today’s guest is William Doonan, a tenured professor of anthropology and archaeology and a writer of a number of excellent mysteries.William has spent the last fourteen years helping students explore the structures and functions of past and contemporary cultures. As an active field archaeologist, he spent summers on Peru’s north coast excavating pyramids, mummies, and strange little mud walls. I’ll give you some links to his work below, but first, let’s hear about …

Musicals & Cannibals

 Reading The New York Times today, I came across an ad for the new Broadway musical version of The Bridges of Madison County.  Did we need this?  Apparently we did.

 I’d already been thinking a lot about Robert James Waller’s 1992 book.  I read it when it came out and I read it again last year.  It’s a masterpiece.  I mean it.  I don’t mean I especially liked it.  It was fine, right?  But you have to be impressed.  Weighing in at a mere 38,000 words, it’s basically a novella, and yet it has been selling well for nearly two decades, with more than fifty million copies in print.  It is also a major motion picture and now a Broadway production.  Soon the action figures will be collectables.  

 I don’t entirely understand the frenzy over this story.  And that’s why I’m not a multi-millionaire, multi-million copy author, like Waller.  But I’d sure like to understand it.  No doubt it would make me a better writer.  So I set myself a simple task.  I would start with Waller’s setting – Madison County.  I would pay homage to his central plot points – love found, love lost.  I would maintain his two central characters – middle-aged drifter, and middle-aged farm wife.  Then, because I’m a writer too, I drew on my own insights to imagine what Waller left out.  What elements could have made this a better story?  It came to me in a flash: cannibals.  Also, I don’t have all the time in the world, so I figured I would tackle the project as a short story.  

 I slaved for many days, but I’m pleased with the result.  The Cannibals of Madison County is a taught, suspense-laden short story that retains all the poetic nuances of Waller’s work, but also brings in cannibals, which actually really helped tighten up some plot holes.

 So I hope you’ll give my story a read.  At 4400 words, it’s an eighteen-page page-turner.  And because there’s really no market left out there in this cruel literary world for short stories, I decided to hoist it up on Kindle as a Kindle short.  It can be yours free today and tomorrow if you click HERE.  And if you do get a chance to read it, please take a moment to leave a short review.  I’m hoping Robert James Waller is reading this blog, because I think he’d really like it.

 For more information on Doonan and his work, please visit www.williamdoonan.com

Some of William’s novels feature an eighty year-old detective for the Association of Cruising Vessel Operators.  And then he has his suspense novels following archaeologists who go to Peru to investigate the Santiago de Paz pyramids. Good stuff.  Check it out.