, it’s the story of two brothers born in Cuba in the 1930s to Jewish immigrants from Poland. One is a communist and the other is not. One stays in Cuba and is an official in the Castro government; the other immigrates to the United States. It tells their story from 1958 through 2001.

After that I’m planning on working on something that’s been on my mind for a long time, a novel about baseball. The tentative title is Fielder’s Choice. Fielder’s Choice is a term in baseball for a certain type of play on a line drive. It’s also the name of the title character, a ‘never-a-star’ baseball player who manages a mediocre major league team. He’s taken a young Dominican player under his wing. The Dominican player is a generational talent. They develop a very close relationship, there’s the father/son thing again. Fielder has to decide whether to push the young player forward to further his career or keep him close. Even men will cry at this one. It’s kind of my Field of Dreams, the same way Forgiving Maximo Rothman was my Dr. Zhivago.

Veronica Jorge: Tell us one or two things you’d like your readers to know about you.

A.J. Sidransky: That’s kind of difficult. I don’t like to talk about myself; I’d rather talk about my work. But here’s a go. I’d like readers to know that I feel that if I can touch one person with my work, change one point of view, make one reader look at life a little differently, I feel I’ve done a good job, I’ve done what I set out to do.

When The Interpreter was in pre-publication, my publisher’s son-in-law saw an advanced reader copy on her coffee table. He liked the cover. He asked if he could take one, and she said yes without telling him about the subject matter. That was on purpose.

For those of you who haven’t read The Interpreter, it’s a novel set during and just after the Holocaust in Europe. And there aren’t any concentration camp scenes because I don’t write them. Anyway, she told me that while he’s a decent man, her son-in-law is something of a redneck, her words not mine. Two weeks later he returned the copy and told her that my book had changed his outlook on a number of things. He’d learned about what happened during the war in a new way. He connected with it. It changed his opinions about things. I didn’t ask what those things were, but I can imagine what they are. If I had not sold one copy of The Interpreter, I would have been satisfied with those results, then and there. My work broke through.

Veronica Jorge: Thank you A.J. for spending some time with us and allowing us a glimpse into your world and your writing.

We hope all of our readers have enjoyed meeting A.J. Sidransky. To learn more about him, and his latest works and news, connect with him at: www.ajsidransky.com. You can also write to him at aj@ajsidransky.com. He welcomes email from readers. He can also be found on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Visit his site. Say hello. And above all, read his books. They will touch your heart!

Veronica Jorge

See you next time on April 22nd

P.S. For those of you who missed it, or want a refresher, here are the links to A.J. Sidransky’s books reviewed on this site.

Some of A. J. Sidransky’s Books

INCIDENT AT SAN MIGUEL

FORGIVING MARIELA CAMACHO

FORGIVING STEPHEN REDMOND

FORGIVING MAXIMO ROTHMAN

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Writing The Dreaded Book Blurb by Jenny Jensen

March 19, 2021 by Jenny Jensen in category On writing . . . by Jenny Jensen tagged as Blrubs, clickbait, Marketing, writing

The Dreaded Book Blurb | Jenny Jensen | A Slice of Orange

Cartoons by John Atkinson, www.wronghands1.com

Writing The Dreaded Book Blurb

Every author faces this last crucial challenge. You’ve already spent untold hours researching, writing and editing your book. Your title hits just the right poetic note. You’ve gone several tense rounds to find the perfect cover. All that remains is the book blurb, the opening salvo in the promotional war. This is the first (and sometimes only) chance to grab a reader and compel them to buy the book. And so, like click bait, you need to lure your reader with an honest but irresistible snap shot.

It’s an art, this writing of a synopsis that isn’t a synopsis, this sell copy that isn’t an ad. And for something that isn’t a science there are strict rules: you have to be honest – no misleading the reader. No spoilers or why bother to read it – which can be tough since the spoiler is often the most exciting part of the story. Keep it at 200 words or less and don’t make it one run-on paragraph. Use the proper keywords for your genre. Reveal something about the antagonist – readers like to know if they can root for the hero. This isn’t the place to relate the entire plot but you have to provide the zeitgeist, the feel of the tale. No easy task.

A lot of the writers I work with find this daunting and ask for help, which I am happy to provide. I think it’s difficult for the writer to step far enough away from their work to pick out the enticing, salient points and present them with the tension and intrigue that make for a successful blurb. To the author, all story points are important. I get that, but as an avid reader I know what works for me in a blurb. It’s not how much is said, but how compellingly it’s said.

