Virtual Book Tour: Gavin Goode by @dseaburn #interview #giveaway #contemporaryfiction #literaryfiction

Contemporary/Literary

Date Published: 6.27.19

Publisher: Black Rose Writing

“I don’t know how and I don’t know why, but I think I died today.” So begins the complex and mysterious journey of Gavin Goode and his family. What happened to Gavin and why? What secrets will emerge along the way? Frankie, his wife and a dress store owner, feels guilty, but why? His son, Ryan, who owns an ice cream parlor, and daughter-in-law, Jenna, who is a bank manager, are expecting their first baby. How will this trauma affect them? And what of Rosemary, Frankie’s best friend? Or Ben Hillman and eleven-year-old, Christopher? How are they implicated in the events that unfold around Gavin’s misfortune? This is a story of despair and hope, dreams and reality, uncertainty and faith, humor, secrecy, forgiveness and beginnings.

Interview

What is the hardest part of writing your books?

I never know the ending when I start writing a book, so having the patience to go forward when the path ahead is often unclear is challenging.

What songs are most played on your Ipod?

Classic music from the ‘60s.

Do you have critique partners or beta readers?

Yes, I have a two people who I trust with my manuscript when it’s done, but I don’t have anyone read it when it’s in process. I have also used independent editors before sending the manuscript to my publisher.

What book are you reading now?

I am reading “Nickel Boys” by Colson Whitehead. I think Whitehead and Jesmyn Ward are currently the two best American writers.

How did you start your writing career?

I first started taking writing seriously when I was in seminary in the early 1970s. I had some poetry published at that time and was learning how to write sermons. Then I went into the mental health field and published creative nonfiction pieces about the experience of working with patients. Eventually, I entered academics as an Assistant Professor in a Department of Psychiatry and a Department of Family Medicine in a medical center where I published books and papers about my work with families and physicians. I never thought of myself as a fiction writer. I thought that was beyond my skills. But I got an idea from a conversation with a patient that I carried in my head for ten years before a read a novel written in first person that made me think I could do the same thing with the idea I had had for so long. That was in 2001. I was 51. That novel was published in 2005. “Gavin Goode,” my seventh novel, came out this June. A late start in fiction, but I’m not sure I could have done it any sooner.

Tell us about your next release.

I have recently started writing my eighth novel, which has the working title, “The Broken Pieces of God.” Like others of my novels, the characters are ordinary folk who face the often extraordinary challenges of life. In this case, the challenges of a changing local economy, the demands of illness, and the presumed power of a religious statue.

About the Author

David B. Seaburn’s first novel, Darkness is as Light, was published in 2005. He followed with Pumpkin Hill (2007), Charlie No Face (2011), a Finalist for the National Indie Excellence Award in General Fiction, Chimney Bluffs (2012), More More Time (2015), and Parrot Talk (2017), which placed second in the TAZ Awards for Fiction (2017) and was short listed for the Somerset Award (2018). Seaburn’s upcoming novel, Gavin Goode, will be released in June 2019.

Seaburn is a retired marriage and family therapist, psychologist and Presbyterian minister who lives in Spencerport, NY with his wife, Bonnie. They have two daughters who are married and three wonderful grandchildren. After serving a rural parish for six years, Seaburn entered the mental health field. He was an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center for nearly twenty years. There he was Director of the Family Therapy Training Program (Psychiatry) and Coordinator of the Psychosocial Medicine Rotation (Family Medicine). He also taught, practiced and conducted research. He published over sixty academic articles and two books. In 2005, Seaburn left the Medical Center to become Director of the Family Support Center in the Spencerport Central School District, a free counseling center for students and their families. Seaburn is currently a writing instructor at Writers and Books in Rochester, NY.

Visit his website at www.davidbseaburn.com.

Read his Psychology Today magazine blog at https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/going-out-not-knowing.

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