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The Experiences of One Man
Indian Billy Ice shares the true story of your great-great-great-grandfather and how he survived being taken by a nomadic Native American tribe in the 18th century. Why was this an important book for you to write?
As the last member of the Ice family line, I felt a profound responsibility to share the incredible life story of my ancestor, Billy Ice. My book was initially a screenplay that garnered significant acclaim, winning 28 writing contests worldwide, including two in Russia. Despite Hollywood’s recognition of my writing talent, the screenplay never made it to the big screen. However, the book has allowed me to reach a wider audience and help people understand the challenges faced by 18th-century frontiersmen.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
In recent years, the colonial period has been scrutinized more critically, often through the lens of political correctness and historical revisionism. While it’s undeniable that atrocities occurred on both sides, my book offers a unique perspective by focusing on the experiences of one man, Billy Ice.
Did you find anything in your research of this story that surprised you?
I was astonished by how an eight-year-old boy could endure 11 years of unimaginable hardship without his spirit being broken. Billy was an extraordinary individual who survived indescribable horrors.
What is one thing that you hope readers take away from Indian Billy Ice?
I often remind friends and acquaintances to “honor your ancestors because history matters.” My hope is that history will once again become a key component of the educational process.
Author Links: GoodReads | Amazon
As he matures, the young man becomes a formidable force on the frontier, dispensing his own brand of justice to those who cross his path. Along the way, he finds himself embroiled in the conflicts of the time, serving in every war that marks his era. Despite the turmoil of battle, he never forgets his ultimate goal: to reunite with his family and carve out a life of his own.
Eventually, fate leads him back to his kin, and with them, he establishes a wilderness community, a sanctuary in the untamed lands he has come to call home. Through hardship and triumph, he remains steadfast in his commitment to protect his loved ones and uphold the values of his rugged existence.
This is the true story of my great-great-great-grandfather, William Galloway “Indian Billy” Ice.
Define Identity
In Valtoha, you ask readers to join you on a journey from Singapore to Valtoha as you examine your family’s history beginning with your late grandfather. What inspired you to share your family history with readers?
When I went in search of my grandfather’s village, I did not intend to turn the adventure into an actual book. However, after the experience, I felt it was an amazing story in itself and that people would want to hear about it. I shared the experience with some close friends and they championed the idea of turning it into a book. Then the next questions were: how I was going to stylise the entire account and what parallels did my grandfather share with me? With these starting points, I began to craft the text that is now VALTOHA. On some levels, this may have been a personal project and on other levels, it was meant to give a voice to a seemingly insignificant person who actually is something of an important figure of subaltern history.
How long did it take you to research and put together your family’s history and write Valtoha?
I began writing the bulk of it while I was still travelling around India, so over the course of a month or so. That was just the first draft of the text we have now. Over the next three months, I began asking for information from the various sources and speaking to Dr. Kirpal Singh about the foreword of the text. Unearthing some information was easier than others but I think good fortune did play a huge part in the way some of the information fell into my lap.
What is one thing you hope readers take away from your story?
An enjoyable tale and nothing more because that is all it really is, I think? I know questions will inevitably be raised about identity, belonging and assimilation, as always with stories of transmigration. However, the truth is that these things really don’t matter. Most of us tend to spend a large portion of our lives trying to define identity for ourselves. The truth is that once we have a sense of the answer, we don’t really know what to do with it. Yes, I’m a third-generation Indian immigrant to Singapore but so what? My wife is Mexican, and I can’t relate to most things Indian or Singaporean. So what? The identity that I’ve constructed for myself doesn’t matter at all as much as the experiences that I have been through. Therefore, the search for identity is an absolute utter waste of time. I am a storyteller, and all this text is bringing to readers is just a story.
What is the next book you are working on, and when will it be available?
I am currently working on a speculative poetry collection about music and sound with American poet, Garrett Carroll that should be out sometime in 2025. Ikhṓr, my art/poetry collaboration with Irish artist Shane Reilly, will be released at the end of October this year. Also, at some point in 2025, I will be releasing Shadows with Sauroctonos Publishing. This is a grimoire about Southeast Asian supernatural entities and the dark magic used to invoke, banish and protect against them.
