Abiding Darkness initially anchors itself in the relationship between two children.
Junior Washington is an eleven-year-old black child. He lives in a small cabin out on Cat Lake; his parents work for the Parker family. He's loyal, he's compliant beyond what would normally be expected of an eleven-year-old boy, and he's a committed Christian.
Missy Parker, who lives on the other side of the lake, is the crown princess of the Parker family. At seven years of age she's beautiful, wealthy, willful, and tough as a tractor tire. Andâin the midst of the most defined segregation in our nation's recent historyâthis little white girl and Junior Washington are best friends.
Only one thing stands between these two children and a storybook childhood . . . they are destined to encounter a faithful servant of the Author of Evil.
Abiding Darkness starts almost gently. The first sentence offers doubt, but readers may not see any real trouble surface until a few sentences later, and that's mostly kid stuff, almost cute. Fro •
Author Interview – John Aubrey Anderson
In continuing to highlight Wedgewood Grey, the latest book from John Aubrey Anderson, he was gracious enough to give an interview to some young’n’ blogging up in Idaho.
As his bio says, he was an airline pilot for many years. Doesn’t he just look like one here?
Either tomorrow or Saturday I want to post a couple of snippets from both of his books and talk a little about why the particular sections seemed to work, in my opinion. Please check back and add your comments to the discussion! And now, Mr. Anderson please:
1. How long did it take for the story of the Black or White Chronicles to formulate in your head? What was the process for putting it on the page?
There is no reason why anyone should believe this, but tracking the process behind the writing of these stories could not have been done with a Cray computer. But . . . My first and only effort regarding fiction was a two thousand word story I did for our girls twenty years ago . . . a little thing about choices.
In 1997, I pulled that little story out
•
I was born and raised in my grandparents' home, five miles north of the setting I chose for Abiding Darkness. That little cotton country town is within a rifle shot of two rivers, a bayou, a double handful of lakes, and endless acres of woods. Add that backdrop to a culture that offered an umbrella of protection for children while allowing boys to roam the countryside with firearms and fishing poles, and you come up with an environment that would provoke the envy of Tom Sawyer. In those surroundings, millions of day-by-day adventures linked themselves to become my boyhood.
When I was eight years old, I saw Flying Tigers with John Wayne and knew I wanted to be a pilot. After graduating from Mississippi State, I flew six years in the Air Force then twenty-nine years for a major airline. My career in the cockpit was nothing less than a thirty-five-year answer to a young boys unspoken prayer. And now I get to write . . .
Writing has transformed my lifemostly for the better, but my schedule has been a little crunched for the last four years. In one sense, I look forward to th