Ken Follett: Author of Fall of Giants

Ken Follett is one of the world’s best-loved novelists. He has sold more than 130 million copies of his books. His book, Fall of Giants, went straight to the No.1 position on bestseller lists in the USA, Spain, Italy, Germany and France.

Follett's first novel in 1978 was Eye of the Needle, which won the Edgar award and was made into a film starring Kate Nelligan and Donald Sutherland.

Follett's novel The Pillars of the Earth, about building a cathedral in the Middle Ages, was a detour from the spy genre for which he had become known. Published in September 1989 to rave reviews, it was on the New York Times bestseller list for eighteen weeks. It also reached the No. 1 position on lists in Canada, Great Britain and Italy, and was on the German bestseller list for six years, and voted the third greatest book ever written by 250,000 viewers of the German television station ZDF in 2004.

His current project is his most ambitious yet. The Century Trilogy will tell the entire history of the twentieth century, seen through the eyes of five linked families: one American, one English, one German, one Russian, and one Welsh. The first book, Fall of Giants, focusing on the First World War and the Russian Revolution, was published worldwide on 28 September 2010. The second book, Winter of the World,about the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, and the development of nuclear weapons, will be published in many countries in September 2012.

Learn more about Follett and his work by visiting the author's website.

Watch Ken Follett speak at the 2010 National Book Festival:

 

Fall of Giants is the September pick for the Chunky Book Club. Please join us mid-month for the discussion!

Beatriz Williams: Author Guest Post and Giveaway

Overseas by Beatriz Williams

464 pages

ISBN 978-0399157646

Putnam Adult (May 10, 2012)

Today I am delighted to share a guest post by author Beatriz Williams along with a give away of her debut novel, Overseas.

Beatriz Williams is a graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia. She spent several years in New York and London working first as a corporate and communications strategy consultant, and then as an "at-home producer of small persons." She now lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore, where she divides her time between writing and laundry. Overseas is her first novel.

Learn more about Williams and her work by visiting the author's website. You may also find the author at her blog, on Twitter and on Facebook.

When I requested a guest post by Beatriz Williams, I was asked to suggest some topics. After reading about her new book, I thought exploring the topic of Love in the 21st Century would be an excellent choice...and Beatriz agreed, writing:

Wendy, let me first say how thrilled I was when I saw your list of suggested topics for this guest post! You really understood what I was trying to convey with the love story between Julian and Kate -- namely, the vast distance between courtship and love a hundred years ago and the way it plays out today, and what that means for young men and women. I'm so excited to have the opportunity to natter on about it here -- thank you!

So, I am very happy to present this guest post to all of you - ENJOY!

Love in the 21st Century 

by Beatriz Williams 
 

At a cocktail party the other night, the subject of Spreadsheet Guy came up for discussion. You may have heard of him: some poor geek of an investment banker who organized his dating contacts from Match.com into an Excel spreadsheet of eye-watering sophistication, complete with color coding and alphanumeric scoring. As spreadsheets go, it was a work of art. His only mistake, according to my friends at the party? He forwarded it -- heaven knows why -- to one of the women on the list.

So much has changed from the start of the First World War through the calamitous, miraculous century that followed, and nothing more profoundly than the conduct of courtship. When the idea for Overseas -- a brilliant young British infantry officer, in the doomed tradition of Rupert Brooke and Julian Grenfell, walking the streets of modern-day Manhattan -- first appeared in my brain, I wanted to dismiss it. I've always considered myself a writer of historical fiction, drawn to the intricate virtues of the past, and had never even tried a contemporary voice.

But the lure was irresistible. In Julian, I had the personification of romantic Edwardian youth -- dashing heedlessly off to slaughter, writing poetry amid the rats and mud -- now deposited into the irony and cynicism of twenty-first century Manhattan. In Kate, I had an independent young woman immersed in the casual dating scene of college and Wall Street, whose expectations of men had fallen so low she'd given up on the little dears altogether. What would happen when these two opposite poles came together?

To modern ears, Julian's expressions of chivalry and romanticism may seem excessive. In fact, they're largely culled from the historical record. In 1915, Vera Brittain wrote to her fiancé Roland Leighton, expressing impatience that he'd been kissing her photograph goodnight when he'd never kissed her in person. He wrote back from the trenches: "When it is all finished and I am with her again the original shall not envy the photograph. The barrier which She seems to have found was not of reserve but rather of reverence. But may it not perhaps be better that such sweet sacrilege should be an anticipation rather than a memory?"

Roland would be killed eight months later by a German sniper, at the age of twenty.

