Recently I’ve posted my thoughts on A.S. Peterson’s The Fiddler’s Gun (click link for review) . I’ve been raving about this book to friends and family every day since I finished it and encouraging people to head over to The Rabbit Room to purchase a copy of their own. (And you should bookmark The Rabbit Room anyway because it’s a great place.)
After posting up my review I connected with A.S. (Pete) Peterson on twitter and he kindly offered to send a book my way for a giveaway and answer a few questions I put together for him.
Lydia:
First of all.. I’d like to start by asking a question that I debate on a daily basis with my nephew. If you had to choose one side to be on.. which would it be? Pirate or Ninja?
Pete:
Since pirates are actually nasty criminals, I’d probably side with the ninjas in the real world. But in all honesty, pirates seem to be much more fun. I mean who wants to hang around the ninjas in their off time? Are they gardening? Meditating? Catching flies with chopsticks? No thanks. I’ll take the pirate’s leisure any day of the week.
I should mention that I nearly had it both ways. The first draft of The Fiddler’s Gun featured a sailor named Haji who was a dishonored samurai on the run. Sadly, he didn’t make the cut.
Lydia:
You mentioned on Sheila’s website at One Person’s Journey through a World of Books that you made a treasure map and the name of Phineas Button was used there. Did you have a favorite pirate name you ever used as a kid?
Pete:
The only pirate memories I have from childhood relate to our family eating at Long John Silver’s. They used to give out pirate masks and I remember trying to collect them all: Bluebeard, Long John Silver, Barbarosa, Billy Bones, I don’t know how many there were.
Lydia:
Bart was one of my favorite characters in the book. What was the inspiration behind making him a play an instrument? And how did you decide on the fiddle as being the right one?
Pete:
Anne Rice’s “The Vampire Lestat” is one of my favorite books and there’s a fantastic scene in it where Lestat’s childhood friend Nicholas, who is a violinist, is wracked by despair and playing wildly. Rice’s descriptions of his playing and the emotional weight of it were incredibly moving to me. I think my use of the fiddle as a dramatic tool owes a lot to her influence. If you watch a person play a violin, it’s a very passionate and sometimes intimate thing. In The Fiddler’s Gun, Fin is a fiery and passionate woman and both the fiddle and the gun are ways in which she expresses that.
Lydia:
I’m excited to hear that The Fiddler’s Green is in the works and am very much looking forward to its release. As an author, what did you find was the biggest challenge in writing and/or publishing The Fiddler’s Gun?
Pete:
I think the biggest challenge in writing it was just finishing, getting to the end. It’s very easy for me to begin things that I’m excited about, and it’s also easy to write those final dramatic scenes. But when you’re lost in the middle, that’s the tough part.
I’m currently slogging through some of that middle territory in Fiddler’s Green and I’ve noticed that it really causes me to pay attention to the step by step craft of writing. I find that often when I’ve spent all day trying to squeeze out 1500 words that don’t come easy, I’ll go back and read over it the day after and find that it’s actually quite good. The reason is that I worked and struggled over every single word that day. By comparison, on days when it all comes easy and I’m swept along by an emotional scene, I usually discover upon re-reading that it’s full of badly written junk that has to be cut away.
Lydia:
One of my favorite questions to ask other authors and readers is this: If you could read any book for the first time again, which book would it be?
Pete:
I’d have to say The Lord of the Rings. I’d give just about anything to un-see the movies, un-read the books, and go back to the day as a child that I first discovered Middle Earth. I think Tolkien was my realization of what a truly beautiful thing language is. There’s little else like it in the English language. I’ve been reading Paradise Lost lately and it’s been a real eye opener, certainly one of Tolkien’s literary forebears. There’s a lot of Tolkien in the language and imagery and when I’m reading some passages I feel like my eyes and my mind are widening and stretching further open with every word on the page. It’s truly a level of amazing that only one or two writers in a century ever ascends to. The 17th century gave us Milton; the 20th century gave us Tolkien.
A huge thank you to Pete Peterson for taking the time to answer my questions! The Fiddler’s Gun is available to purchase for eReaders and also you can visit The Rabbit Room via this link to pick it up!
Now.. the giveaway. Pete was awesome enough to ship over a signed copy of The Fiddler’s Gun. It’s a gorgeous book to look at and an even better one to read! The rules for entering this giveaway are simple and require just a little imagination on your part.
1. You must leave your Email address in your comment.
2. You must answer the first question Pete answered in this post: Pirate or Ninja.. and why?
This giveaway will end on April 30, 2010. International entries welcome.
