CelticLady’s Interview with Larry and Rosemary Mild (5/14/24)
Please welcome my guests, Larry and Rosemary Mild to CelticLady’s Reviews! Their latest novel is a spy thriller, Kent and Katcha.
Kathleen: Please tell us something about Kent and Katcha that is not in the summary. (About the book, character you particularly enjoyed writing etc.)
Larry: Pavel Ilyan is a deranged soul imprisoned in Camp Obuchat with Kent Brukner. He’s a minor character introduced to produce drama in Kent’s miserable life. He keeps turning up in the plot like a bad penny just when things seem to be looking up for our hero. Pavel lives in the moment with no fear of death. He’s easily riled to kill and just as easily pacified with a crust of stale bread.
Rosemary: Katcha’s mother, Mavis, confesses that she had no idea what she was getting into by marrying Papa. She was only nineteen, a highly intelligent English girl, who fell for his charm, sincerity, and virility at a business conference. She loves him. But life in the Russian boondocks, waitressing in her small café, is not what she wants for her daughter. Especially now. Beloved Papa spoke his mind at a meeting and was promptly thrown in prison.
Kathleen: How do you come up with the names of your characters? Do you name them after real people?
Larry: Although I have modeled a few of our characters with the traits of actual relatives, I have never named our characters after real people. For much of our work, I’ve relied on our Honolulu Star-Advertiser’s obituary pages for names. Never the identical name, but a first name from Column A and a second name from Column B. giving me a choice of at least five ethnicities to work with.
Supplying names for Kent and Katcha presented a whole new problem. With a cast of characters approaching fifty names, I had to turn to the Internet for lists of ethnic Russian first and second names. Then it was a case of selecting from Column First Name and Column Second Name. I tried to pick widely throughout the Anglo alphabet. How the two sounded together usually sealed the selection. Of course, I avoided the Cyrillic spellings of these names.
Rosemary: Many of Larry’s name selections had similar endings, which were confusing—too many started or ended with the same letters. I made a number of changes in several last names. When Larry got the manuscript back from me, he had to reorient himself. In Hawaiian pigeon, he’d ask me, “Who dat?”
Kathleen: What is your favorite scene in the book? Why?
Larry: The balancing of the double scene within the Russian Federation Army Building involved a lot of detail work. Separated by a hallway, the espionage in the general’s office had to coordinated with the alertness of the two men working late in the attaché’s office. What will happen next? I love to build suspense.
Rosemary: My favorite scene? When Kent and Katcha emerge from the bus station and jump into a taxi, they discover they’re being tailed by a black Mercedes. I love the flamboyant, reckless way Kent deals with it.
Kathleen: Describe the room you are sitting in as though it was a scene in one of your books.
Larry: As I sit behind my primary computer monitor (we each have two), I can see the upper reaches of two six-foot bookcases sprawling right and left. They contain about 300 books, both fiction and nonfiction, including advice on writing such as Telling Lies for Fun and Profit by Lawrence Block. Hanging on the inside of the door are two red sashes and a scroll of Desiderata. The two sashes contain foreign city pins that I collected from our worldly travels. Behind me are three tall file cabinets, and above them, long, crammed-full shelves. Rosemary sits in the opposite corner of the room, hidden by my second monitor. From my desk of well-worn oak, I can look out the floor-to-ceiling windows and see the Pacific Ocean from fifteen stories up.
Rosemary: Spread out on top of our two bookcases are our pride and joy: eight traditional Japanese Daruma dolls. They’re just heads, no arms or legs, modeled after Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism. The dolls are paper maché, red with white faces, black eyebrows and mustaches, but no eyes! You buy one hoping for good luck when you are about to launch a particular quest. The tradition is to take the doll home and color in the left eye (with a black marker). After completing your quest successfully, you color in the other eye. Larry and I discovered the Darumas at a Japanese department store here in Honolulu and we were inspired. We bought one each time we started a new book, and colored in the second eye after each one was published. But with twenty books under our belts, we had to stop at eight—no more room in our squashed second-bedroom office.
Kathleen: What writers have you drawn inspiration from?
Larry: My favorite? Ken Follet and his historical novels about Kingsbridge, England, in centuries past gave me both pleasure and learning. Robert Ruark in Something of Value, Uhuru, and Poor No More gave me insight into African culture and the churning upheaval of the times. James Clavell gave me an Asian point of view in Shogun’s feudal Japan and Noble House’s look into the Hong Kong banking industry. My all-time number two spot goes to Leon Uris with Mila 18, (the only book that made me cry), Hajj, Trinity and QBVII.
For fun I read thrillers (Brad Meltzer, David Baldacci, Clive Cussler, and Wilbur Smith) and mysteries (P.D. James, Elizabeth Peters, and Elizabeth George).
Rosemary: I love the novels of Tom Wolfe--deeply satiric, cutting to the heart of human foibles, but driven by suspenseful plots. Fully drawn portraits: the master-of-the-universe bond trader who takes a wrong turn in Harlem (Bonfire of the Vanities); and the puffed-up southern real estate tycoon brought to his knees by his bankers (A Man in Full). In the Life of Pi by Yann Martel, I’m sitting in the boat with the animals, sun-scorched, starving, and a true believer despite myself. In A Dog About Town by J.F. Englert, the dog thinks and reads (Dante’s Inferno) and helps his owner solve crimes by pushing alphabet-cereal letters with his nose to form clues on the kitchen table. Strangers on a Train by Patricia Highsmith is my favorite suspense novel of all time.
Kathleen: What is your usual writing routine?
Larry: In the past, it’s been four to five hours per day, six days per week. But as I get older, it’s been more like three to four hours per day, five days per week. At ninety-one, I need more pure reading time and, of course, my afternoon nap.
Rosemary: Larry has a waaaaay longer attention span than I do. He has a high concentration ability no matter what he does, whether it's writing or fixing a broken lamp or getting the jammed paper out of my printer. Me? I’ve been going to Jazzercise for forty-six years (since COVID on Zoom). It keeps me strong and lively in between juggling our doctor appointments and a bit of caregiving, so I’m lucky if I get three hours of writing in per day.
Kathleen: What are you currently working on?
Larry: I’m currently writing a sequel to Kent and Katcha with a working title of Kauai Spy. It’s about a foreign spy (mole) on the Hawaiian Island of Kauai. The target is the Barking Sands Military Facility. Kent is now a practicing lawyer in Honolulu and his wife, Katcha, is in culinary school. I’m six chapters in, waiting for the characters to lead me into trouble and rescue.
Rosemary: I’m working on the fourth Paco and Molly Murder Mystery, The Moaning Lisa. As usual, Larry, being the more inventive of us, wrote the first two drafts, and passed it on to me. I inject flesh-and-blood into the characters, sharpen dialogue, and add scenes. I especially enjoy writing dialogue with crackling conflict. Katcha is feisty, big time! And that works for me. I came out of the womb arguing.
Praise for Larry and Rosemary Mild