I start with a deconstruction approach. It’s possible to distill any story down to bare bones. In his book Hit Lit – Cracking the Code of the Twentieth Century’s Biggest Bestsellers James W. Hall provided the most distilled example I’ve ever seen. This is a beloved tale that we all know intimately: “A young girl wakes in a surreal landscape and murders the first woman she sees. She teams with three strangers and does it again.” It’s short, accurate and intriguing but would it sell the book?

I wouldn’t distill it down that far but it makes a great beginning. What if we knew something about the young girl – an orphan, a princess, a refugee? And what about the surreal landscape – gaping desert, oozing swamp, forbidding mountains? Then the three strangers – female, male, older, menacing, kindly? Is all this murdering spurred by necessity, thrills, defense, the three strangers or is it unintended manslaughter? And finally, what is the young girl up to – revenge, enlightenment, finding a way out of the surreal landscape? Flesh out those points, add some genre keywords, reference any kudos and you could turn those original 24 spartan words into a 160 – 200 word blurb that would peak curiosity and entice the shopper to buy.

If you can step away from the totality of your story and deconstruct the plot to the primary elements, then present those elements in a provocative way you can create an effective selling tool with your book blurb. BTW, that book Hall described? The Wizard of Oz.

Jenny

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The Black Candle Killings Book Tour and Giveaway

March 17, 2021 by marianne h donley in category Rabt Book Tours tagged as HappyLondonPress

Conspiracy Series, Book 3

Detective Thriller

Date Published: March 1st 2021

Publisher: Happy London Press

A church going district of North London and a neighbourhood where friendly residents know each other. But when a brutally murdered woman is found next to a burned-out black candle, a strange mark etched deep into her back, the locals became afraid.

Her old boss, a Chief Superintendent in the Met, calls for PI, Tammy Pierre’s assistance. He’s aware of her Caribbean links, and knowledge of Obiah, a voodoo curse found in Trinidad, and used, some claim, to commit bizarre murders. So, is it voodoo? Or just superstition?

A trip to the West Indies reveals some disturbing facts, new evidence of child abuse and murders going undetected for over twenty years.

Returning to London, her situation becomes dangerous – is it all more than Tammy had bargained for?

About the Author

Having never written a dramatic word in my life some thirty years ago, an idea for a short story popped into my head. With the encouragement of my wife and daughter I wrote a tale about a timid and ineffectual man and his pet cat, called Cat and Mouse. Wife and daughter approved so I produced more stories and then joined a writers’ group who also liked what I wrote.

Sir George Everest said, they climbed that mountain, ‘Because it is there.’ The same might be said of writing. Why do we write? because of the idea, the notion, the thought. ‘Because it is there,’ and the irresistible urge to put it down in print.

My inspirations have come from real people, events or situations that have presented themselves. Titles like, I am a Contract Killer, Beads of Blood, Death Zone, License to Kill, are all based on my own lifetime experiences, questions asked, incidents occurring. So far, nobody has been murdered on my watch. But the notion gave rise to the impetus to write my first murder mystery, The Lyme Regis Murders. Could I make the jump after years of writing macabre short stories to a full-length drama? That familiar beating in the gut, said, ‘Yes, try it. Give it a go.’

And so to that cosy coastal town where nothing untoward ever happens. Or perhaps it does. The author seeks to shatter notions, change people’s perceptions, spoil long held views. That was my intention in entering into the world of crime thrillers. I’ve found that ‘nice’ people are not always what they seem. The helpless can be transformed into the most dangerous, the most dangerous become the most harmless. It’s all up to the writer and what they’re hoping to achieve. For me, so far, there have been several children’s books, one collection of short stories, with three more planned and three novels completed, plus a fourth in the mixer.

Whilst a short story might be written with a flurry of adrenalin in the space of a few hours, a book will need more than just a flash of creativity. It will need, perseverance, discipline and dogged determination. But then, isn’t that what is required of every ambition?

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Excerpt

The Black Candle Killings
Andrew Segal

Prologue

Yuh gonna die!

