Finding George Washington by Bill Zarchy

 Please welcome Bill Zarchy author of Finding George Washington

Bill Zarchy will be awarding a $50 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

Finding George Washington

by Bill Zarchy

 

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GENRE: Historical-Time Travel-Baseball Thriller

 

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INTERVIEW:

1. What or who inspired you to start writing?

 

My father, Harry Zarchy, wrote over thirty books on crafts, hobbies, and the outdoors, mostly published by Alfred A. Knopf. He was always writing. When I was very young, he gave me an old portable typewriter. I used it to produce a family newspaper, which I sold to unsuspecting cousins. So I’ve always felt like a writer. I was a columnist for my high school newspaper and managing editor of my college daily at Dartmouth. I did some writing during film school, but then embarked on a long career as a cinematographer, which took me around the world several times, and I began to want to record some of the amazing experiences I had in my work and travels. This led to my first book, a memoir titled Showdown at Shinagawa: Tales of Filming from Bombay to Brazil.

3. How did you come up with your idea for your novel?

 

When I was a kid, I indulged in a mental game, where I would imagine how I could possibly explain the wonders of 20^thCentury technology to George Washington. A few years ago, I decided to bring George back to life and began writing this book, my debut novel, Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale. My old mental game is now a full-length story!

6. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?

 

I’ve done some travel and research and written a few chapters for a sequel to Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale. It’s tentatively titled Saving Franklin Roosevelt. Like Finding George Washington, it falls under the category of Alternate History or Speculative Fiction. A quick summary: in February, 1933, after FDR was elected president for the first time (but before his inauguration), a deranged man with a gun got very close to him at a rally and opened fire. Several people were wounded and two killed, including the mayor of Chicago, but Roosevelt was unhurt. But … what if he had been fatally wounded in that attack? What would have happened to The New Deal, FDR’s approach to combatting the Great Depression, and how would the U.S. have responded to World War II without him?

7. If you could be one of the characters from this book, who would it be and why?

 

I would want to be George Washington himself, an amazing combination of courage, strength, passion, and self-control. I wouldn’t mind being worshipped as a hero in my own time and a legend for centuries to follow. Plus, I think he’s a fascinating character in so many ways. So many contradictions!

8. Can you give us a sneak peek into this book?

 

Here’s the premise in a nutshell: 

On a cold night in 1778, General George Washington wanders away from the Revolutionary War encampment at Valley Forge, stumbles, and falls, then vanishes — only to turn up at a dog park on the shores of San Francisco Bay in the summer of 2014. Here he meets a couple of 20-somethings from Berkeley, who take him in and share with him the wonders of the 21^stCentury, including their love of baseball and the San Francisco Giants. 

 

But soon it’s clear that the world around them is changing and devolving into something impoverished and colonial. All of which brings up the question — if Washington never returns to Valley Forge in his own time, what will happen to his army? Without his leadership, will the Colonies be able to defeat the British? And if they can’t, what happens to the French Revolution and all the other wars of liberation that took their inspiration from the American Revolution?

9. Do you belong to a critique group? If so how does this help or hinder your writing?

 

I belonged to a critique group with about ten other writers for more than a dozen years. It started as a group of travel writers working on short-form pieces for periodicals and anthologies. This is where I started workshopping various true stories about my work and travels for my first book, Showdown at Shinagawa: Tales of Filming from Bombay to Brazil. After some years together, many of us had begun writing fiction, mostly novels. Though I got lots of help from this group for a long time, and we had all become good friends, after a while the group no longer met my needs. Because everyone was writing longer pieces, it was difficult to get enough feedback, since I could write much faster than the group was able to critique in our monthly meetings.

10. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who encouraged you to take this big step?

 

As I mentioned, my dad was a writer. After he passed away, and before I published my first book, my mom said to me, “You know, you should get an agent. Pop would have gotten much better book contracts if he’d had an agent.” 

 

I started writing Finding George Washington in 2013. Following Mom’s advice, after I had put in several years of research and writing and editing, I sent out query letters and sample pages to about two dozen agents. A few responded with the usual type of polite “It’s not right for me” rejection, but most failed to answer at all. A few months later, I queried another bunch of agents, with the same results. The utter rejection slowed down my process in finishing the book. The same pattern persisted for several years. 

 

Last summer (2020), I decided it was time to look for an agent again, or perhaps for a publisher. I consulted with a friend in the publishing business, trying to determine if publishers were still publishing books during the pandemic. When he heard that I had by then sent queries to over 100 agents, with a distinct lack of results, he urged me to consider “the difference between persistence and delusion” and suggested I self-publish Finding George Washington. “Even if you land an agent or a publisher tomorrow, it will still be at least a year or two before you will hold a book in your hands. If you publish it yourself, you’ll have a book in a month.” It was actually more than two months, but it was great advice.

11. What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or publishing)

 

Worst advice: you must write every day, and do it as a routine, at the same time of day, without fail. Best advice: there’s no “one size fits all” method that works for everyone. When I was still working as a cinematographer and traveling a lot, it was impossible for me to keep a writing routine, especially a daily one. I would write whenever I could find the time — morning, noon, or night, often late at night after everyone else went to bed. That might not have been the most efficient method, but it’s what worked for me. Since I’ve retired from my day job, I still find that the best writing time often varies, day by day, depending on what else is going on in my life.

