BooksChatter: ℚ Blind Walls

Today we have the pleasure of meeting up with author Bishop & Fuller to talk about Blind Walls (1 March 2019, Wordworkers Press, 226 pages), a Paranormal Urban Fantasy / Magical Realism.

"The pairing of Bishop and Fuller is a magical one. . . . It’s a brilliant opus, melding the past, present, and future with intimate, individual viewpoints from a tightly arrayed cast of believable characters in as eerie a setting as might be dredged out of everyman’s subconscious searching. . . . Blind Walls offers a weird alternative world, featuring a blind man with second sight and an acerbic wit as its charming, empathic hero." — Feathered Quill

"These characters are so well developed that one has to think of them as live people – laughing with them and crying with them, even getting old with them. This is an amazing story based on the Winchester Mansion and told with such quiet, compelling, raw humanity that the reader simply can’t stop until the entire tale is told. A wonderful, spooky look into others lives and what may or may not happen on any given day. — Dog-Eared Reviews

|| Synopsis || Teaser: Excerpt || Authors Q&A || About the Authors || Giveaway & Tour Stops ||

A very warm welcome to Conrad Bishop and Elizabeth Fuller; thank you for joining us on BooksChatter!

How much of yourself is reflected in this book, and how?

"We’re co-authors, so one answer would be that it’s uniquely DID: dissociative identity disorder. Is it horror or humor? Which is the protagonist? What’s the ultimate intention? It’s probably a bit unsatisfactory that the final answer to all those questions is Yes.

Our previous novel GALAHAD’S FOOL drew heavily on our professional experience as actors and puppeteers, but we had to do lots of research on carpentry for this one—even though Elizabeth has foremanned lots of seat-of-the-pants building projects over the years. What it reflects more, we hope, is an empathy with people NOT like us, those who—in order to make a living—have had to serve the mad obsessions of others."

The first thing that draws me to a book is its cover. Can you tell us about your cover for Blind Walls - why you chose that concept and who the artist is.

"A woman covering her face: that’s the creature who dominates all the others, a terrified ghost. And the stairs: well, in a mansion of three hundred rooms, there are lots of stairs. Though it’s not of the horror genre—there’s a lot of humor—it felt right to place it there emotionally: just the mundane “horror” of living with the choices you make.

The designer is Frank Ackerman, who’s been in our marriage for many years. In fact he’s the co-author Conrad, who’s done countless poster designs for our plays, but became “Frank Ackerman” as a credit on promo photos he appeared in as an actor. Frank was a character in a long-ago play of ours, and still hangs around for menial tasks."

Why should we read Blind Walls and what sets it apart from the rest? What makes your book unique?

"Not having read all of the 400,000 books published annually, we have no idea if BLIND WALLS is unique. We hope it’s real.

While not a “page-turner” we hope readers will turn the page to the next moment. We hope that it reflects the weird, courageous journey we all undertake to navigate the uncharted rapids of life, whether we sink or swim."

Who would you recommend Blind Walls to and what should readers be aware of (any warnings or disclaimers)?

"If you’re only a fan of “genre” and nothing else, this book isn’t for you.

If you really need to know who’s good and who’s evil, this isn’t for you.

If you want a story of the legend of Winchester House, better to find a download of the recent movie.

This is a fiction about the ordinary people who built the Pyramids, Stonehenge, the Great Wall [of China], the Taj Mahal—ordinary people in service to another’s great obsession."

Can you tell us something quirky about Blind Walls, its story and characters?

"Our initial attraction to the “legend” of Winchester House (a haunted heiress obsessed with building as a strategy of survival) wound up being a very small part of the story, ridiculed by our fictional heiress herself. Where the central characters emerged from, we have no idea, except that our own life path may be echoed.

For our characters Chuck and Dee, his landing the dream job that proved to be a bear-trap resulted in slow-boiling disaster. For us, the expectation was an academic career, but after a couple of stints on college faculties—including the “dream job”—we opted to risk our future in the insecure realm of an independent ensemble, and that defined the next 40+ years."

What do you like to write about?

"We’re almost afraid to analyze that, for fear we construct our own cage. But for CB: anything funny. For EF: letters to friends. Apart from that, we can’t say we “like” writing. Does a mother “like” labor? It’s an obsession, it’s a craft, it’s a calling, and if you resist your calling you wind up like Jonah in the belly of a whale.

What we write about a lot is how people find themselves in situations, needs, obsessions, that they’re not quite ready to face. Sometimes that comes out in farce, sometimes in tragedy, usually in a mix of the two. Or, as with BLIND WALLS, stories within stories."

What is your writing process?

"Sit there a long time, write some words. Apart from that, our collaborative process involves what people do with editors, but also, often, a lot of mutual work improvising scenes or character interviews into a recorder, not only to find verbal material but to get the physical “feel” of a character, how they think, their rhythm, their gestural life, etc. That comes out of a lifetime of acting, but it’s accessible to anyone.

With BLIND WALLS, we worked with a group of actors in its first stage, and some of those scenes—though after many drafts—made it into the novel."

What is in store next?

"We’re at work on another novel, plus Elizabeth on a solo memoir spurred by her finding her birth family after many years of search.

And work is persisting on a new theatre piece, taking off from Lewis Carroll’s ALICE books into the madness of the present day."

And as a final quirky thing, to get to know you a little bit better... do you have a pet or something that is special to you that you could share with us?

"Our secondary pets are our cats, but folks have seen billions of cats.

Our actual pets are each other, seen in the author photo, though not in the petting modality. It does happen, however, with persistent intensity."

People never tire of seeing cats ;-) Hence here are the boys with special cuddles sent to both of them from all of us at BooksChatter!

Thank you for sharing :-)