Ken Simmons

What are your favorite books — and why?

1.  The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald) — You can't go home again, you can't even love the same
    person again.
   
2.  1776 (David McCullough) — The first years of the American Revolution were perilous for freedom.
   
3.  Against the Current (Frances Knoll Ring) — F. Scott as she knew him and loved him.
   
4.  Kate Remembered (A. Scott Berg) — Funny, insightful, warm, deals with fame and death with grace.
   
5.  Max Perkins (A. Scott Berg) — Learn about F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway and
    publishing greatness
   
6.  Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger) — Holden Caulfield is a lost wardway teenage punk.
   
7.  Dragon Lady (Sterling Seagrave) — Understanding China through the Empress Dowager.
   

Favorite films?
Chinatown…Message in a Bottle…Gone with the Wind…Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet…Rear Window…Patton…
Mildred Pierce…Giant…Out of Africa…Lawrence of Arabia…African Queen

Favorite music?
Stevie Nicks…Heart…Carol King…Jethro Tull…B.B. King…Eric Clapton…Cher…

Who are your favorite writers, and what makes their writing special?
F. Scott Fitzgerald for his gentle word flow…A. Scott Berg for his sense of understanding famous people…
Scott Turow for his very large vocabulary…Shakespeare for his wordplay…Chekhov for his easy sentence style…
Leo Tolstoy for his explosive sentences…

What are you working on now?
Another emotional Thriller…

When is your next novel coming out?
Because of the research, it takes about six months to fully develop a good Novel.

What else do you want your readers to know?
Writing is like breathing…It should be natural. Sentences have a natural rythmn. Sentences come alive with a heart-beat, a cadence, a life force. They illude to kindness, hatred, love, loneliness and the paing of a lifetime. Writers are born; not made. Writers breath life into blank pages and make words hold the human emotion and the human condition.