Please welcome Mark Morey author of The Last Great Race.
Mark Morey will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
The Last Great Race
by Mark Morey
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GENRE: Historical Fiction
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INTERVIEW:
1. What or who inspired you to start writing?
I have always liked reading good books, and
one day I went to the local library to borrow a book, but I couldn't find one.
Particularly the books by male authors had stereotyped, cliche characters, the
loner who eventually rights all wrongs but never finds love or
companionship. I thought I could do
better than that, which became the inspiration for my first novel, The Red Sun
Will Come.
2. What elements are necessary components for this genre?
For historical fiction there are two important elements. One is to be thorough with your research
because you are writing about real people and real events, and readers will be
distracted by unnecessary errors of fact.
The second is to work hard at teasing out your characters. Because they were real people they're not
necessarily whose who you would develop as key fictional characters. You have to analyse how they acted and
behaved and work out why they may have acted like that, and then use that analysis
to turn them into characters who readers can relate to.
3. How did you come up with your idea for your novel?
I have followed Formula One car racing since the early 1970s, and through that
I was aware of the story of Achille Varzi, a good driver of the 1930s, until
his private life got in the way of his racing career. When I looked into the facts about Varzi I
didn't realise that he was the best racer in a legendary era, certainly one of
the best of all time, and that his love affair with Ilse was so passionate and
ultimately so destructive. I thought
that passionate love, the tragedy that came out of it, and his recovery with
the help of Norma who came back into his life, made a great story. Norma Colombo was a woman against the
odds. She lived with Achille Varzi
unmarried when women didn't do that, and when Achille broke up with Ilse she
came back to him. That was just as
amazing as anything that happened between Achille and Ilse. One man and two women who adored him
completely, totally and absolutely.
4. What expertise did you bring to your writing?
My career as an information technology analyst means I have written a lot over
the years and decades, so writing is second nature to me.
5. What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in your
bio?
I have had a few setbacks in my life, so my motto is carpe diem or seize the
day.
6. As far as your writing goes, what are your future plans?
I am writing a story set in renaissance Venice, loosely based on a real-life
scandal that happened in the fifteenth century.
7. If you could be one of the characters from this book, who would it be and
why?
The fictional journalist Paul Bassi who's able to turn his obsession into his
career, and who completely and totally adores the gorgeous Pia Donati. He's a good man who has it all.
8. Can you give us a sneak peek into this book?
Achille
lit a cigarette and pulled Le Ambizioni Sbagliate from his luggage. He sighed while he momentarily contemplated
nights in hotel rooms. It was always
better when Norma accompanied him or when his friends were around. But racing had changed and the cost of
developing new cars meant fewer entries, and fewer drivers at the
circuits. He took the comfortable velvet
armchair in the corner of the room and turned to the first page, when he was
startled by knocking at the door.
Achille put the book down and opened the door to be surprised by Ilse
Pietsch. Momentarily startled he then
realised she ought not to be seen there.
“Ilse,” he said. “Entrez, s’il tu
plais.”
“I saw your times from
practice today,” Ilse said in French after she closed the door behind her. “They were good.”
Achille nodded
while puzzled to have her in his room.
“That isn’t why I
came here,” she said. “All the time you
were practicing I thought about your comment on Tazio Nuvolari. I know that any driver can drive fast, and
any driver can drive on his limits and perhaps crash and break his leg, or even
kill himself. A great driver and an even
greater man is the man who knows where his strengths and weaknesses lay, and
how far he can go to achieve his ambitions without going too far.”
Achille stood
stunned with his cigarette hanging from his lips. It was as if she peered into his soul. Just like that.
“Achille?” she
asked.
“Pardon?” Achille
said, still confused. He looked at her
eye to eye for she was almost as tall as he.
“You understand me,” he said quietly.
“So I’m right.”
“You knew you were
right.”
“I wanted to hear
it from you.”
“Why?”
“You’re a great man
more than a great driver, and I know you have been misunderstood. I heard talk of arrogance but they don’t
understand you. You’re a deep thinker
who analyses all the options before deciding on a course of action.”
Achille was again
startled. Ilse knew more, much more,
about him than his racing. He wondered
how she could do that, and especially a woman so young.
Their conversation
faded to silence and Achille suddenly felt an intense ache of desire for
beautiful Ilse Pietsch. A yearning, a
longing, an almost overpowering urge to grab her and take her away and ravish
her. He never felt such strong feelings
before and he liked them. He liked them
a lot. And yet she was unobtainable. Perhaps that was it. She understood him and yet he couldn’t have
her. His heart raced and he felt sweaty
despite the pleasant temperature. No,
such feelings were something else and he guessed what it was. After two brief meetings he had fallen in
love with another man’s wife. He didn’t
love Norma and never had, but he never expected to find love in a hotel in
Montlhéry. He butted his cigarette in
the ashtray and all the time Ilse stood there, close but not too close, and
Achille knew the significance of that.
He wondered, but it was too far too fast. For many years he wanted to kiss those lips,
but he knew if he started he wouldn’t be able to stop. He gazed at beautiful Ilse Pietsch, he smelt
her soft perfume, and he knew he shouldn’t.
“You should go
before people realise,” Achille said.
“Of course,” Ilse
replied.
She left his room
and quietly closed the door behind to leave Achille pondering whether he should
have asked her to stay.
9. Do you belong to a critique group? If so how does this help or hinder your
writing?
I don't belong to a critique group but I beta read other author's works in
exchange for beta reads of mine. I find
that mutually beneficial, and I hope I have helped other authors get their
works into shape for publishing. I know
this has helped me.
10. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who
encouraged you to take this big step?
My first four novels were published, but this one is self-published. I found no benefit in sharing royalties with
a publisher who did little more than design a cover, make it available online
and issue a press release. I can do
those things myself. Published or
self-published still relies on a good story and the author taking the time and
effort to publicise the work.
11. What is the best and worst advice you ever received? (regarding writing or
publishing)
My first novel The Red Sun Will Come was professionally edited and the lessons
I learned from that I carried into every subsequent novel. I recommend to all aspiring authors to get a
professional to look at their first story and particularly at their writing
style.
12. Do you outline your books or just start writing?
I always outline my books in a series of dot points over a timescale. This story, being historical fiction, fits around
real events including World War Two, so it had to be outlined in some detail.
13. How do you maintain your creativity?
If I'm getting stale I take a break, and then my writing flows much
better. If I'm stuck on something I go
for a walk, and by the time I get home the problem will be solved.
14. Who is your favorite character in the book. Can you tell us why?
I like Pia Donati: she sees the good side of everybody, and she understands
men.
15. Are your plotting bunnies angels or demons?
Plot bunnies are good ideas at the time, and if I think they're good I will
incorporate them into my story.
Sometimes they work out well, but at the end if I'm not happy then I
take them out. You have to be ruthless when
moving from a first draft to a more polished work.
16. Anything else you might want to add?
I hope those who like a good story will try The Last Great Race. The real-life characters and events are
almost larger than life, although true to life, while the era, leading up to
and spanning World War Two in Italy, is quite fascinating. I have not seen a story anything like this
one, and I think it has much to offer to readers of fiction.
BLURB:
This story
is based around the life of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic sportsmen
of his era, Achille Varzi: multiple race winner, twice Racing Champion of Italy
and a hero to his many followers. Told
partly through the eyes of Varzi and partly by fictional Italian-Australian
racing journalist Paul Bassi, we follow the many triumphs and tragedies of
Varzi's life: his passionate love affair with Ilse, his tragic morphine
addiction, his recovery from his addictions, his marriage to Norma and his
re-signing to race for Alfa Romeo.
Only war intervenes, and Paul and
his wife Pia leave Achille to spy for the British at the naval base in
Naples. Paul and Pia endure hundreds of
Allied air-raids, they join the partisans who fought off the German army until
the Allies could rescue them, and then they survive in a near-ruined city as
best they can.
By 1946 Italy is still shattered but
life is returning to normal, and no more normal is Achille Varzi winning the
Grand Prix of Italy that year. Over the
next two seasons Achille Varzi scores more successes, until he makes his only
ever driving mistake and is killed in Switzerland in 1948. Even though he died too young, Paul and Pia
know that Achille Varzi would never have lived in his life in any other way.
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EXCERPT:
“Achille
crashed,” she said and drank some more.
“I have never seen anything like it.
He was the only driver taking the banked curve at the end of the
straight flat-out. Each lap I heard the
exhaust note of his car never wavering as he took that curve with his typical,
stylish precision. And then on lap
fourteen a sudden gust of wind came in from the desert, blowing dust and
debris. I held my hat and glanced at the
Englishman nearby, just as the wind caught the front of Achille's car and
lifted the front wheels from the track.
The car rose higher and higher like an aeroplane, flying away from the
track until the rear of the car hit the ground and then the front, and it
rolled over and over with the most terrible noise. Over and over until it stopped on its wheels
in the middle of an orchard. There were
Arab men dressed in robes and they ran to the car. I was on the wrong side of the circuit and
checked that nobody was coming before I ran to it as well, and so did the
Englishman.” She drank more water. “I thought he must be dead, nobody could
survive a crash like that, but he climbed out of the wrecked car and brushed
dirt from his overalls. He looked around
and saw me but I don’t think it registered.”
“Is
he alright?” Paul asked, worried.
“He’s
fine although shaken. He didn’t even
light a cigarette, and then he fainted. The Englishman Raymond Mays helped him,
and he drove us back here.”
Paul
contemplated what he heard, and that would have been a terrible thing to see.
“I
have never seen anything like it,” Pia repeated and Paul hoped that Achille
really was alright. If he was taking
that curve flat-out he must have been doing about 300.
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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Writing technical documentation
and advertising material formed a large part of my career for many
decades. Writing a novel didn’t cross my
mind until relatively recently, where the combination of too many years writing
dry, technical documents and a visit to the local library where I couldn’t find
a book that interested me led me consider a new pastime. Write a book. That
book may never be published, but I felt my follow-up cross-cultural crime with
romance hybrid set in Russia had more potential. So much so that I wrote a sequel
that took those characters on a journey to a very dark place.
Once those books were
published by Club Lighthouse and garnered good reviews I wrote in a very
different place and time. My two novels
set in Victorian Britain were published by Wings ePress in July and August of
2014. These have been followed by a story set against the background of
Australia's involvement on the Western Front, published in August 2015.
Australia's contribution to the battles on the Western Front and to ultimate
victory is a story not well known, but should be better known.
Staying within the realm of
historical fiction, one of the most successful sportsmen of the 1930s, Achille
Varzi, lived a dramatic and tumultuous life.
It is a wonder his story hasn't been told before, beyond non fiction
written in Italian. The Last Great Race
follows the highs and lows of Varzi's motor racing career, and stays in fascist
Italy during the dark days of World War Two.
Mark Morey
@markmorey5
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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION and RAFFLECOPTER CODE
Mark Morey will
be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter
during the tour.
http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f1736
