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April 9, 2004

2004 Warren Adler Fiction Award Winner Announced!

The Warren Adler E-Sheet 25

In this issue:

Greetings From Publishing Central
A Book Club Discussion Guide for "The Children of the Roses"
Winners Announced - 2004 Warren Adler Fiction Award
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	Greetings From Publishing Central We are happy to offer you another issue of the Warren Adler E-Sheet, which keeps you up to date on what is happening in the author's world. We hope you enjoy it.

A Book Club Discussion Guide for "The Children of the Roses"

Let me join the discussion.

This is probably not a "first", but I thought it would be interesting to encourage reading group discussions of my just released novel Children of the Roses, now in bookstores and available online everywhere.
I'd love to attend via cyberspace or conference call.

As most of you know, the new book is a sequel to The War of the Roses which became a much-presented movie and dealt with a nasty divorce in which Mr. and Mrs. Rose killed each other off in a spectacular "death by chandelier" scene, visually and chillingly adapted to the screen.


	The Children of the Roses Now in bookstores! Read the first chapter

The Children of the Roses takes place years later. The "children" are now adults. Josh, the male child, now in his thirties is married to Victoria. They have two children Michael 10, and Emily, 8.

The female child, Evie, has not married. She is an authentic gourmand who, despite her girth, has had many lovers, enjoys her life and is a true believer in the politically incorrect and unhealthy idea that "food is love."

Like most human beings, everyone of the characters are conflicted, each in his or her own way, following the dictum expressed in the first line of Tolstoy's great novel "Anna Karenina."

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

In today's jargon such families are labeled "dysfunctional." But are they really?

Some folks have considered the book a "black comedy." I'm not sure such a label can be precisely defined. If it means that domestic horrors often begin with the tiniest, silliest and funniest little details, like a telescopic fault line which opens to a yawning hole after an earthquake, I'm inclined to agree.

That is exactly what happens to the Rose family in this novel.

Be forewarned: The Children of the Roses is not a novel peopled with warm and fuzzy characters. It is about people who, like most of us, make awful decisions and terrible mistakes. It is about a family in crisis, locked into a legacy of violence and domestic mayhem. It is about people who blunder through their allotted time seeing a détente with life's ups and downs and try their best to play the hand they have been given. Some will see these characters through a humorous lens. I hope so. Without humor domestic tragedy is tough to confront.

Some will see their own personal traumas reflected in the characters and events and react negatively to the situations and scenes depicted. Some critics of my work are often moved to condemnation on the basis of self-recognition. It is hard to be objective if you have been psychologically injured by divorce and all the concomitant searing experiences associated with the process.

To keep the discussion lively and meaningful, I have included a few questions that might trigger some reactions.

Would a mother, determined to keep her child in a prestigious, in-demand, private school be willing to provide sexual favors to the headmaster to prevent her child's being expelled? (This was the dilemma faced by Victoria Rose when the sexual predator Mr. Tatum, the headmaster of son Michael's school has discovered grounds for expelling the child.) What do you think?
Victoria and Josh attempt a "nesting" solution as a potential divorce settlement, meaning that their two children remain stationary in the house while one parent presides and rotates every two weeks. Do you think this is a good child custodial strategy?
Evie Rose is a gourmand, overweight, gluttonous, but sweet, generous, endearing, non-judgmental, and loving. Her dictum is that "food is love." Michael, Emily and Josh adore her. Is she as bad an influence on the children as Victoria contends?
Michael and Emily act in bizarre ways in an effort to keep their parents from divorcing. Some of these acts appear illogical and weird and hark back to events in the lives of their parents and grandparents of which they have no specific knowledge but might have absorbed through overhearing conversations or references that they could not have understood. Is it possible for young children to absorb psychologically or by some mysterious osmosis or filtration process these bits of information?
Josh is seduced into a sexual affair with Angela, a talented staff employee from an Italian American culture, the mother of three children and an ardent Catholic. He is obsessed with guilt and agonizes over his transgressions. When the affair is discovered, he asks Victoria's forgiveness. It is rejected. Weighing mindless sexual passion over keeping the family intact, what would be your reaction?
Embedded in this story is the issue of whether a woman who is a high powered lawyer on a surefire career track should give it up to become a suburban housewife and devote her life to rearing her children. Victoria has made this choice. As a woman would you make this choice? As a man what would you advise your spouse or significant other?
Do the children of domestically disturbed parents "catch" this virus of contention from their parents and repeat this behavior in their own lives. What do you think?

Print and save until after you read the book and use for discussion with your reading group or with me in the discussion forum.

One of the glories of this new technology is that it has made possible a quick and easy way for authors to have a meaningful dialogue with their readers. The fact is that authors and readers essentially are in a one-on-one communication mode and have been since the transmission of words and images were invented in the Stone Age.

People have always questioned the meaning of their lives and the many strategies of coping with the gut issues of their existence. The novel has always functioned as a device to provide insight, nuance, understanding and pleasure to readers who follow the lives depicted in stories concocted by authors.

Using the architecture of words to create characters and plots mirroring life, the author entertains, teaches, excites and seduces the reader to follow the lives of his or her inventions and imaginings.

Nothing is more gratifying to the author to discover how he has connected with the reader. Hence, my offer to participate in your discussion of my work or, if preferred, a one to one conversation via cyberspace. I invite you to tell me your thoughts about The Children of the Roses. Above all, be thoughtful, precise, honest and candid.

Post your comments on my discussion forum and I will do my best to acknowledge every one.

Winners Announced!
2004 Warren Adler Fiction Award

The winner of the 2004 Warren Adler Fiction Award presented by the Wyoming Arts Council is Mary Abbruzzese of Jackson, Wyoming for her lovely story Tea Leaves. I hope to be able to present her award check of $1,000 in Jackson this summer. Honorable mention went to Robert McKee of Douglas, Wyoming and Alyson Hagy of Laramie.

Congratulations, Mary!