Lawrence Weill Virtual Tour: Guest Post and Giveaway

Hi, everyone!

I am pleased to participate in Lawrence Weill's Virtual Tour hosted by Tomorrow Comes Media.


About Lawrence:

Lawrence Weill is an author and artist in western Kentucky. In addition to novels, he writes short fiction, non-fiction articles and books, and poetry. His work has appeared in a wide range of local, regional, and national journals. He and his wife live in the woods overlooking a beaver pond. 

CONNECT ONLINE WITH LAWRENCE: 
Website | Facebook


Welcome to Darlene's Book Nook, Lawrence!

Lawrence has written a guest post, so I will now turn the floor over to him!

Hi. My name is Lawrence Weill and my debut novel Incarnate was released in March of this year. In my novel, some of the situations that my characters go through are difficult scenes for readers, whether the conflict has resulted from what my characters have chosen to do or something that has befallen them. I am sometimes asked by readers how I am able to write and to cope with these difficult scenes. Do these scenes distress me? Does writing a scene in which characters are hurt affect my everyday life? Why do I include them in the story?

The answers to those questions sometimes vary, depending upon what is happening in the novel and to whom. Firstly, the characters I have created for Incarnate are just that: characters. I have to keep that in mind. In difficult scenes, I make sure I adopt that stance so that I can create an authorial distance to the action. In a sense, I make myself see the writing during those scenes as reporting the action somewhat impersonally. As Sargent Friday often said on the old "Dragnet" television program: "Just the facts, sir." I find approaching some scenes in this way helps me to be able to write it down in a more non-judgmental way, in a more matter-of-fact way. After all, one of the things I want the reader to do is to supply the value set to the narrative, to make of it what she will, to decide whether something good or bad is happening. That to me is an important element in the writing.

On the other hand, in general, I like the characters I create, or at the very least, I have a certain empathy for them, or else I could not develop them fully. When my characters actually do things which create unpleasant scenes, I don't have them act out of malice. They may be misguided and show poor judgment, but their intent is not generally evil. A great deal of the suffering of people in general is from just such causes: misguided motives or lack of judgment. That is a critical aspect I want to take from everyday life and put into the story. Everyone makes mistakes. That is the human situation. We sometimes act out of ignorance or even selfishness, and sometimes even when we try to do the right thing, we have unintended consequences that we regret. What is the mark of our characters, as well as the characters in any story, is what we do with those results.

Those previous comments notwithstanding, there are a few scenes that were hard to write. Honestly, there were times when I wrote passages that writing the scene made me cry. At those times, I sometimes had to leave the manuscript for a time, to allow myself a bit of healing, for lack of a better term. Why did I write them? Because the story demanded them. The conflict that I had developed, I felt, resulted in sometimes bad things happening for the writing to be true.

These are the ways I deal with difficult scenes. I do think it is sometimes harder to write such passages when the story is character driven, but if the writing will portray the action faithfully, these scenes are needed.

Thanks so much for joining us today, Lawrence!

About the Book:

What should a woman do if she believes she is the mother of the second coming of Christ? This is the problem Lara Joyner faces when she comes to believe, through her visions, through the look on his face, through her cards, and through the thousands of hidden signs she sees in nature, that her son is Christ incarnate.

Incarnate is driven by this woman’s character and readers struggle between wanting to sympathize and knowing she is deeply troubled. In the end, we discover how her delusion turns many worlds upside down, as well as how faith overpowers reason. The story follows Lara and her two sons as she pushes Dale to perform miracles and save humanity. Although obviously unable to do so, he goes through the motions to protect his little brother Louis. Told alternately from Lara’s perspective (in the present tense) and from the other principles in the story, the plot follows the trials brought on by Lara’s spiraling madness, her husband’s desperate search for his family, and the children’s bewilderment and fear.

Buy Link:
Amazon

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Tour Participants:

May 6 - Read 2 Review - Interview

May 7 - I Read a Book Once - Contest/Giveaway

May 8 - Books, Owls & Tea - Interview

May 9 - The FlipSide of Julianne - Guest Post

May 10 - Makayla’s Book Reviews - Guest Post

May 12 - Crossroads Reviews - Review

May 13 - Laurie’s Thoughts and Reviews - Excerpt and Tens List

May 15 - The Dan O’Brien Project - Excerpt/Promo

May 17 - A Book Vacation - Promo/Spotlight

May 21 - StoreyBook Reviews - Promo/Spotlight/Excerpt

May 22 - Armand Rosamilla, Horror Author - Guest Post

May 23 - Bookishly Me - Review

May 26 - Breath of Life - Review

May 27 - Lost Inside the Covers - Review

May 31 - Darlene’s Book Nook - Guest Post

June 1 – Spellbindings -Review

June 2 - Babs Book Bistro - Podcast Interview

June 4 - Ali’s Bookshelf - Character Post

June 5 - Mom Cat’s Book Blog - Guest Post