UPDATE! Radio Interview Extravaganza Date Added!
Posted by admin | Filed under Blog, Book One, Book Three, Book Two, Dana McCarter, News, Sharon Kaye, The Aristotle Quest Trilogy, books, tour
Sharon Kaye is touring the airwaves to discuss the Aristotle Quest Trilogy and her hit novel, Black Market Truth, and her tour has just been extended to include one more show!
If you missed the first leg of the radio tour, don’t worry! You can still catch Sharon Kaye this Thursday at 9:30p.m. EST, or check back here for links to the podcasts of her interviews as they become available.
Date: 09 July - Thursday
Time: 9:30 pm EST
Station: Cotolo Chronicles
Area: Grantville, PA
Tags: aristotle, black market truth, interview, mystery, philosophy, Quest, Radio, sharon kaye, suspense, thriller, trilogy
UPDATE! Radio Interview Extravaganza Dates Added!
Posted by admin | Filed under Black Market Truth, Blog, Book One, Book Three, Book Two, Dana McCarter, News, Second Life, Sharon Kaye, The Aristotle Quest Trilogy, books, tour
Sharon Kaye is touring the airwaves to discuss the Aristotle Quest Trilogy and her hit novel, Black Market Truth, and her tour has just been extended to include four more shows!
If you missed the first leg of the radio tour, don’t worry! You can still catch Sharon Kaye on the following dates and times, or check back here for links to the podcasts of her interviews as they become available.
- Date: 9 June - Tuesday
- Time: 11:30 am EST
- Station: KCMN - The Morning Show 1530 AM
- Area: Colorado Springs, CO
- Date: 18 June - Thursday - DATE CHANGED!!!
- Time: 9:00 pm EST
- Station: Cotolo Chronicles
- Area: Grantville, PA
- Date: 14 June - Sunday
- Time: 11:00 am EST
- Station: The EZ Help, You + More Show
- Area: Online Live
- Date: 14 June - Sunday
- Time: 9:10 pm EST
- Station: WBTM - The Behind The Mike Show
- Area: Delaware - Broadcasts Nationwide
- Date: 18 June - Thursday
- Time: 9:00 pm EST
- Date: 18 June - Thursday
- Time: 9:00 pm EST
- Station: Cotolo Chronicles
- Area: Grantville, PA
- Date: 8 July - Wednesday
- Time: 12:00 pm EST
- Station: Good News Broadcasting
- Area: New York City - Broadcasts Internationally
Tags: aristotle, Black Market, interview, mystery, philosophy, Radio, Romance, second life, sharon kaye, Suspence, thriller, Vatican
Interview with Black Market Truth Author, Sharon Kaye
Posted by admin | Filed under Black Market Truth, Blog, Dana McCarter, News, Sharon Kaye, The Aristotle Quest Trilogy
Sharon Kaye is a Professor of Philosophy at John Carroll University and a successful academic writer. She is currently making the transition into the world of fiction with her new novel, Black Market Truth, the first volume in a planned trilogy, The Aristotle Quest, published by ParmenidesFiction™
Q: You’ve had great success with your academic writing, with your Philosophy for Teens series and LOST and Philosophy. What inspired you to move from scholarly writing into fiction?
Ever since I was a kid my grand plan was to write fiction. The thing is, for good fiction, you have to have something to write about. You can’t just start making something up out of nothing. I learned this very young.
Growing up, my best friend was a little boy who lived down the block. His mom was a librarian—I suppose that’s where we got the idea of becoming writers. We used to run around the neighborhood with little notebooks trying to think of something to write. Our first story was called “The Mystery of the White Car.” The guy across the street drove a white car. We noticed it coming and going. We soon learned, however, that it wasn’t very mysterious at all, and we didn’t get very far with the story.
I studied the history of philosophy because I wanted something genuinely interesting and important to write about. The scholarly phase of my career was really just a set up. I’ve always been looking for a juicy mystery.
Q: Was it a difficult process? How would you describe the difference between writing fiction and writing for an academic audience?
All good writing tells the truth in some way. Academic writing tells the truth about the real world while fiction tells the truth about a fantasy world. To write about either of these worlds you have to find a voice there.
After “The Mystery of the White Car” I went solo with my first book: How to be a Frog -by Frog. Was this academic writing or fiction? From Sharon’s point of view it was fiction. From Frog’s point of view, however, it was pure fact. And Frog was a character within me—a voice I developed in a fantasy world.
Writing the Dana McCarter Trilogy is the same. Dana is a character within me. So it’s really just a matter of speaking the truth from her point of view—from within the fantasy world she inhabits.
The hard part is developing a fantasy world other people find interesting and important. I tried writing novels twice before and failed each time because the fantasy was too idiosyncratic. It was Eliza Tutellier at Parmenides who finally pushed me in the right direction—to create a world other people care about.
Q: You write about and teach ancient philosophy in a society that has its eyes increasingly focused on the future, ever in search of the next big thing. Is it a challenge to find relevance for your contemporary audience?
I actually think philosophy is the next big thing. The reason is that religion is dead. Or rather, it soon will be—it’s hanging on by the skin of its teeth. The vast majority of people still say they’re religious, but it’s a shell of what it used to be. That shell is getting thinner and thinner. The more we learn about the world the less room there is for superstition and ritual. Human beings will always want to think about the big questions. Religion used to be the way to do that. As religion wanes it gives way to science and philosophy.