Naturally,Vera (an early feminist) found such rituals of courtship confining. But from where we stand at the opposite end, as men organize their romantic prospects into spreadsheets, ranked according to perceived physical beauty, the notion of sex and love as something sacred, not be undertaken lightly, seems breathtakingly...well, sexy.

What do you think? Has courtship changed for the worse since the summer of 1914? Or does our increased freedom balance out any loss of romance? What's your experience of love in the 21st century?

**********************

WIN A COPY OF OVERSEAS

Contest open from May 1, 2012 - May 9, 2012 (at 5:00 pm PST) 

I am thrilled to be able to offer one lucky reader a copy of Overseas by Beatriz Williams. Please read the following carefully to be entered in the giveaway. 

The contest is open internationally. If the winner is from the US or Canada, the publisher will be sending you a copy of the book; if the winner is outside of the US or Canada, your book will come directly from us.

There are several ways to enter this contest - and you may do any or all of them for additional chances to win with ONE exception - you MUST be signed up for the Chunkster Challenge to get at least one entry into the contest. If you have not signed up, you may do so by visiting this post and using Mr. Linky OR by leaving a comment on that post saying you are signing up. It is not too late to sign up for the challenge!

So to simplify:

For ONE entry, please sign up for the Chunkster Challenge, and then come back here and leave a comment telling me you are signed up and wish to be entered in the contest (if you are already signed up, just leave a comment saying "I'm signed up, enter me."

Additional entries may be earned and a comment should be left on this post for each additional entry:

• Tweet about the contest with a link to this post. Be sure to include Beatriz in the tweet by using @bcwilliamsbooks
• Visit Beatriz's facebook page, like it, and post to her wall answering any of the questions posed in her guest post above (about love in the 21st century) 
• Blog about the contest with a link back to this post

You will get extra chances by doing each of the above (so you can earn up to 3 extra chances).

I will randomly select ONE winner after 5:00 pm on May 9th and announce their name here on the Chunkster blog. If you have not given me a way to reach you (ie: by leaving me your email address in your comment), then you will have to contact me within 5 days of the announcement or I will draw another winner.

Clear as mud? Any questions, please use the contact form on this blog to contact us!

GOOD LUCK!!!

Featured Author: Stephen King

 

This month we are hosting the first ever Chunky Book Club (to see our selections for the rest of the year and the schedule of discussions, visit the Chunky Book Club page). We've selected Stephen King's best seller 11/22/63 for our March read. Formal questions about the book will appear on this blog by mid-month.

Stephen King was born in Portland, Maine in 1947 and grew up in Durham, Maine. He attended the University of Maine at Orono, where he wrote a weekly column for the school newspaper, The Maine Campus. He was also active in student politics, serving as a member of the Student Senate, and supporting the anti-war movement. King graduated from the University of Maine at Orono in 1970, with a B.A. in English. He married Tabitha Spruce in 1971. 

King's first professional short story sale ("The Glass Floor") was to Startling Mystery Stories in 1967. He also sold stories to men's magazines. Many of these were later gathered into the Night Shift collection or appeared in other anthologies.

King sprang onto the literary scene with the publication of Carrie (Doubleday, 1974) which was later made into a movie. The success of Carrie allowed him to leave his high school teaching position and write full-time. Other best selling novels followed including The Shining, The Stand and The Dead Zone.

Stephen King is known as a prolific writer of horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy. His books have sold more than 350 million copies world wide and many of his literature has been adapted to the screen and television. As of 2011, he had written and published 49 novels, including seven under the pen name Richard Bachman, five non-fiction books, and nine collections of short stories. Many of his stories are set in his home state of Maine. He is an award winning author and was recognized for his literary talent by receiving The National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003.

Here is a terrific interview with Stephen King:



Read more about King and his work on Wikipedia and at the author's website.

Guest Post - Author Elliot Perlman

The Street Sweeper, by Elliot Perlman

Today author Elliot Perlman joins us on the Chunkster Challenge blog with a special guest post. Vasilly and I are thrilled to have him here - and we hope you will enjoy this feature which gives wonderful insight into the inspiration for his latest novel and the process of writing a book of this length. First a little about Mr. Perlman:

Elliot Perlman was born in Australia. He is the author of the short-story collection The Reasons I Won't Be Coming, which won the Betty Trask Award (UK) and the Fellowship of Australian Writers Book of the Year Award. He is also the author of two previous novels: Three Dollars (1998, and Seven Types of Ambiguity (2003) which was shortlisted for the 2004 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Best Book), the 2004 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards (Best Fiction Book), and 2004 The Miles Franklin Award.

