The Moment Between
by Gareth Frank
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GENRE: Psychological Thriller
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BLURB:
After four years of mourning, Doctor Hackett Metzger is determined to stop letting his wife's death control his life. He is finally beginning to live again, but his recovery leads to an unexpected fight for his own survival and startling revelations about what happens to all of us in The Moment Between.
Hackett, a brilliant neurologist, is a skeptic. He doesn't believe he will one day be reunited with Jean, or dwell with God in heaven. What he does believe is that he should have seen the warning signs of her heart attack; he should have saved her. He also cannot accept the possibility that his clinical study of near death experiences could prove the existence of a conscious afterlife. When Hackett falls for the mother of a patient, grief finally begins to fade. But he has no idea his new love is hiding her dangerous past. Will Hackett's damaged spirit endure another heartbreak?
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EXCERPTS
In those first months, he tortured himself with the notion that Jean’s voice had been real. He was sure that she had been present while he tried to save her. He prayed that she lived on in death, hoped that even as he failed, she had a soft landing on the other side. Her voice became his torture.
And so he understood death as he never had before. He understood grieving and pain. He understood what it meant to miss someone and to know that he would never see that person again. He understood loneliness. Most of all he understood the foolish and painful illusion that life might somehow continue. There was no voice. Jean had not talked to him from beyond. He had tortured himself from within. She was dead. He had learned to accept that cold hard reality. Anger had settled into the dark hole that was his memory of that day, poisoning his spirit. For weeks he stayed home from work, for months the blackness held him captive, until slowly he emerged into the world once more. His sanity hinged on his acceptance that Jean’s voice had been an illusion. Death was just death.
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I Asked Gareth where are five places you might visit for inspiration for your books?
I enjoy writing about places I know. The Moment Betweenis set in the Washington, DC area which has rich opportunities for writing all sorts of scenes from urban business centers to restaurants to open air drug markets and the bucolic setting of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal Tow Path that runs from the Georgetown neighborhood up the Potomac River into rural Maryland. I also adopted the Hill Towns of Tuscany, Italy for great scenes of traveling, biking and dining in old Europe.
My next book is set in places all across the western United States. What a travel opportunity that provides. The west is so grand and vivid that writing about it feels like you are literally painting scenes with words. One of my chapters is set on the rim of Zion Canyon in Utah. I'd love to stand upon the cliff looking north at Angel's Landing and the winding river below. I would hike in with a laptop so that I could re-write the scene with that incredible backdrop right there in front of me. The same could also be said of places with less striking grandeur. I'd love to track down this little seedy neighborhood north of Los Angeles where colorful graffiti covers rundown buildings. I stop in front of one place in particular, probably hesitating before stepping into the neighborhood tattoo parlor and watching needles stab and spread color across skin.
In Montana, I'd pick out a dusty town that straddles the railroad and Highway 2. I'd get to know the taverns and gas stations. I'd talk to the farmer pumping gas into his 1995 Ford pickup. I'd sit on a curb and drink a Coke while the world turned around me.
As for the future, I am heading to India in November! That's actually six places.
AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Gareth Frank is a former union organizer and administrator. He received a Master's Degree at the University of Wisconsin and later studied at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. The Moment Between is his first published novel. His short stories have been published in various journals and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize as well as the Silver Pen Write Well Award.
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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION
Gareth Frank will be awarding a $50 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.
