One of the things I love best about interviewing other Historical Fiction authors, is that you learn what stories obsess them, and how they view these stories through whatever personal experiences they have. Case in point, if I told you there was an Asian-American author whose previous book was a translation of Chinese romances, would you expect their latest book to be about the Trojan War?
See what I mean?
History teacher, banker, finance executive–Hock Tjoa has turned to writing for
his “third act.” He published The Battle of Chibi, (if you ever saw the movie Red Cliffs, that’s the story)selections from The Romance of the Three Kingdoms that he translated in 2010 and Agamemnon Must Die in 2014. He is married and lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California.
Seems to me that the definitive book on the Trojan War was done a while ago. What’s this story about?
The “mother of all wars” (the Trojan War) is over. All the people of Mycenae want is peace and normalcy. But the gods have a crowded agenda for them. There will be blood and pain, even quarrels among the gods.
The royal family of Mycenae has a bloody, monstrous history. Agamemnon returns with his war trophy, the Trojan Princess Cassandra, whom he unthinkingly flaunts before his queen. After an epic sword fight in his own banquet hall, Agamemnon is killed. Cassandra has her nightmares/visions of the gory and unspeakable deeds of the House of Atreus; she is led away to be executed. Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus have their respective reasons, but this regicide must be avenged. Or so say the voices in Orestes’ head. He must avenge his father. He must kill the regicides. He must kill his own mother.
Hmmm, no wonder so many neurotic syndromes have Greek names. There’s a lot going on there. What inspired you to write this particular book? Why this story?
The story is based on the Oresteia, the sole surviving classical Greek trilogy, by Aeschylus. I was assigned (an English translation of) this book in a humanities course at college with the introduction that this was a key work, a part of the foundation of Western civilization, etc.. I did not get it (just as I did not get Moby Dick).
Over the years I have read almost every translation that has appeared, hoping for the light to go on. I decided a few years ago, to write this story myself, as I understood it and not necessarily as my professors might have wished.
Sounds like there’s probably a Greek name for that kind of thinking but we’ll leave that to a therapist. What’s your favorite scene in the book?
Hm, every scene was difficult to write and a delight in the end, but I’ll pick the
Agamemnon Must Die, by Hock Tjoa.
chapter that deals with Cassandra, a minor character with an unusual gift and a sad fate. It also includes portions in verse, something that I experimented with in this book.
You can find Agamemnon Must Die and Hock’s other work here:
I am thrilled to be part of two panel discussions and a book signing at the Elgin Literary Festival January 29-30 in Elgin, IL.
Join us at the Elgin Literary Festival January 29-30
I’ll be part of a panel on “How your real job influences your writing” as well as one on various methods of publishing. I’ll also be talking about how working with a “middle way” publisher like The Book Folks helped me get The Count of the Sahara out into the world.
The Count of the Sahara is now available in Kindle format. Also available in paperback from Amazon or direct from the publisher.
Not for nothing, but I’ll also be signing and (hopefully) selling the book as well.
Like many fledgling writers, I have spent a lot of years reading Writers Digest. From the early 80s til last month, I would read the articles and think, “Man, you must really know what you’re doing to get an article published. Wish I could.”
Hey, I’m in Writers Digest just like a real writer.
Fact is, while 15 years of my life looks like a black hole on my business resume, nothing has prepared me in life like the time I spent telling jokes to drunk people for a living. I’m happy to have shared the lessons learned with other writers.
Has anything really changed as a result? Probably not. I may have sold a few more copies of Count of the Sahara (in Kindle, of course, because other writers are as broke as I am.) Am I a better writer for having done this? Did I make any money on it? Did my ego really need more reinforcing that doesn’t actually improve my lot in life? The answers to all those are a big old no.
The weird part? Someone out there is reading that, envying me. Life is strange, huh?
Had a great time doing this one-hour radio interview with Dr. Joseph Schuldenrein on November 18. We discussed Byron de Prorok, why presentation skills matter to scientists, and why I could never…. ever…. be a real archaeologist.
It was a wide-ranging interview, and a lot of fun. Take a listen:
Check out the Indiana Jones: Myth or Reality podcast.
Below is the book’s place on their Table of Honor Page.
The Count of the Sahara took an “Honorable Mention” for the 2015 Great Midwest Book Festival.
It’s so gratifying that the reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, if a bit mixed. If you’ve enjoyed the story, please tell the world on Amazon or Goodreads.
Oh and my favorite review so far? A 4-star that started with “I liked this book and I don’t know why…”
Michael Tarabulski and I tour the Logan’s exhibit based on his years of research. Great finally meeting him in person!