Q: How do the challenges of writing relate-able philosophical fiction in a culture that places so much value on novelty and instant gratification differ from the challenge of teaching ancient philosophy to modern undergraduates who at times seem to place more value on marathon keggers and watching reruns of Jackass than on grappling with the complexities of ancient Greek philosophy? How do you keep the interest of your students, and have those methods helped you in being a more effective novelist?
When I was a new teacher, fresh out of graduate school, someone gave me the following piece of advice: teach to please yourself. This is the best advice I have ever received about anything and I have done my best to follow it.
As a teacher, there is no point in trying to please the students, or your colleagues, or the dean, or anyone else. First, they don’t know what they really want. Second, if you ask them what they want, they’ll all tell you different things. Third, in trying to do these things, you’ll make yourself miserable.
If you teach to please yourself, on the other hand, there will always be at least one person in the room who is having a good time and learning something. And the amazing thing is, it’s almost always contagious. Teachers who please themselves invariably end up pleasing those around them.
I think novel writing is exactly the same. I write to please myself. And I do please myself—ask my husband how hard it is to pry me away from my computer. If it weren’t for him, and my daughter, and my job, I’d write all day every day. It makes me really, really happy when other people dig what I write. But I don’t do it for them. I do it for me.
Q: Dana McCarter is quite a remarkable heroine—brilliant, brave, sometimes brazen—what was your inspiration for her unique character?
Daniel Pinkwater published a young adult novel in 1982 called The Snarkout boys and the Avocado of Death. My best friend’s librarian mother gave me a copy when it came out. In it, there’s a teenage girl called “Ms. Bentley Saunders Harrison Matthews, a.k.a. Rat.” She’s a wealthy, eccentric, only child, who goes snarking out with the boys and gets into all manner of trouble. Though I didn’t realize it when I was writing Black Market Truth, I think Dana may be Rat all grown up.
Q: She, like you, is a philosophy professor and a lover of Aristotle…are we to assume that she is to some degree based on you?
Well, she is me, in the Aristotle Quest world. But what does that mean? I think it means that she does what I would do if I were her. If I lived in a world where Aristotle’s lost dialogues actually survived and I had the money and the opportunity to buy them on the black market, I would.
Q: The life and writings of Aristotle play a key role in this novel, yet so little is definitively known about this enigma of a man. What made you choose Aristotle?
I wrote my PhD thesis on William of Ockham, a fourteenth-century monk who was condemned by the Pope and exiled due to his nominalist philosophy. I chose to study Ockham because I thought, and still think, that nominalism, the view that everything in the world is an absolute individual, is true. Ockham claimed to have derived his entire philosophy from Aristotle. Perhaps he was just saying this to gain some leverage against the Pope. But there is an undeniable nominalist vein in the lecture notes attributed to Aristotle. So, when I found out Aristotle’s dialogues had been lost, I couldn’t resist the idea that he too had been condemned for nominalism.
Q: Was it daunting to write in the voice of Aristotle?
The Aristotle character is based on one of my old professors, who shall remain unnamed. Whenever I write in Aristotle’s voice I just think of what this old professor of mine would have said. This professor was a natural born genius just like Aristotle. So the daunting part was interacting with him in person. Writing about it now is nothing in comparison.
Q: What was your inspiration for the text in the lost dialogues?
I have no idea where those came from. I just wanted to convey what nominalism is and how it is connected with atheism. Once the dream characters were established, the dialogues just fell into place.
Q: As a professor, you are habitually concerned with retaining authenticity without becoming so obscure you risk losing the interest of your audience—how do you balance accuracy and entertainment?
I’ve always had a very low tolerance for boredom. This was the bane of my existence in graduate school where I had to force myself to wade through endless scholarship. A lot of graduate students develop such a high tolerance for boredom that they come out permanently boring! But I somehow escaped with my low tolerance intact. It buoys me out of the deep waters. I just won’t write about stuff that bores me anymore.
Q: In Black Market Truth you tackle some pretty controversial topics—illegal document trafficking, blatantly unapologetic home wrecking, and, oh yeah, dismantling the foundations of Christianity as we know it—were you at all concerned about how readers would react when you chose to write about religion?
I work at a Jesuit university. You might think I’d be nervous about how the Jesuits would react. But actually, they’re a bunch of rebels themselves. They knew I wasn’t Catholic when they hired me. They value intellectual conflict and aren’t afraid of challengers. They believe, as do I, that the truth will win out in the end. We just have different ideas about what that truth is. I made the lead antagonist in my novel a Jesuit out of great respect and admiration.
I was more worried about how my family would react. They’re all religious, but they were good sports about it.
Q: Do you have any interesting writing quirks? Odd habits, superstitions, or rituals you indulge in while creating?
Superstitions and rituals are too religious for me. The only odd thing about my writing these days is that I’m no longer alone. I sit in a really cheap computer chair that lets me slouch way back so that my daughter Audrey can snooze on my lap all day while I write. She was born at the end of August. She’s the bomb!
Q: Finally, if readers take away only one message from Black Market Truth, what would you want that message to be?
Seek the truth!
Tags: answers, aristotle, aristotle quest, author, author interview, black market truth, book news, books, fiction, interview, mystery, novel, philosophical fiction, philosophy, questions, sharon kaye, thriller, truth
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