 There are few things in this life that make me happier than seeing a friend share his gifts with the world. I was privileged to watch it all unfold again, at Donald Levin's book launch event for Cold Dark Lies, the latest installment of the Martin Preuss Mysteries. Held at the creatively conceived Color & Ink Gallery in Hazel Park, this was a wonderful event filled with art, music and literature. Sunshine streamed in the gigantic windows, laughter from friends and family filled the space, music rocked the rafters, and we reveled in storytelling at its finest. Donald read just enough from the book to give us the flavor of the novel, and become enticed by the story, without giving it all away. He read several passages, and even shared a section about my favorite character, Toby, Martin Pruess' son. After the reading, the audience asked questions and what could have easily been a compelling course on the craft of writing, given Donald's history as a college professor... it was far better. Instead, we delighted in a comfortable conversation with friends about mystery, life, love, and the element of surprise. After a brief intermission, and some snacks, we were thrilled by the musical talents of Donald and his author pal, Thomas Galasso. With three pieces that were representative of the novel, we enjoyed acoustic guitar and banjo; with Thomas offering vocals. This certainly was not your average book launch party... but then, Donald Levin is not your average author! There were two major highlights of the day for me... first, I bought an authorgraphed copy of the book (yes, I'm a serious fan... squeeee!) Second, after the party tapered down, Donald and Thomas allowed me to get up close and personal with their music. You see, being deaf in my left ear means that I hear the world differently... Donald allowed me to feel his music by placing my hand on the guitar as he played. Truly a gift I will always cherish! Thank you, Donald Levin for a tremendously entertaining afternoon! I wish you continued success and I eagerly await your next literary adventure! Visit Donald Levin's website HERE to learn about ordering his book and upcoming events where you can meet him. Check out my interview with Donald Levin on Indie Reads TV!  Photos by Dave Plopa
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 Jordan J. Scavone created his first picture book at about six years old. This first book was titled The Animals Look For Food. It was about animals looking for food. Though not the most well-thought-out (or well written) book of all time, this did plant seeds for the future. After receiving his undergraduate degree in Children's Literature and Theater for the Young from Eastern Michigan University, Jordan began working on his first picture book. This past April Jordan received his M.A. in Children's Literature from EMU. Recently, we had the pleasure of sitting down to chat with Jordan about his writing career. Here is an excerpt from that discussion. PP: What is the first book that made you cry? JS: I don’t know if Of Mice and Men was the first, but I remember it really broke me. I love, love, love that book, and it gets me every time. PP: What is your writing Kryptonite? JS: Editing probably…I’m mildly dyslexic so I miss a lot of little things. Outside of that, actually starting a new book. I can come up with a solid idea, a solid action, but getting that opening line or first paragraph is tough. PP: Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book? JS: Yes. Haha, I do want them to all stand alone (like the cheese!) but, I like to add in little nods almost like Pixar does. Emma (Might-E) and Georgia (The Mud Princess) cameo as classmates in A Girl Named Adam and when people notice, it’s pretty cool. PP: How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? JS: I think it made me more anxious knowing that now that one was out, other things I write could also come out, and I felt like I had to step-up my game. I also felt like I had to really finish things more quickly, as I suddenly had people asking for more books. PP: As a writer, what would you choose as your mascot/avatar/spirit animal? JS: Much like in life, a turtle. I’m a procrastinator, I’m slow, but I could also secretly be a ninja. PP: What did you edit out of your books? JS: My picture books don’t actually lose too much from draft to draft. The YA novel I’m plugging along with right now will probably have a lot cut, but I am an adverb guy. So, I’ll probably need to cut lots of those soon. PP: What one thing would you give up to become a better writer? JS: Does it have to be important? Cause, I’d love to give-up my dyslexia haha. But I guess if it had to be something I cared about... uhm... hotdogs? Yeah... maybe…chocolate milk? No... because that would mean no hot chocolate... this is a hard question. PP: What is your favorite childhood book? JS: I didn’t read too many children’s picture books as a kid (ironic right?) but I remember the first book series I ever actively followed and got the books the day they released was the Deltora Quest series by Emily Rodda. They are a mid-grade fantasy series, and I ate those books up. I still have my childhood copies of the first eight in the initial series. I reread them every few years. PP: What is the most difficult part of your writing process? JS: Focusing on writing. I love video games, I love movies, I love reading, I love just hanging out with my wife and playing lazer tag. I need to get