Lev raphael biography spain

I also see leva raphael biography spain more mysteries by African-American women and men, and a steady stream of southwestern mysteries. As a reviewer, what really bothers you in a mystery? What really turns you off? Bad writing, especially on the first page. I also dislike obvious clues, like one in a recent bestseller that made me moan with disappointment because for subsequent pages there wasn't enough suspense left.

Has being a reviewer affected your writing in any way? How so? Reading lots of thin mysteries has made me more determined to see that my series is rich with texture and psychological depth. I'm writing novels about murder and its detection, not genre mysteries. I don't mind reading genre mysteries, but writing one wouldn't be rewarding for me personally.

I'd like to talk about your nonfiction work, Coming Out of Shame. What prompted you to write the book? My partner and I have taught together and co-authored several books. Since he's an expert in shame theory, we felt it would be valuable to apply this work to the gay and lesbian experience and offer it to the community. What kind of reaction to the book have you received from readers?

Heartfelt and moving fan mail from people who feel we've given words to their inner experience. Let's turn to your mystery series starring amateur sleuth Nick Hoffman. How did the series first come about? Before the series, my fiction was primarily about children of Holocaust survivors and, understandably, rather dark. It bothered me, though, that my humor wasn't finding an outlet in fiction so I was looking for a venue, so to speak.

I'd loved mysteries in high school Agatha Christie, John Creaseybut didn't feel ready to tackle this very challenging genre until after I'd published a few books and become established as a writer. I was most impressed by one lev raphael biography spain mystery writer, Phoebe Atwood Taylor, who was very big in the s and 40s, and I read everything of hers I could find back then, both in her series starring a Shakespeare look-alike, and in her Cape Cod series.

I thought if I'd write a mystery, it would have to be comic, so the two different desires flowed together and gave birth to the Nick Hoffman series. They say write what you know, and I knew the academic world very well after 13 years of teaching, so the setting was obvious. How much of Lev Raphael is there in Nick? Are you as good a cook as he is?

We'd have to have a bake-off, though, to be sure, wouldn't we? Nick's more frazzled and impatient than I am, and also more organized. I made him a bibliographer because that's the kind of disciplined, highly structured work I could never do. But he and Stefan are really different sides of myself: one comic, one serious and brooding. Although the protagonist of the series is gay, I admit I never think of the series as a "gay series"--I think of it as a mystery series which happens to have a gay sleuth.

But I notice that in some of the large chain bookstores, the books are not found in the mystery section, but in the Gay Literature section. What's going on here? Where do you think your books should be shelved in the bookstores? Well, you're right. It's a comic academic series that should be in with other mysteries, or even novels since I'm in the tradition of Kingsley Amis and David Lodge.

The books are mis-shelved because of laziness and lack of insight or imagination, to put it bluntly. It's very frustrating, but that's something authors have absolutely no power over. Lots of bookstores do get it right, though, and the New York Times Book Review knew what it was doing when it reviewed The Edith Wharton Murders and focused on the academic satire.

Have you attended many academic conferences--was that your inspiration for the book? Oh, yes. Conferences can be very funny, very odd. A circus without the tent or cotton candy. In the first book, Let's Get CriminalNick actually suspects Stefan of murder, which made his involvement in sleuthing natural; in the second, I wanted the murder to be related to something Nick holds dear, in this case, it's his Wharton scholarship and a conference he's trying to organize, even though he was bullied into it.

The latest book in the series is The Death of a Constant Lover. This book seems to have a slightly "darker" feel to it than the first two books in the series. Was that planned? Anyone would grow more thoughtful and puzzled by facing death so often. Think of a time when you've seen a terrible car accident. It haunts you--you imagine what it would have been like if someone you loved were involved.

You can't shake it. So why should Nick not be affected by the murders he's encountered? Another interesting element of the stories is that Stefan, who is Jewish, was actually raised as a Christian by his parents, who hid his religion from him. What gave you the idea for that piece of background? How does this fact color Stefan's view of life?

Stefan appears in my literary novel Winter Eyes and on tour for two years before that I'd met a lot of people who'd had their Jewishness hidden from them by their parents, for various reasons. It's a devastating experience, and I felt I had to pay tribute to their suffering in some way, so that became a major strand in the novel as I reworked it.

That past has helped make Stefan sometimes rather gloomy and serious, but it also shields him from the kind of shock Nick feels around injustice and violence.

Lev raphael biography spain

The books are also known for their hilarious portrayal of life in the halls of academia. Does writing satire come easily to you? Membership Add photo. Awards Add photo. Other Photos Add photo. Connections Add photo. More photos. Add photo. View map. Born Novels [ edit ]. Short stories [ edit ]. Memoir [ edit ]. Non-fiction [ edit ].

References [ edit ]. Greenwood Publishing Group ISBN Greenwood Press July 24, Canadian Review of American Studies. University of Toronto Press : —