Josh Mitchell of Wickid Pissa Publicity introduced Charles Tabb to us as his "new, award-winning author," and told us that Floating Twigs is his debut novel, the first few chapters of which are available at: www.amazon.com/Floating-Twigs-Charles-Tabb-ebook/dp/B07HYGQ5JZ
La Libertad: Where were you born?
Charles: Topeka, Kansas. My father was in the U.S. Air Force and stationed there. I grew up in the Panhandle of Florida.
La Libertad: Where did your love of writing begin?
Charles: When I was eight years old, I realized that the things I read and enjoyed were written by people and wondered what it would be like to write stories. I have loved reading my entire life, and often, when growing up, read books that were beyond the typical books for people in my age group. For instance, I read Catcher in the Rye when I was eleven.
My early efforts at writing were rebuffed by magazines and agents, of course, so I decided to teach English instead. After I retired from teaching, I made the decision to finish some of the books I had started writing, and polished the stories. My first published story was a flash fiction piece, "We Need to Talk," published online by Ariel Chart. I was proud that the acceptance took less than three hours to arrive in my inbox.
La Libertad: What writers inspired you?
Charles: Stephen King, J.D. Salinger, Harper Lee, Michael Connelly, James Patterson, David Baldacci, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, William Wordsworth, and William Shakespeare.
La Libertad: What would you like to tell our readers about your debut novel, Floating Twigs?
Charles: The following is the jacket blurb from the novel. I will follow that with some history as to how the novel came to be written, and some of my thoughts on it:
"It's 1968 in the rural coastline town of Denton, Florida, and the only thing with a tougher life than twelve-year-old Jack Turner is a starving dog named Bones. When they meet while Jack is fishing, Jack knows that he and Bones are meant for each other, and he promises his oft-absent alcoholic parents that he'll somehow get a job to pay for his new dog's food and care.
"In the process of finding work, Jack meets Hank Pittman, a middle-aged man who lives in a dilapidated school bus at the harbor, and Mrs. Mary Jane Dawson, an eccentric but kind older woman in need of gardening help. As Bones nurses back to health, Hank and Mrs. Dawson become the caring parents Jack never had.
"But gossip and lies about Jack's growing relationships lead to an attack on Bones' life and questions about secrets in Hank's past. When Hank is put on trial for a crime he didn't commit, everything Jack holds dear is set in the balance of that small-town courtroom.
"Floating Twigs is a timeless coming-of-age story about a boy and his dog, the responsibilities that come with loving others, and how sometimes one small moment can change a life forever."
The seed of this novel occurred when I was two weeks short of turning eleven years old, on Labor Day of 1966. I remember the date because my first day of Sixth Grade was the next day. Two friends and I went fishing on a barge that had been beached for some time, across from the harbor of the Florida Panhandle town where I lived at that time. The novel begins by describing this fishing adventure as well as I can remember it.
As we were fishing, a pathetic, starving dog came upon us from over the sand dunes of the area where the barge had become mired in the sand. We were fascinated by the horrible condition of the dog, and one of my friends decided to adopt him.
This friend's parents, I later came to realize, were hopeless alcoholics. Both of them were drunk not long after sundown, if not before. We took the dog to my friend's house, and his father, claiming the dog was suffering, went inside, brought out a rifle, and shot the dog right in front of us. It was an experience so traumatic I never told my mother about the incident. I recall crying myself to sleep that night thinking the dog wouldn't have been suffering if someone had adopted and taken care of him.
As I grew older, I would wonder what might have happened if my friend had been allowed to adopt the dog. The story grew out of that. As I began writing it, I realized I needed more than just the story of a boy's adventures with his dog. I needed a bold conflict. I landed on the idea of having the man who befriends Jack be accused of a crime he didn't commit while also making him a former war hero, signaling that our past is easily forgotten by those around us, especially an honorable one.
The title comes from the childhood game Jack plays, that of floating twigs along the road wash either during or after a storm. In his imagination, he endowed the twigs with consciousness, a common childhood practice, and would follow the twigs to the gutter if they made it that far. If they didn't, he would assume that getting stuck in the debris along the roadside was by choice, so he left them there. If they made it to the gutter, which led eventually to the Gulf of Mexico, he wondered if they made it far enough to float freely in the vast waters. There are two episodes of Jack floating twigs, one early in the book and one near the end. The metaphor of the twigs symbolizing people becomes obvious by the time the second episode is finished. It is also made clear in the story that this was the last time he ever played the childish game, indicating he was no longer a child once the book ends.
