Please welcome Ross Eddy Osborn!Cate: Ross, what is your most recent book?
Ross: Forever Found, Forever Lost (paranormal shape-changing)
Local doctor is bitten by a werewolf (a satanic demon really) and flees his home in Wicca Scotland, by makeshift sailboat, to where Viking legend lends the blessed sun does never sit. Hey, you don’t want to kill or infect anymore innocent souls during your lunar madness, do you?
Well, months later the good doctor is found frozen to said sailboat’s wooden tiller, is accidently thawed out by Alaskan natives, and ravages two famished polar bears that were set to feed on his Eskimo saviors —who are sure enough superstitious now, having thought the strange sailor from the land of drift wood igloos was truly dead….if frozen wide-eyed stiff with the sad frown of a beached whale.
And now, 553 love starved years later, the Eskimo’s demon sawbones will take a commercial jet flight south—unknowingly under the rising, demon moon— to seek out a large medical study grant, as well as (as the Inyaka Eskimo legend goes) the favors of a lasting moon mate. Of course his traveling companion, one James Jesse Dowell (a most cynical African American) doesn’t believe one word of the cook hermit’s secretive, 500 year b.s. story. For if James learned one truth, while growing up tough in the Chicago streets and the no nonsense Alaskan pipe fitter trade, “Ain’t nothin real till it bloody real, doc, so don’t play this child the backwoods fool!”
Talk about a wild ride to hell and back, when the beast comes alive at forty thousand feet in the arctic sky during a jet hijacking. “When the moon is fool and the soul is damned, the beast must prey on the innocent lamb,” or so the age-old legend, used to go. For you’ll see what I mean when Charles Patrick MacHenery falls to his suspect death, only to sink his demon fangs into one Cajun Beauty, Miss Amada De’la’ray, who’s already scared victim and moonshine giggly of a local, fanged tooth monster that still hopes to, own her pleasures. And James Jesse Dowell is not quite his wise-cracking self either, anymore, as he sets after the devil beast with his late father’s pistol and two silver bullets carved out of his great, great, great grandmother’s African tribal ring. “You’ll think ‘you can only die by a lovin hand,’ Scotsman—James Dowell the devil on your back now!” Cate: Wow, that sounds like an epic tale. Tell us something about yourself.
Ross: Grew up blue collar in Oklahoma City, snuck through high school, did an eye opening tour of combat duty in Vietnam (1968) were I learned first trembling hand that we all laugh, cry, and scream in the same language. Been writing 20 plus years now, and getting solid notice.
Cate: What inspired me to write Forever Found Forever Lost?
Ross: Being in a strange land where I, right or wrong was the alien beast, I truly wished to be proven otherwise. Wishes failed…a lot. Prayers seemed to fall on deaf ears, too—yet I’m alive and safely home?
Cate: How did you publish this book?
Ross: Forever Found Forever Lost isn’t published yet, it’s in the editing mix. Should be published this December. Whisky Creek Press found worth in this particular scratching and welcomed me to join their strong list of talented writers. Quite proud to be mentioned among said, creative lot.
Cate: How did you know you wanted to write?
Ross: Didn’t, just got the itch seemingly forever ago. Was blessed, or cursed, with an ever creating mind and found myself hacking out trite stories on a word-processor. I truly don’t remember wanting to write, no guiding light, no demonic bell from hell past, no whisper from an angle, just found myself writing. Now, I don’t quite know how to strop. LOL. But I have advanced with the computer age.
Cate: What do you believe is the hardest part of writing?
Ross: Finding my work in the critical hands of those more read than lived. But I’ve learned to deal with said…if I so choose to progress. For as many times that I’ve been stone right about people, I’ve often been unjustly wrong.
Cate: How do you do research for your books?
Ross: My not so thought out life experiences mostly, for fiction. For none fiction, the library, history books, being often shot at during the war, National Geographic, the nightly news, and what history books I find worthy of definitive truth. And yeah, from the movies and television….even heart felt rock and roll music.
Cate: Did you learn anything from writing this book?
Ross: To rewrite! Rewrite! Rewrite! and that ‘character conflict and resolution’ is the page turning must!!!
