Welcome to the second post in the Dinner With Lisa blog tour! Today I have a guest post and a giveaway!
First, our guest post.
How did you choose what time period to set the book in?
Dinner with Lisa is based partly on stories of my own family. For years I listened to my relatives recount their childhoods and talk about the unusual characters they knew. I enjoyed these anecdotes immensely, but didn’t think about them after they’d been told. However, as I got older, and the various relatives, including my grandparents, passed away, I wished someone had recorded their stories.
After completing my first novel, The Impact of a Single Event, which became a national bestseller, I began to write down my own recollections of those stories and had my parents and their older siblings, all now in their seventies and eighties, supplement my memories. As the cache of tales grew – a great uncle’s experience in WW1, my mother’s memories of the neighborhood corner store in the 1940’s, my father’s memories of life on a dairy farm in the 1930’s – I saw a connecting thread. Before long, I was researching the time periods in which the stories took place. I finally chose the 1930’s because I found the Great Depression a fascinating time and because it was topical. While I was doing the research, North America was going through the worst recession since the 1930’s and there was great fear in the media that we were heading for another economic depression.
How do you make a family living in the past relatable to readers in the present?
The answer to that question is easy, but the method of making characters from the past relatable to readers in the present takes a great deal of effort. I believe you need details. The more details I have about the time period I am writing about the easier it is for me to create a picture in my mind. In the case of Dinner with Lisa it meant months of pouring over newspapers from the Great Depression to get a good account of what people were going through and how they dealt with such terrible circumstances. Essentially it was all about research.
Dinner with Lisa is based partly on stories of my own family. For years I listened to my relatives recount their childhoods and talk about the unusual characters they knew. I enjoyed these anecdotes immensely, but didn’t think about them after they’d been told. However, as I got older, and the various relatives, including my grandparents, passed away, I wished someone had recorded their stories.
After completing my first novel, The Impact of a Single Event, which became a national bestseller, I began to write down my own recollections of those stories and had my parents and their older siblings, all now in their seventies and eighties, supplement my memories. As the cache of tales grew – a great uncle’s experience in WW1, my mother’s memories of the neighborhood corner store in the 1940’s, my father’s memories of life on a dairy farm in the 1930’s – I saw a connecting thread. Before long, I was researching the time periods in which the stories took place. I finally chose the 1930’s because I found the Great Depression a fascinating time and because it was topical. While I was doing the research, North America was going through the worst recession since the 1930’s and there was great fear in the media that we were heading for another economic depression.
How do you make a family living in the past relatable to readers in the present?
The answer to that question is easy, but the method of making characters from the past relatable to readers in the present takes a great deal of effort. I believe you need details. The more details I have about the time period I am writing about the easier it is for me to create a picture in my mind. In the case of Dinner with Lisa it meant months of pouring over newspapers from the Great Depression to get a good account of what people were going through and how they dealt with such terrible circumstances. Essentially it was all about research.
Thanks to R. L. Prendergast for writing such a great post!
And now for the giveaway!
The prize is one copy of Dinner With Lisa by R. L. Prendergast. You can win a print copy in the US or Canada or an e-copy anywhere in the world. All you have to do is leave your name and e-mail in the Rafflecopter form. You can get one bonus entry for leaving a comment on this post. Any comment will do. This giveaway will run from March 15th to March 28th. Good luck!
12 comments:
I really like the cover, and the plot sounds very good!
another great giveaway! A wonderful day at your blog today!
sorry - removed my errors ;)
i'd agree with Lena - the cover is great! and so glad there's a giveaway offered :) thank you mr Prendergast!
and to ms manning for letting us know a bit more about this book thru the review post!
Cute cover (I'm a girl often moved to buy a book just based on the cover). And the book sounds interesting - a little different from my norm, but good nonetheless.
I'd love to read this book! Thanks for the chance to win a print copy.
nicolesender(at)yahoo(dot)com
I love the cover, and would love to read this book!
Thanks for the chance to win!
My mom lived during the depression. I would love to pass this book along to her after I read it. I know she would enjoy it, too.
seems like a great book
Sounds like a difficult but interesting read.
Thank you for your kind review. I'm pleased you enjoyed the book (and that many of your readers are interested in the cover!).
For those of you who choose this book for your book club I would be happy to take part in the discussion (over the phone). You can contact me at rod(at)RLPrendergast(dot)com.
Kindest Regards,
R. L. (Rod) Prendergast
I read a review of this book and thought it would be a great book to read. I enjoy historical fiction books and stories that describe the characters in depth.
seknobloch(at)gmail(dot)com
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