Heist of the (15th) Century

[Theodore P. Druch]

   I may be here under somewhat false pretenses, so let me begin by confessing before you beat it out of me with truncheons. I am not a writer of crime fiction - at least not yet. In fact, until a few years ago, I wasn't a writer of anything besides voice-overs for my numerous travel videos, and nasty and satirical responses to the idiots on various blog sites,usually political.

   I began my writing career in 2009 with the self-publication of a book about my travels with my wife and two dogs in a beat-up old motor home through Mexico and Central America, Footprints on a Small Planet. Among the travel tales and descriptions of the various places we visited over nearly three years, I peppered the narrative with short stories about the ancient peoples who lived in the ruins we saw.

   The book took off like a brick outhouse in a hollow.

   I started a second travel book about a year-and-a-half in a European motor home. It's about a third done, but I lost interest when it occurred to me that it might be more fun to take an episode from our travels and expand it into book length. This I did with African Odyssey, the account of an impromptu trip we had to make because of a visa problem. A weekend jaunt turned into a month-long adventure.

   For six months, in 2009, I suffered a serious illness that kept me at death's door. The demons that afflicted me as a result I exorcised by writing The Reapers Carol, a book length account of the ordeal.

   For several years during the sixties and seventies, I was a member of an American Yoga ashram, and for a year-and-a-half, we lived with Timothy Leary at his estate in Millbrook, NY. I had always thought that there was material here for an interesting novel or two, so I wrote a sort of autobiographical one about the period, Millbrook Memories. Since it's all about breaking laws, getting harassed and arrested, and facing grand Juries and the like, I suppose I could shoehorn it into the Crime genre, but it would take a bit of stretching.

   Now, I've decided that I have enough writing experience to try my hand at longer fiction than short stories, and am currently working on an historical novel/.saga/.adventure that does include a heist.

   Set in 1492, it follows the exploits of a Spanish Jewish family expelled from Spain as they get embroiled in a plot to find and return the mythical lost harp of King David to his tomb in Jerusalem.

   I hope I live long enough to find out how it ends. 

   That's up to the characters, I guess, but they keep taking themselves off on adventures far exceeding the modern standard for novel size, and they refuse to listen to reason. "You created us O Lord" They say, "Now leave us alone and let us get on with our lives."

   Who can argue with a pirate captain brandishing a sword under your nose?

   I will be publishing the chapters in serial form on my blog at:  http://selfpublishedandbroke.wordpress.com/  which also contains links to all my other books.

   I invite all who are intrigued, to check it out, shameless self-promoter that I am.

 

Theodore P. Druch

(Ted to my friends, and you are my friends, particularly if you buy my books. Let's not get carried away by sentimentality.)