HalSchweig

Middle Island, NY, -- Winner of major awards at the New York and Hollywood Book Festivals, The Strange Odyssey of Peter Sampson, by debut novelist Hal Schweig, has been published as a trade paperback.

Dr. Andrew Linick, president of New World Press, publisher of Strange Odyssey, said the book garnered a recent accolade from NewBookReviews.org, an online book review site, which proclaimed, “Hal Schweig is an exhilarating new talent. His bold leap into controversial subjects shows a bravery and confidence usually reserved for best selling authors, but his skill and talent make it look and feel he belongs in that group. Bravo! An extraordinary reading experience!”

Strange Odyssey tells the story of two anguished souls—Peter Sampson, a failed alcoholic professor, who has lost his faith, and Brett Parker, a hauntingly beautiful and mysteriously angelic fashion model, by her own admission, “sexually dead inside”—who meet and embark on an “otherworldly” odyssey that changes their lives and dramatically alters humanity’s understanding of life after death and the immortality of the soul.

The novel won the top award in the General Fiction category at the New York Book Festival and was accorded the top e-book (prior to its recent publication as a trade paperback) at the Hollywood Book Festival. It can be purchased for $15.95, plus shipping, from the author’s web site, www.halschweig.com, and is expected to be in stores before the end of the year.

RAVE REVIEWS

Hal Schweig is an exhilarating new talent. His bold leap into controversial subjects shows a bravery and confidence usually reserved for bestselling authors, but his skill and talent makes it look and feel like he belongs in that group. Bravo! An extraordinary reading experience.

Mark Reed, NewBookReviews.org

This book is a real page turner. The only author whose novels move as fast as this one is Dean Koontz.

Hal Dickens, Skokie Public Library, Skokie, Illinois.

About the Author...

Hal Schweig has written a number of short stories, one of which was published by the Ohio Journal, the literary quarterly of Ohio State University, and subsequently won the publication’s award as the best prose published in the Journal that year. He lives in the Chicago suburbs with his wife, Norma, and dog, Charlie. The Strange Odyssey of Peter Sampson is his first novel.

An Interview with Author Hal Schweig

Good books stay with you long after you’ve finished reading. Great ones inspire you to change the way you look at the world or yourself.

Interviewer: What got you started in writing? (What made you decide to become a writer?)

Schweig: From the time when I was a child, I liked making up stories, and finally, I started writing them down. I found I got great pleasure out of doing this. I also found that I had a natural affinity for writing, both fiction and all kinds of prose.

Interviewer: Who or what has had a major influence in your writing life?

Schweig: Many of the modern writers, although I can’t point to any one in particular.

Interviewer: What are some of the stories that have altered your views or changed your life?

Schweig: I can’t think of any stories that have literally changed my life, and everything I read, fiction and non-fiction, goes into the mix. I guess, that makes up my views.

Interviewer: What do you think sets you apart from other writers?

Schweig: I don’t know if anything sets me apart, except my writing is clear and easy to read, for the most part, at least my commercial fiction, which has been my conscious intent, so that the reader has an easy time of it.

Interviewer: What has had a major impact or influence in helping you create your own style? Who has most influenced your writing style?

Schweig: I did a stint as a news writer for a wire service and, at times I had to write the stories as fast as I could type, no time for embellishments. That was a big influence in developing my style.

Interviewer: How long have you been writing and do you write every day?

Schweig: As I said, I started writing in childhood, but no, I don’t write every day, unless I’m working on a particular story or novel at the time. However, I think it’s a good idea for a writer to write something every day.

Interviewer: What is the “ultimate” book on your current reading list and why?

Schweig: At the moment I’m reading a suspense/mystery titled, The Chemistry of Death, by Simon Beckett, which is far more than its genre would suggest. A very well written book.

Interviewer: What book has given you the most pleasure in the past year?

Schweig: A two-volume biography of Elvis Presley. I’m not a fan of rock and roll, but this is a truly fascinating human-interest story. He led one of the most unusual lives of the 20th Century.

Interviewer: What inspired you to write The Strange Odyssey of Peter Sampson?

Schweig: I had a very powerful dream, which I mention in a kind of preface to the book. This provided me with the answer I’d long sought about why, if there is a loving God, there is so much misery and cruelty in the world. A day or so after this dream, I began to feel I had a mission to write this book and, in a weird way, the writing just seemed to flow, as if – not to make it sound corny – it was being dictated by another source.

Interviewer: Do the themes come before the characters for you, and how did you bring the characters to life?

Schweig: In this case, the theme came first. But sometimes there isn’t a theme at all. In fact, a short story of mine published in a literary quarterly, which subsequently won an award from the quarterly as the best prose they published that year, actually began with a flash image in my mind, and I just started writing, having no idea where it was going.

Interviewer: Are your characters based on real people as told within a narrative structure?

Schweig: No, not in this book at least. But no one can live a number of years without picking up a zillion characteristics about a large variety of people, which, in my case, get blended into one character or another.

