Book Club discusses "Stranger Room"

[This post was started in May but got delayed.] In May, the book club had a great surprise for its book discussion session as it was joined by writer Frederick Ramsay, the author of Stranger Room our book selection for the month. And the meeting was quite different for us as Ramsay joined by conference call from his home in Arizona. This is the first time we've hosted a guest author by phone.

Thankfully, everything went very well--handling the conference call with our phones, etc.-- and I believe we talked for about 40 minutes or so. Here's an author photography from the his website. Also, Ramsay contacted the group about speaking to us as he happened to google his name and found that we had his book scheduled for May. I was never more surprised then when I actually received that first call from Mr. Ramsay.

Ramsay is the author of the "Ike Schwartz mystery" series and Stranger Room (published last year) is his newest until Choker hit the book stores and library shelves just recently. Schwartz is the sheriff in a fictional rural Virginia mountain community which is his actual hometown. Following a stint in the CIA, Schwartz is back in Picketsville, Va., and works to shape up a badly-managed sheriff's department.

In Stranger Room, the death of a traveler to the town nearly mirrors the unexplained death of another in same building--now a possible historical local attraction--and to solve the crime will take a long trip back almost 150 years before the Civil War.

Also, as I wrote earlier the conservation went on for nearly most our time and here are some of the things our guest author shared:

• he is "retired and writing for fun" with the typical goal of writing a novel within three months by producing a chapter a day


• as Ramsay started his writing career, his wife assisted him by typing his work but not these days as she is a full-time student


• he says he hates research when writing novels and says he'll fake some matters and "make things up"


• "it is hard to edit your own stuff" and you have to recognize the book's story needs to move along


• as books make a profit, the book publishers will ask for more books


• on the disappointing side, "people aren't buying books, especially young people" (for instance, at book signings the attendees appear to be 45-years-old and older)


• when writing, "the hardest challenge is to make each book better and to not repeat" a story


• while writing this series, Ramsay says he develops the characters one book at a time and doesn't plan ahead where the characters should "wind up"


• when asked about having input on book covers, he said it depends but his suggestions were used for what to show for Stranger Room cover.

Ramsay definitely won us over after we finished our discussion with his healthy dose of wit, clear-thinking judgment and good prose. Again, (as I said that night) thanks for calling and your time, Frederick Ramsay.