Reviews
Russell Blake has a masterpiece here. The book overflows with fear,
mystery, murder- all eloquently put. It is most definitely a
page-turner. Most importantly, it will make you stop and think. Mr.
Blake claims the book is fiction. However, he readily admits that,
“It is almost impossible to verify with complete certainty what is fiction
when examining the world of covert operations and intelligence agencies.”
An extremely conceivable conspiracy drives this story at a fast pace.
A mysterious manuscript contains dangerous information. The ugly truth
can change history and the world, as we know it today. Our unlucky hero
finds himself in the possession of this manuscript. He is now the target
of a powerful group that will not allow this to become public. Innocent people
die in the quest to retrieve this manuscript. Will our hero make it out
of this alive?
Interview
with Russell Blake
K-You have stated that you believe the best
fiction comes from a blend of fact and fantasy. This book reads more like
fact rather than fantasy. Given your intimate knowledge of these entities
may I ask if you have a military background?
R- I’ve never served in the armed forces.
K-Is there anything in your own life that
inspired you to write the story?
R-Well, there are some things that are similar, but I’d prefer not to go
into detail as to what the similarities are. Let’s just say that there’s a
little of me in all my protagonists.
K-As a writer, I admire other authors that are
able to “open a new world for me”. You have a very descriptive style that
allows the reader to feel and see the story. Is this something that just
flows from you?
R-Yes. I’ve been told to dumb down my style, and to cut back on the
exposition and narrative, but frankly I think that what you wind up with is
writing that could be anyone’s at that point – sort of a bland, vanilla writing
style I’m utterly uninterested in. If that’s what I needed to do to have people
buy my books, I think I’d give up writing. No offense to the monosyllabic
authors out there who have been successful, but I would like to take more of a
note from Umberto Eco, Chuck P and David Foster Wallace than from James
Patterson. Although I’d love to have his income…
K-You and me both...Where is your favorite place
to write?
R-I’ve written all my books from the same desk, so that’s probably the
place.
K- I was guessing that it was the beach.
I love Mexico. I usually vacation there at
least once a year. What influenced your permanent move to Mexico?
R- I was looking to broaden my horizons, and had grown tired of the pressure
cooker, consumer-driven lifestyle of the States. I wanted something relaxed,
where it was warm, the beer cold, the water blue, and the native friendly.
Mexico naturally beckoned, and I’ve never had a single regret moving here.
K-Getting back to the fact that the book is a
little too real: Is it true that you actually live on the West
Coast of Mexico in a neighborhood surrounded by drug lords?
R-Yes, and no. I mean, it’s not like they are surrounding my town or
anything. But there are always plenty of bad guys in any area, and mine is not
unlike the rest of the country in that respect. Although if you look at the
murder rate, it’s actually lower here than in most similarly sized U.S. cities.
That should tell you a lot. Not to discount the very real danger in some areas
– anything near the border is ugly, as are some cartel towns and some resorts
near Mexico City. But guess what? There are equally ugly areas of the U.S. I
just prefer not to go to them, just as I didn’t go to the American ones when I
was in the U.S.
I think the brush Mexico gets painted with involves a lot of hysteria and
generalizations, some of which are deliberate – the U.S. has a large segment of
the population that’s coming to retirement age, so if it doesn’t want to lose a
whole lot of tax base and retirement funds to warmer, friendlier, cheaper
countries, it has to make them seem as unappealing as possible. Otherwise why would
anyone stay in the U.S., if you could live for half as much at a considerably
higher quality level somewhere else? No, those places are dangerous and scary
and, ugh, different, so best to spend your vacation money in Hawaii or Florida
and keep paying twenty grand a year property tax for the privilege of being in
the U.S. If that sounds cynical, it is. Which comes through loud and clear in
many of my books.
K-Well, I see your point. I would love to
retire in Paradise. You're in a beautiful place.
I’d like to do a little exercise, if it's okay
with you. I’m going to provide a scene from a book and I would like for
you to re-write it in your own style.
R-All right, but I do go on, as you know from my books…
K- Okay, here it is:
Just do
your work, Consuela. Don't imagine things. You got a lot of shit to do
today.
She was a small women and she was fast.
She would finish cleaning this house and then move on to the next. The
more houses she could clean, the more money she could send back home, to her
family. Her children were still in Mexico with her parents. She was hoping to
bring them to America one day.
Think
about the kids and get your shit done.
Then she saw the bloody towel thrown in the
hallway. Her heart was pounding so loud she could hear it. She noticed the
bedroom door was closed.
Mr. Ryan
never left that door closed.
Her legs were shaky as she slowly walked towards
the door and opened it.
"Help me...please."
Then the screaming began.
