To celebrate the release of The Family Mansion, Hirsh Sawhney asks Anthony C. Winkler about his writing process; what he thinks should be required reading for people interested in the Caribbean; and why writing screenplays is so different than writing a novel.
This month, we’ve released three spectacular novels—Every Boy Should Have a Man by Preston L. Allen, The Family Mansion by Anthony C. Winkler, and the second novel in our Open Lens imprint: The Roving Tree, by Elsie Augustave. We’ve excerpted all three books in our free May Digit, available available in mobi (for kindle) and epub formats.
The vaporetto turns the bend.
You’ve seen it in countless paintings by Canaletto, Turner, and others, a thousand and one photographs and movies and TV documentaries, but still the eternal view unfolds like a slow-motion epiphany.
The Grand Canal in all its majesty. Canal Grande . . .
Mita landed in Kingston at three and instructed the cabby to take her to the Courtleigh . . . Knutsford Boulevard . . . New Kingston.
A slip of paper with the addresses and names was getting damp in her bra. She gazed out the window at the glittering sea, trying hard to relax, but it was impossible. The sea hugged the side of the flat smooth road for miles until it cut away from the sea altogether and became narrow and rutted and cars swerved dangerously past the meager little houses leaning shoulder to shoulder. Soon they were in the heart of midtown in slow-moving traffic, the sidewalks overflowing with people, and floors and floors of office windows climbing to the sky . . .
En route to her job at the morgue, Jinx walked on JFK Boulevard to the PATH station at Journal Square. It was hot for June, the evening cloud cover an airless ceiling pressing on the street. A grimy storefront diorama displayed mannequins behind plate glass, girls with bald heads and painted-on lashes, clad in cheap, thin dresses. They stood frail against the hard gray light. Commuters hustled by, indifferent to the girls’ orphaned gazes . . .
Tami didn’t even count her night’s tips before she shoved the wad of coins and damp bills into her purse and went out the back door of Chevy’s Pub just minutes after closing. She gunned the Fiesta past her apartment, past the Sidney city limits, heading straight for the used RV she kept down by the river. She knew she’d find Dale with that slut who had been hanging on him all night . . .
Books & Books, a wonderful independent bookstore in Florida, receives praise in a letter to the editor in the Miami Herald!
Watch Marva Allen talk about Makeda and The Roving Tree on Arise News!