Cate: Hear, hear. What are you reading now?
Ross: Working on a creative none fiction book right now, not reading.
Cate: What types of books do you like to read.
Ross: Well, I’m under the ‘lazy’ impression that I may be unduly influenced by other writers, might unwittingly steal their compelling voice as mine. But I do like Stephen King. Not his scary stuff, but works like ‘The Green Mile, Shaw Shank Redemption, Delorious Clayborn’, and that one about the writer getting shanghaied by the crazy fan. Like Jack London, too, yet his most descriptive ‘ Sea Wolf’ story fell flat at the end; or was I just unduly influenced by a hardened critic? Naw, it fell flat. I’m also quite inspired by other Whiskey Creek Author’s compelling writes.
Cate: Are you working on your next book? What can you tell us about it?
Ross: I’m working on ‘Don’t Stand On Greasy Grass’( creative none fiction about an immigrant Irish lad (Dan Kelly ) who comes eye to conflicting eye with one of histories most debatable, if not arguable figures, George Armstrong Custer, 1876). Yet private Kelly, and the once boy general, will often saddle talk fondly of the true loves in their lives, Elisabeth ‘Libby’ Custer and Kelly’s hopefully waiting Helen, Helen of Troy New York, right up to the war whooping end.
I served with a ‘thought fearless’ officer in my foolish war, and I may know what those terrified enlisted pony solder’s truly thought of Custer, when ‘unwittingly?’ overwhelmed by original Native Americans with vengeful tomahawks, if not axes to grind over stolen lands and broken treaties. But again, they found an ax on the Little Big Horn River battlefield; aka The Greasy Grass, to the Crow and Ree Indian scouts that rode with Long Hair, Yellow Hair, Son of the Morning Star, Lt, Colonel ( not general) George ‘Auti to his loving kin’ Armstrong Custer. Well, I’m enjoying the first few, bloodless chapters, defining characters, wants, goals, fears, dislikes, while all the plotting while nearing the last ‘non treaty Indian’ trail that many the adventure minded pony soldiers will ever follow. For ample, among the ethnic mix of German, Irish, English, and some hardened Civil War vets, have never before corralled a true hostile native. And more than a disgruntled few liken the hero of the buffalo plains, Colonel George Armstrong Custer to ‘Hard Ass,’ Iron Butt’ but to mention a whispered two. Yet the near whole of the Seventh Calvary will get their horrid fill of the plains Natives, too, the vengeful Sioux and Cheyenne, to name but two determined tribes among the ever massing, hostile thousands.
Have another finished book, being hawked about by me, ‘Thorns of a Tainted Rose, 1881’. Southern Riverboat gambler falls smitten prey to an oddly beautiful, would-be novelists from New York City. “We were divided, North and South, because we hated each other so.” Mary Boyken Chestnut (Civil War’s leading diarist). If you dig a bawdy, slight of tricky hand work filled with crafty characters, pearl black and porcelain white, you might find Thorns a compelling, freed slave read. My father was a professional gambler, or bottom dealer, which truthful ever.
Cate: What is the best advice you can give other writers about writing and publishing?
Ross: I’m still too the new guy with Whiskey Creek Press to offer sound advice about writing, much less publishing. Yet I do find solace in the ‘published authors’ writers group provided by my literary sponsor, WCP.
Cate: What are you doing to promote your latest book?
Ross: My latest book ‘Forever Found Forever Lost’ is also my fist book to be published, so I’m learning from seasoned WCP authors how to advance my knowledge about ‘web pages’, ‘blogs’, ‘book signings’, ‘book shows’ etc. It’s a slow go, to one like me, but I’m climbing the right literary latter.
Cate: Where can readers learn more about your work?
Ross: In a few, arduous months, interested readers will find a book blurb about Forever Found Forever Lost on the Whiskey Creek Press sight. I’ve said all need be said about me.
Cate: Any last remarks?
Ross: I strive to entertain with flesh and bone characters drawn from the devilish well of eternal life, too.
Cate: Wonderfully put. Best of luck to you, Ross, and thanks for being my guest.