12. Do you outline your books or just start writing?

 

More bad advice: you must know where you’re going with the story before you start writing, or else you’ll waste time and never get to your goal. I started writing Finding George Washingtonwithout a plan, hoping it would become clear as I progressed. But I felt guilty, because I had heard so many times about the need for writers to have a road map. 

 

Then I read Stephen King’s book on writing, called On Writing,and he straightened me out. Basically, he said that he rarely knows where his stories are going when he starts them. Instead, he begins with characters and a situation and begins to write whatever comes to mind as the story fills itself in. 

 

I knew I wanted to have George come to the 21^stCentury and meet a young man about my son’s age at that time. So I began by writing chapters about their meeting. Pretty soon it became clear that the young man needed a pal, a sidekick, a foil. And I needed a Black character. Then I began to think about what would happen if George never returned to his own time, so I had to devise a plan to get him back, or rather, my characters had to. That became the core tension in the story. And so on.

13. How do you maintain your creativity?

 

It’s important to me to stay creative, even in retirement and during the pandemic. Especially in retirement and during the pandemic. In the past three years, I have produced and performed in my own one-man storytelling show (in the oral tradition, no notes and no text), mounted and hung my first exhibition of still photographs, and published my first novel. Since the shelter in place, I take long dog walks and photograph flowers and foliage — often in brightly colored, intense closeups — and post them on social media. Friends often ask what specialized tools I use for these photos. Answer: (1) iPhone 10, and (2) Instagram. I capture images during our walks and tweak them from my recliner. Fun stuff!

BLURB:

 

On a freezing night in 1778, General George Washington vanishes. Walking away from the Valley Forge encampment, he takes a fall and is knocked unconscious, only to reappear at a dog park on San Francisco Bay—in the summer of 2014.

 

Washington befriends two Berkeley twenty-somethings who help him cope with the astonishing—and often comical—surprises of the twenty-first century.

 

Washington’s absence from Valley Forge, however, is not without serious consequences. As the world rapidly devolves around them—and their beloved Giants fight to salvage a disappointing season—George, Tim, and Matt are catapulted on a race across America to find a way to get George back to 1778.

 

Equal parts time travel tale, thriller, and baseball saga, Finding George Washington is a gripping, humorous, and entertaining look at what happens when past and present collide in the 9th inning, with the bases loaded and no one warming up in the bullpen.

 

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EXCERPT:

 

A new freeze gripped the valley, and a few inches of virgin white covered the now-frozen ruts in the roads. When the soldiers first arrived at this winter encampment two months before, rain and cold had compounded the misery of the men. Lately it had been freezing and snowing, making the hardened ground easier to traverse than the sleety, slippery mud had been.

 

A small farmhouse made of tan and brown fieldstone sat in flat bottomland near the creek. The back door opened and a splash of warm light lit the new snow. From inside came the sounds of a party—a fiddle, laughter, and high-energy conversation. A tall man in a heavy cloak and three-cornered hat stepped off the small porch at the rear of the house and into the cold. A sentry snapped to attention. 

 

“Just getting some air, lad, stand easy,” the Gdeneral said. “No need to follow.” He trudged off north, away from the house, enjoying the brisk chill.

 

Ah, he thought, it’s fine to have my dear wife here with me these past couple of weeks! She and the other wives provide such a boost to the morale and hopefulness of the men. It’s worth a wee party to celebrate the difference they make … and my birthday. 

 

The dreadful winter weather and the spread of disease had cost him one-fourth of his army in the early going, but at last there were signs of hope. Foraging for food was still a daily struggle, but now the men were finally housed in hundreds of hastily constructed wooden huts. 

 

The eager effervescence of the Marquis de Lafayette for the past half year; the appearance of the Polish nobleman Pulaski a few months before; the continued loyalty of so many of the troops; the imminent arrival any day now of the Prussian Baron von Steuben; and the General’s wife coming to stay with him during the winter encampment—all these events gave him hope. 

 

 

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Bill Zarchy filmed projects on six continents during his 40 years as a cinematographer, captured in his first book, Showdown at Shinagawa: Tales of Filming from Bombay to Brazil. Now he writes novels, takes photos, and talks of many things.

 

Bill’s career includes filming three former presidents for the Emmy-winning West Wing Documentary Special, the Grammy-winning Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em, feature films Conceiving Ada and Read You Like A Book, PBS science series Closer to Truth, musical performances as diverse as the Grateful Dead, Weird Al Yankovic, and Wagner’s Ring Cycle, and countless high-end projects for technology and medical companies.

 

His tales from the road, personal essays, and technical articles have appeared in Travelers’ Tales and Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies, the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers, and American Cinematographer, Emmy, and other trade magazines.

 

Bill has a BA in Government from Dartmouth and an MA in Film from Stanford. He taught Advanced Cinematography at San Francisco State for twelve years. He is a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area and a graduate of the EPIC Storytelling Program at Stagebridge in Oakland. This is his first novel.

 

findinggeorgewashington.com

findinggeorgewashington.com/blog

billzarchy.com 

 

Paperback:    https://www.amazon.com/dp/0984919120/ 

Kindle:    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08NXXNLBB/ 

 

Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/Finding-George-Washington-A-Time-Travel-Tale-by-Bill-Zarchy-112403433952296

 

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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE

 

Bill Zarchy will be awarding a $50 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

 

http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f3688