Good morning! Please welcome author Christopher Calcara to Full Moon Dreaming. He is here to tell us about his new release, Squealer. Christopher will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN GC to one randomly drawn commenter via Rafflecopter during the tour. The more you comment, the better your chances of winning. To find the other stops on his tour, go here. Don't forget to look for the Rafflecopter at the end of this post!
Squealer
by Christopher Calcara
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GENRE: Crime Thriller/LGBT
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BLURB:
With
tongue-in-cheek and dark overtones, Squealer examines the life of an
impressionable Midwestern Catholic Italian choirboy who grows into a mob-worthy
assassin in order to avenge high school nemeses from his past.
As ‘Pete Casanova’ takes us on a journey through the heart-land, his early
ethnic and religious experiences expose the motivations for his deadly actions.
We come to realize why, for him, it’s never too late to seek revenge.
Squealer addresses topics of physical, mental, emotional, and sexual abuse
inflicted on students by their teachers and religious authorities. It deals
with the difficult subjects of homophobia, prejudice and bullying, but with wit
… and suspense!
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EXCERPT:
Word had it that the mob boss controlled every rotten
illegal operation between our quiet hamlet on the Missouri River and rough and
ready Chicago to the east. Unlawful pursuits included prostitution, gambling
(before it was legalized on riverboats), drugs, and booze (legal but
susceptible to monopoly). No telling how many enemies he offed, or had offed.
I heard “the family” stuck their black hands in all the
local gay bars, typical of controlling interests at the time. If you didn’t
play hardball with them, you didn’t play at all. An adversary was typically
dispatched in one of two ways: either their livelihood was lost to a mystifying
incendiary fire or, if particularly scorned, they could be found dead, hogtied
like a sausage in the trunk of their car, which was dumped at the airport.
On our journey across the river to Civella’s, Georgio would
tell me how honorable a human being this mobster was, how generous a friend to
his family the man had been. Having set up Georgio’s father in business, they
were eternally and intractably indebted.
I was told of a secret tunnel in Civella’s basement that led
across the street to the house of his brother, Carl “Cork” Civella. Georgio
said that whenever the fuzz or the Feds visited Nick’s home, he’d have his
punks run contraband through the underground to the safer surroundings at
Cork’s. I suspected the reverse was pulled off if they hit up Cork. (Years
later, I learned this hidden labyrinth never existed. With the law firmly in
Nick’s pocket, there was no need for it. The fabled tunnel under my
grandfather’s store probably never existed either, although I don’t doubt there
was an excavator in our family.)
For all the buzz, I was afraid of the old man before I ever
laid eyes on him. I pictured a menacing Marlon Brando type entangled in the
tomato vines, brokering international power deals and assassinating those who
crossed him with silencers in restaurant bathrooms.
We were let into the fortress by a tough disagreeable
understudy who was plainly more than a butler or manservant. He had the bulk of
a bodyguard, and I’m sure he was padded with impenetrable long underwear.
Everything about this man said he was prepared to take a slug for somebody.
Even his eyes seemed to say, ‘Do not fuck with me!’
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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
After earning a degree in Journalism from the University of
Missouri School of Journalism, Calcara created marketing campaigns for
businesses and institutions featured in print and broadcast media.
He writes fiction and semi-fiction, short stories, memoirs,
plays, novels, and screenplays. He has collaborated with composers to write
plays with musical scores. Joan is one such musical play that lyrically exposes
the soul of Jeanne d’Arc—Joan of Arc.
Calcara was the only Charleston writer to win the 2011 South
Carolina Arts Commission Fiction Project. His short stories have been published
by numerous literary journals. He has lived in the South, Southwest and
Southeast, and currently writes from the Midwest.
YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNAGN_S_-Vr2s0JIn5nlYWw
Website
https://chrisjcalcara.wixsite.com/website
Goodreads
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21162911.Christopher_Calcara
Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/christopher.caruso.14
Twitter:
https://twitter.com/CJCalcara
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The Questions – please choose at least 5
1) You’re marooned on a small island with one person and one item of your
choice—who is that person and what item do you have?
2) Which musical would you say best exemplifies your life – and which character
in that musical are you?
3) Take these three words and give me a 100 word or less scene
using them: hammer, saucer, traffic lights.
Distracted
by the unsettling breakfast conversation, she’d taken both the delicate tea cup
and its matching saucer along with her when she left home for the office.
Stopping abruptly at the yellow signal of the corner traffic lights, the cup tumbled
from the dashboard to the floor and crash-landed on the cold steel head of Tom’s
hammer peeping from beneath the passenger seat. The piercing sound of the shattering
china and the sheer incongruity of the two items sent a shivering chill up her
spine, as if both might somehow figure ominously in her day.
4)
What is your idea of how to spend romantic time with your significant other?
5) When you start a new story, do you begin with a character, or a
plot?
When
I have some idea of plot in mind, that’s how the story (like SQUEALER) begins. But
when a person or character appeals to me (as in the story mentioned in Answer
#9), it’s usually their particular experience that stands out, so I write the
story around the character. Simple answer: Both.
6)
If they were to make the story of your life into a movie, who should play you?
7) Who’s your favorite horror villain and why?
James
Whale’s 1931 Frankenstein, because he was misunderstood. He had the capacity to
be a gentle man. Remember the scene where he attempts to play with the little
girl or when he stumbles upon the hermit in whom he finds a “FRIEND”? If he hadn’t been miswired by a loopy scientist,
things might have turned out very differently for the monster.
8) Do you have an historical crush and if so, who is it?
Thomas
Jefferson. Lawyer, statesman, diplomatic minister, governor, congressman, secretary
of state, vice president, president, architect, author, philosopher, agronomist.
Visit his home in Charlottesville, VA. You’ll learn that he is also credited
with a number of inventions, including the Polygraph for copying his writings.
9) Is there a story that you’d like to tell but you think the world
isn’t ready to receive it?
I’ve
written a short story about a poor, under-educated, backwoods, put-upon mother
who suffocates her latest infant with a Winnie the Pooh pillow that says, “Some
people care too much; I think it’s called love.” Empathy for the woman is roused
as her personally justifiable motivations are revealed. I’ve submitted it to a
few journals who offer the same canned rejection: We enjoyed reading your
story; however, it doesn’t fit our current needs.” Or something ridiculous to
that effect.
Thank you for hosting today.
ReplyDeleteChristopher Calcara: Thank you for hosting me.
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