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5 Minutes, 5 Questions With… Maria McKenzie, author of The Governor’s Sons

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5 Minutes, 5 Questions With…
Maria McKenzie, author of The Governor’s Sons
(CreateSpace)

Providing a different glimpse into the lives of the hired help, The Governor’s Sons is a heart thumping account of forbidden love and political ambition in the deep South, a suspenseful tale of romance, deception, racial tension and ultimately, racial reconciliation within the powerful Kroth family.

During the summer of 1936, Ash Kroth, a young law student from a southern family of wealth and political prestige, falls in love with Kitty Wilkes, a beautiful “Negro” girl.

Nearly thirty years later, as a segregationist governor in the midst of civil rights turmoil, Ash is forced to confront the inevitable consequences of his love for her.

In 1965, Harland Hall, a black Civil Rights leader, moves to the capital city in an effort to quell the racial violence occurring not far from his mother’s home. But what mysterious link does this young man have to the Governor’s past?

Joey Pinkney: Where did you get the inspiration to write The Governor’s Sons?

Maria McKenzie: About four years ago I read Essie Mae Washington Williams’s memoir, Dear Senator. She’s Thurmond’s love child by his family’s Continue reading 5 Minutes, 5 Questions With… Maria McKenzie, author of The Governor’s Sons →

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5 Minutes, 5 Questions With… Joe McKinney, author of The Red Empire and Other Stories

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5 Minutes, 5 Questions With…
Joe McKinney, author of The Red Empire and Other Stories
(Redrum Horror)

Joe McKinney’s debut collection, “The Red Empire & Other Stories”, brings together eight tales of haunted policemen and cosmic horrors. A chance encounter with a homeless man one hot summer night opens the doors of perception for a Houston beat cop. Genetically engineered fire ants threaten to devour a small Texas border town, and the only thing in their way is a grief-stricken county man.

An ex-detective can no longer run from the ghost of his greatest failure. A rare piece of non-fiction chronicles the author’s fifteen year investigation into a century old cold case. Police work can be hell. But there’s no hell like the catacombs of the mind.

Joey Pinkney: Where did you get the inspiration to write “The Red Empire and Other Stories”?

Joe McKinney: The stories in “The Red Empire and Other Stories” cover several years of my writing career, and each one has its own unique Continue reading 5 Minutes, 5 Questions With… Joe McKinney, author of The Red Empire and Other Stories →

5 minutes 5 questions with, amazon.com, interview

5 Minutes, 5 Questions With… Tristan Gans, author of Stranieri: Life Among Italy’s Tourists, Expats, and Immigrants

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5 Minutes, 5 Questions With…
Tristan Gans, author of “Stranieri: Life Among Italy’s Tourists, Expats, and Immigrants”
(Belfort and Bastion)

In 2008, Tristan Gans and his fiancée Sarah went to Italy to recuperate from college. They found themselves in an industrial city where the locals were hostile—but not the other foreigners, “Stranieri,” living and working in Italy despite the objections of the “real” Italians.

But, as Gans soon realizes, it is the Strangers who hold the whip hand. It is they who provide the services, labor, and energy that the Italians cannot seem to produce for themselves. In this thought-provoking book, he asks what will Italy be, and how will “native” Italians react, when Italy is as much African, Pakistani, and Slav as it is Latin.

But Gans doesn’t stop there. In this multifaceted, multilayered work, Gans uses Italy as a metaphor for the West as a whole—a West that may be, he suggests, sliding into postindustrial irrelevance.

And for Gans that possibility has a unique piquancy. He is, he explains, a Millennial, and like most upper-middle class members of his generation he has from his earliest youth been taught to seek success, even greatness at all costs. But “greatness,” as Baby Boomer parents defined it, may not be possible in an age of decline.

Joey Pinkney: Where did you get the inspiration to write “Stranieri: Life Among Italy’s Tourists, Expats, and Immigrants“?

Tristan Gans: I tried to do a lot of traveling when I was living in Europe–backpacking, taking local trains and low-cost flights to see friends and go to Continue reading 5 Minutes, 5 Questions With… Tristan Gans, author of Stranieri: Life Among Italy’s Tourists, Expats, and Immigrants →