Tell us how much of yourself you write into your characters.
I write no more of myself into my
characters than is absolutely necessary to propel the story. Only three
personal traits define all characters 1) humans are fundamentally flawed (from
Original Sin) 2) God has a plan for every single life but still allows free
will and 3) everyone can receive and needs forgiveness. A story should advance
itself through the characters’ actions and decisions with as minimal affect
from my own predispositions.
What is the quirkiest thing you have ever done?
Typical original material writing
bursts occur in one to three thousand word spans of epiphany. Whether it is the
quirkiest thing I’ve ever done or continue doing is up to your definition of
quirky. I can’t write without fruit. Yes, I am serious – one banana, one orange,
and one apple followed by a cup of the strongest Earl Gray I can brew. My wife,
Donna, can recognize that look in my eye without even asking, knowing a trip
through the Produce Department is as important as the electricity running
through my laptop. It started in my college days when I lived on no more than
$30.00 for the entire week and a sort of subconscious connection formed. It
becomes a particular challenge when traveling abroad or at the oddest
imaginable hours.
When did you first discover that you were a writer?
I’ve written stories almost as
early as I began reading them. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to
write. Moving around the country so frequently and sharing the back seat of our
Ford LTD station wagon with my brother, I was forced to keep myself occupied
without the assistance of today’s electronic amusements. So, I did what I
thought everyone else did – read.
The earliest days were filled with
small newsprint paperback cartoon collections of Peanuts comic strips. I read
and reread for hours straight, learning a vocabulary including such words as
“opthamologist,” “agoraphobia,” and “wishy-washy” by the time I was seven years
old. I made friends with ease wherever we traveled but the one constant
companion I always knew would be there regardless of geography was a good book.
Then, I graduated from comic strips to science fiction sometime around the
sixth grade – Verne, Asimov, Bradbury, and my favorite Robert Heinlein. The
constant changing environments and new people entering and leaving my
adolescence brought subconscious writing contributions. Like most others who
find a need to express themselves through the written word, I finally reached
the perspective where I believed that I could tell stories better or at least
as well as what I read at the time.
That’s why I wrote my first book, too. Tell us the range of the kinds
of books you enjoy reading.
I enjoy the gamut of fiction genres
from Classical to Contemporary including domestic and international authors. Any
book offering illumination or a unique uplifting perspective – something that
teaches as well as entertains. Unfortunately, the world teems with mediocre
secular fiction where dysfunctionalism and social immaturity appear as sole
driving motivations. My reader is trusting his or her time in my novel and, if
successful, the story should provide some degree of previous unrecognized
insight. If I am going to invest those countless hours of keyboard isolation,
then the reader should gain even more than my own investment.
How do you keep your sanity in our run, run, run world?
Never get frustrated by attempting
to change events beyond my control. God has a plan and purpose for every one of
our lives. We all need to make conscious decisions to stop both physically and
mentally, for at least five minutes a day to breathe, pray, and offer
undistracted quiet contemplation. My children offer moments of clarity at the
most unexpected moments. My family and I were leaving church service one
evening. My youngest son Paul, who is four going on fourteen, adores his older
sister. Possessing an entire additional year of living – Elizabeth is his world. We negotiated our way
through the crowd of post service congregation after picking them up from
children’s church and waited at the parking lot crosswalk. My wife commented on
a group of approaching fire trucks and Elizabeth
stared with wide-eyed focused fascination. Paul strained and jumped to see
without success. Elizabeth
informed him that he was just too little and needed to wait until he was older.
Paul looked up at me and I saw tears begin welling in his eyes while he
hesitated, uncertain to ask a question. Finally, he blurted out, “Daddy, I
wanna on your arm tops to see.” Of course I lifted him up over my head to perch
where he grinned from ear to ear at the passing siren roar. When the world
doesn’t seem to offer any answers you want to hear, never be afraid to ask up
on your Father’s shoulders.
How do you choose your characters’ names?
Many believe character naming
should be some clever allusion to specific character traits or overall
storyline role. My selection remains much more basic and relative to
individuals I’ve known or how my own past experiences with certain figures best
fitting the story.
What is the accomplishment that you are most proud of?
My family. No matter how this world
does or will define achievement, my own father instilled in me a fundamental
perspective I pray I can pass to my own children. Prioritize God first, family
second (if you are doing the first, the second is a natural by-product), and
work third. If I can always strive to be the best father and husband I know
how, I will have accomplished all that I will ever need.
If you were an animal, which one would you be, and why?
I attempt envisioning myself as a
state of every animal at any given time. It is not necessarily the type of
animal rather than the animal stage. A young bear cub, a fledgling duck, or a
new born wolf pup – I am them all. I am in a constant state of awe and wonder. I
want to learn and absorb every gift of experience that God presents in this
life. The newness of youth retains the characteristics of humility, concern,
trust, and has not been tainted with the natural cynicism of advanced
experience. If I should ever reach a point in this world’s life when I have
forgotten this fundamental concept, then I would cease living as a human and
exist as nothing more than an animal.