Many thanks to Mr. Perlman for taking the time to craft a guest post for us!

In the early 2000s I was living in New York across the street from the mini-metropolis that is Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. Patients came to the giant hospital from all over the world for treatment there. Visitors, bewildered, sad or numb, came from all over the world too.

I used to catch the bus at a stop outside the hospital and see the hive of activity and the interaction of seemingly disparate people of different ages, socio-economic groups and educational levels, people of different races, ethnicities and nationalities, all milling around each other. So stressed were the visitors and many of the staff that they chain-smoked to alleviate their stress out on the street besides patients in wheelchairs.

To a writer observing this scene, the multitude of smokers outside the cancer hospital, people of all different backgrounds forming an instant but transient community, all of this is the gold that sends one off in search of the goldmine that is the answer to the question, “What if an unlikely friendship was to blossom out of all of this?”

From here came the answer that was the seed for The Street Sweeper. We see the beginning of an unlikely relationship between two men who, statistically should never have met. One of them is an African American janitor, a wrongly-convicted recently released ex-con, the first ex-con to be put on six month probation in a pilot program to help ex-cons re-integrate into society, a man desperate to keep his job, find his young daughter and get his life back on track. The other is an old white man battling cancer, a Jew in his eighties with only wisps of hair and thick European-accented English, a Holocaust survivor. He’s a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp and even rarer than that, he was a member of the Sonderkommando, those Auschwitz prisoners forced by the Nazis on pain of death to work in the gas chambers and crematoria.

In a 21^st century survival story these two men will need each other in ways neither of them could ever have imagined. And this is only the very beginning.

I often get asked where the beginning comes from and if I know at the beginning how long the book will be or how long it’s going to take me to write it. Perhaps it’s a mistake on my part but when starting one of my books I don’t really think very much at all about the length. Somehow, and it happens variously, I get the idea for a story, what you might call a plot outline, and I start making notes. I might start doing some research. I’ll read something, hear something, go somewhere and watch people, interview someone and then the plot really starts to take shape. Nowhere in any of this do I start thinking about length. Given the length of my most recent two books, you’d think I would have (or at least I should have) given some specific thought to the question of length. Seven Types of Ambiguity took me almost 4 years to write and I think it weighs in at about 230,000 words. The Street Sweeper is a bit shorter but took longer, in large part because The Street Sweeper required more research than my 3 previous books put together.

The Street Sweeper took about 5 ½ years to write. In addition to all the reading that I had to do for it there were the interviews. I interviewed people all over New York; historians at Columbia, ex-cons, social workers, lawyers. Then the story took me to Chicago, specifically to the Illinois Institute of Technology where David Boder, the inspiration for my character, the academic psychologist Henry Border, had taught and researched. Then I interviewed former students of his enrolled then in his masters program working on the “Adjective- Verb Quotient”. Then I went to the all-important South Side of Chicago to see where the meat works were and where my African American Chicagoans lived. I had the good fortune to be shown around there by a charming African American gentleman then in his 80s who was able to tell me about life in that time at that place. I interviewed people in my hometown, Melbourne, Australia. Then of course there were my trips to Poland and particularly the 6 trips to Auschwitz. I found a guide at the Auschwitz State Museum who went from being a trusted guide to a friend and confidant. To him I confided the wartime plot. He gave me great encouragement urging me to tell this story. Not only that but he introduced me to the last surviving Polish Jewish member of the Sonderkommando. It was this man’s wartime experiences that became the basis for my character, Henryk Mandelbrot, the Holocaust survivor in the New York hospital who befriends the African American ex-con.

I knew it wouldn’t be a short book but that didn’t bother me or faze me in any way. As a reader I’ve enjoyed works of all lengths but so many of the books that influenced me, as a writer and perhaps even as a person were, now that you force me to consider it, long books. As a young man I was a devotee of much 19^th Century fiction; Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola and the Russians of course. Even when I moved into the 20^th century, many of my favourite books were long ones; Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate and Robert Musil’s, The Man Without Qualities. It’s such an incredible comfort to discover a new favourite writer or a long book in which you just want to lose yourself, to immerse yourself. Whatever else is going on in your life, you know the book is there waiting for you with characters you already know and about whom you want to know more. But to be honest, I’ve also read a lot of short stories and poetry of various lengths and one of my books, The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming, is a collection of short stories so I don’t think I’m fixated on length. I have to admit though that one of the short stories in The Reasons I Won’t Be Coming, the last one called, “A Tale in Two Cities”, is about 100 pages. That’s probably quite long for a short story. Now you’ve got me thinking!

© Elliot Perlman 2012