Tamanrasset Book Tour

Lily, 8 months ago

Goddess Fish Promotions Presents

Tamanrasset
by Edward Parr

A randomly drawn winner will receive a $25 Amazon/BN GC – Enter Below

TAMANRASSET is historical fiction set on the edge of the Sahara as the ancient world begins to fade and great empires collide. Four strangers—a mature Foreign Legionnaire, a Sharif’s wrathful son, an ambitious American archaeologist, and an abandoned Swedish widow—become adrift and isolated, but when their paths intersect, the fragile connections between them tell a story of survival and fate on the edge of the abyss. Blending the sweep of classic adventure with the horror of a great historical calamities, Edward Parr’s TAMANRASSET is a saga about the crossroads where nomads meet.

The Sun had not yet risen above the ruins of the Mechouar Palace, but at the mosque nearby many Muslim people of the city of Tlemcen were already at their morning prayer. It was a great privilege to be admitted to one of the oldest mosques in Algeria, over eight hundred years old, and an even greater privilege to be allowed to pray before the mihrab there among the great white columns that lined the enormous hall. As the prayers ended, there was a gentle rustling of movement as the faithful rose and exited to the open and airy marble-tiled courtyard of the mosque, still quiet in the twilight of dawn. Isabel retrieved her leather boots and exited a side door beneath the shadow of the towering brick minaret. Covered by her tightly drawn dark brown burnouse, khaki pants, white shirt, and a black hijab, Isabel walked along the great stone wall to the main gate of the palace. The few buildings in the complex that were still usable had been made into offices for the French army, but the pool and gardens of the central courtyard were peaceful and shadowy. She passed an alcove that featured Islamic calligraphy carved into the stucco, and Isabel stopped to read it: “Allah is God, there is no god but He: the King.”

A quiet voice behind her asked: “Madame Pedersen?”

She turned to find a short, elegantly dressed French officer approaching her. His flat-topped white hair was soldierly, but his crisp, tailored uniform, polished boots, and wide waxed mustache displayed a carefully composed appearance.

“Peace be with you,” she said, casting her eyes downward and crossing her arm over her chest as she nodded.

“Peace be with you, Madame. I apologize if I disturbed you; will you come inside?”

“As you wish.”

She followed the French colonel to a charming wood-paneled room overlooking an orchard of citrus trees bearing large green fruit. The colonel sat on a bare wood chair beside a wide wooden table, crossed his legs, and twirled the end of his wide mustache. Isabel stood silently before him in a respectful posture.

“I have the greatest respect for your beliefs, my dear, but it would be helpful to me if you would sit and speak to me informally. Would you be so kind?”

“Of course,” she said and she sat on the chair beside his. Her demeanor now expressed more of her experience and self-assurance, her hijab more a symbol of her confidence than of her humility. The colonel raised an eyebrow in appreciation of her serene face and brilliant blue eyes.

What is the sweetest thing someone has done for you?
I don’t want to get too specific here, but to just mention something quite recent – I have a friend, really a work colleague, who reached out to me recently about a work matter, and at the end of our conversation he said: ”Oh, by the way, when I was looking up your number online, I saw your new book on sale, and I know several people who would love to read it, so I ordered a few copies.” I really appreciated that. You know, as an independent author, I don’t make much money (if any) per sale, but I absolutely love to have people read the book and enjoy the story. I hope if you’re reading this, you’ll buy a copy, please. If it’s too costly for a hardcover, I understand: eBook editions and paperback editions are coming soon. Thanks!

How would you spend ten thousand bucks?
A question like this is usually no fun unless you can dream up the most frivolous way to spend the money, but honestly this year I think I would give the money to a political organization like the ACLU. If that offends you, well, you probably wouldn’t like my book anyway.

Where do you get your best ideas?
I wish I knew which ideas were the best! But I mean, I can always tell as I’m writing when parts of the story start to come together, to gel in some way which you hadn’t expected but suddenly a whole bunch of things make sense, and then the story reaches a moment where you can finally see why you had been writing all the stuff that came before even if you didn’t know then why you were writing it or even why it was part of the story. Now, I’m one of these writers that doesn’t plot things out in advance too much (some, just not very much), so those ideas just usually come to me on the fly, unexpectedly, like revelations. But for a writer who plots out their stories very thoroughly before beginning to write, I imagine they have the same experience of discovery where their imaginations just take flight and some moment or action or words suddenly have meaning and purpose. That’s a special part of creating the work.

What comes first, the plot or characters?
My writing is deeply and primarily rooted in my sense of a specific time and place, and maybe I know some things that actually happened there which I want to be part of the story. Then I can begin to the consider the characters that live there, and only then think about what could happen, what those characters might do or say. Sometimes even I don’t know how their stories will end until I get there.

What does your main character do that makes him/her special?
I like to think that every main character has something special about them that makes them compelling enough to read about. My newest novel, Tamanrasset: Crossroads of the Nomad, has an ensemble cast with four lead characters: One of them, I think, is incredibly patient and measured, another is clever and ambitious, a third is tenacious and strategic, and the fourth is compassionate and brave. But what makes them all special is that they each understand in the end that they are connected to each other, and that in a world where every man and woman is isolated and at risk, their fragile, fleeting connections to other people are the only things that truly matter.

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Edward (“Ted”) Parr studied playwriting at New York University in the 1980’s, worked with artists Robert Wilson, Anne Bogart, and the Bread and Puppet Theater, and staged his own plays Off-Off-Broadway, including Trask, Mythographia, Jason and Medea, Rising and an original translation of Oedipus Rex before pursuing a lengthy career in the law and public service. He published his Kingdoms Fall trilogy of World War One espionage adventure novels which were collectively awarded Best First Novel and Best Historical Fiction Novel by Literary Classics in 2016. He has always had a strong interest in expanding narrative forms, and in his novel writing, he explores older genres of fiction (like the pulp fiction French Foreign Legion adventures or early espionage fiction) as inspiration to examine historical periods of transformation. His main writing inspirations are Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Bernard Cornwell, Georges Surdez, and Patrick O’Brien.