Wild Women Authors is delighted to feature debut author Steven J. Kolbe who is celebrating the release of his first novel, How Everything Turns Away, a contemporary murder mystery, recently released by the Wild Rose Press. Accompanying Steve is Father Remy Mbombo who will go first.
Good morning, Father Remy. Thank you for
taking time away from your duties to join us. First, tell us a bit about How Everything
Turns Away. It isn’t my story but
Ezra James’. When he came to St. Joseph and Mary he was, like so many people I
meet, defeated by life. I thought several times that he would give up, not just
on his marriage and his career with the FBI, but on life itself. Then he found
Brooklyn Hannigan, twenty-two, beautiful, unconscious in the snow. It was as
though God had given him a purpose again.
Having read this story, several times over, how you
just described Ezra is so profound and so very true. Thank you. Please tell us
what made you choose the priesthood for a career. As a young man [the
religious life] it appealed for various reasons, mainly prestige and money, I
am ashamed to admit. Then I had an experience that literally shook me to my
core. That day I realized what a gift the priesthood was, and how much I could
offer my fellow human beings. That day, I became a real priest.
Knowing what you know now, if you had it
to do over again, would you stick with being a priest or do something
different? Looking back, I see
the hand of fate moving me inescapably to where I am. Although, I would’ve made
a mean footballer. Soccer player, that is, for you Americans.
What is your biggest fear? That I have been too harsh on one of my parishioners
or otherwise led them astray.
Who is your favorite fictional character
and why? Le Petit Prince. I read that book so many times as a boy, the spine [on the book] became
soft and the pages began to fall out.
What is the best piece of advice you ever
received? “Not everything is as
sinister as it appears.” That came from my first post in Zaire. Father Khonde
never led me astray, though he had plenty of reason to, I found out later.
Thank you for
this insight into the religious life—for you—and other things. Now we’d like to
chat with Steve.
Which
writer or character[s], from either books or movies, [or both] have had a major
impact on your writing? I’ve drawn a lot from Agatha Christie and Sir Conan
Arthur Doyle as far as how the mystery genre works. More recent crime
influences include Denis Lehane, Michael Robotham, and Karen Odden, who is a
mentor to me through Mystery Writers of America. More generally, I think I
decided to become a writer after first reading Fitzgerald and Salinger as a
sixteen/seventeen-year-old. Something about their combination of angst and
romanticism struck a nerve with me.
With
regard to research, where did you start for this novel? Did that lead you down
different paths, thereby changing the original concept? I found out that I know almost nothing about
electricity. I had the attack [on the student teacher, early on in the book] involve
a power outage but I didn’t understand how it would work exactly. As I learned
more, I altered my methods. I also did a fair bit of research about Africa,
which was a fun surprise. My priest is of mysterious origins, a fact that I get
into more in my next book, but he comes most recently from Senegal, a country
in West Africa. As a student at LSU, I lived in the international dorm and my
roommate Oumar was from Senegal. He impressed me more than anyone else I met in
those days. When I met him, Oumar spoke English, French, Wolof, and Arabic.
He’d enrolled in business German just that semester to broaden his career
prospects. Fate had started us off in two radically different places and of the
two of us, he had to work much harder to end up in that dorm room.
Tell us a
bit about your publisher. How did you hear about them; what influenced you to
submit to them; how is the submission process; what is the turn-around time
from date of query to date of release? When
I finished my first major draft, I gave it to my wife, Susan. She read it over
the course of a few days and suggested, rightly so, that I take out the entire
middle, which was in the victim’s POV and sort of explained everything for the
detective and the reader. When I finished the rewrite, I picked up a copy of Writer’s Market from the Finney County
library and created a list of agents and publishers. There I made a great
discovery: The Wild Rose Press. They were looking for unsolicited mysteries, so
I queried. Over the next year, I went back and forth with an editor until we
felt the manuscript was strong enough to publish. So about a year from query to
acceptance, which had everything to do with the book needing more work. From
there the release date was set (about two months after I approved the final
proof).
What are
you reading right now? I just
finished reading the Norton Anthology of
Postmodern American Fiction and
Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers. (I have a bad habit of reading multiple
books at once.) I just started T. J. Klune’s The House in the Cerulean Sea, a humorous fantasy YA novel, and
Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club,
a runner-up for the Edgar Award this year.
What's
next for you? I have a story coming
out later this year in Calliope, a
literary journal run by Mensa. It is a postmodern spy story that draws heavily
on chess notation. So, you know, possibly it’s unreadable. I’m also working on
a very readable sequel to HETA. So
far we’ve seen into the minds of Ezra James and Lucia Vargas. In the next book,
we’re also going to see Fr. Remy’s perspective as the three solve a brand new
set of interconnected mysteries and, in the process, find out about Remy’s
mysterious past and why he hasn’t shared more about it with Ezra.
Instagram: @StevenJKolbe
Twitter:
@KolbeSteven
To
purchase How Everything Turns Around, go to:
Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/how-everything-turns-away-steven-j-kolbe/1139749012?ean=2940162343035
Interesting interview! Your book sounds so good.
ReplyDeleteGreat interview. Good luck with your book!
ReplyDeleteB&N has it in the mail to me, and I’m excited about reading it! :-)
ReplyDeleteA great interview, and I'm reading Steven's book right now. Love it! Looking forward to reading the entire series as it comes out.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed every tense, riveting page between the covers of How Everything Turns Away. A clever attempt at murder at an upper-crust private Chicago high school leaves a beautiful, pregnant student teacher fighting for her life. What happens next is a tale loaded with school rumors, fear, jealousy, and one-upmanship. Guaranteed to keep you guessing until the end.
Ezra James, disgraced, humiliated, and flawed FBI agent, struggles to get through each day with dignity and integrity intact. In a fast-paced race to catch the culprit before he can finish the job, Ezra works alone and with Lucia Vargas, a young Latina detective who has her own secrets to hide. In the background, kind, mysterious Father Remy Mbombo, the one to whom a troubled soul might turn, sees more than most.
Steven, you’ve drawn your victims, suspects, and cops with love, grace, and a touch of humor. You’ve created an intriguing mystery, and it’s wonderfully written. I hope you’re working on a sequel. I want to be whisked away again to be with these very human, realistic characters.