Rogues Angels Present: Between Micah and Amos

Please welcome Alan Oakes author of Between Micah and Amos

Alan will be awarding gift cards to three randomly drawn commenters during the tour. The characters are always going to Sonic ? so he is giving away gift cards in the names of the main characters: Grand Prize: Billy-sized $25.00 2nd Prize: Manuel-sized: $15.00 3rd Prize: Ashleigh-sized: $10.00 If the winner prefers, they can get either an Amazon or BN.com gift card instead of the Sonic card.

BETWEEN MICAH AND AMOS

By

Alan Oakes

INTERVIEW:

1.What or who inspired you to start writing?

I went to college for journalism at the University of Kansas.  But I didn’t do any significant writing until recently.  I’m in awe of people in their late teens and twenties who can create characters of a certain depth.  They are incredibly gifted!  That wasn’t me.  But now, it seems that I am like a latent volcano – lots of ideas are spewing out.  Architect Phillip Johnson didn’t design his first residence until he was forty.  Grandma Moses started painting in her seventies.  Some of us are late bloomers!

 (Johnson outside his glass house – designed into his 90’s.)

2.What elements are necessary components for this genre.

I mashed two genres together for Between Micah and Amos.  On the one hand, I wanted the story to fall into the young adult genre – the main characters are in their high school years.  The story’s heroine, Ashleigh Mae, is smart and beautiful, but very wounded.  This is her story.

I’m also hot for the film noir genre – I first actually envisioned Between Micah and Amos as an indie film – so it is very cinematic.  But the idea of film noir -- having a host of flawed, and broken characters, nighttime settings, and a plot as kind of a mystery – really influenced the story telling. 

It is interesting because as I get feedback, I am hearing from a lot of people who are not young adults who really like the book.  Maybe that’s the noir coming out.

  (Orson Well’s character in Touch of Evil inspired Detective Reese in Between Micah and Amos)

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

Working as an at risk counselor at a Texas high school for almost nine years, one thing I was personally wrestling with was the question of whether a young person from lousy circumstances can somehow get out of the undertow of their life circumstances and make something better for themselves.  That is the idea I was struggling with for this book.

4.What expertise did you bring to your writing?

When I was in high school, my father opened a television commercial studio in Chicago.  I would go there after school to clean the place and it was incredible!  In that environment, I saw all of these extremely talented professional story tellers at work.  That’s what good ads are – mini-stories.

Piecing together one scene with another to make a story, I think I got that sense from watching how TV commercials were made. 

Also, because I worked in ministry for many years, having to stand up in front of five hundred people every week and preach – and make it interesting – gave me a bit of an understand of how to try to take the reader on a journey of emotions.   

5.What would you want your readers to know about you that might not be in

your bio?

After college for a few years, I worked in Los Angeles in a television commercial production company.  Our stable of directors included Howie Deutch who directed teen classics, Pretty in Pink and Some Kind of Wonderful.  I also personally worked for Academy Award nominated and Emmy Award winning director/cinematographer, Mikael Salomon.  Deutch had a magical feel for working with teenagers.  Salomon created some of the most lustrous images ever put on film.

   (Salomon’s cinematography was nominated for an Academy Award for Backdraft)

 (Vintage teen drama a la Deutch)

If you wanna be good at anything, you’ve got to work – they both taught me that.

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

I just submitted a novella to Whiskey Creek Press called Crossfire.  It follows what happens to Billy, Ashleigh’s boyfriend, four months after the ending of Between Micah and Amos.  I wanted to write a story very different from Between Micah and Amos.  It is still noir in nature, but it is starker.  I plan at least one more part after Crossfire in the Between Micah and Amos series.

I have other stuff I’m working on, but I prefer not to dish it until it is done.

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

Ashleigh Mae is seventeen years old.  She is a high school senior who is living in down on its luck, Micah, Texas.  She and her mother, Jo Lynn, live at the Wild Buffalo Motel – a tired Route 66 remnant.  They share one of the old tourist cabins out back with Jo Lynn’s present boyfriend, Darrel. 

But one hot August night, Ashleigh is out with her hunky country boyfriend, Billy, really late.  They mess around out in the county and when Ashleigh rolls in, her mother has been beat up by Darrel.  While Darrel works his nighttime shift, Jo Lynn Mae takes her daughter and hustles over to an old boyfriend, Casey’s trailer, on the outskirts of Amos, Texas. 

Ashleigh can’t say goodbye to Billy.  She is forced to reenroll at Amos High School.  Amos, unlike Micah, is a much wealthier town.  At the high school, Manuel Garcia, a handsome wealthy senior from a conservative Hispanic family takes a liking to Ashleigh – much to his family’s dismay.

Ashleigh’s home life is terrible with her mother’s manic moods and Casey’s drug-induced rages.  All the while Ashleigh has a past that needs to be dealt with – can she somehow break free?   And then of course, there is that dead body of the floor of the trailer…

10. When did you first decide to submit your work? Please tell us what or who

encouraged you to take this big step?

Maybe because I’m a graduation coach and one of the things I am working with young people is setting goals – so I decided to create a personal five year plan for my writing.  One of the goals within that five year plan was to have a novel published.  I thought Between Micah and Amos was a strong enough work to merit publication.  I was right! 

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

publishing)

A friend of mine a few years back went the whole traditional route with contacting agents and submitting chapters and never hearing squat back.  Or if she did, they either wanted to change everything or reject the work outright.  She finally lost the ambition to finish the project.  Her experience taught me not to get bogged down in the old school publishing process. 

