Blog Hop: All of Our Secrets

I'm honored to be chosen to be part of this blog hop, and I'd like to thank Wendy Laharnar for tagging me to participate. This gives us all a change to view new releases from authors we admire as well as introduce us to some works in progress.

Ten Interview Questions for “The Next Big Thing” are as follows:

Q. What is the working title of your book? I was going to call it, Gone With The Wind, but decided to make it more relevant to my story. So the title is All of Our Secrets.

Q. Where did the idea come from for the book? Well, I expand on this question later on, but the truth is it came about with some frustration over speeding up the pace of getting to the opening death of lead character. It's in the first sentence now...that's hopefully soon enough.

Q. What genre does your book fall under? It's definitely a mystery, but it has a lot more depth to it concerning overcoming grief.

Q. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? One of my final readers suggested a slenderized Philip Seymour Hoffman for the protagonist. Jessica Biel might be nice for his much younger wife. I had David Spade, toned down, in mind when I thought about Chad, Bruce's attorney. When I started this, I thought about Wilford Brimley, playing against type, and taking on the antagonist Detective, Mort Meeker.

Q. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book? Bruce Neumanski didn't kill his secretive wife, but her unsavory past cripples his defense against a ruthless detective. 

Q. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? I will be self-publishing through Kindle for e-book; CreateSpace for paperback; Smashwords for all other platforms.

Q. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? The first draft took about two years, and it was kind of funny how I ended up with the first draft. I was up at the family cabin in northern Wisconsin typing away when all of a sudden, I released I was finished, then type: The End. The first draft was 126K words, which I shrunk to about 90K words, and, when all was said and done, it ended up about 108K words.

Q. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?  Anita Shriver's "The Pilot's Wife" has been mentioned as a book with similar overarching themes, a mystery that slowly comes to fruition and the process of grieving over the unexpected loss of a loved one.

Q. Who or What inspired you to write this book? I was told after the first draft of another book I wrote that I needed to step up the first chapter of my next book. In a huff, I started writing with the main character awaking with a dead body, turned out it was his wife. I thought, well if that's not early enough in the book, then I don't know what anyone wanting a mystery would want. Then came the hard part about how did she died. I saw a news item about a man falsely accused of murder, and it was his story that gave me final pieces to the mystery puzzle.

Q. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? I reviewed several multi-step programs about grief. While the mystery is at the heart of the story, how Bruce deals with his grief is the pulse for pushing the story forward.

On October 31st, my dear friends will be answering the questions about their fabulous novels. so for a treat, hop over and visit them...or, you can go visit them right now.

Ron Voigts
Amber Collen