Author Interview with Thomas G Morgan | Author Q & A

Q: Quote from your Book | Favorite Quote – “The dumbass illusion from bourgeois enlightenment that religion and sexual morality is fleeting superstition requires an abjuring ignorance of the loyalties, longings, flaws and work of ordinary human beings.” Page 437 Shotgun Preacher

Q: As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up? A: Animal trainer. Livestock farmer. Storyteller.

Q: When did you write your first book and how old were you? A: “Olde Ben: the Lost Percheron”
“Charles C. Devere: Swashbuckler”
“Tippy Highjacks the Plane”
“John Ross: Detective”
“The Killer Tattoo”
Ten thru twelve years of age

Q: How did you begin writing? A: Did you intend to become an author, or do you have a specific reason or reasons for writing each book? To advance certain ideas, enhance certain values — and to set the record straight .

Q: What would you say is your interesting writing quirk? A: My writing stands accused of conspiring a conservative case for Communism.

Q: Do you like to create books for adults, youth and/or children? and Why? A: I write for the precocious child in every mature adult.

Q: How many books have you written? Which is your favorite? A:I have written three, (1) “Not of Our Time” (2) “Glimpses” (3) My favorite, always the last one for sale, “Shotgun Preacher”
I currently have four in progress (1) “The Firstling” (2) “Spiral Code” (3) “Destruction of Time” and (4)”Of Time and Eternity”

Q: How long does it take you to write a book? A:Five to ten years

Q: Could you describe the mundane details of writing: How many hours a day to you devote to writing? Do you write a draft on paper or at a keyboard (typewriter or computer)? A: I write in longhand at first light, after prayers and hydration; before farm chores at midday and clinical work in the evening.

Q: What does your family think of your writing? A:The thoughts of my family are essential to my writing. I am deeply grateful for how much they love my work.

Q: What do you like to do when you’re not writing?A: Read the work of others. Ride horses. Hunt wolves. Contemplate and pray for those I counsel. Tend my flocks, herds, hounds, and birds. See motion pictures and discuss them. Farm visits with kin, friends comrades and issue*.
*Issue: racehorse term for offspring

Q: What do you think makes a good story? A:The olde notion of “a disturbance in church”, i.e. a narrative through the flack of human contradiction confronting evil with moral resources to prevail and/or endure.

Q: What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating/writing your books? A:How images of character and plot dialectically determine details of the story.

Q: What authors do you like to read? What book or books have had a strong influence on you or your writing? A: I like most to read and re-read Simone Weil. Early to late influence include: Eric Knight, Walter Farley, Jack London, Steinbeck, Hemmingway, Fitzgerald, Shakespeare, Yeats, Mayakovski, Dostoyevsky, Gorki, Sholokhov, Mailer, Dylan Thomas, James T. Farrell, Ross Lockridge, and James Joyce. “Gravity and Grace”, “Brothers Karamazov”, Raintree County”, ” Quiet Flows the Don”, “Finnegan’s Wake”, “For Thom the Bell Tolls” and “To a God Unknown”.

Q: Do you hear from your readers much? A: What kinds of things do they say? From Bravo! to Bullshit!

Q: Where do you get your information or ideas for your books? A: From History and current portents. The trick is to restrict excess information.

Q: Do you have any suggestions to help me become a better writer? If so, what are they A: “To write” as “to love” is not soft employment. Both require hard work more akin to physical labor than emotive sharing or gossip. Hemmingway thought you had to be shot at to be a writer. I think you’ve had to have known labor as a necessity to keep at writing as a virtue.

Q: Do you meet your readers at book signings, conventions, or similar events? A: I look forward to it.

Q: Tell us about your most resent book?

(1) “Glimpses” – The Holy Koran teaches “that life with its Glimpses of goodness is still a terrible probation”. Surrounding evidence indicate it is not difficult to violate probation. No escaping the trials of this life, we plead our case with the stories we tell. Here are some of mine attempting as Darnton notes “to provide a cognitive jolt” which “ignites the imagination”. You can purchase Glimpses on Amazon.com

(2) “Shotgun Preacher” – pivots on the classical “disturbance in church”. I prayerful narrative threatened with gunfire and resolved in faithful endurance. Your can order Shotgun Preacher on Amazon.com

Q: What’s more important: characters or plot? A: Equally important; dialectically determining details of the story’s sense and sense of place.

Q: How do books get published? A: Like most 21th century phenomena; i.e. post traumatically.

Q: Do you write every single day? A: Not possible.

Q: Ballpoint, uniball or fountain pen? A: Ballpoint

Q: Any writing rituals? A: Conversation with my characters and interior narrative throughout my days create what I record and write at first light the next morning. Ritual care and regular tasks of animal husbandry require nonverbal communications which I find informs thoughtful words.

Q: What’s the worst job you’ve had? A: Clinical Director for three regional psych clinics, 50 miles apart considered “feeding stations” by central corporate hospital. “Supervised” by an obese gusano (counter-revolutionary Cuban) whose administration garnished my temporary triplicate salary to my ex-wife’s regular extravaganzas.

Q: Tell us some more about your book/s. A: Four more in progress for my list (1) “The Firstling”: Archetypal sixties protagonist becoming a Christian/Muslim operative in Chechnya and the Levant. God consciousness vs. the rot of empires and blood for oil warfare. (2) “Spiral Code”: Mysterion of love, life and death spiraling out of the Signal Corps in WWII CBI (China, Burma, India) Theater through the preposterousity and cold war chill to endure the destruction of time in prophetic and angular distances. (3) “The Destruction of Time” and (4) “Of Time and Eternity” finishes the trilogy of poems that paralleled John Berryman’s Caution, they are written “not to understand but to terrify and to comfort”.

Q: Are you planning to adapt any of your stories to the screen? A: Yes, my children recommend Denzel Washington and Danny Glover.

Q: How hard is it to establish and maintain a career in writing? A:Creative writing may economically complement but is best conserved safe this side of a capitalist marketing career. It is a calling not a consumer product.

Connect with Author Thomas G Morgan
Website www.thomasgmorgan.com