Thankfully, the publishing world is completely deconstructed right now.  More people are writing and more unique voices are coming to the fore.  As an artist, I want to write, not shop my stuff all day. 

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

Mikael Salomon came up as a cinematographer for James Cameron and Steven Spielberg.  Talk about disciplined story tellers!  Mikael used their system. Before any filming ever happened, he would go shot by shot through a script with a story board artist and work out the details of every camera set up in specific detail.   He would have the whole project completely drawn out in story board form before a single frame was shot.  The detail work was incredible.  The amount of caffeine that went through that man’s system to crank it out! 

That rubbed off on me and I have to organize my books as well. (And liberally caffeinate myself when writing! Ha!)   I think of books in five acts, ten to twenty scenes an act.  For Between Micah and Amos, I wrote each scene on a five by seven index card – listing the location, characters, and what action needed to happen in the scenes.  I spread them out all over my living room floor!  That helped me visualize the flow of the story better. 

Once I get the characters in the location -- have a visual in my mind -- and understand what needs to happen, I just let the characters talk in my head.  They can figure out the rest. 

13. How do you maintain your creativity?

Writing is my second job.  I find that if I am designing a story, I need to have at least one day of rest from my job at the high school to really get my imagination going.  But once I have the whole plot worked out and the scenes in order, I can tune into the story easier. 

Writers are sponges.  We’re always picking up things, a lot of it unconscious, and it bubbles up when we are creating something. 

Having time off in the summer from my full time job is also a big help.  That time tends to be the most fertile for me.

16. Anything else you might want to add?

 I wrote Between Micah and Amos for that young person who may feel overwhelmed by their own life circumstances.  If I can reach out to you and say anything, it is that you matter!!  Don’t listen to the haters – they will be emptying your trash cans one day!  Believe in yourself and the world is yours! 

Thanks for the wonderful opportunity!  

BLURB:  

Like a flash, the discharge from the gun lit up the inside of the dimly lit, filthy trailer Ashleigh called home. Ashleigh sat curled up on the stained pink carpet next to the pull-out bed in the living area where she slept.  The victim lay dead, slumped against the wall of the trailer.  Ashleigh looked at the motionless body.  She was petrified.

Meet Ashleigh Mae, a seventeen year old high school senior living in the small town of Micah, Texas.  Her boyfriend Billy calls her a wild child.  Her momma is always telling her she makes bad choices.  No matter what, no one really understands her. 

Ashleigh dreams of a life with Billy.  Their love is true, she thinks. When her mother forces them to leave Micah in the middle of the night and move in with her momma’s old boyfriend Casey, on the outskirts of a town called Amos, Ashleigh’s life is torn apart. 

This is her fight to get it back….

EXCERPT:

            Ashleigh loved Billy. The faster she raced down the deserted country road to his singlewide mobile home, the more excited she grew at the prospects of their life together. She just wanted to see him, to hold him, to breathe in his manly aroma. Many times in school, Ashleigh daydreamed of settling down with Billy. They met only a year ago, but it seemed as if they had known each other a lifetime. They would have cute kids. Ashleigh would become a mother and care for her beautiful children. Her children would adore her and need her. She and Billy would buy a house in the new development on the outskirts of Micah—a real house with a real back yard.

            It seemed like no time when Ashleigh arrived at the trailer park where Billy rented his singlewide. The place looked so huge compared to Casey’s trailer, she thought, as she pulled up next to the mobile home. Ashleigh could see there were lights on in the living room and she could hear death metal rock music blaring. I’m gonna surprise his ass, Ashleigh thought. She opened the door to the single-wide. The place wasn’t as dirty as Casey’s but Billy still lived like a boy—dirty clothes strewn about, trash needing to be taken out and everything needed a good scrubbing, but not as bad as Casey’s.

            Ashleigh gleefully snuck up to the door to the bedroom. She couldn’t wait to surprise her handsome man. She would hold him and tell him what hell she’d been through and they would get it on as they never did before.

            She swung open the bedroom door, calling out, “Look honey, I’m home!”

            Before her was Billy on top of some fat chic. Billy stopped and looked her way. He was indeed surprised!

            “Are you serious?!” Ashleigh called out. Impulsively, Ashleigh dove into the bed, fists flying at the other girl. “You ugly slut!” Ashleigh hollered, throwing punches at the girl’s face.

AUTHOR INFORMATION:

Alan Oakes is a Graduation Coach and Counselor at a Texas High School.  He is a featured writer for Green Building and Design magazine and a contributor to other magazines including Texas Architect and New American Luxury.  In the past, he served as Associate Pastor of Saint Austin Catholic Church and Director of Catholic Campus Ministry at UCLA.

Alan holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas and a Master of Arts degree from the Washington Theological Union in Washington, D.C.

To learn more about the author, feel free to go to his website:   http://www.alanoakes.net/ 

Websites for Between Micah and Amos: 

http://www.betweenmicahandamos.com/

Publisher Link:

http://www.whiskeycreekpress.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=1066

Buy it:

Ebook Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Between-Micah-And-Amos-ebook/dp/B00AH6YWSS/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1355367414&sr=1-1&keywords=between+micah+and+amos

Paperback Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Between-Micah-Amos-Alan-Oakes/dp/1611605458/ref=tmm_pap_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1355367414&sr=1-1

Ebook Barnes and Noble:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/between-micah-and-amos-alan-oakes/1105810924?ean=2940015814286

Goodreads:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12845610-between-micah-and-amos

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