What is your favorite food?
I have two equal favorite
categories – TexMex and Chinese. TexMex offers bold, intense flavors with a
full range of textures while Chinese offers an extensive variety. However, my
most specific favorite food is bread. I learned how to make bread from my
grandmother when I could barely see over the countertop. There is a humbling
therapy in activating the yeast, hand kneading the dough, and baking at just
the right temperature while the aroma penetrates throughout the house.
What is the problem with writing that was your greatest roadblock, and
how did you overcome it?
Every author can identify with
sitting down behind the keyboard or staring at a blank sheet of paper waiting
for ideas to catch up with willpower. There will always be laundry, the sink
will always have a dirty dish or two (and many more if you are blessed to have
two toddlers and a teenager in the house), and errands to run. Quite often, the
one to three thousand or so words I write at a setting rarely fulfill the
initial inspirational flash. The most efficient method to eliminate a roadblock
is to allow the words themselves to become the bulldozer. If you have strong,
bold characters (or at least traits suitable to their characterization), their
interactions between one another and their environment can take you in
directions not originally foreseen. Do not raise your expectations so high that
the only result will be disillusionment – take it easy on yourself. The Gilded
Prospect was rewritten thirty-two times but through perseverance and
the belief in the ministry of the novel, a conclusion was attained.
Tell us about the featured book.
Charlie’s
daughter, Charlotte, is terminally ill and even though he and his wife Karen
don’t know how much longer she will live, he sacrifices
whatever time they may have remaining to pursue the slimmest of chances to save
her. Just laid off and already financially exhausted from medical bills, he
needs a miracle. Charlie was abandoned by his father at a young age after the
cancer death of his mother, instilling an enormous amount of bitterness and
anger. Charlie’s father reappears just before his grandfather’s funeral. Charlie’s
relationship to his earthly father is much like the relationship many
Christians have with our Heavenly Father – strained at times, often forgetful,
and filled with lingering questions of understanding why certain events occur. After
the death of his grandfather, Karen discovers the Alaskan gold rush journal of
his great great grandfather, Absalom, and the enormous fortune he hid. Charlie
decides to pursue the gold in an effort for Charlotte ’s life-saving treatments. Enlisting
the accompaniment of his best friend George, they set out and encounter much
hardship and self-doubt. They meet up with Charlie’s Great Uncle Tyler, still
living s hermit’s life in an old Klondike log
cabin, who questions the sanity of their quest. Realizing he is helpless to
disillusion them, Uncle Tyler requests the son of his best friend, a Tlingit
Indian, guide them to the mine containing Absalom’s gold. During the course of
their adventures and challenges, Charlie discovers something even more valuable
than gold.
The Gilded
Prospect
is an essential Christian allegory – In order to gain everything, you must
first demonstrate enough faith to sacrifice everything. The novel can be summed
in a single word – control. We, as human beings, possess a profound conceit
that we control our own destinies. Yes, freewill is part of God’s design,
however, that freewill does not supersede His master plan for each and every
one of us. Sorry to say that even many Christians, although consciously
striving towards the One, still become desensitized in day to day secular
minutiae. That is Charlie’s ultimate choice, and ours. We must be in a state of
constant choice. When the walls are collapsing around us and only seconds
remain for our decision, “Who’s rope are we going to pull up?”
Please give us the first page of the book.
Today
Charlie no
longer sensed his feet. He passed the same broken fence slats he had been
promising Karen he would fix for almost a year. Foofoo’s unchanged, darkened
dog house remained slanted in One-Eyed Chamber’s yard across Milford Street , vacant from the cocker
spaniel’s death last spring after too many tennis ball chases into evening
traffic.
The
constant, almost barren maple still retained its tapered fingers stretching
into a late-night sky. His feet shifted toward another route, down to the
pavement’s end, and right toward the river. At this late evening’s hour, most porch
lights were dark. Only one or two windows glowed with a single lamp's
illumination or a television’s blue glow beyond closed-eye snoring. A cat
darted from a low-cut hedgerow with a quick-crunch, dry-leaf flash, and Charlie
didn’t offer the slightest reaction.
Karen’s
distorted expressions of concern, blueprint patterns in his subconscious,
churned his concentration. He realized that no phone calls would raise
suspicion. There was no word choice or delivery method, just intimate tonal
knowledge transmitting the event. Synapses cracked and sizzled with cascading
images and how to compact so much into a single word, sentence, or expression.
Autumn air
suspended silence without a single fluttering sway past quiet cottages and
ancient plots; a star array across the vast night sky spun him in
disorientation. In the valley below, a single, blinking neon light flashed with
intermittent bursts among fast-food incandescent signs and streetlamps. From
his considerable distance, Charlie recognized the pinpoint lights set at
regular intervals around the yard's chain-link fence. Fourteen years passed
during the half minute he stared down, recognizing the forklifts and stacks
still moving around the kilns. Every moment, both inane and what seemed
critical in the passage of his years, was clothed in the same blue uniform
jumpsuit of Deen and Sons Lumber. Even now, the day’s pine resin still clung to
his nasal passages.
