'Writing: A Journey for the Writers and for Readers' - A Guest Post by Author David Khara ~ LoupDargent.info

What we have today is the first part of a two-parter Book Tour stop with a difference... One with some French flavour added to it, if you like.

The book we're hosting this two-parter tour stop for is 'The Bleiber Project', an adrenaline-pumping conspiracy thriller based on World War II and its consequences today. It is the first in the Consortium Thriller series. This thriller full of humour and humanity was an immediate sensation in France, catapulting the author to the ranks of the country’s top thriller writers.

Don't worry too much if you can't speak/read French though as It has been published in English by Le French Book, a digital-first publisher specializing in best-selling mysteries and thrillers from France.

(A little bird told me that there was a movie based on this book in the making, so when David Khara, its author, becomes famous don't forget where you heard about him first..)

In Part Two, we will have a rather very lengthy (One of the reasons why this Book Tour stop is in two parts) excerpt available for you to read and, among other things, a Giveaway. C'est super, n'est-ce pas?

We will add the link to Part Two here as soon as it goes live, so stay tuned!

Anyway, let's give the floor to David Khara so that he can tell us about his journey as a writer...

Enjoy!

Loup Dargent

>> Update: Part Two ( with Giveaway and all) is now live and can be viewed here!

The Guest Post:

Writing is a journey that begins with reading. I started reading at an early age. I’d read anywhere, at anytime, almost anything I could find, including newspapers, comic books, and novels. Most of the time, I had a dictionary near me to help me understand the meaning of words, and I learned a lot this way. The first book that really hit me was The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas. I loved the adventure in it, the historical context, the strong bond that grew between Athos, Portos, Aramis and, of course, D’artagnan. When I think about it, this book is the reason I started fencing—and I’m certainly not the only one!

Books are often linked to key moments of our lives. I first travelled to the states when I was 17, and during the flight to New York (Manhattan appeared to me as a promised land, and still is 30 years later), I read the whole The Two Towers from the Lord of the Rings trilogy, thus getting a double dose of pleasure. I still own the edition I had back then, and every time I look at it, the emotions come back. Think about it, I’m pretty sure you’ve had the same kind of experience.

The way I see it, writing is a journey for both the writer and the readers. And that is something I constantly keep in mind while working. I’m not telling my own story in my novels. They are not catharsis in any way. My main goal is to entertain. It is all about giving pleasure (or trying to do so), offering readers a trip out of their life. There is no reward I enjoy more than when people come to me during book signings and say, “I didn’t sleep because I wanted to know more” or “I slowed down reading because I didn’t want to reach the end too fast.”

Another of my goals is to reveal my readers unknown historical facts. The Bleiberg Project took me four months to write at a fairly slow pace, but it needed no less than an intensive six months research. It was during that time I realized how much WWII has influenced our way of life nowadays. I discovered so many unbelievable things that it gave me the ideas for the whole trilogy.

Beyond facts, there were the testimonies of people who lived those troubled years: war criminals, ordinary soldiers, anonymous heroes, and victims. I spent countless hours listening to them in order to understand their mood and their way of thinking. I’m not ashamed to say I cried quite a lot. But I had to go through this since the series is all about paying tribute to the victims, and the keyword for the trilogy is “Resistance.” As a writer, this was my true, well, journey.

And that leads me to my last point: the characters. Liverpool’s soccer club has an anthem entitled “You’ll never walk alone.” Though solitary by essence, the work of a writer is filled with characters. I had great time with every single one of them. It reached a point where they took control of the keyboard and dragged the story to places I didn’t quite anticipate. But after all, isn’t it one of mankind’s inner strengths to be unpredictable and surprising at times? And isn’t a novel not only about its plot but also about the humanity you can find in it?

In this, my absolute master is Dennis Lehane. The whole Kenzie-Gennaro series is pure pleasure, and Mystic River is to me the absolute masterpiece when it comes to humanity and character’s depth and psychology. That makes me think his last book has been released in France two weeks ago, I’ll dive in it to see what journey he concocted for us.

About David Khara:

David Khara studied law, worked as a reporter for Agence France Press, was a top-level athlete, and ran his own business for a number of years. Now, he is a full-time writer. Khara wrote his first novel—a vampire thriller—in 2010, before starting his Consortium thriller series.

The first in the series, The Bleiberg Project, became an immediate bestseller in France, catapulting Khara into the ranks of the country’s top thriller writers.

Here are some interviews of the author:

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