First, I got to meet Michael Tarabulski, whose research on Byron de Prorok is the cause of all my troubles, and The Count of the Sahara couldn’t have happened without him.
Part of the exhibit. The character of Belaid’s wife, Tadefi, was based on the painting in the upper right.
Then we toured the exhibit… seeing photographs, film and artifacts from the original site, and reliving moments of the book. The story really came alive.
Had a blast speaking to the group about Byron de Prorok and how he’d make a great Kardashian.
Thanks to all. Of course, if you know any group interested in Midwest history or archaeology, I’m available to speak! Drop me a line on the Contact Page
I am well and truly stoked to be speaking at the Logan Museum/ Beloit College on Monday, November 9. Below is a copy of the press release for the event.
For Immediate Release
Novelist Wayne Turmel to discuss “Count” Byron de Prorok on Nov. 9
The dubious character accompanied Logan Museum explorers on a famous expedition in the 1920s
Of all the archaeological expeditions in the Logan Museum of Anthropology’s history, none remains so tangible in public and institutional memory than Alonzo Pond’s journey across the Sahara desert in 1925. “Blue Veils, Black Mountains,” the Logan’s latest exhibition takes a full accounting of the Pond trip.
The items Pond brought home from that expedition formed the backbone of the Logan Museum’s collection. “The materials brought back by the Pond expedition created the first large, purposefully and intentionally assembled ethnographic collection brought to the museum,” says Curator of Exhibits and Education Dan Bartlett. Additionally, “Pond’s trip was covered by newspapers across the country,” Bartlett says, “For the greater Beloit community, the expedition elevated Beloit’s reputation as a center of scholarship.”
But like any good expedition, it was not pursued by Pond alone. On Monday, Nov. 9, the Logan Museum will welcome a pair of guests to shed some light on perhaps the most famous member of the expedition, “Count” Byron de Prorok. The event will be held in the Godfrey Anthropology Building, Room 102.
At 7 p.m., Michael Tarabulski, a Beloit alumnus and an archivist with the National Archives, will screen his brief film “A Distinctly Dubious Character: Byron de Prorok and the Tomb of Tin Hinan.”
Immediately following the screening, author Wayne Turmel will discuss his new work of historic fiction, The Count of the Sahara. The novel, told from the point of view of Byron de Prorok’s assistant, follows de Prorok on the cross-country promotional tour he undertook during the year following the Pond expedition as well as a number of flashbacks to the expedition. As readers will note, there is a bit of discrepancy between Prorok’s recollection of events and how things unfolded during the Pond expedition. Turmel’s e-book was one of the most downloaded ebooks on Amazon worldwide the week it debuted.
“Prorok was really one of modern media’s first celebrities,” Turmel says. “He really crafted an image of a swashbuckling adventurer for himself,” Turmel adds. “He was a perfect storm of charisma and accessible fame. He traveled to parts of the country that had never seen film footage of these far-flung expedition destinations before.”
Prorok “drove the archaeological purists crazy,” Turmel notes “because Prorok declared some of his discoveries the greatest since King Tut’s tomb.
Tarabulski and Turmel’s presentations will tell the story of the rise and fall of Byron de Prorok. Following the presentation, the Logan Museum will be open at 6:30 p.m. so attendees have an opportunity to visit the exhibit both before and after the presentations. The Logan Museum is located at the corner of College and Bushnell Streets on the campus of Beloit College.
I’m always fascinated by (and somewhat jealous of) people who can draw upon their family histories as the jumping-off place for historical fiction. That’s because I know embarrassingly little about my own roots. I mean, I had ancestors, I just don’t know anything beyond the fact I must have had great grandparents. That being said, I have definitely considered doing some research using an online census and some of the other resources over on the Genealogy Bank website. There is so much that I would like to learn about my ancestors and I have a lot of questions about my family tree so it would be absolutely fascinating to learn a little bit more about my roots. Deborah Lincoln, on the other hand, has used family history to write her tale of Missouri before the US Civil War, “Agnes Canon’s War.”
Deborah Lincoln lives and writes in Oregon
Deborah Lincoln has lived on the Central Oregon Coast for ten years. S. She and her husband have three grown sons. She was awarded first place in the 2013 Chanticleer Laramie Awards (best in category) and was a 2015 finalist for a Willa Award in historical fiction presented by Women Writing the West.
So tell us what the book’s about?