A blaring
horn shocked Charlie, and he leapt to the roadside ditch, unaware of his drift
toward the median. An upward glance contrasted almost naked sycamores against
the stars. Their thin black bodies rose with upward-slashing illusion while
Charlie waited for a single, thin tendril of shadow to curl down and reach
across his throat. Darker leaves scattered across the front lawns were browner,
the night sky more vast, and his little angel’s red cheeks that much farther
away.
He
descended a hill toward the Malcolm
C. Jay
Memorial Bridge .
The ancient iron span was early 1920s construction for Western National Passage
hauling timber into downtown yards. Even after years of abandonment for faster,
sleeker, newer, more efficient modes of transportation, it was the longest
county commission demolition tabling due to insufficient funds.
How can readers find you on the Internet.
The best
starting point is my website at www.philthurmanfiction.com.
The novel is available in soft copy, hardback, and every available e-reader
platform. Amazon, Barnes and Noble, ChristianBooks.com, and too many more to
list carry The Gilded Prospect. It is fascinating to Google search and
find availability on German, Japanese, Australian, East Indian, and many more
International book retailers.
Thank you, Phil, for the interesting interview.
Readers, here’s a link to the book. By using it when you order, you help support this blog.
The Gilded Prospect: A NovelLeave a comment for a chance to win a free copy of the book. Please tell us where you live, at least the state or territory. (Comments containing links may be subject to removal by blog owner.)
Void where prohibited; the odds of winning depend on the number of entrants. Entering the giveaway is considered a confirmation of eligibility on behalf of the enterer in accord with these rules and any pertaining local/federal/international laws.
The only notification you’ll receive is the winner post on this blog. So be sure to check back a week from Saturday to see if you won. You will have 4 weeks from the posting of the winners to claim your book.
If you’re reading this on Feedblitz, Facebook, or Amazon, please come to the blog to leave your comment if you want to be included in the drawing. Here’s a link.
Http://lenanelsondooley.blogspot.com
15 comments:
Looks like I am the first one to sign. Phil is another new author to me and this book sounds like something that I would enjoy reading. Thank you for the opportunity!
Blessings,
Jo from Southern Arizona
azladijo(at)aol(dot)com
Thanks for the opportunity to get this book.
Lyndie Blevins
Duncanville, Tx
Thanks, Lena for again featuring a new author to me. This novel sounds intriguing and i would love to win. Thank you, Phil and Lena for the chance.
marianne from northern Alberta
mitziUNDERSCOREwanhamATyahooDOTcom
I am not familiar with Phil Thurman's books but this one will definitely be on my "books I must read" list.
Thanks for entering me in the book giveway for "The Gilded Prospect".
Janet E.
von1janet(at)gmail(dot)com
Florida
Hi Phi
Thak you and Lena for giving me a chance to win your book. So in writing it is self , God, and forgiveness. You have to have a banana, orange, apple and the strongest Earl Gary, Phi, what is Earl Gary? Your book sounds like a good book. Can't wait to read it. God bless you.
Norma Stanforth from Ohio
Norma,
Thank you and everyone else for your kindest of words. Earl Gray is my favorite tea and there must be something in the bergamot. After the novel's first few drafts, I wondered if I was thematically tackling too much. But, through persistence and listening to the Lord, I believe it fits together well. This novel has multiple levels and I am always receptive to opinions or clarifications.
In Christ,
Phil
A fabulous post thank you.
I'm looking forward to reading THE GILDED PROSPECT.
Mary P
QLD AUSTRALIA
Thanks for the opportunity to get this book.
Lyndie Blevins
Duncanville, Tx
Enter me!!
Thanks for the giveaway and God Bless!!
Sarah Richmond
Blanch,N.C.
I'd enjoy this book. Thanks!
Beth from IA
Enter me!!
Sharon Richmond
Blanch,NC.
sharonruth126@gmail.com
Looks interesting!
-Melissa M. from TX
This sounds very interesting. There aren't too many allegories out there! I'm in MN.
To All,
With such strong reactions from everyone, I pray The Gilded Prospect will at least come close to expectations. This novel's publication has brought uncountable blessings from readers, other authors, and publishing professionals. But, whether a Christian author or a Christian cab driver, we must all always remind ourselves that every living, breathing action and reaction is for the promotion of His glory. Even though I am a quality assurance executive, I still consider my writing a ministry. Whether we realize it or not, we are all ministers regardless of vocation. For those of you who have followed Lena, I believe we can all agree that she has been a blessing to all of us.
In Christ,
Phil
What a great read this is going to be. Sounds so good! Phil is a new author to me and I'm looking forward to reading this book.
Blessings!
Judy B from Indiana
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