better about sitting down and actually writing. When I’m motivated, I can crank out numbers, but when I am unmotivated... it’s not pretty. PP: What is the easiest part of your writing process? JS: Character design! I love coming up with characters, and fleshing out their personalities, backstories, how they look, etc. PP: When did it dawn on you that you wanted to be a children’s book author? JS: When I was quite young. I have a book from early elementary school, that I still have that I wrote on computer paper, stenciled the pictures, and stapled them all together. It’s awful, I had a 2nd grade girl during a school visit, beg me to read it, then when I got halfway through, they told me “You can stop now.” PP: Who are your biggest literary influences? JS: Sendak is probably number one. I don’t want to write like him stylistically, but I love how long his books are, how he doesn’t write down to kids, and how his stories are just great. He’s one of the all-time greats for a reason. PP: What’s your favorite movie which was based on a book? Why? JS: Probably Lord of the Rings, I can literally watch those movies anytime as many times as possible. I think they did a good job adapting the books, while also making the movies their own thing. You can enjoy both the movies and the books as separate things, but also as the same thing. PP: How long does it take you to finish a book? JS: Reading or writing? Reading, I can generally knock out a typical length YA novel in a day or two. Writing, from start to finish somewhere between eight and twelve months for a picture book. PP: What is that one thing you think readers generally don’t know about children’s books? JS: They aren’t just for kids. Most children’s books have some element of a dual audience to keep the adults reading the books interested. Mine, however, are written for all ages, just using the picture book as more of a lens. I try to write so that everyone can truly enjoy them. PP: Can you tell us about your current projects? JS: The YA novel I am almost done drafting is urban fantasy. Swords, shields, vampires, and blood. It’s a big step away from my picture books, but the early reading responses have been very strong. I’ve had friends who are familiar with my picture books be very surprised that I can write YA. I’m also toying around the idea with a Middle Grade novel and trying to find my next picture book. PP: Any advice you would like to give to aspiring creators/artists? JS: Do the thing. I know it sounds dumb but do the thing. If you fail, that’s fine, sometimes it’s better to fail the first time. I finished NaNoWriMo in 2010 and was so excited I finished that I used CreateSpace to get the book out less than a month after November. It was unedited (because I thought that Word’s spell check was good enough) and ultimately it was trash. It needed so much work, and it was so bad that I stopped writing novels for a long time. In hindsight, I’m glad that that happened, if it didn’t I would never have improved, and I would never have written Might-E and I wouldn’t have three children’s books out.  Visit Jordan J. Scavone and Learn More about His Books at These Upcoming Events: May 11, 2019: 2nd Annual Morse Elementary Book Bazaar, Troy, MI June 22, 2019: The Pages Promotions Summer Indie Author Book Fest at The Hilton Garden Inn, Troy, MI July 27, 2019: Sterlingfest in Sterling Heights, MI October 20, 2019: Leon & LuLu's Books & Authors; Clawson, MI
 Donald Levin is an award-winning fiction writer and poet, and the author of the six-book Martin Pruess Mystery Series. He is also the author of The House of Grins (1992), a novel; and two books of poetry, In Praise of Old Photographs (2005) and New Year's Tangerine (2007). His poetry and fiction have appeared in numerous print and e-journals. The sixth book in the mystery series, Cold Dark Lies, is enjoying a launch event on May 11, 2019 in Hazel Park, Michigan. We recently had the pleasure to sit down with Donald and discuss his writing career. Here is an excerpt of that discussion. PP: What literary pilgrimages, if any, have you gone on? DL: I’ve visited many writers’ haunts, including Joyce’s Dublin, the Bronte parsonage in Haworth, Emily Dickinson’s Amherst, Jane Austen’s homes in Chawton and Bath, the Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy homes in England, Virginia Woolf’s London, and New York City watering holes for famous writers. Without a doubt the one that most moved me most was the Bronte parsonage; I was tremendously touched by my visit to the home of the three great woman writers and seeing how they developed as artists totally isolated as they were in the distant, desolate home they shared with their stern father and ne’er-do-well brother. They persisted. PP: Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book? DL: In my current series, I want each book to stand on its own while being part of a larger body of work with an overarching narrative arc. PP: How did publishing your first book change your process of writing? DL: Long before I published my first book, I had been a professional writer for over twenty years working on virtually every kind of communications project in health care, public health, business, advertising, and public relations. So my writing habits were well-established by the time I began publishing poetry and fiction. I already knew to approach writing with a serious, workman-like attitude. When I saw my first book published, it was more proof