Our interview today is with Gale Martin the author of Don Juan in Hankey, PA (rated 4.7 stars, 42 reviews). Before we get to the interview a brief book description: A socialite, a retired dermatologist, a hometown opera singer, and a bipolar ketchup heiress have dreams of turning the Hankey Opera House into Lincoln Center on the Schuylkill River. The reality is that the Hankey Opera Company stands on the brink of financial ruin. They think mounting an ambitious production of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, a popular opera about history’s most legendary womanizer, will solve their problems. It only compounds them. Read more on Amazon.Interview with Gale Martin
What is the significance of the title?
Don Juan in Hankey, PAis a modern retelling of the classic Don Juan legend about history’s most famous lover, set in a small Pennsylvania town. It’s a humorous backstage novel that combines the gothic and comic elements of Mozart’s Don Giovanni—the classic opera about the last two days of Don Juan’s life. When the Hankey Opera Guild decides to produce Don Giovanni to raise money for their failing opera company, intrigue and comic misadventures ensue.
How much of the book is based on real people you’ve come across in real life?
Most of the people in the book are composites. These characters include shards of real-life folks pre-dating a later interest in opera. People who intrigue me or infuriate me stay with me the most. For instance, while I was attending a writing conference in New York, I was fascinated by this middle-aged woman having a rainbow assortment of pills for breakfast – I was having oatmeal and OJ. That incident stayed with me, so that’s why it’s in the book.
I’ve never served on an opera guild, but I did spend a few miserable years on a community theater board and a few other non-profit boards, experiences which haunted me for decades like a bad tooth that’s eventually yanked but only after causing you a lot of suffering. On community theater boards, there are always performers there because they are jockeying for bigger roles in future productions. As far as my characters go, usually there are pieces, sometimes even great chunks of real people I’ve met. Vivian was inspired by one such (annoying) person and began less sympathetically than she is drawn now. Deanna is every small-town female board chair I’ve known all rolled into one person.
Do you think you succeeded?
Definitely. I created a fun, fast read, based on a less accessible classical art form, thereby making opera seem more appealing. People who like opera really dug the opera lore in Don Juan in Hankey, PA. People who’ve never seen an opera in their lives have said they now want to see one. Even the Kirkus Review said, “Cognoscenti [those who know a lot about opera] will especially appreciate the musical references, but readers need not be opera buffs to enjoy this novel.” Don Giovanni is such an entertaining, captivating opera. I think this book captures that flavor.
As more and more people became exposed to this novel, a remarkable thing happened along the way. Because the location of the book is part of the title, people began taking photos of the novel from different parts of the world and emailing them to me or posting them on their Facebook pages. Now I have a little summer contest called DON JUAN GETS AROUND to encourage more of these fun photos.
You start the action at a breakneck pace, and then manage to get through several hundred pages without really slowing down at any point. What’s the trick?
I shared the first draft of Don Juan in Hankey, PA with a local library book club, some of whom commented that they were hoping for a faster start. I gave up the idea of making any kind of statement about groupthink and dysfunctional arts organizations and committed myself to telling a good story. I actually came to the opening I’m using now very late in the book’s development. I didn’t set out to mirror the plot of Don Giovanni. I literally had an “aha” moment while thinking about how to reopen the book with a faster start: I should have Deanna be assaulted by a masked man just like Don Giovanni creeps into Donna Anna’s bed chamber to open the opera. I also knew that operas tend to be slow if not glacially paced and that I had to infuse more rapid-fire action into an opera novel to have a prayer of chance appealing to readers of commercial fiction. Plus, I like lots of plot twists in turns in the books I read.
I shared the first draft of Don Juan in Hankey, PA with a local library book club, some of whom commented that they were hoping for a faster start. I gave up the idea of making any kind of statement about groupthink and dysfunctional arts organizations and committed myself to telling a good story. I actually came to the opening I’m using now very late in the book’s development. I didn’t set out to mirror the plot of Don Giovanni. I literally had an “aha” moment while thinking about how to reopen the book with a faster start: I should have Deanna be assaulted by a masked man just like Don Giovanni creeps into Donna Anna’s bed chamber to open the opera. I also knew that operas tend to be slow if not glacially paced and that I had to infuse more rapid-fire action into an opera novel to have a prayer of chance appealing to readers of commercial fiction. Plus, I like lots of plot twists in turns in the books I read.
Who is the audience for this novel?Anyone who likes contemporary fiction that is alternately funny and sometimes scary with a lot of longing, lust, and even a little love thrown in for good measure. Oh, and a few quirks in their characters. Those things are essential.
Where can people buy this book? Don Juan in Hankey, PA is available as an ebook on Amazon.com. There are other links on my website to purchase the book, depending on whether you want an ebook or a print copy, or to contact me.
Anything else readers need to know? If you download my book and like what you read, I’d love to hear from you. I’m on Twitter @Gale_Martin, on Facebook at Gale Martin’s Books, on Goodreads, and LibraryThing.
No comments:
Post a Comment