Welcome to the book tour for Mamma’s Moon by Jerome Mark Antil. Today he stopped by to give us a little bit of insight into his latest book, as well as to let us get to know him a little bit better. Find out with whom he would like to spend some time, where you should go if you visit his area, and one surprising revelation about him and his career! Then enjoy an excerpt before you download your own copy. Leave him more questions and then follow the tour for more fun. Plus there is a great giveaway at the end!
Describe your book in one sentence or fewer than 25 words.
Mamma’s Moon is a glimpse at Louisiana French Acadians. Gabe is charged with murder –Peck wants to find his mother he has no memory of.
What was the inspiration behind this book?
A bestselling author called me an encouraged me to write a sequel to One More Last Dance. My life being threatened at a Walmart gave me the idea for the story.
What kind of research did you have to do for it?
I studied for six months – Louisiana culture and history for the lifetimes of each of my fictional characters. I studied dialects. I interviewed New Orleans icons and was helped with my ‘legal’ passages of the story by a NOLA criminal court judge and an attorney.
Which character was your favorite to write?
Lily Cup.
To which character did you relate the most?
Peck.
What was one of your favorite scenes?
Saks Fifth Avenue is one. The other would be a spoiler.
Will we see these characters again?
I think so.
Which of your book worlds would you like to visit?
I would like to go fishing with Baitman Alex.
Who would be your dream narrator for the audio book version?
Judge Laurie A. White has already asked if she could do my audio.
Why should we read your book?
You will find pleasure in the story. Great characters. Good sex. You will learn of a culture and a place that is being trampled on by takers both internally and internationally. It is a beautiful, culture rich, poor as a church mouse toy for the rich and famous worldwide, a place to come play and eat one week a year and leave nothing in their wake as they depart.
What do you hope people will get out of your book?
A passion for the importance of assimilation of race and cultures.
How do you make yourself stand out in this genre?
My exhaustive research brings the backdrop to a level of historical fiction.
Tell us about your other published works.
Handbook for Weekend Dads – a booklet was an Amazon bestseller for 4 years. The Pompey Hollow Book Club made me Writer of the Year by Syracuse University student body – and got a call to my home from Barnes and Noble’s headquarters. They found me a distributer and put me in stores on the condition I would write more books. I’ve written 10 since. The Pompey Hollow Book Club series; The Long Stem is in the Lobby and Return to Tiffany’s (non fiction); The Peckerwood Finch series – and coming in November – TALL JERRY Legend One of the Delphi Falls Trilogy.
On what are you currently working?
A medial thriller and TALL JERRY Legend Two of the Delphi Falls Trilogy.
What does your upcoming release schedule look like?
Signings are set for every Louisiana Barnes and Noble in May. Friars Club in New York City is featuring me and Mamma’s Moon in their upcoming ‘Billy Crystal’ issue of their Epistle. Scheduling signings now. Upstate New York later this summer for hard Grand Opening of the county park at my boyhood home.
What is your writing routine?
6AM make thermos of coffee, do the dishes. 6:30AM in my studio writing until 1PM. 1,500 to 2,500 words. Nap for 30 minutes – afternoon of marketing and planning. Late afternoon drinks and movie with my wife.
What is the best writing advice you ever received?
Hemingway. Writing is a discipline – it isn’t an art. Write what you know. Count your words.
Who is your writing muse?
My wife, Pamela.
What is your favorite part about writing?
Having someone tell me they enjoyed one of my books.
What is your least favorite part about writing?
Being on an airplane, reading through one and finding a typo.
What are you currently reading? Up next on your TBR?
I never read when I write. I want my voice on my pages – not some other voice or habit I pick up.
What book and/or author changed your life?
John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Then his Grapes of Wrath.
When not writing, what can we find you doing?
Dining with friends or watching a movie with my wife. Lecturing at a school.
What is one skill you wish you had?
I wish I could illustrate my work.
If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
I would make America less violent, less self-centered.
If you could meet one person living or dead, who would it be and why?
Winston Churchill.
Let’s say I’m coming for a visit to your area. What are some must-see places?
Dragonfly at Hotel ZAZA; School Book Depository; Perot Science Museum; Museums in Fort Worth.
What is something on your bucket list you have accomplished? Want to accomplish?
I got my INDIE published books in all stores. I would like to have a worldwide blockbuster.
What would you do if you won the lottery?
I’d have writing contests for literacy in schools.
What is something readers may be surprised to learn about you?
That I’m 78 – and am producing a novel or two of merit every single year since I was 70 – and will until the day I die.
Is there anything else you would like to add?
I teach the young there is no such thing as writer’s block. You can only write about three things. People, places, or things. Pick one and start writing. Don’t know how to start? Sit down and write a letter to your mother about the topic you’ve selected. You will be a writer.
Mamma’s Moon
A bond that can only happen on a dance floor happened in a cafe off Frenchman Street among four unlikely characters: a man who was about to die; his friend, an illiterate Cajun French yardman; and two of the most successful women in New Orleans.
