📚 A Bookish Chat with 'Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea' Richard I. Levine | Author Interview | #AuthorInterview
Richard I Levine is a native New Yorker raised in the shadows of Yankee Stadium. After dabbling in several occupations and a one-year coast-to-coast wanderlust trip, This one-time auxiliary police officer, volunteer fireman, bartender, and store manager returned to school to become a chiropractor.
A twenty-five-year cancer survivor, he’s a strong advocate for the natural healing arts. In 2006 he wrote, produced, and was on-air personality of The Dr. Rich Levine Show on Seattle’s KKNW 1150AM and after a twenty-five-year chiropractic practice in Bellevue, Washington, he closed up shop at the end of 2016 and moved to Oahu to pursue a dream of acting and being on Hawaii 5-O.
While briefly working as a ghostwriter/community liaison for a Honolulu City Councilmember, a Hawaii State Senator, and volunteering as an advisory board member of USVETS Barbers Point, he appeared as a background actor in over twenty-seven 5-Os, Magnum P.I.s, NCIS-Hawaii, and several Hallmark movies. In 2020, he had a co-star role in the third season episode of Magnum PI called “Easy Money.”
While he no longer lives in Hawaii, he says he will always cherish and be grateful for those seven years and all the wonderful people he’s met. His 5th novel, To Catch the Setting Sun, was inspired by his time in Hawaii.
Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea is Levine’s first foray into the romance genre.
Website & Social Media:
Website ➜ http://www.docrichlevine.com
X ➜ https://www.twitter.com/Your_In8_Power
Facebook ➜ https://www.facebook.com/RichardLevineAuthor/
Instagram ➜ https://www.instagram.com/rilevinedc
Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea offers romance, contemporary fiction, trauma, strength and growth. Which of these traits were the hardest to write about?
To be perfectly honest, none of those things were hard because when I write, I am writing and creating it is a form of personal entertainment that comes from life experiences and heartfelt expression—be that in the form of character development, which is always taken from people I have known, or from events that I’ve actually experienced, personally witnessed, or learned about from eyewitness accounts. Of course, I do take creative license to embellish if it fits the situation and/or to protect the innocent. But when I’m writing and I’m in the zone, the story’s path or the character’s arc almost always comes organically.
Which of the characters from Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea do you most closely identify with and why?
That is something I haven’t given a lot of thought to. I consider myself an observer who is standing on the sidelines watching the world pass by. As such, all of my characters are made up of composites of people that I’ve met throughout my life. Some of those characters are additionally infused with some of my own personality traits that allows me, as the creator, to enhance or denigrate that character as I see fit.
What do you think sets Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea apart from other books of the same genre?
Readers’ Favorite Reviewer Grant Leishman sums this up perfectly in the review he posted just recently. Here is a very short excerpt from his commentary:
“Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea is a powerful, emotional rollercoaster that captures readers from the beginning and takes them on a journey of love, loss, and redemption...Levine has a remarkable talent for evoking story arcs and emotional dramas that will tug at readers’ heartstrings. The character development is superb. I am a sucker for a good romance and all the elements were present but there was so much more depth, conflict, and suffering than you would normally find in a romance. This lifts the story well above others in the genre. The descriptive prose is wonderfully rich and complex...”
Surprise me. What is something that happens in the book that would make my mouth drop without giving too much away?
Like Driftwood On The Salish Sea is more than just a love story between Mitch Brody and Jess Ramirez, and with all sincerity, I did not set out to weave a tale with hidden messages. But those hidden messages are there throughout the book and it will be interesting and fun to see if readers can find them.
Who is your favorite romance author?
I’m sorry to say that I do not have one.
Do you think writing a romance is more complex than writing books of other genres?
I certainly cannot speak for other authors, but generally, I don’t think so. It comes down to what you know of human nature and what it is you’re trying to accomplish. If your experience writing fiction, in any genre, only comes from what you’ve read in other fiction books, or if it only comes from watching a movie, then I suspect you’ll have a hard time trying to create a story. I believe crafting a quality narrative should come from a combination of reading the works of others, watching a screenplay unfold before your eyes, reading non-fiction accounts of human events, and your own desires; all of which are combined with a fertile imagination and life experiences which should include personal triumphs as well as heartaches. Fantasy, desire, and personal experiences that are too uncomfortable to openly talk about with others can be carefully woven into each of your characters without revealing which of those are actually you. It’s quite therapeutic. As with anything else that deserves your best effort however, it’s important to take your time, never force the process but have fun with it, and write for an audience of one which is yourself. You are the writer, the creator, the producer, director, the primary talent, the background actor etc.
What’s next for you?
I will say that there is a new adventure that I’ll be embarking on very soon. It may or may not wind up being incorporated into my next novel. But for now, that next adventure shall remain a mystery.
When they met in the fourth grade, it was love at first sight for Mitchell Brody and Jessica Ramirez. He was the freckle-faced kid who stood up for her honor when he silenced the class bully who’d been teasing her because of her accent. She was the new kid whose family moved to San Juan Island, Washington, from San Juan, Puerto Rico, and whom Mitch had thought was the most beautiful girl in the world.
She was his salvation from a strict upbringing. He was her knight in shining armor who had always looked out for her. Through the many years of porch-swinging, cotton-candied summer nights, autumn harvest festivals, and hand-in-hand walks planning for the ideal life together, they were inseparable…until 9/11, when the real world interrupted their Rockwell-esque small town life, and Mitch had joined the Marine Corps.
This is not just the story of a wounded warrior finally coming home to search for the love, and the world he abandoned twenty years before. It is also the story of a man who is seeking forgiveness and a way to ease the pain caused by every bad decision he’d ever made. It’s the story of a woman who, with strength and determination, rose up from the ashes of a shattered dream; but who never gave up hope that her one true love would return to her. As she once told an old friend: “Even before we met all those years ago, we were destined to be together in this life, and we will be together again, because even today we’re connected in a way that’s very special, and he needs to know about it before one of us leaves this earth.”
Like Driftwood on the Salish Sea is available at Amazon.
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