Ask the Author: Darrell Kastin
Answered Questions (7)
Darrell Kastin
Obrigado, Marta! :)
Darrell Kastin
If I ever get stuck on something I move on to something else. It's never a problem for long.
Darrell Kastin
Seeing what lies unavailable in the beginning, but emerges as you work the piece: the sudden appearance of a new character, an unexpected plot twist, or ending that you couldn't foresee. The surprises are the best.
Darrell Kastin
By having an argument with my publisher over the title of my collection of stories. I wanted Tales of the Azorean Nights; they wanted something like what I finally came up with, The Conjurer and Other Azorean Tales. We went back and forth, and I finally relented but not without saying, "I will use that title, then, for another book." At that time I had no other book in mind, and certainly not a sequel to The Undiscovered Island, which had taken me 20 years to write. But a month before leaving for Germany where I was to have a 3 disc replacement in my neck, I suddenly began writing stories. I had somewhere between 4 and 6 when we left for Germany, and 4 months after our return to the US, I had about 150 pages of the new novel. I was overjoyed to see Leonardo Brum again, because I liked him a lot. The stories kept writing themselves, somewhat interconnected in that the relative one of character would appear in another story.
Darrell Kastin
Daydream. Keeping my ears and eyes open. Read.
Darrell Kastin
A sequel to my first novel, The Undiscovered Island. The new book is titled A Tale of the Azorean Nights. Leonardo Brum, the detective who appears in The Undiscovered Island, returns to the Azores, drawn to the island of Pico, in fact to a specific village, São Teotónio, as if lured by the very forces of the lava and sea, the lush vegetation and sea breezes, if not a siren per se. He has retired and finds himself a bit adrift, but soon after his arrival he is enlisted by a villager to find out who is stealing the dreams of the people of São Teotónio. At the same time his neighbors, an elderly couple, engage him in nightly recitations as each tells a story; Brum is to judge which of the two is the better storyteller. Interwoven between the stories, Brum tries to solve the mystery of the stolen dreams and discover his reasons for being summoned by the island.
Darrell Kastin
Really, the only answer to this is to read anything and everything, and to write, write, write. Put it aside, then rewrite. Put it aside again, and rewrite again. Do this a number of time. People who think they can get by with 3 or 4 revisions are doing the necessary work.
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