All right, we've made it to mid-June! This will be the last #BehindTheScenes for a while. I mainly focus on my kid during the summer months. Stayed tuned for another episode in September, though! For today, due to popular demand (based on what I saw for the last post), I am doing another #BehindTheScenes with authors who have inspired me for whatever reason.
Ernest Hemingway - My father disliked Hemingway and he was not on the list of authors he recommended. Depressing was the only response I managed to get out of him. So, I did not catch him until high school, when I read A Farewell to Arms. I thought it was utterly sad...but intoxicating as a reader. I devoured The Old Man and the Sea and went from there, slowly understanding the man. While Hemingway had many flaws and was generally an ass all around, I found some of his antics inspiration for my books more than anything else. There was shooting a toilet with a picture, checking Fitzgerald's dick, and much, much more.
Ellen Marie Wiseman - This was a recent find. When I was still working for the bank, I was fond of ordering from Thrift Books. Ellen Marie Wiseman was a suggestion the website made. I bookmarked What She Left Behind and eventually ordered it and read it. I was utterly floored by the sadness, realness, and detail to the books. Ms. Wiseman chooses history to base her characters around, and often relates the story to today's events. Her words are empathetic and magical. She has inspired me to be the same way with my characters, and to never give up until the very end.
Walt Whitman - I try to be diverse with my reading. Growing up, though, I recalled reading Leaves of Grass and being awed. And who could forget O Captain! O Captain!, dedicated to Abraham Lincoln? Whitman had guts and he dove into deep human emotion. Not to mention, when he was in his mid-thirties, he decided to become a poet. Nobody cared about Leaves of Grass, though, and he had to return to being a journalist. His bravery in just jumping into a vocation that hardly had financial gain was something I could relate to. If you think being an author is a lucrative career, then you have not been watching my frustrations the past couple of years.
Bonus: who is the author pictured for this post?
Namaste! Enjoy your summer!
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