“Hmm? Watch you say, lady? Hear me now, hear me. Don’t y’all cry. You muss up yuh face. Me ain’t gonna hurt you none. Gonna be quick an’ easy. All be over soon, soon. You understan’? De Lord, he am waitin’ for yuh.”

Lillian Persaud hadn’t had sex with Tom for over a month. As she made for the office at a brisk trot, she smiled to herself. Gorgeous fresh morning. Gentle breeze. A few spots of rain tapping at her brolly. Some wispy grey cloud. Might warm up later, though. Bound to really, she thought with her usual optimism.

Out of the corner of her eye she spotted something moving. A shadow; perhaps her own? Couldn’t place it. Coming from behind a parked car? A moment of unease, but not one to break the glorious mood she was in.

The day ahead, filled with appointments, staff meetings and then, this weather forecast had said it would be a mixed day, so at least there’d be some sun to look forward to.

Business was getting busier by the week in her expanding company, Persaud IT Ltd. A hectic day ahead of her. Evening to think about.

Plans for sex, she mused. Lots of it. Asap. On the agenda. And about time too. She smiled again at the prospect. Some soft music; modern jazz. The contemplative tones of Miles Davis’s trumpet. Chic Corea on piano. Tom’s favourite record, Peggy Lee singing, ‘Some Cats Know’, and she added mentally the following refrain, ‘How to go real slow’. Tom knew how to go real slow. Lovely man. What a wedding night they’d had. Not a real wedding, but an exchanging of vows and commitment before an Unofficial Officiant in a Humanist service. They both had their own reasons for preferring to avoid a religious ceremony. A couple of dozen close family and friends in a tiny hotel off the beaten track, near to Bourton-on-the-Water, in the Cotswolds.

Of course, it wasn’t the first time they’d made love, but Tom made it feel that way. It was as if he’d saved something special for just that evening. Up till then, every night with him had been special. But, wow! she thought. Was that night extra special, or was it not?

Not too many nights like it since the baby. Gracie was a demanding tot, and now an even more demanding little girl. Still, she thought, their imp seemed to have got over her current bout of sleeplessness.

Someone on the other side of the street, emerging from behind a tree this time, looking at her. Looking at her? A phantom silhouette. Following her. Dark tracksuit and trainers. Hoodie obscuring the face. Soundless steps. Were they smiling? She couldn’t see.

Lillian frowned for a moment. No-one else around. Early morning. A few parked vehicles. An unexpected feeling of loneliness. Maybe they were scowling? She hurried on, getting nervous now, her heels clicking on the pavement, echoing in her ears.

Like being on the ghost train in a fairground. Never sure what was going to jump out at you. Nothing was going to attack her out here in the street. This was Bloomsbury where bad things didn’t happen. She’d soon be at the office. Door locked behind her. Safe. Then, hot coffee. The world waking up. Staff arriving shortly.

Tom said she was a worrier. “Darling,” he’d told her one day, “if you didn’t have something to worry about, it’d almost certainly worry you.” He was right of course. But worriers get things done, she’d protested. And, looking around, she found her imagined stalker had vanished. A heaved sigh of relief.

Baby Grace had been fractious and her sleepless nights had impacted Lillian and Tom. But there’d been six undisturbed nights when the parents had caught up with some desperately needed shut-eye, and now Lillian was beaming to herself as she mentally planned the evening in.

“Look! Look! See? It say in here in de Bible, Deuteronomy 23, verse 2, dat no-one born of a forbidden union may enter de kingdom of de Lord. Even to de ten generation, none of his descendants may enter de assembly of de Lord. Yuh gonna have to pay, lady.”

Tom loved cooking, but he also liked to eat out. He’d probably booked somewhere for them already. It was their anniversary, that of the first time they’d met. But tonight was going to be all Lillian’s treat. And for a change there’d be no meat. Tom could eat lamb and beef for England, but he’d been told by his doctor to cut down as his cholesterol levels were too high. So tonight, would be fish. Cod, baked in fish stock, with chopped onions and tomato, and a handful of black olives to finish it off. Steamed new potatoes in their skins, dripping in butter, well, maybe not exactly dripping. A mixed salad, with her own dressing. A bottle of Pino Grigio. And for dessert, a blueberry pavlova coupled with vanilla ice cream by Marshfield Farm, an English make on a par with the best of Italian. Divine thoughts.