to me that writing depends on hard work and dedication much more than inspiration. PP: What did you edit out of your books? DL: Anything that doesn’t move the story along or contribute to the development and understanding of my characters. Also anything where the writing calls attention to itself. PP: What one thing would you give up to become a better writer? DL: At my age, I think I’ve already given up everything there was to give up! PP: What is your favorite childhood book? DL: I read voraciously as a boy. My two best places were the Sherwood Forest Library in Detroit and the library at my elementary school, Bagley School in Detroit. I had too many favorites to mention an individual book, but I remember loving reading the Tom Corbett series, Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells. PP: What is the most difficult part of your writing process? DL: What’s hardest for me are the issues that arise when considering the question of what I’m going to do with a piece of writing once I’ve finished with it. That means facing the big world of publication and (seemingly more often) rejection, where everybody’s a critic and nothing’s ever good enough. The joy for me is always in the writing itself, in entering into the lives and worlds of my characters, which may or may not be a reflection of the world we actually live in—where language and structure and movement are my sole preoccupations. I’ve found that thinking about what will happen to a book or poem after it’s done (Will anybody read it? Will anybody like it? Will anybody buy it?) totally kills my creative impulses... it ruins the joyful experience of writing and makes me not want to write. Which removes a significant source of pleasure from life. PP: What is the easiest part of your writing process? DL: Honestly, I love everything about writing, from the sheer neuromuscular act of forming words on paper (or typing them on a screen) through the crafting and recrafting of words, sentences, paragraphs, scenes, and chapters as a book unfolds itself to me as I write it, to holding it in my hand as a physical object when it’s published. So every part of it is pleasurable and therefore easy in its own way. PP: How long, on average, does it take you to write a book? DL: Nowadays it takes a year from conception to publication... typically three to finish the first draft, another seven months for revisions and rewrites, and a couple of months to bring the manuscript to publication. PP: A common misconception entwined with authors is that they are socially inept, how true is that? DL: The writers I’ve known tend to be introverts who live in their heads (read: imaginations) more than most people. That’s not social ineptitude, it’s having different priorities. I also know many writers who are outgoing and extremely social; I’m not one of those! PP: Who are your biggest literary influences? DL: Again, in my life I’ve read widely and deeply, and like most writers I’ve been influenced to some degree by everyone I’ve ever read. That said, my biggest poetic influences are Philip Levine and Amy Clampitt. The crime novelists who have most influenced me are Ross Macdonald, Henning Mankell, Don Winslow, and Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. PP: How did it feel when your first book got published? How did you celebrate? DL: I felt a sense of accomplishment; then I celebrated by setting to work on the next one. PP: Can you tell us about your current projects? DL: My latest project is the sixth novel in the Martin Preuss mystery series, Cold Dark Lies, just published and scheduled for its launch on May 11th. I have several more planned in the series, but I’m not sure whether that will be my next project or whether I will write a stand-alone book. PP: Any advice you would like to give to aspiring creators/artists? DL: For writers, I’d say: Read everything you can get your hands on, and read it the way writers read: By analyzing how the piece is put together, how it achieves its effects, how it moves, how the scenes open and close and move, how the sentences or lines flow, what the word choice is... look at everything. Read good stuff and bad stuff and figure out what distinguishes them. Read stuff you like and stuff you hate, and figure out why you like what you like, and why you hate what you hate. If you’re going to be a writer, you’re going to join a literary conversation that’s been going on for hundreds of years; you need to know what’s been said so you can join it intelligently. And then write. Don’t think about how nice it would be to write, don’t plan to write someday, don’t tell yourself you’d write if you weren’t so busy—just write. Make time in your days, however filled or busy they are. Try to remember that we’re all terrible when we start out; the people who get better are the ones who stick with it.  Visit Donald Levin and Learn More About His Books at These Upcoming Events: May 4, 2019: The Plymouth Library Book Fair, Plymouth, MI April 20, 2019: The Carpathia Club Easter Festival, Sterling Heights, MI May 11, 2019: Cold Dark Lies book launch at the Color & Ink Studio in Hazel Park, MI May 18, 2019: Rochester Heritage Days, Rochester, MI June 22, 2019: The Page Promotions Summer Indie Author Book Fest at the Hilton Garden Inn, Troy, MI July 13, 2019: Fenton’s Open Book bookstore at the Fenton Art Walk, Fenton, MI July 27, 2019: Sterlingfest in Sterling Heights, MI
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