📚 A Bookish Chat with 'A Divisive Storm' David E. Feldman | Author Interview | #AuthorInterview #BlogTour #Interview #ADivisiveStorm
David E. Feldman has written 8 books of his own and ghost-written many others. He has made several films, won 2 film awards and won a playwriting contest in 2022. His first in series Not Today: Dora Ellison Mystery Book 1 was a Best Mystery 2022 Killer Nashville Claymore finalist and was followed by four, soon to be five, more Dora books. His novel The Neighborhood was a 2023 finalist for The Book Excellence Awards.
He plays piano and sings professionally and loves to paint, which he does both for fun and commission. He adores his wife, two sons and their Yorkie. He has an MLS degree in Library & Information Science.
His books include: The Dora Ellison Mystery Series
Not Today, Dora Ellison Mystery Series Book 1
A Gathering Storm, Dora Ellison Mystery Series Book 2
A Sickening Storm, Dora Ellison Mystery Books Book 3
A Biological Storm, Dora Ellison Mystery Series Book 4
A Special Storm, Dora Ellison Mystery Series Book 5
Pilgrimage from Darkness Nuremberg to Jerusalem
Bad Blood, a Long Island Mystery
Born of War: Based on a Story of American Chinese Friendship
How to Be Happy in Your Marriage
The Neighborhood
His work can be found at https://www.davidfeldman.com/books.shtml.
He works extensively as a ghostwriter, via his ghostwriting website at https://longislandnyghostwriter.com. His film, Everyone Deserves a Decent Life (directed, produced) won the Alfred Fortunoff Humanitarian Film Award at the Long Island Film Expo, 2014. His film, Let Me Out! (Written, directed, produced) won Best Psychological Thriller at the 2009 New York International Film Festival. His play, Love Lives On, was a winner of the inaugural Artists in Partnership Inaugural Playwriting Contest and was performed in Sept. – Oct. 2022 in Long Beach, New York.
Website: https://www.davidefeldman.com/books.shtml
Twitter: https://twitter.com/davidefeldmanw1
Facebook: https://facebook.com/DavidEFeldmanAuthor
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidefeldmanwriter
Welcome to The Writer's Life! Now that your sixth book in the series has been published, we’d love to find out more about the process. How did you come up with the idea to write your series?
I have loved to read since I was a child. I was a bit of a troublemaker as a teen and rarely went to school. My education came from constant, ongoing reading. I particularly love reading mysteries, and have many favorite authors and series. Two of my favorite authors are Lee Child and Harlan Coben. I love that Child's Jack Reacher gives bullies their due. People (frequently women or the elderly or otherwise infirm) are often abused in the Reacher books and the abusers always get what's coming to them. While Dora Ellison, my main character, is a very different animal from Jack Reacher, she has her own violent streak and she, too, gives bullies and violent criminals what's coming to them. Harlan Coben has love at the center of many of his stories. Loving relationships are torn apart by circumstances or bad actors. I'm a big fan of love, and I have strong, loving relationships at the heart of my Dora books. I have an ongoing cast of characters running through all 6 Dora books. They love, lose love, and find love again over the course of the books, while mysteries are being solved.
Link to the series:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/
Are thrillers noir your expertise? What interested you in the genre?
Noir thrillers have darkness as their ambience. The bleakness of life is at the forefront in noir stories. While my Dora Ellison books have other, lighter aspects to them--humor, for instance--the bleak, violent, danger of noir is very much a hallmark of my Dora books.
What’s one fact about your book that would surprise people?
People ask why I have written about a woman detective who is in a relationship with another woman, given that I am a straight man. Some find that surprising. My answer is: I don't know. She showed up and told me to write about her. She's a tough cookie, so I listened.
How hard was it to write a book like this and do you have any tips that you could pass on which would make the journey easier for other writers?
Well, writing is hard and not hard. It IS a lot of work. But it's work I love, and so it isn't really work. It's creating a puzzle, and if you're the kind of writer that I am, it's work we must do. I HAVE to write. It's how I process life, process trauma. What can make it easier is to read books about writing, about structure. I write via a modified 3-act structure. Look it up, and you'll have a structural template. I have also read quite a few books about writing mysteries and thrillers, as well as books about police procedures, profiling, and weaponry.
What other books are you working on and when will they be published?
I am writing a non-mystery to honor my father. It's called Percival (not his name; the book is a fictionalized version of his life), and is about a musician who, like my father, contracts polio at the age of two. I am also writing two new mystery series. One is a noir series tentatively called Hammer & Sharpe. The other will be a comedic mystery series--rather like Donald Westlake's Dortmunder books, which I find hilarious and wonderful. Tentative title: The Geller Mysteries.
Here's a link to the new Dora book, released August 1st, 2023, A Divisive Storm, Dora Ellison Mystery Book 6:
https://www.amazon.com/
Finally, what message are you trying to get across with your book?
There are a few. Spirituality is a big part of my life. Dora is Jewish (as am I), and Missy is Buddhist. I believe that just about anything is possible. I believe life is less about having what we want, and more about wanting what we have. For me, mysteries are puzzles that are also rather like roller coaster rides. If well done, well written, they are exhilarating and fun. For me, it's also important that, while terrible things happen in my mysteries, the good usually triumphs.
Ray Drucker is shot in the face while sitting in his car in the parking lot of a drug store. His wife, Katie, hires Dora Ellison and Missy Winters of Geller Investigations to find his killer. Soon, another murder occurs, and these are linked to a third murder, five years earlier. Dora and Missy learn that these men were all members of a club with a barely hidden racist agenda and a white supremacist past. As the bodies pile up, Dora and Missy are faced with their most daunting, dangerous case yet!
Fans and lovers of Noir, Hard-Boiled and LGBT Detective Mysteries will love the Dora Ellison Mystery Series.
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Divisive-Storm-Gripping-Mystery-Thriller-ebook/dp/BoBF1FKNVV/
The Writer’s Life
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