Charles Haas

The Thanksgiving Virgin (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Lives collide on a cold night where one world ends and another begins.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: iUniverse
• Seitenzahl: 418
• Erscheinungstermin: 18. März 2008
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780595912575
• Artikelnr.: 69340010

Autorenporträt

Charles Haas, a graduate of the University of Iowa, has been a business analyst for fifteen years and lives in Kansas City. This is his debut novel. The teachers at Iowa went above the call of duty to develop their students. I remember taking classes from MFA candidates from the Iowa Writer's Workshop as an undergrad. I signed up for writing courses just to pad my schedule filled with science and business. What I found were expository and creative writing teachers who recognized a bit of talent in me and encouraged it, helped me mold it, and took me into more classes where I further developed a voice. Today, a number of those people are still involved in academia and some return each summer for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival in Iowa City. I benefited from their guidance and expertise in ways that are still playing out for me. And I remember their messages as well." One of their messages was for him to become a writer after college, which Charles immediately shied away from. "It was 1988, a recession had engulfed the economy, and I needed a job. So I went into business and told myself I would get around to that novel one day. It took fifteen years." It took just one year for him to get into business and technology consulting and he was off on a career spent as a project manager and analyst serving various corporations. "There are methodologies and disciplines closely followed in my regular line of work, but there are still innovative ways to think and to solve problems. Writing is a complete departure from my regular work where no methods need followed, and the occasion to free-form ideas is commonplace. There are right and left brain elements to both business analysis and writing a novel, and plenty of discipline needed for both, but they are different pursuits, each with their own sets of challenges. I enjoy that. Writing gets just as intense as anything else. I found that writing a novel takes hard work and a great deal of time. And there are days when you don't want to do it." On method: "I wrote this book without knowing what was going to happen, no notes, no outline, and no plan. But a stream of thought filled me up every day and I found the story leading me after a short while. It was a fascinating experience, especially switching courses in the overall plot within multiple stories; having the book speak to me is the best way I can describe it. I've heard other writers describe it as sort of paranormal. They end up becoming a channel for the prose as if they had little to do with its origination or synthesis. I can say that I know that sort of strange feeling on a sustained level, because sometimes I would anticipate going into my writing room and wonder if anything would be there. But it nearly always was. Perhaps part of that was due to the fact that when I was finished with each session, I would forget about it and go do other things. I was very much disciplined and I recognize that part of it, I edited it myself as well, but the creativity sometimes came from nowhere. I do visualize quite a bit of the writing. I do think that's necessary." Influences: "Many authors, contemporary American writers like Patrick Conroy, Irving, Salinger, the usual suspects. Rick Bragg is an example, Tom Wolfe. American writers are sort of like American composers, direct and unpolished at times, but sincere and present with description and sensitivity to human conditions. You listen to a Copland piece and hear the texture of it; you read Conroy or Bragg and see there is a southern resonance to their work just like there was with Faulkner and Twain, or a Grisham, a loyalty to the stories that lingered on the land. I can say there is a certain mystery to the Ozark culture that inspired my writing." Some people have gifts they are not afraid to share, and some have a bottomless well to offer. I'm not afraid. I'm inspired by many people I have been blessed to know.