R-
A soft breeze stirred the jacaranda blossoms outside the open wooden windows
of the old house, the air heavy with humidity, the uneasy remnant of a distant
squall. Inside, the clamor of a bucket knocking against the scarred wooden
banister announced that the cleaning girl had arrived to perform her grudging
chores. Leathery hands gnarled by a lifetime of manual labor were more
expected on an elderly peasant woman than on a twenty-nine year old of
diminutive stature, but Consuela couldn’t turn back time. She’d had to do
what she could to make ends meet, and in a harsh environment, that often meant
backbreaking tasks nobody else wanted to do – strawberry picking for fourteen
hours a day, working in the tomato fields the same hours, or scrubbing floors
and toilets with corrosive chemicals that hardened her skin as much as they’d
tarnished her soul. None of which her placid expression betrayed. Outwardly,
she was inscrutable; invisible to the privileged for whom she worked.
The cleaning gig was better than some she’d had. At least it enabled her to
care for her children in the only way she was able – monthly Western Union
transfers to her parents, who were raising them while she paid their bills from
afar. It wasn’t her first choice, but she’d gotten caught up in the business of
living as barely more than a girl, and soon the adventure of forbidden midnight
rides in musty cars with the dangerous love of her life had been replaced by
the reality of an infant girl, with another on the way, the father long gone to
greener pastures, leaving her with only regret and responsibility.
She hummed under her breath, a tune from home, from the fiestas that made
Saturday nights in her rustic village near Veracruz bearable. On mornings like
this, the dream of a small yellow clapboard house, with a little yard, perfectly
manicured, on the outskirts of this town, in the impossibly prosperous U.S.,
her children playing safely in it, speaking English – the language of
opportunity and of power, and wealth – was the only thing that got her through
the day. Mornings after the big weekends were the worst. The clients always
left a mess, knowing she, or someone like her, would clean up after them.
Mondays were always the same, and she resigned herself to another long
afternoon if she was going to clean two homes before nightfall.
Which she would do, even if it killed her.
Because she needed the money. It was always about the money.
Finished in the foyer, she moved towards the master suite, the heavy
mahogany door with its ornately hand-carved panels a reminder of centuries
past. As she rounded the corner into the hall, she hesitated, momentarily
confused. Even as she registered something on the gleaming hardwood floor, her
nose detected a distinctive metallic smell – the smell of fresh blood. At first
she thought it was one of the cats, injured or killed by the damned dogs.
Consuela hated the dogs, and was always relieved when they were elsewhere; she
didn’t care where. They scared her, reminding her too much of the ugly angry
men in her life.
Dogs were always like
their masters, she thought as she struggled to make out the form in the dim
light.
She peered in the gloom, and abruptly realized it was one of the owner’s
thick white terrycloth towels, soaked in blood, the jaunty teal thread of the
embroidered R of his last name – Ryan;
Senor,
no,
Meester Ryan – standing out
from the crimson stains, which were slowly turning rust-colored.
The silence of the empty house was fractured by an explosion as the metal
bucket hit the floor with a crash, startling her into action, her fingers
having reflexively dropped it. The ammonia in the water made her eyes tear, and
she was about to curse when she heard it…faint at first, and then again, a
little louder.
Scratching. At the door.
Consuela approached the battered pewter lever with a trembling outstretched
hand, anxiety now in full bloom.
Scratch.
A tiny internal voice argued against proceeding any further, told her to turn,
to run, to get away from this cursed place, the money be damned. Meester Ryan
never closed this door, or any door, for that matter. She didn’t know what it
meant that today it was shut, but she was sure that whatever the reason, it
couldn’t be good.
The scratching continued, and her ears strained, catching something else.
Something like an animal, wounded, caught in a trap, like she’d seen once as a
child on a trip to her grandfather’s farm, when a hare had gotten snared and
nearly torn its neck off trying to escape. Consuela had learned a terrible secret
that day. She knew that rabbits could scream. The sound had never left her, and
even now, as the hair on her arms stood up, she was reminded of that ugly
sound, as she had been for months after in now-faded nightmares.
She hesitated, forcing down the fear that was blossoming inside her, and
then swung the door open, mop clenched in her free hand like a puny club.
Her eyes widened even as she heard the gurgled plea from the thing on the
bedroom floor. A thing that had once been…
“Help me…please.”
Outside, a covey of quail soared into the April sky from the field across
the way, startled by the piercing shrieks echoing from the house. Screams that
went on forever, unheard on the rural country road; screams of a horror that
would never fade, and that promised the rabbits would have company in
Consuela’s psyche for the rest of her life.
K- I love it! You are a wonderful
writer. I will keep this close by for inspiration.
R-I try to open as many doors for the imagination as possible when I write,
and am constantly torn between a Hemingway approach of only a few words, and a
DFW approach of pages, enjoying the way words splash on the page for the sheer
joy of the musicality to the cadence. Obviously I give in to the DFW more than
the Hemingway.
K- It’s working for you. Thank you so much
for the interview. I will definitely be reading the rest of your
books. I am hooked : )
Find Russell Blake's books here
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While visiting the islands, once the Play Actor was anchored in a nice spot, it is very common for various vendor boats to stop by to present their goods or services. They offered fresh baked goods, fruit, freshly caught fish and even laundry service.