Aging Captain Gabriel Jordan, retired, was given two months to live, three months before he met “Peck”–Boudreau Clemont Finch–a groundskeeper on the back lawn of his hospice on Bayou Carencro, Louisiana. It was at the hospice that Gabe told Peck his dream of seeing the Newport Jazz Festival before he died. They became friends, and Peck offered to help grant his wish by taking him there.
And they began their journey.
It quickly became a journey with complications and setbacks. They saved each other many times, but they were in turn saved by two extraordinary women: Sasha (Michelle Lissette), a real estate agent in New Orleans’s posh Garden District, and her best friend, Lily Cup (Lily Cup Lorelei Tarleton), a criminal attorney.
Less than a year before the events in Mamma’s Moon, Gabe and Peck wandered into Charlie’s Blue Note, a small jazz bar in a side alley just off Frenchman Street, where the music was live and mellow and the dancing warm and sensual.
Here they encountered Sasha and Lily Cup, and amid the music, the dancing, the food, the flirting, and the cigar smoke, the four formed an unusual and lasting friendship that would see them each through a series of crises, disappointments, life-threatening situations, and moments of great joy and satisfaction.
Read an excerpt:
Did you murder the kid, Gabe?” Lily Cup asked. The aging army captain, veteran of Korea and Vietnam, lowered his newspaper just enough to see over the entertainment page.
“Close the door, honey, AC’s on,” Gabe said.
In a tight, black skirt with a tailored matching waistcoat and white Nike walking shoes, she leaned and propped a black leather briefcase against the wall by the door. She stood like an exasperated tomboy, adjusting and refastening the diamond brooch on her lapel.
“I heard you’ve been walking with a cane, dancing man. What’s that all about? You’ve never carried a cane. You jazz dance for hours a couple of nights a week and Sasha tells me you started carrying one everywhere you go when you don’t need one. It’s smelling pretty premeditated to me, Gabe. What’s up with the cane thing?”
“Does Sasha know about this morning?”
“I haven’t told her anything. She’d have a canary.”
Gabe lifted the paper again to read.
“I need to know if it was murder,” Lily Cup said.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Gabe said.
He closed the paper, folded it in half, and in half again. Dropping it on the arm of the chair, he stood and left the room.
“Define murder,” he said from the kitchen.
She tossed a handbag and white driving gloves onto the other chair, lifted Chanel sunglasses to the top of her head.
“Gee, I’ll have to think on this one. Hmmm…Oh, I know. How about the police have a cane with blood on it and there’s a dead man.”
“It’s a walking stick. My cane is over by the door.”
“Well now it’s a goddamned murder weapon. They checked for prints, and yours are the only prints on it, and their guess is the lab will say the blood has his DNA.”
Gabe came out with a coffee urn in one hand and his finger and thumb through two empty cup handles. He held the cups out for her to take one.
“No more,” Gabe said.
“You’re rather nonchalant for the spot you’re in. Why’d you clam up on me like that at the precinct? It didn’t set well with any of them. The DA entered a charge of second-degree murder. The police chief put out a warrant for you from lunch at Brennan’s.”
He held the empty cups closer to her.
“Just made it. Chicory and cinnamon.”
“If you had television you’d have seen it—‘Daylight killing on St. Charles Avenue.’ It’s all over the news, freaking out the DA and the Visitors Bureau. No telling how many videos from streetcars going by will wind up on You Tube.”
“That’s enough,” Gabe said.
“People can live with violence after dark. That’s expected in any city, but when it’s in broad daylight, forget it. The DA pushed for an early docket with a magistrate and it’s Tulane and Broad for you at nine a.m. tomorrow.”
“What’s Tulane and Broad?”
“Magistrate Court. Congratulations, Gabe, you made the big time. You have to appear before a magistrate to hear the second-degree murder charge against you.”
She took an empty cup in one hand, pinched his arm with the other.
“Look me in the eye and swear it wasn’t murder,” Lily Cup said.
“This some kind of technique they teach at Harvard Law, Miss Tarleton?”
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About Jerone Mark Antile
JEROME MARK ANTIL writes in several genres. He has been called a “greatest generation’s Mark Twain,” a “write what you know Ernest Hemingway,” and “a sensitive Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.” It’s been said his work reads like a Norman Rockwell painting. Among his writing accomplishments, several titles in his The Pompey Hollow Book Club historical fiction series about growing up in the shadows of WWII have been honored. An ‘Authors and Writers’ Book of the Year Award and ‘Writer of the Year’ at Syracuse University for The Pompey Hollow Book Club novel; Hemingway, Three Angels, and Me, won SILVER in the UK as second-best novel.
Foreword’s Book of the Year Finalist for The Book of Charlie – historical fiction and The Long Stem is in the Lobby – nonfiction humor. Library Journal selected Hemingway, Three Angels and Me for best reads during Black History Month.
Before picking up the pen, Antil spent his professional career writing and marketing for the business world. In this role, he lectured at universities – Cornell, St. Edward’s, and Southern Methodist. His inspirations have been John Steinbeck, Mark Twain, and Ernest Hemingway.
Website: http://jeromemarkantil.com/blog/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100012149166797
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Jerome-Mark-Antil/e/B0046C4AOK
Jerome Mark Antil will be awarding a $10 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
Thank you for hosting today.
Do you have any ideas for a follow up?
Thanks for the interview.