Interview with Carole Eglash-Kosoff, author of WINDS OF CHANGE

An avid student of history, Carole Eglash-Kosoff is a native of Wisconsin. After graduating from UCLA, she spent her career in the apparel industry and teaching fashion retail, marketing, and sales at the college level. Her first book is The Human Spirit – Apartheid’s Unheralded Heroes, described above. She has also established the …a better way! Scholarship program, which provides money and mentoring for worthy high school students for both their first and second year of college. Carole Eglash-Kosoff lives and writes in Valley Village, California.

You can visit her website at www.whenstarsalign-thebook.com.

You can connect with Carole at Facebook at www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=553077163.

Q: Welcome to The Writer's Life, Carole. Can you tell us how long you’ve been writing and how your journey led to writing your latest book, When Stars Align?

I’ve been writing on and off for nearly 50 years and I’ve always had a fascination with important, but obtuse, facts of history. One of these was the disputed election of 1876 that end the Civil War’s Reconstruction decade. That decade had seen a breath of equality between the races and progress in government, society, and education that was snuffed out and disappeared from our country for nearly a century.

Q: I love your title…can you tell us why you chose it?

The love of a colored boy and a white girl in the 19^th century south is unacceptable yet each time she asks whether they will ever be together, his answer is ‘when our stars align’

Q: Why did you believe your book should be published?

I believe that too few people understand that for a decade a long time ago there was equality between the races and this year, the 150^th anniversary of the Civil War, was a good time to revisit the subject.

Q: We all know that publishers can’t do all of the publicity and that some lies on the author. What has your publisher done so far to publicize the book and what have you done?

Author House has not done a great deal. I have done book readings, speaking engagements at UCLA and Service Clubs, and exhibited at the LA Times Festival of Books, the New York Book Expo and local book shops. I am also using social media, whenever possible to promote the book.

Q: What book on the market can it compare to? How is it different? What makes your book special?

John Jakes has written extensively about this period of history but the closest books are Howard Fast’s Freedom Road and Richard Wright’s Native Son

Q: Open to a random page in your book. Can you tell us what is happening?

pg 87 - Henry has awoken from his 1^st marital night with his inexperienced wife and notes that ‘she was as ardent as yeast rising’

Q: Do you plan subsequent books?

Yes, a sequel (but capable of standing alone), Winds of Change, takes the children from When Stars Align and moves the story forward into the 20^th century.

Q: Thank you for your interview, Carole. Do you have any final words?