A Consequence of Greed - a conversation with fan Brian D.  Brian:
I received the book and haven't put it down since. I'm
already on page 130! My one issue with the book is that
I can't stop reading it, so it's distracting me slightly
from my homework. Knowing that you base the novels loosely
on your life experiences strangely has me more heavily
invested in the story than usual. Its almost as if I'm
reading a biography, rather than a fictional work. I did
notice the use of colloquial language in the book, and
it definitely adds a rich element to the characters and
their development. I'll let you know when I finish the
book. Keep in touch.Jack: Thanks for getting back. As I wrote it, I was quite influenced by Steinbeck's GRAPES OF WRATH and maintained the colloquial language throughout the book, just like he did. In many contemporary stories they forgo that and just have colloquial language at first, then after a few chapters, go to straight prose. I find that keeping the dialect throughout the novel allows the reader to submerge himself in the cultural differences I describe; it really was like that in Central Texas. Brian: I just finished it! I love how you used Sheila's dreams to develop the plot. Jack: Dreams are a cool way to deliver back story. In GREED, as I call it, I used dreams to deliver the past while maintaining the current story time. They can definitely be over used, so I had to be careful. But, to the extent they are each rich and entertaining in their own right, and well engineered, they're OK. I alluded to Shakespeare on several occasions. The time I'm most pleased with is when Sheila fell asleep with her hands sweating. Then, she dreamt she was in the Corisicana Church wearing a white dress with blood dripping from her hands. She worried the other parishioners would know she was the murderess. That was taken from Shakespeare's Othello. When she was subsequently pummeled with stones outside the church and saw only black, it foreshadowed subtlely the subsequent incident on the lake when hail pummeled her.
Latent Image and The Armstrong Solution - a conversation with fan Frank W.  Frank:
Having read both Latent Image and The Armstrong Solution,
I liked how you, as you say, "told from the point
of view of Kathy rather than Marcus to represent a multidimensional
view of the same storytime". What was your motivation
for this technique and have other authors tried this approach?Jack: When you really get into "point of view, " which I did as I studied at The University of Iowa Summer Festival of Writing, you begin to see the magic of capturing how two different people see the same scene. That is so much like real life you start to see as a writer that putting that into your work can be incredibly rewarding. You can leap miles in skill level with skilled use of a single technique.  In
Latent Image and The Armstrong Solution I saw that tackling
the same subject from two different points of view was
magic. I particularly like the restaurant scene where
Marcus meets Kathy, and Kathy knows she is about to ask
him for a divorce the next day. It was pure magic, writing
that scene from two different perspectives, especially
such different ones! It really helps define the difference
between characters. Many writing classes, including the
one I taught at College of DuPage in Illinois, teach this
as an exercise to students to understand the intricacies
of "point of view." I understand that a number
of authors have employed similar techniques, thought not
as colorfully as I might have. I made the differences
in point of view really show when, after all, they were
about to get a divorce!Frank: Having worked in the corporate food business and lived in Texas and California myself, I have related to both The Armstrong Solution and A Consequence of Greed. I was fascinated with the "addictive ingredient" scenario. Where did you get the idea for that and do you know if it has ever been considered in real corporate life? Jack: I got the idea from a joke. My wife came home from work one day and told me how her coworkers had joked that "maybe to guarantee their (financial) targets, they ought to put some kind of addictive substance in their food product." They were being facetious, of course, but I decided right then and there that that was a good premise for a book . . . and the idea for The Armstrong Solution was conceived. Two years later it was a book. It really shows, however, the level of pressure corporate managers are routinely under to deliver the goods. Frank: The ending in The Armstrong Solution was very gratifying. Do you think Marcus would have done the same thing? Jack: If he was in the right mood, that's exactly what he would have done, but I pondered over that ending for days since it was so powerful, so complete. In the end there was NEVER a doubt that Kathy Armstrong did what she would have done since I got to know her so well as a character. She was basically very angry at the male chauvinist corporate institution.
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