La Libertad: What is the hardest part of being a full-time writer?
Charles: Also being a full-time marketer is definitely the most difficult part - something I never thought was part of the job until I began writing in earnest. I end up spending as much time marketing and dealing with the business side of writing as I do actually composing my books. It's a reminder that there is no up without down. I sometimes feel like one of those jugglers who spins plates on thin rods, rushing from one to the other to keep them spinning to prevent them from falling to the floor.
La Libertad: What foreign languages, if any, do you read, write, and/or speak?
Charles: I took two years of Spanish in high school, and some of that has stuck with me over the years, but I'm afraid I am not multilingual.
La Libertad: Where have you traveled?
Charles: I've been to all but nine of the fifty States, all but seven of the contiguous States (all north central). I have also traveled to Mexico, England, Germany, The Netherlands, and Iceland. Each country has its particular appeal. I long to return to Iceland and London. My favorite cities to visit in the U.S. are New York and New Orleans.
La Libertad: What would you like to tell our readers about your upcoming detective series?
Charles: I have written two of these books so far, with more coming. The series concerns the life and career of Detective Tony Pantera, a flawed man who, like the rest of us, is doing his best to be the best person he can be. He is divorced with two daughters who are coming into adulthood themselves. He still carries a bit of a torch for his ex, but she is remarried and happy.
The stories take place in the Richmond, Virginia, area where I now live. In the first book of the series, Hell is Empty, Pantera must solve a kidnapping with almost no clues at all.
Samantha Dobson, a fifteen-year-old, rebellious teen, is taken by a man who has grown obsessed with her. She is held prisoner in a small room where her every move is monitored by camera. Meanwhile, her mother does her best to hold her remaining family together. Her husband escapes into his work, and Samantha's older brother and sister deal with the loss in their own self-destructive ways.
Pantera, whose only other kidnapping case not committed by a parent ended with the death of the victim and no suspects, works against time to find Samantha before she goes missing forever or is found murdered, which was how his previous case ended.
The title is taken from Shakespeare (all of my detective novels have titles taken from his works). His play The Tempest has a line, "Hell is empty and all the devils are here." My premise in the book is that evil surrounds us on all sides - sometimes seen, sometimes not, and it's up to the virtuous people in the world to make the difference between chaos and caring.
The second book in the series, The Purger, concerns Pantera's first serial killer case, though it's a serial killer who never read the list of what a serial killer is supposed to be. There are no sexual reasons for the killings, and financial gain is not a motive either. Yes, our antagonist is insane, but there seems to be no rhyme or reason for what he does and whom he kills. The only pattern is that the killer urinates on some token taken from the victims, wrapped in discarded paper and placed on the victim's chest. They are both male and female, young and old, wealthy and poor. The reader finds out the reasons behind the killings in chapter one, but Pantera must figure it out.
This title is taken from Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Julius Caesar.
And let our hearts, as subtle masters do,
Stir up their servants to an act of rage,
And after seem to chide 'em. This shall make
Our purpose necessary and not envious:
Which so appearing to the common eyes,
We shall be call'd purgers, not murderers.
--William Shakespeare
The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, II, i
My next Detective Pantera book, The Whirligig of Time, will hopefully come out in the early summer of 2021.
La Libertad: What are your overall career goals?
Charles: Like every writer, I want to pen a bestseller or five. Over fifty-five thousand people have enjoyed Floating Twigs, some claiming in reader reviews that it is one of the best books they've ever read. I want to keep writing books until I no longer can.
I have a second literary novel similar to Floating Twigs that I am currently working on. I hope to have it out by Christmas. The working title is Canaries' Song. It is about a recent widower raising three daughters. The oldest loves horses; the youngest is headstrong, angry, and rebellious; and the middle daughter is a "special needs child" who loves listening to her canaries. It is about finding happiness where it is. I also have the basic plots of the next two books in the Detective Pantera series ready to begin writing.
Next fall, the as yet untitled sequel to Floating Twigs should come out. Yes, I am busy writing all the time.
La Libertad: What links would you like to share?
charlestabb.com
facebook.com/CharlesTabb919
La Libertad: What else, if anything, would you like to tell our readers?
Charles: Thank you for taking the time out of your day to learn about me and my work. It is sincerely appreciated. I also hope to have a book of short stories coming out next year sometime. The working title is Stories I Told Myself.
Interview by Charles Tabb
Photos by Dee Tabb and Addie Johnson
Edited by William Mortensen Vaughan
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