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‘Black Rabbit Hall,’ A Conversation with Eve Chase

February 11, 2016 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Eve Chase (c) Clare Borg-CookEve Chase has worked as an editor and feature writer for various magazines in the UK.

Black Rabbit Hall, her debut novel, is the story of two women, born three decades apart: fourteen-year-old Amber Alton and thirty-two-year-old Lorna Dunaway. Each has a connection to Black Rabbit Hall, a stately manor house in Cornwall.

Amber spent endless summers at Black Rabbit Hall until an accident changed her family’s lives. Decades later, Loran feels the manor will make a perfect venue for her upcoming wedding, despite its crumbling stone walls and need for repairs. She cannot explain Black Rabbit Hall’s pull on her, but her instincts lead her into the manor’s labyrinthine history and the ghosts of her own past, including Alton-family secrets that have been buried for decades.

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Filed Under: About Books, book launch, Huffington Post Column, Interviews Tagged With: agents, Character, English literature, Gillian Flynn, hybrid genres, journalism, lyrical prose, Paula Hawkins

Psychology In Fiction

August 22, 2015 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

FreudOver the last few years, I’ve been writing fiction. For decades, I’ve been a psychiatrist. As a novelist, I now write with a reader’s sensibility, and read with a writer’s eye. I’m struck by the degree to which fiction and psychology share certain crucial elements.

Human functioning can be conceptualized as involving thinking, feeling, and behavior. These three elements are the very pillars of being.

Fiction taps into these foundations of existence by using the written word to evoke mental images, which in turn, beget thoughts and feelings. A novelist creates a world for the reader to enter, and to which the reader relates.  This is the essence of storytelling.

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Filed Under: About Books, Huffington Post Column Tagged With: caring, Character, David Morrell, fiction, Linda Fairstein, Lon Land, psychology, Stephen King

“Secrets of State” A Conversation with Matthew Palmer

May 27, 2015 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Matt Palmer Author Photo Credit (C) Kathryn BanasMatthew Palmer is a 24-year veteran of the U.S. Foreign Service. Having been at ground zero for many pressing global issues from Kosovo to Africa, he has extensive knowledge of international crises. His debut thriller, The American Mission, has been compared to John LeCarre’s The Constant Gardner. As a son of the late Michael Palmer, Matthew’s writing pedigree is clear.

Matthew’s new novel, Secrets of State, is a gripping thriller focusing on the world’s most dangerous nuclear threat—war between India and Pakistan. After leaving government service, the novel’s protagonist, Sam Trainor, is working for Argus Security, a private consulting company. He stumbles across a startling bit of intelligence: a telephone transcript implying the delicate balance between India and Pakistan could be deliberately upset, and it becomes clear something catastrophic could be looming: nuclear war between these South Asian giants. The clock is ticking as Sam Trainor must do what he can to prevent a world-changing disaster from occurring.

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Filed Under: About Books, book launch, Huffington Post Column, war Tagged With: Character, conflict-free diamonds, espionage, India, Michael Palmer, nuclear war, Pakistan, storytelling, thrillers, U.S. State Department

Tortured Souls Tell Great Stories

March 2, 2014 by Mark Rubinstein Leave a Comment

Poisoned by his lustful quest for vengeance, his obsession carries his crew to their demise.
(Ahab, Moby Dick)

The king goes slowly insane because of his mistakes and his daughters’ perfidy.
(Lear, King Lear)

She was forced to make a choice between two unbearable, unthinkable options.
(Sophie, Sophie’s Choice)

Their marriage, finances and lives were bankrupt; and now he is suspected of her murder.
(Nick and Amy Dunne, Gone Girl)

She could not stop remembering the sound of the spring lambs being slaughtered.
(Clarice Starling, The Silence of the Lambs)

Take the character to hell (either physically or mentally), and if well-drawn, the reader will really care about this person. All of us can relate to the torture of being alive in an indifferent world.

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Filed Under: About Books Tagged With: Character, Conflict, Gone Girl, King Lear, Moby Dick, Shakespeare, Sophie's Choice, Stephen King, storytelling, The Iliad, The Silence of the Lambs, turmoil

Writer to Writer: A Conversation with Barry Eisler

September 25, 2013 by Mark Rubinstein

Barry Eisler is the best-selling author of two thriller series, one featuring John Rain, a half-Japanese, half-American former soldier turned freelance assassin; and another featuring black ops soldier Ben Treven.

After graduating from Cornell Law School, Barry joined the CIA and held a covert position with the Directorate of Operations. After leaving the organization, he worked as a technology attorney and startup executive in Silicon Valley and Japan, and earned a black belt at the Kodokan International Judo Center. He began writing full time in 2002 and Rain Fall was the first of his seven-book John Rain series.

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Filed Under: About Books, Huffington Post Column, Interviews, On Writing Tagged With: A Clean Kill in Tokyo, Author Interviews, Barry Award, barry-eisler, Ben Treven, Book News, Book Publishing, books, Character, cia, Cornell Law School, David Morrell, Fiction Writing, Gumshoe Award, James Bond, japanese, john-rain, Pacemaker Hacking, publishers, Reading, Self-Publishing, series, St. Martin's Press, the-detachment, Thriller, Winner Take All

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