Author Links: GoodReads | X (Twitter) | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Romanticized The Hell Out Of It
Catalina DuBois Author Interview
Book of Matthew Part I is a tale of forbidden love in rural Missouri in 1850 which was a tumultuous time in the U.S. What was the inspiration that inspired the setup to this intriguing novel?
It all began with a conversation. I had just started dating the man who is now my husband and we were still getting to know one another. He asked if I would vote in the upcoming election and I replied, “of course I will. My ancestors fought and died to give me the right to. Without their sacrifices I wouldn’t be able to vote, own property, read, let alone attend my university. I wouldn’t even be able to date you.” After that conversation I started to wonder how difficult it would have been to have an interracial relationship centuries ago and my first book was born.
I have always been a lover of suspense, mystery and horror so I decided to write in these genres. My goal was to create a Jack the Ripper sort of villain, while maintaining the drama, romance and personal conflicts that make characters relatable and memorable.
While growing up I noticed a double standard in regard to history. If you were white and you wanted to trace your lineage back to the Mayflower this was perfectly acceptable. People were intrigued to hear your family’s history and they encouraged and praised your vast knowledge of a bygone era… but if you were black you were often discouraged from learning anything about your ancestry. I was told things like, “Black people need to leave the plantation,” and “Black people live in the past and need to just forget things.” Yearning to educate myself about the past is not the same as living in it. I didn’t desire someone to blame or scapegoat, all I wanted was the same answers that other races of children were encouraged to seek out.
When I received correspondence from readers in England, France, Ireland and several countries in Africa they applauded my stories and said, “Wow! This was a fascinating look at American history.” Not Black history, nor African American history. Other countries acknowledge this topic as American history because that’s exactly what it is. When I am criticized for this subject matter my response remains the same,
I don’t write racist literature. Nor do I write black history. I write American history.
The book touches on sensitive social topics rarely discussed, slavery and the dynamic between master and slave. What were some themes you wanted to capture in this story?
The main theme I wanted to capture was that every form of this institution was morally reprehensible. When I grew up in school most of my teachers refused to teach this subject whatsoever. We would skip over huge chunks of our textbooks just to avoid it. The few who did teach about it romanticized the hell out of it, and made it seem acceptable because “most slaves were like part of the family” …I actually heard this more than once. What I desired to express in this story was that even if you were a house slave who was treated better than others and much like part of the family, merely being owned endangered your life because someone has diminished your social standing from that of a human being to that of a piece of property. This fact alone placed even the best treated of slaves at risk for kidnapping, rape and murder with no law enforcement to save them.
Second, I wanted to make it known that when some of us are slaves, we all are. Destitute white men, minorities and women of all colors were treated as second class citizens because of that system of inequality.
Third, I wanted to acknowledge all the people who were adamantly opposed to slavery and fought against it at every turn. 400 years of Americans are blamed and villainized for what some people did. Though slavery was socially acceptable, not everyone agrees with 100% of what is socially acceptable. Disagreeing with social norms is what makes us individuals. Fighting against corrupt social norms is what makes us heroes. The people who stood against these heinous acts are rarely recognized, but without them our society would’ve failed to evolve.
Sarah is a slave that is targeted by a serial killer that murders with impunity. What were the driving ideals behind Sarah’s character development?
The driving force behind Sarah’s character development was the total lack thereof I have witnessed in similar stories. In many of the plantation novels I have read the slaves are faceless one-dimensional victims who serve as little more than background for white main characters. The female slave characters were poorly developed and served as little more than objects of lust incapable of inspiring true feelings of love and affection. Reading a plantation novel with no black main characters is like reading Memoirs of a Geisha with no geisha. These stories failed to capture my attention and I found the characters unrealistic and totally unrelatable. When I wrote a book I was determined to make sure there were black main characters as well as white ones, and that ALL of my characters have depth and unique personalities. I wanted Sarah’s character to have hopes, dreams, ambitions, drama and romantic conflicts of her own. I yearned to put a human face on a slave character, an aspect rarely seen in books of this nature. Though there have been many forbidden lust stories in this genre I wanted to give Sarah an against all odds forbidden love story readers wouldn’t soon forget.