Tom hadn’t seen the white thong yet. The one with the split crotch. The matching, barely there, white bra. The contrast with her ebony complexion would be stark. Heavens! she thought, I’ll be stark, or as good as. She’d kept them for an occasion like she was going to make tonight’s. Her legs went slightly wobbly at the thought. However would she make it through the day? she wondered.

The first thing she noticed upon opening up the office was that the alarm hadn’t been set the night before. She frowned. Must have a word with the cleaners later today. But, just the same, she thought, worrying.

They’d kept all the original features of the beautiful Georgian building’s interior, whilst managing to lay out desks with smart glass dividers to allow, if not privacy, at least the chance to concentrate on work without the immediate intrusion of others in the room overwhelming you.

There was a separate boardroom for client meetings, and it was to this she presently repaired. She needed to spread out paperwork in a manner more convenient than might be obtained, no matter how many screens she chose to work with. For all her IT skills, sometimes it was the old tried and tested routines that worked best.

Lillian was happy. Happier than she’d ever been in her life. After a ghastly childhood, from which she’d made a timely escape, things were coming together more satisfyingly than she had ever dared to hope.

“Dey all jagabat womans tink dey can fool me. Dey run away from me, but me have catch yuh. Me have seen you, lady, flahntin’ y’all an’ yer babby. Lady, de chile am barn of a forbidden union. Who you tink you is? Me ain’t no dotish man. No mamaguy. Me am gonna bring y’all back to God.”

And yet, that shadow again, from the corner of her eye. And, here? In the office? Her mind playing tricks? Had to be. But why, all of a sudden? She wasn’t normally given to random fears. She’d be seeing ghosts next. Shaking her head resolutely, she told herself not to be stupid.

Then the light pad of a muffled tread, a sharp pinprick in the back of her neck, the warmth of a thin stream of blood, her blood, running down her spine and a cultured voice warning her not to look round.

She felt as though she were being crushed with fear. She couldn’t breathe properly. Her blood was freezing in her veins, as she shuddered, uncontrollably. She could see the papers spread around the boardroom table, but made no connection with them. It was as though she were marooned in a foreign country, where she could neither understand nor make herself understood.

She knew she mustn’t panic, mustn’t scream, because the shadow would want her to scream, would need her to scream in order to exercise power over her. She closed her eyes and breathed in deeply to try to calm her nerves. The voice was educated, could be spoken to. She might use reason. This was clearly a case of mistaken identity which she could quickly establish.

Then the voice changed. The tone dropped by a couple of octaves and to her consternation, the accent was now clearly patois.

Lillian heard a match flare, smelled burning tallow as smoke played around her head. She tried to think who it could possibly be. Racked her brains, uselessly. Didn’t know who it was. No idea in the world. But they clearly knew all about her.

“De candle am burnin’ dong. It have you name on de side, Lillian.

“When it reach de bottom yuh gonna die.

“Hmm? Ah! Now you screamin’, Lillian? Dat’s good. Show y’all repentin’. Keep screamin’ now, Lillian, keep screamin’. Ain’t no-one to hear you.

“Praise de Lord.”

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What is the price of justice?

About the Author

Guest Post

D. Lieber

How to identify your writing problems

Veronica Jorge: Welcome, A.J. You describe yourself as a dyed in the wool New Yorker, born in the Bronx, and life-long Yankees fan. So how did you develop such a deep interest in the Dominican Republic?

Veronica Jorge: Since an aunt and uncle of yours were among those refugees who lived in the Dominican Republic, can you share with us how their experience touched your emotions and influenced your writing?

Veronica Jorge: You travel on a regular basis to the Dominican Republic. So I take it you really love the island. Do you also identify with Maximo because of the friendships you’ve made with Dominicans?

Veronica Jorge: Two recurring themes in your novels are forgiveness and the relationship between fathers and sons. Why are these of such importance for you?

Veronica Jorge: What do you want the reader to come away with after reading your novels?

Veronica Jorge: Do you have some new projects that you’re working on that you can share with us?

Veronica Jorge: Tell us one or two things you’d like your readers to know about you.

Veronica Jorge: Thank you A.J. for spending some time with us and allowing us a glimpse into your world and your writing.

Some of A. J. Sidransky’s Books

The Extra Squeeze Book Club

Writing The Dreaded Book Blurb

Excerpt

The Black Candle KillingsAndrew Segal

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The Black Candle Killings
Andrew Segal