Novelist Michael Kenneth Smith is chatting with me about his new historical fiction, Fantaisie.
Bio:
Mechanical engineer and after selling my start-up automotive OEM parts business, took up the pen. Writing has become a passion as Fantaisie is my seventh book. These novels are set in historical timelines and march to the cadence of the period.
What inspired you to write this book?
Fantaisie is a standalone sequel to All Is Fair, my last novel at the end of which left the question of the relationship between the two main characters.
Excerpt from Fantaisie:
Dawn broke over the City of Light, the first tentative rays of sunshine painting the sky in hues of pink and gold. The streets lay empty, save for a few early risers. All was quiet except the distant rumble of the first Metro trains and the occasional clatter of a baker’s cart. But at Le Bourget Airport, the day was already in full swing.
Jan Orlinski stood on the tarmac, his eyes fixed on the hulking shape of the C-47 Skytrain. The aircraft, a remnant of the recent war, sat silent and imposing, its dull green paint reflecting the early morning light. To Jan, it called to mind a slumbering bear waiting to be awakened from hibernation.
He took a deep breath, the cool morning air filling his lungs with the scent of aviation fuel and damp concrete. This was it, the moment he had been simultaneously dreading and anticipating. Today, he would take to the skies again, not in the sleek, agile fighter planes he was used to, but in this lumbering transport aircraft.
Jan pulled a crumpled photograph from his pocket. Sophie’s smiling face looked back at him, her eyes full of hope and love. After almost four years as a POW, he was eager to turn the page on their past troubles, eager for them to build a life with little Maria, the daughter he’d only recently met. But, first, he had to find a way to survive in this new, postwar world.
What exciting project are you working on next?
Another WW2 novel about a young German woman who is on the spectrum: a borderline savant. Her skills with memory and pattern recognition gain her employment with the intelligence section of the German Abwehr. She thrives in the world of codes, numbers and data. She experiences an attraction to a co-worker and at the same time becomes disillusioned with the direction of Hitler. She experiences dark anti-semitism and deception as she tries to navigate a world in turmoil.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
My publicist always got mad at me for not thinking I was an author, so this question is difficult to answer. When I was in college, engineering students were not required to take electives, however, as my then lady friend signed up for a creative writing class, I decided to join her. The first assignment was to write a short story and a week later the professor read my story to the class. That class was one of the few A’s I received in four years and that short story became the last chapter of my first novel many years later. Maybe I should have considered myself as a writer then.
Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
As the editor of a small paper and frequent contributor to others, I write a fair amount. Writing to my time to create characters and scenes and blend them into stories. I love to crawl into an imaginary world and let things happen as I type.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
Interesting question. I work without any writing community for discussing ideas, methods, etc., so I’m a loner and I am always afraid to seek approval of my work. Maybe that is not quirk, but I do like to read my own stuff and then wonder where did that come from.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
We lived on a farm and I suffer from hay fever, so I knew I wasn’t going to follow my father’s footsteps. I also knew that I didn’t like to take orders (who does?), so I wanted to be my own boss and when that happened, I found work to be very enjoyable.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
When somebody reads one of my books, I hope that they not only enjoy it, but they learn somethings they did not previously know.