1--What is the title of your latest release?
A GLOOMING PEACE THIS MORNING
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
A Glooming Peace This Morning is a short, morally ambiguous coming-of-age tragedy that has all the traditional themes of the Southern Gothic: race, sexuality, justice, religion, class, love, hate, and the juxtaposition of gentility and the grotesque. This book should be banned!
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
The setting is a complex amalgamation of several Southern towns where I’ve lived, all in Georgia, South Carolina, West Virginia, or Alabama.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
No.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Intelligent, disturbed, and indignant.
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
I’m an extrovert, but melancholy is my natural state.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
As I draft. And after I’m done. I could tinker in perpetuity.
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
Fried mac and cheese.
9--Describe your writing space/office!
I write everywhere I go - airplanes, airports, cars, my home and work office, libraries, coffee shops. I’m a compulsive writer.
10--Who is an author you admire?
Robert Frost.
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
Besides Ecclesiastes - all is vanity! - there are several: To Kill a Mockingbird; All the King’s Men; Law, Legislation and Liberty (all three volumes!); essay collections by C.S. Peirce and William James; anthologies of modern 20th century American poetry; and of course numerous plays from “Hamlet” and “King Lear” to “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “No Exit.”
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
It was an email, actually. I suppose I felt “relief” and “gratitude,” but at any given moment, I’m full of conflicting thoughts and emotions, and it’s difficult to say which prevails.
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
I like dense philosophy, dark and existential plays, 19th and 20th century British novels, 20th century American poetry, all sorts of history, Austrian economics, and jurisprudence—yes, jurisprudence. I jump from genre to genre.
14--What’s your favorite movie?
A River Runs Through It.
15--What is your favorite season?
Autumn.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
I don’t celebrate my birthday. I didn’t earn anything to celebrate. If anything, birthdays should be celebrations of the mothers who brought us into the world. They suffered through the accouchement that we can’t even remember.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
Game of Thrones. I know, I know. I’m late. I didn’t discover Netflix until the pandemic.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Steak with wine and wine with steak.
19--What do you do when you have free time?
Hang out with my wife and children, read, and play golf.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
I hope to write another novel one day, but it won’t be soon.
Cephas recounts childhood events in the 1970s that retell the story of the improbable, forbidden love between Tommy Cox, who has an intellectual disability, and Sarah Warren, the darling of polite society. The two are pushed together by a mysterious illness, and their resulting illicit relationship results in a heated trial that stirs up the entire town. Tommy’s prosecution turns on whether he could have, under the law, formed the requisite intent to be found guilty of the crime for which he’s charged. Cephas and his friends—Lump, Brett, and Michael—struggle to come to terms with their growing knowledge of Tommy and Sarah’s intimate relationship. Along the way the four learn much—perhaps too much—about justice, truth, lust, and love.
Literature and Fiction Literary [Livingston Press, On Sale: November 30, 2023, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781604893601 / ]
Allen Mendenhall is associate dean at Faulkner University Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, USA, and executive director of the Blackstone & Burke Center for Law & Liberty, USA.
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