Agnes Canon’s War is the fictionalized story of my great great-grandparents’ experiences during the Civil War in Missouri. Agnes Canon is 28 and a spinster when she leaves her home in Pennsylvania in the spring of 1852 to join a group of cousins who traveled to frontier Holt County in northwest Missouri. There she meets and marries Jabez Robinson, a doctor who was born in Maine and had traveled to the California gold fields and the army posts of the Southwest during the Mexican-American War. In the decade before the Civil War actually breaks out, both Kansas and Missouri are a battleground of politics and acts of violence, and Agnes and Jabez are in the thick of it. This is the story of two people who watch their family, their town, everything that keeps a society civil, crumble into a chaos they are powerless to stop.
What is it about this time period that intrigued you enough to write the book?
I had access to the basic facts of my ancestors’ lives, which were compiled by a cousin in the 1970s. The characters were so exceptional, the events so
Agnes Canon’s War draws on her own family history
extraordinary, that I didn’t want the story to die out. Agnes seemed to me to stand out from other nineteenth-century women, in that she chose to turn her back on her family home in Pennsylvania and venture into the unknown. She left behind six siblings, none of whom ever married or bore children, so her marriage and children were the only links to the next generation.
Jabez, too, was a fascinating and even romantic character: though he was born and raised in Maine, he held secessionist views during the Civil War and suffered from them. He was an adventurer, too, traveling to California and the Southwest in the 1840s, becoming a doctor in the face of all sorts of challenges, marrying his first love after a ten-year separation only to lose her within two months of the wedding. The “plot” was tailor-made for a novel, and though I left out lots of events and made up others, I hope I did them justice.
Without setting off the spoiler alert, what’s your favorite scene?
Several of my favorite scenes would give away too much. So I’ll choose an early one: a scene set in Cincinnati where Agnes and Jabez meet for the first time, an accidental encounter at a marketplace along the riverfront. I like it for the sense of being suspended between civilization and frontier, for the colorful characters and the bustle and excitement of an exuberant young town. It mirrors Agnes’s hope for and optimism in her future.
The Lisle Public Library is now the home of a copy of The Count of the Sahara. If you spent as much time as a kid as I did in your local public library, you know that it’s a pretty big honking deal.
Snuck in to see it with my own eyes. Only thing better would be if was checked out and I couldn’t find it!
Writing is often said to be a lonely business, and the writing part surely is. You can’t have a group of people hanging around while you’re hunting and pecking your way to brilliance. What I do know, though, is that my writing has vastly improved since I got out of my cave once in a while.
Just this week, I attended two different writers groups, and for very different reasons. On Saturday, I was asked to read my short story, On the Rail, at the launch of Rivulets 27. That’s the 2015 version of the anthology put out by the Naperville Writers Group each year.
Reading On the Rail at the 2015 Rivulets launch. That face is dramatizing a scene, not realizing what I actually wrote.
Then on Wednesday night I attended a new group–Author, Author, at the Wheaton library. I was invited by my friend and colleague Jerilyn Willin. It was focused on how to actually sell more books.
What do writers groups do for me?
They get me out of the house. I run my company from home, and cabin fever is a very real and dangerous thing. In order to prevent turning into Jack Nicholson from the Shining, I need to get out among human beings.
I get to read other people’s work, including things I would never voluntarily read. I’ve probably read more poetry in the last year than in the previous 30. Romance novels? Superhero fan fiction? Really awful drivel that should never be inflicted on innocent human beings? Really good work from people who are hiding their lights under giant bushels? Yup, yup, yup and yup.
I’m learning how to proof and edit, and see my own mistakes reflected in glorious, painful technicolor in my critiques of others.
I get feedback from people who aren’t related to me or have a vested interest in soothing my ego.The Count of the Sahara benefited greatly from the feedback of strangers or at least people who don’t live with me. Next week they’ll get the first peek at my new novel, The Horns of Hattin.
This is not a charitable thought, but here it is: I am pretty good. I know this because I see what else is out there. My work is better than a lot of people’s (which is good to know) and not nearly as good as some (which is humbling, but also really good to know.)
I learn I am not alone in trying to sell my work…. making money from a book is WAY harder than actually writing it,and takes more work. I need to learn all I can. Yes, Erik and the BookFolks do a nice job, but ultimately authors sell their work.
There are other people out there (some crazier, some saner) who understand what it is to be a writer.
NWG member and darned fine writer won a copy of The Count of the Sahara. Can’t wait for his feedback.
Even if you don’t go often, meeting other writers, getting feedback and lending an empathetic ear are important to the author’s journey.
Besides, when you drink in a group, you’re social. When you drink alone it’s just kinda sad.
History teacher, banker, finance executive–Hock Tjoa has turned to writing for
