Room 3
Bartender and songwriter Kelli Foster had always kept her eyes trained on the dream of stardom as a means to escape her small-town life. That focus blinded her to threat right in front of her: a bar patron who lulls her into a false sense of security and abducts her for a shadowy organization, taking her to a cabin in the middle of nowhere.
Desperate to escape and return to the world she thought she knew, Kelli bides her time, complying with her captors as they force her into a dream world where she must unravel the meaning of a song to free a hostage trapped inside a tree. Failure to free the hostage means only one thing: death, for her and the hostage.
Joined by an important test subject whose sanity unravels almost from the start, Kelli attempts to free them both. When the escape fails, Kelli's life becomes even more difficult, and she learns that her assumptions about her life - and the world itself - could all be false. As events spiral out of control, Kelli finds herself caught in a battle between godlike beings that hold her fate, and that of the entire Organization, in their hands.
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Excerpt:
This is the first time we see one of Kelli's visions, following a an injection of the mysterious hallucinogen.
Something rustled in the corn. I whirled, but I knew who it would be before she even appeared. She always found me. "Mimi?"
A little girl appeared from between the rows, pushing the bottoms of the stalks apart. She had blue eyes, dark brown hair, and a smile that could just melt your heart - the kind of smile that never, ever survives into adulthood.
She cocked her head. "How'd you know my name?"
She always asked me that.
"We've met, but I've told you that before, too."
She put her hands on her little hips. "How come I don't remember you?"
"I think it's this place. It always makes you forget."
"I don't like that."
I looked around. "I don't like it much, either. But don't worry about it. I'm here."
Wheels turned in her head. "But why are you here?"
No clue how to answer that one. "You're looking for something, right?"
She nodded.
I leaned down, putting my hands on my knees. "What are you looking for, sweetheart?" I already knew the answer, but this had gone down a certain path forever, and the show had to go on.
She rubbed her eyes. "Cici's gone. I can't find her."
Cici. The girl forever searched for Cici. I had no idea if she even existed. "Now where did you last see your sister?" I said.
Her eyes widened, like I'd shown her the secret of the universe. "We did meet, didn't we, that's how you know about Cici?"
I nodded. "Where did you see her last?" Knew the answer to this one, too.
She pointed over my shoulder. "There."
I knew what I'd see when I turned. I'd seen it so many times that I'd even started to see it in my dreams. It didn't matter, though. Every single time I turned to gaze on it, it knocked me on my proverbial butt: an enormous, gnarled tree, soaring up into the sky. This wasn't just any tree, though. Somebody had carved a wooden organ out of the trunk, with two levels of wooden keys and wooden pipes rising out of the higher reaches.
The largest keyhole you've ever seen had been connected to that organ, its details carved right into the trunk, between the keys and the pipes.
"She's locked in there, isn't she?"
Author Interview:
The Avid Reader: What inspired you to write Room 3?
Jonathan D Allen: A few years back I learned that my then-wife-to-be had never seen the 80s horror movie Videodrome; it's personally one of my favorite movies and has been a pretty big influence on my work. Horrified, I set out to remedy the situation immediately. As we watched the film (which is about a man who discovers a pirate TV station that can alter the mind) I realized that the premise had great potential in modern times. What if someone stumbled across a video site with the same goal, or found a blog that blurred the line between reality and fiction so that the reader never knew if the author was truly in danger. That became the kernel of inspiration for Room 3. The original premise fell by the wayside and got incorporated into a short story, but I'm happy with how things turned out.
The Avid Reader: When or at what age did you know you wanted to be a writer?
Jonathan D Allen: I began writing at a very young age, maybe six or seven, but it was always just little skits and vignettes that occurred to me. I first knew that I wanted to write novels when I read Stephen King and Peter Straub's "The Talisman" at the tender age of 10 or 11. I wasn't ready to leave those characters behind and had my own vision of how the story would continue, so I guess you could say I started with fan fiction.
The Avid Reader: What is the earliest age you remember reading your first book?
