The Writer's View: K. Williams

This post is part of a virtual book tour organized by Goddess Fish Promotions. K. Williams will be awarding a grand prize of a paperback of OP-DEC: Operation Deceit (US only) to one randomly drawn winner and a digital copy of the book to 10 randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during the tour. Click on the tour banner to see the other stops on the tour.

The View outside my window is boring. It’s an average street in an average small city. I won’t bore you with the details, other than trucks roll by late at night sounding like juggernauts about to descend upon the house and destroy me and everything there.

My writing space is…eclectic. It’s scattered, busy and dusty, but it is well-used. Who has time to dust? My writing space is what I assume used to be the landing space or master bathroom for an 1850s one family home turned duplex. My writing space may change in the near future, for apartment leases in houses are no sure thing.

I love this writing space. It’s dim, has all the things I could possibly need, and is cramped. I roll out of bed every morning and skitter through it to the half-bathroom there. It has a chilly wood floor, well-worn through the ages and it creaks. I threw down some oriental rugs to save my feet. I wouldn’t change a thing in there…maybe another bookcase?

My writing space has bookcases stuffed with books and DVDs. I have two computers. One is old and I don’t know what to do with it. I’m attached. I wrote my first novel on it. I got acquainted with deviantArt there. We’re friends. It’s in good condition, but operating an old system. I can’t afford to upgrade it. Eventually, I will part ways in a sad turning of my back on the machine that provided me the means for writing what became the key to the kingdom. Beside it sits its replacement. The newer tower is my newer friend. It saw me through graduate school, edits of OP-DEC. It’s seeing me through the interviews and blogs. My friends in foreign lands connect with me there. I have a lone lamp to light it all.

I sit between a blank canvas propped on my filing cabinet and the computer desk. The area is narrow. I’m quite small. When my computer crashed this fall, the gentleman who came to fix it barely fit. My writing space is mine, because no one else fits there, figuratively or literally. On the chair, I keep a memory foam pillow because my bony butt hurts after a while sitting on the old used chair my dad got me over a decade ago. I’ve been looking at new ones, but this is my chair, a brown cloth monstrosity that gives me back aches.

At my feet, I have a folded up fleece throw. I sit for hours and my blood pressure drops so that my feet and hands get cold. In the winter, the lack of insulation makes it terribly cold to sit there, even after buttoning up the window. The furnace blows cold air down on my head. I throw on a hoodie that hangs on the door knob. Just the other side of the room (less than a foot away) is a dog bed. Sadie Sue lays there. Before her, a Jack Russell named Maximillian occupied the spot until Lymphoma removed him from my writing space. His pictures hang just outside.

Upon the walls, I have collected bus shelter posters from the X-Men films featuring Hugh Jackman. I am a comic fan. I’ve had a Captain America shield longer than the films existed. Wolverine and Captain America are long time favorites. From there you can also assume that I love film. I studied cinema in graduate school and wrote about it extensively as I learned how to adapt novels and write my own scripts. Maybe the posters will be replaced by my movie posters one day (bus shelter size of course).

In the narrows and wherever I can fit them are things. Movie props, hats, toys, decorations. I have a red pair of wings on the wall under a “Witch’s Brew Served Here” sign that I picked up from Hallmark one Halloween. A rhinestone key dangles below them both. You can cut the scene with that marker on the opposite shelf. They all have meaning, intertexts between them and the other things I huddle together in my mad laboratory of mess. I hardly pay attention to it all because what I truly need is what’s in my head. They’re there to remind me of that until I remember. For now the Snoopy calendar is on the wrong date, and I have filing to still do. The dust will be there another week…month.

A shadowy past becomes a sinister future… It's 1933 and the height of Boston's social season. Claire Healey overhears a terrible argument between her industrial-tycoon father and her socialite mother. Claire's father sends her mother away, declaring she is hysterical with fatigue. Displaced by this disastrous outcome, Claire is brought to New York by her spirited aunt, to be raised beyond the reach of the damaging turn of events.

Nine years later, Claire returns to her childhood home to face her past once more. The world has long since exploded in war. A mysterious stranger named Carsten Reiniger has infiltrated the scene, placing his commanding presence among the old familiar faces of Boston's elite. Intrigued by the newcomer, Claire struggles to piece together his identity and finds a dangerous connection to her troubling past. When Claire's prying comes to light, she and her aunt are whisked away in the middle of the night to ensure their silence. Can Carsten Reiniger be trusted or is he implacably loyal to duty alone?

Enjoy an excerpt:

Fantasies of jumping from the moving vehicle or pushing Carsten out with a display of sudden and great strength filled Claire’s mind the entire ride back to her father’s house. The night somehow clung more darkly to their street. A roll of thunder echoed in the distance, barely audible above the growl of the engine. The driver steered the car up to the gate, pausing for it to open. The menacing groan of the iron barrier awakened Claire’s need to escape. She moved, but Carsten’s alertness obstructed such notions. His hand tightly grasped her wrist, planting her hand firmly on the seat between them. The concealed gun glinted, catching the reflection of the headlights. Pain and fear played on her face.

“Not just yet,” he said in low tones as the car proceeded slowly up the drive.

Carsten released her hand and patted it, wearing one of his grins. Claire tore her hand away, clutching it to her chest. Her owlish eyes kept a close watch on him. He only chuckled, amused by her fear. She was at his mercy with not a soul to help her.

The driver remained focused on his task. Claire wagered the driver had already known about the plans for the night, and he played along to keep his cushy job. The car coasted up to the overhang and came to a gentle stop. This time, he didn’t get out and open the door. He waited, allowing Carsten to do it instead.

Carsten reached across Claire and opened her door.

“Slowly,” he instructed, brandishing the weapon more boldly.

About the Author: Born in Saratoga Springs, New York, where she continues to reside, K.Williams embarked on a now twenty year career in writing. After a childhood, which consisted of voracious reading and hours of film watching, it was a natural progression to study and work in the arts.

K attended the State University of New York at Morrisville, majoring in the Biological Sciences, and then continued with English and Historical studies at the University at Albany (home of the New York State Writer’s Institute) gaining her Bachelor’s Degree. While attending UA, K interned with the 13th Moon Feminist Literary Magazine, bridging her interests in social movements and art.

Currently, K has completed the MALS program for Film Studies and Screenwriting at Empire State College (SUNY), and is the 2013-2014 recipient of the Foner Fellowship in Arts and Social Justice. K continues to write and is working on the novels of the Trailokya Trilogy, a work that deals with topics in Domestic Violence and crosses the controversial waters of organized religion and secularism. A sequel to OP-DEC is in the research phase, while the adaptation is being shopped to interested film companies. Excerpts of these and more writings can be found at: www.bluehonor.com.

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