Ask the Author: Doug Brendel
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Doug Brendel
My new novel "Pleasure and Power" is the result of many different influences over the course of my lifetime. I actually wrote the first 9 chapters in 1999; they were influenced by stories I'd heard my mother tell about her parents, as well as my own experiences as a Caucasian foster parent with an African-American baby. But I didn't know how my novel would end, and a friend I trusted hated the first 9 chapters, so I threw the book out. I came back to the book after a 15-year hiatus (after the friend found my 9 chapters in a desk drawer, re-read them, and urged me, with an apology, to give it another shot). She actually had to send me my own manuscript. I re-read it, and agreed with her that it was bad — but suddenly the rest of the story came to mind. From that day I was fixated on rewriting and finishing the book. It wasn't easy finding the time because I'm a fulltime freelance fundraising writer, I volunteer as the leader of a humanitarian aid distribution charity in the former USSR, I'm active in community theatre, I'm a husband and a father. But finally, after 18 months or so, here it is!
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