The Next Big Thing – Indie Book Blog Hop

The author interview series called The Next Big Thing Blog Hop asks:

What’s the next big thing in the indie book reader world?

At The Next Big Thing Blog Hop, authors from around the world share the inside stories on their new work. Each author’s new blog post answers 10 questions about writing and publishing their book. Look for who tagged the author and at least 5 new authors.

Indie Author Q & A

1. What is the working title of your book?
Brindle 24 is my new book, subtitled “the last day in the life of a town”. Brindle is the name of the small town in my new story, and 24 refers to the hours in their last fateful day.

2. Where did the idea come from for the book?
I often find my self asking “what if…”? While writing Brindle 24, I was trying to answer this question about the Shakespeare play Romeo and Juliet.

What if…Romeo and Juliet were living now? What if the feud was not just between families, but between the city life and the country life? I set up a confrontational and impulsive Romeo from the city, with a young Juliet from the country – in a town that was “fracked”. Fracking, drilling for gas by using a heavy industrial method, is a hot issue right now in both city and country areas.

3. What genre does your book fall under?
Brindle 24 is contemporary fiction. The story focuses on how family life and the living environment changes after gas drilling, so Brindle 24 is also listed under political and scientific writing. I write fiction books, but am a scientist by training, with a PhD in genetics. One reviewer described Brindle 24 as edutainment.

4. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
The writer may be the last person who weighs in on the actors selected for a new movie – but I have favorites. I can see Denzel Washington as the local police officer on a mission to protect people in the small town he has come to love. The scientist in the story is a conflicted character, Christopher Walken would be great. As the pregnant mother who fears contamination, a perfect choice would be Emily Blunt. Mark Ruffalo – a powerful voice in the fracking debate now – would be wonderful as the father character in Brindle 24. He is a tormented veteran who is a man of few words but strong actions. For the young people in the story, the “Romeo and Juliet” I would choose new actors.

5. What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Brindle 24 tells the raw story of a nuclear family who live in intimate harmony with the land, and are torn apart by effects of hydraulic fracturing, fracking, beneath their ancestral home.

6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?
I publish my books as a small independent publisher, J.J.Brown Author. Brindle 24 is distributed by Lightning Source for print books to most book retailers, libraries, and independent bookstores. For ebooks, I published Brindle 24 on Kindle, and iBook, Nook and other formats distributed by Smashwords.

7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I wrote the first draft of Brindle over 4 months. Research for the book took over a year. Truthfully, the research part did not end, and I continue to follow the fracking issue in New York. I publish a daily paper at the Brindle 24 site: Fracking Fact + Fiction.

8. What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?
Since Brindle 24 is a love story with a strong message about where our society is going, it reminds me of Margaret Atwood’s the Year of the Flood, or The Children of Men, by P.D. James.

9. Who or what inspired you to write this book?

GasLand, the documentary film on fracking from Josh Fox inspired me to write Brindle 24. GasLand shows how gas drilling devastated families, communities and the earth in Pennsylvania with toxic chemicals. I started searching and found so many testimonials from men and women living in areas that were fracked. I thought, I have to do something and share it. Links to all the movies, videos, poems, songs and even science reports that inspired me are up at the book website, http://www.brindle24.com .

10. What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?
Reading certain novels changes the way I see the world. I hope Brindle 24 will haunt our thoughts with a question: how does industry in the world around us change our lives? What if …we do something about it? What if we don’t?

Brindle 24 website has more about the book.

Thanks to independent author Lawrence Fisher for inviting me to join, at his blog post on: The Next Big Thing. Lawrence authored Kill Me Now published on Kindle and in paperback here.

Next Big Thing

For the Next Big Thing, I invite these authors to participate in author interviews, by answering the 10 questions here, and tagging their next 5 authors.

Please visit them at the blogs listed below to find out more:

Sharon Buchbinder http://sharonbuchbinder.com/blog/
Courtney Cantrell http://courtcan.com/blog/
Cynthia Robertson http://cynthiarobertson.wordpress.com/
Lorna Suzuki http://www.newmobileme.com/imagochronicles9/IMAGO_FANTASY_REALM/Blog/Blog.html
Laura LME http://iamlauramercurio.com/