{"id":1137,"date":"2013-10-23T08:55:39","date_gmt":"2013-10-23T06:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zahraowens.com\/?p=1137"},"modified":"2013-10-23T08:55:39","modified_gmt":"2013-10-23T06:55:39","slug":"true-enough-for-government-work-by-michael-rupured","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/?p=1137","title":{"rendered":"True Enough for Government Work by Michael Rupured"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thanks, Zahra, for letting me drop in to chat about After Christmas Eve. Meeting you in person at GRL was a real treat! I know Atlanta will never be the same. (Zahra: The pleasure was all mine! My godson now wants to know whether you’re my boyfriend. Guess you made an impact!)<\/p>\n

To celebrate the release by MLR Press of my second novel, I\u2019m giving away 10 copies (ebooks) through an 11-stop blog hop. To enter, comment before midnight, October 25, 2013 on any of my posts on the eleven participating blogs. Be sure to include an email address.<\/p>\n

After Christmas Eve is set in a time and place I’ve never experienced. Except for Philip, a supporting character in Until Thanksgiving and the protagonist in this novel, nothing is familiar to me. The settings exist only in my imagination. Without any superficial contact to the story, I reached deep inside and tapped into things I know in my gut.
\nWriting fiction gives me the freedom to embellish the hell out of the truth. I have fun adorning reality with extra details, semi-truths, and pure fabrications to suit my own purposes. Nobody\u2014or very few anyway\u2014knows what parts really happened and which are just made up.
\nThe stories in my novels aren’t true. They’re made up. But I write what I know. Reality creeps into the story in interesting and unexpected ways. I don’t write fantasy. I write reality-based stories\u2014fiction that’s true enough for government work.<\/p>\n

\"After<\/a>
After Christmas Eve by Michael Rupured<\/figcaption><\/figure>Here\u2019s the blurb:
\n
As Philip Potter wraps up his last minute shopping on Christmas Eve, 1966, James Walker, his lover of six years, takes his life. Unaware of what waits for him at home, Philip drops off gifts to the homeless shelter, an act of generosity that later makes him a suspect in the murder of a male prostitute.<\/p>\n

Two men drive yellow Continentals. One is a killer, with the blood of at least six hustlers on his hands. Both men have secrets. And as Philip is about to discover, James had kept secrets, too. But James wasn\u2019t trying to frame him for murder\u2026<\/Blockquote><\/p>\n

*This is the ninth of eleven stops on the After Christmas Eve Blog Hop. Excerpts appear in serial form along the hop, beginning with my post at Shira Anthony’s<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Excerpt #9 of 11<\/p>\n

Chapter Three<\/p>\n

Philip glanced at his watch and wondered where the time had gone. After dropping the radios off at the shelter, he\u2019d popped into the toy department at the Sears & Roebuck store to see about last minute gifts for Thad. Checking out took longer than he\u2019d expected, but he didn\u2019t want to be rude to the helpful clerk. The glares of the shoppers who waited behind him had no impact on his holiday spirit.
\nAs snow crunched beneath his black rubbers, Philip contemplated what awaited him at home. James was\u2026 excitable. No matter how his father had responded, his lover\u2019s reaction would be extreme. If the old man had written James a check, he\u2019d be dancing on the ceiling. If not, well\u2026 if not, then Philip would do what he could to cheer him up.
\nFrom the day they\u2019d met, Philip had been driven by a desire to guide and protect this rare and beautiful gift to the human race. How someone could cast such an exquisite creature into the streets baffled him. That the boy\u2019s father had been the one to commit such a heinous and disloyal act infuriated him. Philip had been only nine when his own dad had died. He didn\u2019t have many memories of him, but those he had were wonderful\u2014so much so that he wasn\u2019t sure which were real and which were only figments of his imagination.
\nBesides his dancing ability, James had a superlative gift for embellishment and a raw talent for making ordinary events sound either much better or worse than they were. Although entertaining at parties, living with the drama was sometimes a challenge. Philip knew tomorrow would either be the absolute best Christmas James had ever had\u2026or the worst. If only he could influence the outcome. Knowing it all came down to James\u2019s father\u2014a man not known for doing the right thing\u2014made Philip uneasy.
\nStreets that had overflowed with traffic and last-minute shoppers earlier were now almost deserted. Progress was slow, thanks to the packed snow that covered the sidewalks. Whether James was jubilant or sorrowful, Philip didn\u2019t want him to be alone on Christmas Eve any longer than he had to be. Solitude and James didn\u2019t mix well.
\nWhen Philip got to the apartment, he\u2019d listen to what James had to say about the meeting with his father. He suspected he already knew, but pushed the thought from his mind, hoping he hadn\u2019t nurtured it into being. Think positive.<\/Blockquote>
\nContinued on 10\/24 on H.B. Pattskyn\u2019s blog<\/a>
\nBuy link: MLR Press<\/a>
\nWeb site<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thanks, Zahra, for letting me drop in to chat about After Christmas Eve. Meeting you in person at GRL was a real treat! I know Atlanta will never be the same. (Zahra: The pleasure was all mine! My godson now wants to know whether you’re my boyfriend. Guess you made an impact!) To celebrate the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,44],"tags":[51],"class_list":["post-1137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fellow-authors","category-guest-blog","tag-michael-rupured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1137"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1142,"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137\/revisions\/1142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zahraowens.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}