Author SCOTT FIELDS
Author Scott Fields talks about his new novel, The Killing Road, and why he decided to dramatize this true story and how hard it was to write such a book.
What made you dramatize the true life events of The Killing Road?
I was at a book signing when a young couple came up to me and the woman told me about a time when three members of her family were killed by a maniac who eventually killed twelve people in a three week period. She gave me the phone number of her grandparents. I met with them and they gave me a scrapbook that was full of everything I needed to know.
What is your fascination with real life crime stories? Why do you think you are so interested in true crime? Your earlier novel, The Mansfield Killings, is also based on true events.
Normally, I prefer feel good stories. I like a story with a conflict but a happy ending. The Killing Road and The Mansfield Killings began by someone telling me about some events that happened years ago. Something clicked inside me when I heard about each one, and my regular life was put on the back burner.
What do you hope to accomplish by writing The Killing Road? By writing any book?
Most everyone has a hobby, and mine just happens to be writing. For all my life ideas would pop into my head. If they stayed there for several years, then I took them seriously and would eventually turn those ideas into a novel.
How did you go about starting The Killing Road? What was involved?
After several interviews and trips to the library for additional information out of the newspapers, I was ready to begin.
You said it was hard writing The Killing Road. What did you mean by that?
It was extremely difficult to write about some of the things that he did. It only took me four months to write The Mansfield Killings, and it took me two years to write this one. He was incredibly vicious and did some things that I described in the novel but will not discuss them today.
Do you have another book on the horizon?
I am about halfway finished with a little more upbeat kind of novel. Imagine a mafia hitman turning into a pastor and becoming obsessed with taking care of kids with cancer. I have a real problem with kids getting cancer, and I just had to write a story about it. This will be one more way of feeding my hobby.
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Kentucky Native Son Ron Rhody’s exciting new book, Concerning the Matter of The King of Craw, will debut at the Kentucky Book Show November 2016
Click here to pre-order your copy.
“The essence of good and evil is a certain disposition of the mind.”
Epictetus
“To those in that section near the river where the poor lived, that section where the bad-ass bars and the honkey-tonks and the cat-houses huddled, to the people in that part of town they called the Bottom, and to many others all over town that were poor and powerless, he was revered. He stood up for them.
To the proper folk of the city, though, he was Lucifer unleashed. He was the King of Craw and they wanted him gone.”
Set in the Roaring Twenties in Kentucky’s Capital City, the story spins around John Fallis, a legendary figure in Bluegrass folklore, and two boys who fall into his orbit.
A successful businessman, a gambler, a bootlegger, movie-star handsome, charismatically compelling, and deferential to no one, he was the champion of the common man and the scourge of the Powers That Be.
He was the King of Craw.
The story begins just before the night of the Big Shoot-Out when he takes on the entire city police force and sets his fabled reputation in stone. But the way he died remains a mystery to this day. Did the powerful forces in the city have him killed or was it the gambling fight it was purported to be?
Though this is a story and not a history, most of it happened. John Fallis, Craw, Crawfish Bottom are names that still resonate and questions about his early end are still unanswered.
This is the first piece of fiction built around the man and the place, full of action and drama, most particularly for readers drawn to mystery and the on-going battle between good and evil.
Whatever you ultimately decide about JF’s place on the scale of good and bad or the particulars of his death, you won’t be bored.
The Publisher
Owain Glyn at home
Outer Banks Publishing Group author Owain Glyn was recently interviewed by author May Freighter on her blog and revealed some of his secrets to falling in love. Here are few choice insights from the poet of love.
May: A lot of writers seem to be better at a particular genre or a style which they hone over the years. This leads me to our next question: why did you choose poetry?
Owain: I guess I was drawn to writing through my love of language, and poetry allows me to use language in a variety of ways that prose does not. I love the lyricism of poetry.
May: I think every writer out there should try a bit of poetry now and again. There is a lot we can learn from it. It summarises and portrays so much in short sentences. Usage of powerful words can always be noted in good examples.Writing lets our souls explore the worlds beyond our imagination, so what is your routine of getting there?
Owain: I am lucky, I can find inspiration everywhere. I am an avid people watcher and I have a very broad set of interests. A walk into town, a walk in the country, ten minutes listening to the news, will always give me food for thought.
May: I tend to try and block out the world while moving. My mind likes to use that time to create things instead of focusing on the people around me. But, when I am stationary and have nothing to do then I become a creepy people watcher. I do hope I don’t freak too many people out by staring. Have to master those ninja skills sometime.
Click here to read the whole interview.
Owain Glyn’s Windswept – Poems of Love, containing 107 love and heart-felt poems, were inspired by the author’s surroundings – the wild coast of Cornwall, UK, a land of legend from King Arthur, and Merlin, to mermaids, pirates, and smugglers. The poems have been read more than 2 million times by more than 12,000 fans of Owain Glyn on the popular writer’s community, Wattpad.
List Price: $10.99
Nine of the 20 books on Amazon’s current bestseller list contain few words and belong to a genre that didn’t exist two years ago. Welcome to the biggest publishing craze of the year: coloring books for adults, writes Susannah Cahalan in the New York Post.
More than 2,000 have hit stands since 2013 and the genre’s two biggest bestsellers, “Secret Garden” and “Enchanted Forest,” have sold a combined 13.5 million copies in 50 countries, she wrote.
“Adult coloring books are key factors in three of the top four adult nonfiction categories,” according to Kristen McLean, director of new business development for Nielsen Book.
“They make up 14 out of the top 20 for games/hobby/activity, including the top three slots. They are 40 out of the top 50 in art/design. There are even three in the top 20 in self-help,” she was quoted an article in the ABA Winter Institute’s look at 2016 bookselling trends from Publishers Weekly.
So what is the attraction to coloring books? People consider it therapeutic, stress-relieving and calming. Adrienne Raphel in her piece in The New Yorker called the trend, the “Peter Pan Market” as adults turn to coloring to relive the joys of their childhood.
Starre Vartan wrote in Mother Nature Network (MNN) that MNN’s own Robin Shreeves is a fan, “I enjoy them because when I’m doing them, I don’t think about anything but colors. They take me away from life’s problems without a lot of effort. So do many other creative endeavors, but with the coloring book, I can do it for 10 minutes instead of the time it would take me to do some other things. I don’t do it often, but I pick it up from time to time and get lost for a bit,” Shreeves wrote.
“Coloring fulfills a creative urge and is also soothing and calming,” wrote Jan Hornbeck Chapman, an Ohio-based youth librarian in her 60s, according to Vartan.
Vartan also quoted Sophie Hessekiel, a college student at Vassar in Poughkeepsie, New York, echoes Chapman, even though she’s at a completely different stage of life. “Coloring lets you think about nothing for a little while, and the feel of a marker on paper is very soothing,” she wrote.
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