Eve Paludan: Reid Lance Rosenthal, author of Threads West, welcome to Jodie Renner’s blog! I’m here as a guest on Jodie’s blog today and I’m so excited to have you join me for this interview. I’m really excited about learning inside information about the creation of your Threads West series and about your life as a fourth-generation land and cattle owner.
Reid Rosenthal: Howdy! I’ll be glad to fill you in on who I am and what I do. And since this is a writing and editing blog, I’ll focus on aspects of the creative writing process, so long as everyone understands that this is all the view of a neophyte. I am under no illusions! I’m still at the point when folks say, “Reid who???”
Eve Paludan: Thanks! It’s great to learn new things about you. I tumbled on your pages on Facebook quite by chance. Your breathtaking photos of rainbows caught my attention. From there, I bought and read your short story on my Amazon Kindle, and then-intrigued-I decided to buy and read your Threads West ebook. And then, I loved it so much that I reviewed it!
Reid Rosenthal: That was a wonderful review, and I was surprised that you reviewed Threads West.
Eve Paludan: As a two-time #1 national best selling author (Writer’s Digest Book Club), a publisher, and an editor, I sometimes give national reviews, but I don’t warn the author! I was so swept away by Threads West. It’s one of those rare reviews I couldn’t wait to write.
Reid Rosenthal: Thank you very much, Eve. I’m truly tickled you enjoyed reading it.
Eve Paludan: I sure did. However, it was your photography that first caught my attention. You’ve captured some of the most beautiful scenes I’ve ever seen of the American West, from land to skies and rustic buildings to horses but especially those rainbows; they were just magical. I wondered, how does your professional outdoor photography influence your fiction writing?
Reid Rosenthal: A perceptive query, Eve. In fact, they’re inextricably intertwined. I’m a landscape photographer. I’ve always been enamored and enthralled with the moods of land and environment, and the palpable energy of the Earth. It is, in my opinion, the root and source of all things, including the lives and struggles of the people who fleetingly line dance upon its stage until tapped on the shoulder by successive generations.
Eve Paludan: You do have such a way with words. So, the rainbows inspire you?
Reid Rosenthal: When a moment speaks to me…that peculiar angle of the sun, bursting sky prisms following a rain, shadows creeping with the angle of the waning sun, I must say I’m compelled to capture the image in every way possible. Many times, due simply to the wild and remote places where I spend many of my waking hours-the sheer right-time, right-place luck- I’ve been fortunate to record the power of scenes so vivid as to be mesmerizing. The thrill of knowing that I have recorded a split second that is never, ever, to be repeated as to the angle, time, season, event, or light, makes it all doubly exciting and satisfying. It is these scenes captured on photo frames, and those never-to-be repeated moments like them that underpin the descriptive portion of my writing. When I write to a mood, to a setting-a snapshot of the earth-it’s all there in a picture, somewhere deep in my soul. The pen becomes merely the shutter, and the paper the film.
Eve Paludan: That is truly inspiring. From the very first page of Threads West, I was completely hooked. Most writers have “first-page panic” trying to decide where to start a novel. From all of the places to start your story, how did you choose this sexy opening love scene to grab your reader’s attention?
Reid Rosenthal: Ahhhh! Romance is a wonderful thing…primal like the land, and universal in its appeal and life experience. What better way to start a great story? If the truth be known, one of the few things I did struggle with in writing this first book of the six-novel Threads West, An American Saga series is which chapter to begin the story.
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