https://www.facebook.com/TheShadeBook
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20805401-the-shade
James Langley's life is over. After an automobile accident leaves him comatose, James' body lies vulnerable in a hospital bed. However, his mind is lost, drifting between life and death, into The Shade.
Trapped in a world shrouded by the unknown, he meets Virgil, a mysterious stranger that informs him that his car wreck was no accident; that the man responsible has imprisoned them both, intent on keeping them there. Together they must race against time to get James back to his body in the real world before he becomes the next victim of a malevolent psychopath.
Enter the world of The Shade, where the boundaries of the human psyche are pushed to their limits and survival is not guaranteed. A place where death isn't the end, but only the beginning.
Q) What inspired you to write this story?
A) The Shade was inspired by a multitude of different things, first and foremost being Dante Alighieri's The Inferno. If you don't know the story I would suggest reading it, it's written in cantos instead of chapters but if you find a good translation it's a pretty easy read. Originally, this book was going to be an ode to Dante, so to speak, a modern day retelling of his classic story. However, that is not how things worked out. As I wrote the story, it began to morph from what I had originally wanted into what I've published now. Seeing this I adapted the story to give nods to The Inferno whenever I could. While The inferno didn't totally inspire me to write The Shade I attribute my first pen to paper, or in my case finger to keys, on the fact that I wanted to tell a story similar to Dante.
Q) How long did it take you to write?
A) It took me around three years to write The Shade. I took a year sabbatical from the book but it went through many drafts and versions before I published it.
Q) What is your favorite thing about writing?
A) My favorite thing about writing is creating something that someone else may want to read. I created The Shade to entertain people, when readers let me know that they liked a scene or character it lets me know I did my job correctly.
Q) What is your least favorite thing about writing?
A) Editing. I really enjoy The Shade and I enjoy writing, but after reading the book repeatedly for mistakes and sentence structure, I can say that I don't ever want to read it again. That's a joke but editing is a very mindless but important task involved with writing.
Q) If you could be any famous person for one day, who would you be and why?
A) Alive or dead? If it can be alive or dead, I would choose Virgil, the Roman poet who wrote The Aeneid. He was the inspiration for Dante to write The Inferno just like Dante was my inspiration. I suppose being that spark for someone is one of the greatest things we can do in life. I am also a huge history buff so being in Rome during that era would be fascinating.
Q) What is the oldest thing in your fridge and how old is it?
A) There is a curious bottle of rum sitting at the back of my refrigerator at the moment. It's about two years old, not sure why I still have it, my wife swears rum doesn't go bad, but I've never seen her drink it—odd.
Q) What can readers expect from you in the future?
A) The Shade is the first book in a trilogy; the other two have been written but have not been edited yet. If you enjoy reading The Shade you'll really like what the second and third books are all about. In addition, when I'm completely done with my trilogy I may begin writing some mystery/detective type novels.
