Interview With Author Michael Fryd
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I spent most of my life as a scientist, but when I retired I decided it was time to become a writer, something I've dreamed of since I was 5or 6. A dozen of my short stories appeared in various literary magazines. I've written two books. One is my memoir of surviving the Holocaust, thanks to my mother's courage, cunning, and a lack of respect for the truth and legal niceties. The other is a novel about crime and political corruption in my adopted city, Philadelphia.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book and first length publication is "My Mother's War". I started writing it for my children, but realized there was a bigger point that needed to be made. It is too easy to intellectualize the Holocaust. Six million people killed numbs the mind. I wanted to remind people that it was more than a number, it was six million individuals who suffered and died during those years. Babies who didn't get a chance to learn to walk, teenagers who never got a chance to experience the thrill and heartbreak of young love, Old people who didn't see their children and grandchildren grow up.
So I chose to write about one family, mine, to show the fear and pain we suffered, and even after we survived, how what we went through changed us.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Yes. I am an unstructured human being, and so don't write an outline or a plot. I start writing and look forward to seeing what my characters will do, and what new characters I'll meet along the way.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Balzac, and Gogol introduced to me to the complexity and fragility of humanity. I'll never forget when I encountered Thackeray's Becky Sharp, a flawed but so interesting female character. Garcia Marquez taught me, trained as a scientist, what possibilities become available if you choose to suspend disbelief. And finally Ogden Nash and James Thurber who showed me how much fun it is to introduce whimsy and humor.
What are you working on now?
I am working on two novels. The first, tentatively titled, Let us Prey, is the story of a woman who spent twenty years in jail for the murder of her husband, a prominent baptist minister.
Five years after she leaves jail, her daughter, born in jail and brought up by her in laws, finds her and wants to hear her side of the story.
The other, titled Mother's Secret, is based on a character like my mother.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I have no experience with promoting my book, so I follow my publisher's wise advice.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Yes. What kept me going, and helped me not get discouraged by rejection which comes inevitably with being a writer, was discovering Kurt Vonnegut's first book was rejected 37 times by publishers.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Don't acknowledge writer's block. Keep writing and even if some of what you write is bad, you will be surprised by how much of it is at worst usable.
What are you reading now?
The Covenant of Water by Verghese. You know a book is great when it is over eight hundred pages and you wish there were more.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I hope to find a publisher for my finished crime novel, and finish the two I'm working on.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
The collected poems of Ogden Nash. You may think this proves I'm a lightweight, and maybe I am. I don't like to reread books. I already know the story. If stranded on a desert island, I wouldn't want to read lofty tomes. I'd want something that would help me pass the time, make me chuckle.
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