Jonathan D Allen: My parents tell me that I was an early bloomer; they first became aware that I could read around age four when I plopped down on the living room floor and began reading aloud from a Dr. Seuss book. I must have been reading previous to that, but I have no recollection of that period. The first book that I clearly remember is The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which must have been around four or five.
The Avid Reader: What genre of books do you enjoy reading?
Jonathan D Allen: I'm all over the map, but if pressed I'd say Dark Fantasy and/or Horror. I love literary fiction as well.
The Avid Reader: What is your favorite book?
Jonathan D Allen: Depends on the day of the week, but right now it's either Clive Barker's Imajica or Stephen King's The Wastelands. Both show such breathtaking imagination while keeping the reader close to the characters' humanity.
The Avid Reader: You know I think we all have a favorite author. Who is your favorite author and why?
Jonathan D Allen: It always comes down to King or Barker and Barker wins by a hair because he didn't have quite as many clunky books as King. To be fair, he didn't get quite the same chance as King. Anyway, I say Barker because he has the same kind of career trajectory that I would love to have: started out with fairly innocent but imaginative tales and began to truly spread his wings into some fantastically-crafted worlds. Most importantly, though, he kept a core of humanity within those stories.
The Avid Reader: If you could travel back in time here on earth to any place or time. Where would you go and why?
Jonathan D Allen: Assuming that I could come back, I would love to see what came before the Sumerian and Babylonian cultures. I've always felt that the evolution of civilization felt incomplete, as if something were missing in the transition from tribes to cities. A lot of my work is about speculating on that connection, and I'd like to see just how off-base I might be.
The Avid Reader: When writing a book do you find that writing comes easy for you or is it a difficult task?
Jonathan D Allen: It varies depending on the scene and characters involved. There are a few characters in my current WIP who are a sheer joy to write and I look forward to any scene involving them, but others are more reticent, with more muted personalities, and that's when it becomes a little more difficult. Overall, though, I do the whole thing for fun so I sure hope it doesn't become too difficult.
The Avid Reader: Do you have any little fuzzy friends? Like a dog or a cat? Or any pets?
Jonathan D Allen: I do! My wife and I have two cats and three guinea pigs. Our publishing company, Qwendellonia Publishing, is actually named after two of the guinea pigs, Wendell and Quimby. I've always been an animal person.
The Avid Reader: What is your "to die for", favorite food/foods to eat?
Jonathan D Allen: Boy has that changed recently. I have a stomach disorder so I've had to cut out gluten and dairy and minimize other processed foods (good for the health, not so good for the palate). Right now my absolute favorite food is a gluten-free spaghetti bake that I've developed using grass-fed beef, tofu cheese, and loads of veggies. It's a constantly-evolving recipe, but it's pretty tasty.
The Avid Reader: Do you have any advice for anyone that would like to be an author?
Jonathan D Allen: The most important advice that anyone could give you is to write. It's as simple and complex as that. Your first few stories are going to be crap - it's inevitable. Everyone starts out writing crap, and typically even the most seasoned, polished veterans write crappy first drafts. The key is to accept that you'll suck at first and use every "failure" as a learning experience. I like to tout Ray Bradbury's theory that you need to write at least a million words of crap to get to the good stuff. It's certainly proven to be true in my case, and I think it could help just about any writer.
Jonathan D Allen
Born and raised in the rural Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Jonathan wrote his first fantasy/sci-fi novel at the age of 13. After studying writing and communication at James Madison University, Jonathan turned his passion for writing into a full-time technical writing career in the DC Metro area, working for companies like Sprint/Nextel, Time Warner Cable, and Sirius XM Radio, where he had an opportunity to combine his love of music with his love of writing. He may have drifted away from fiction at times, but it was always his first love - and he always returned to it. Now living in Bethesda with his wife, two cats, and two quirky guinea pigs for which his publishing company is named, he crafts the kinds of stories that he had always hoped to read but just couldn't quite find.
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Giveaway:
A grand prize of a $20 Amazon Gift Card and six winners (3 of which will get a print copy of Room 3, and 3 of which will get an ebook copy of Room 3).
1 comments:
Great interview! Looking forward to tomorrow's stop, Jonathan.
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