What is the next book that you are working on and when will it be available?
Revelations: The Colburn Curse is a prequel to Book of Matthew that traces the Colburn family back to their beginnings in New Orleans, Louisiana. In this story Matt Colburn Sr. is a young plantation heir who has been given the duty of protecting an aristocrat named, Arial. He falls madly in love with the elusive heiress, but she is hiding a deadly secret that has made her the target of the Louisiana Strangler, a secret that endangers everyone she holds dear, especially Matt. This book is already available for purchase on amazon.com.
The Infinity series is based on the many star crossed lifetimes of Sarah and Matthew. I wrote this series for readers who enjoy historical suspense but prefer a tale with less violence and adult content. Three of the ten books are already available on amazon.com.
Book of Matthew II: Ancient Evil will be released December 2018.
Author Links: Barnes & Noble | BookBub | Website
![Book of Matthew: House of Whispers by [DuBois, Catalina]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/512Y5VFaJNL.jpg)
Women of color are not a priority of law enforcement in 1800’s Missouri. They are not even considered human. These social injustices allow a serial killer to run rampant. Sarah, a beautiful black slave, finds herself in the crosshairs of a monster who murders with impunity. The only one concerned with her plight is the master’s son. Will Matthew find the strength to rescue this slave girl, even if he lacks the courage to admit he’s in love with her…
It’s Jack the Ripper meets Roots in this pulse pounding historical thriller. House of Whispers packs the chills of a Stephen King book, the romance of a Nicholas Sparks novel and the in your face irony of an M. Night Shyamalan flic.
Buy on Barnes & Noble
Beyond Sun and Shadows
![Beyond Sun and Shadows by [Mooney, Lesley J]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51tnYjUK20L.jpg)
Lesley J. Mooney’s Beyond Sun and Shadows is another epic and sweeping tale from the author. Set in Western Australia on a sheep and cattle station in 1948, we follow the lives of a diverse set of characters who are faced with the harsh daily realities of living in the outback with all of its perils and wildness. After they learn of the escape of two dangerous prisoners and then a corpse is found by the local mailman, Ezrah, the community is thrown into turmoil. What ensues is a story of love, adventure and mystery in the Australian bush.
The books primary themes seem to be humankind’s connection to the land and the pioneering spirit of the Australian people, but there are also themes of love, ancestry and the masculine and the feminine. Although the story is set in the 1940’s/50’s, many of its concerns are modern so the book feels both historical and contemporary.
The thing that I loved most about this book was discovering some of the heritage of Australia, such as Aboriginal culture. Landscape plays an integral role in the story, and Mooney excels at writing environment and place–her prose is beautifully lyrical in these instances. Her descriptions of the vastness of the landscape and the tempestuous nature of the bush are particularly vivid and affecting. Not only does she invoke the wide open spaces of the outback, but she also conjures up the minutiae and ‘everyday’ aspects of life such as cooking, and working with the horses and cattle, in evocative detail.
Reading the book, I felt like I had been transported to a land completely foreign to me as the author writes with a very ‘Australian’ voice, but I felt immersed in the world in spite of being ignorant to it. Mooney’s dialogue feels natural. I really enjoyed her use of dialect and Australian phrases and idioms in the writing as well as the inclusion of songs and poetry. Writing dialect can be difficult to pull off, but I actually relished in the musical language of the characters, which added to the authenticity and overall tone of the narrative.
Mooney’s worlds are always fully formed and engaging throughout. She has created a troupe of memorable characters who stay etched in your memory; it is as though they have been living in the author’s mind forever ready to come alive on the page. Because the narrative encompasses so many characters and storylines, it can seem quite meandering at times, and I occasionally felt like I was reading a book of short stories rather than a novel. The book is quite lengthy, and I don’t think that it would have suffered for being a little shorter, but the yarn spun by the author kept me intrigued even whilst the pace was slightly lagging.
This is a rewarding read, full of intimate detail and stunning imagery which left me with a real yearning to visit the sprawling outback of Australia and experience it for myself.
Pages: 537 | ASIN: B072J3M6QV
LITERARY TITAN 