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BLURB:
To guard herself from the perils of her own sensuality, Rose married a man she didn’t love. Now, two years after his death, she’s not sure she can really love anyone. She’s not even sure she cares…
To achieve what he’d always known was his birthright, Luke had to struggle against tremendous odds. But when science discovered a way to access the past, a powerful bureaucracy found a way to use Luke. Now, torn from his own time, everything and everyone he knew, he can see no reason to go on living…
An instant of attraction, uninvited but inescapable, brings Luke and Rose together. Together, they discover the strength to love, the will to trust and hope. But will these things be enough to carry them over walls of suspicion, guilt, bigotry, and hate?
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https://www.amazon.ca/Luke-Blackmons-Rose-Love-Story-ebook/dp/B0BTK2X5NL
Amazon CA Paperback:
https://www.amazon.ca/Luke-Blackmons-Rose-Patterson-Thornburg/dp/B0BYR5GFMH
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“What was your inspiration for writing this book?”
What was my inspiration for writing Luke Blackmon’s Rose? Well, like several of my stories, actually, this one started with a dream. I don’t know if “inspiration” is quite the right word for it, or even that the dream was the seed of the story. But it was somehow the event that made me aware that this story was waiting, ready to be written.
I’m fairly sure this kind of thing happens all the time. When I told a friend of mine about it, she said that she, too, has had dreams that “opened up” (her words) stories to her. And I suspect that she and I – and Mary Shelley, with Frankenstein, and Robert Lewis Stevenson, with Jekyll and Hyde – aren’t the only four writers in history that this has happened to. I’m guessing that there’s something going on in a writer’s mind, not quite conscious yet, still under the radar, that finally reaches a level where it breaks through into consciousness, and that it sometimes does that in the form of a dream.
None of my own story-starting dreams have amounted to much as dreams. They’ve all been short – fragmentary, really – and not terribly impressive. The most emotionally disturbing one was a very brief nightmare, a messy-looking old woman in the doorway of a seemingly deserted café/gas station, who laughed unpleasantly and told me it was almost time for “the breakfast rush” and that “Jerolyn and Fluffy” would be there. None of this meant anything to me, but I got a pretty good little horror story out of it. Another dream had me setting up for a banquet, where I knew (who knows how) that folks would be “eating bugs.” Yuck. And yet another dream, an earlier one, almost as brief, of a little girl climbing out of a second-story window and running down a fire escape, was the beginning of two novels (three, if I ever get the third one finished) and several short stories.
The dream that signaled the start of Luke Blackmon’s Rose was another short one about setting up for a banquet. In the dream I knew that the American singer, actor, and activist Paul Robeson, who died in 1976, would be the guest of honor. He’d been brought forward in time by a newly invented time machine. There were lots of long tables, all set with good china, and I was checking to see that everything was just right. And that was all.
When I woke up, I knew exactly where every element of the dream had come from. In my first two years of college, I was on a work-study scholarship, and one of the things we work-study students did was set the dining room up on Sunday afternoons for the dormitory girls’ dinner; for some reason (maybe because it involves food? Sigh...) I dream about that quite often. Paul Robeson was there because, years ago, a friend of mine who had worked her way through college in the late 1950s had told me she’d served Robeson at a banquet while he was on a speaking tour. And, since the dream was a fairly lucid one, I realized that time travel had to be involved in order for me and Paul Robeson to be in the same place.
Also, when I woke up, I realized, first, that I was going to write a love story; that was clear and it made perfect sense. I realized, second, that I knew very little about Paul Robeson; and, third, that I couldn’t write a story about him anyway – but I could use him as a kind of model for a character in the story, which would somehow keep the strange power of the dream alive.
So I did.
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EXCERPT:
In 1930, he told her, he'd been in the midst of rehearsing a play in New York City. The play's title, Dark Fancy, rang no bells for Rose. "Well," Luke said, "it had a couple of wealthy backers, but the script was awkward. And the play wasn't a good fit for the time. People were beginning to want something light, given the look of things. A lot of folks had money troubles that year. Maybe the play didn't even open. They'd have had to find a new second lead, anyway... Or..." He frowned. "Or not, maybe. I don't know."
"You were the second lead?" she asked gently.
"Yes. Character called Tommy Carleton. His best friend was a man he'd known in college, a teammate, a white man, played by Roland Arnett… The actress playing the girl was colored, of course—quite light, but unmistakable. This was necessary, and that meant the Arnett character's blindness was also necessary." He laughed without much amusement.
"Oh, Luke. I'm sorry, but the whole play sounds terrible," Rose said. "Melodramatic, big problems with logic, and a bad script on top of that? I'll bet it didn't open. I'll look it up."
"I've described it... Not badly. Unfairly, perhaps. There was more to it, more to the Arnett role, and Arnett is—was—great. Deservedly famous. And problems with logic? Of course, but quite realistic, weren't they? The subject of race in this country is riddled with logical fallacies, always has been. Anyway, the play was exciting and controversial. Daring. Two years earlier and it would've packed them in. Even now—I mean in 1930—it would have had a decent run. If it opened.”
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Author Bio:
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Mary Patterson Thornburg has lived in California, Washington State, Montana, Indiana, and again, finally, in Montana. She was educated at Holy Names College, Montana State University, and Ball State University, where she then taught for many years. She's been reading science fiction and fantasy since she was five, and when she began to write fiction it seemed only natural to write in those genres. Her literary heroes are Mary Shelley, who gave us all a metaphor for technology alienated from its creators, and Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia E. Butler, inventors of worlds that shine their powerful searchlights on this one. She writes what some people call “science fantasy” (aka “fake science fiction) within as wide a range as possible, but almost always with a bit (or a lot) of romance.
Author Links:
https://www.marypattersonthornburg.com/
http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Patterson-Thornburg/e/B001IOFDN6/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mary-Patterson-Thornburg-Author/751054628247208
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/mary-patterson-thornburg/47/967/480
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GIVEAWAY:
Mary Patterson Thornburg will be awarding a $25 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour
Good morning! Thanks for having me, Luke, and Rose on your lovely blog today! (Mary Patterson Thornburg, aka "Miki")
ReplyDelete... Thank you, too, for choosing the excerpt you chose -- and for your sensitive editing of it.
ReplyDeleteWhat a brilliant story line! I can't wait to read it.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jenny! xx
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