Interviewer: What is your writing process like?

Schweig: Initially, I write with a pen on yellow lined pads and then transcribe that into the computer. But after that it takes a lot of rewriting. I try not to polish anything in the beginning, knowing I might not even keep those pages in the final text. So I write without worrying about spelling or anything else. All the good technique is saved for the rewriting. Also, I’ve found, if I worry too much about the little things while I’m writing the first draft, it will inhibit the flow of the writing. As a famous writer once said, “You have to write something before you can write something good.” So I don’t worry if the initial draft is “good” or not. That’s for the rewriting and I mean as many drafts as it takes.

Interviewer: What, if any, research did you do to write this book and why?

Schweig: I did a great deal of research. A large segment of the book takes place in Greece, so my wife and I went to Greece. There I took pictures, sketched diagrams, took notes, etc. Every place in the book, not only in Greece, but all the locations where major scenes take place, I was there. I don’t know how else to make a location credible, unless your location is a fictional town you’ve invented. Besides this kind of research, I spent time with a pediatric oncologist, because one of the characters is stricken with leukemia. And I talked to other people, read books, etc.

Interviewer: How long did it take you to write The Strange Odyssey of Peter Sampson?

Schweig: Ten years. I won’t say I worked like a dog every day of those 10 years, but most of the time. At the time, I had two kids at home, a wife, a dog, a house and a full-time job, so I had to squeeze the writing into the cracks and crevices of a daily life.

Interviewer: What methods do you use to keep the critic in your head quiet when writing?

Schweig: As I’ve already mentioned, I don’t worry about it while in the early stages of the writing. After the first draft of this book, I was depressed, because it just didn’t move me. So I had to find a way to make it better, which, over time, I did. It’s a wonderful feeling to transform something that is dead on the page into something that really is alive. In a few scenes in this book, tears will come to the readers’ eyes.

Interviewer: Have you ever suffered through writer’s block and, if so, how did you handle it?

Schweig: The way to handle it is to just write something, even if it’s absolutely no good, or even meaningless; just put words on paper. After something appears on the page, no matter how bad, you can start to fiddle with it, and, usually, lo and behold, something is coming to life. If it doesn’t, then its best to go onto to something else.

Interviewer: What do you most want to say to other first time authors/novelists?

Schweig: This is probably cliché, but I’d say keep at it, as long as it is more or less fulfilling. I’d also say don’t take rejections from editors too seriously, if you believe in what you have written. That doesn’t mean editors are always wrong. But enough bestsellers have been rejected by many publishers, including the Harry Potter series of books, The Godfather, and on and on, to make it clear that publishers don’t always know what they are doing. It is just so subjective. Of course, you can’t just keep sending out the one work over and over. Keep writing other works, if you can.

Interviewer: You write about the continuation of life after death and how people should not fear the afterlife. How is this timely in light of today’s world events?

Schweig: Its been timely, in my opinion, since the dawn of the human race. But in past centuries, religion held a greater power over people and there was less questioning of religious beliefs. Today there is more doubt.

Interviewer: Your position about immortality is provocative to say the least and is certain to stir up controversy, just as Dan Brown’s book, The Da Vinci Code, did. Are you prepared for this and how will you respond to detractors?

Schweig: I’ll have to see when they start detracting. All I can say, however, is this is what I believe. No one can really say for sure what happens after death. What I believe, and what I state in the book, is the idea that God has nothing to do with what happens here on earth, but grants immortality to everyone. This at least makes more sense to me than the idea that a loving God could wreak all of the terrible tragedies on us that we see happening every day.

Interviewer: What is the one most important message in your book?

Schweig: Live life the way you want to, without worrying about rewards or punishments in the afterlife. That, of course, is not a license to live immorally.

Interviewer: What is the one most compelling reason for people to read your book?

Schweig: It has larger-than-life characters, whom I believe will appeal to readers, and a unique story that is far from predictable, but continues to surprise.

Interviewer: What do you want readers to take away with them after reading The Strange Odyssey of Peter Sampson?

Schweig: I hope it makes readers think about these things; I hope it gives them a new point of reference on these age-old questions.

Interviewer: What writer, living or dead, would you most like to have a conversation with and why?

Schweig: Abraham Lincoln. One of the most fascinating characters in human history.

Interviewer: What do you believe in most?

Schweig: Don’t accept anything hook, line and sinker. Keep an open mind, keep being skeptical, keep thinking for yourself, and take with a grain of salt anything the authorities tell you, whether it is your doctor, lawyer, merchant chief, or your president.

Interviewer: How would you best like to be remembered?

Schweig: As a writer who entertained people and made them think, as well.

Interviewer: What do you do for relaxation?

Schweig: Read, read, read.

Interviewer: What writing project are you working on now?

Schweig: Some short stories.

Media Coverage

The Strange Odyssey of Peter Sampson

Breitbart.com
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Syracuse.com
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Miami Today
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PR-Inside.com
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Austin American-Statesman
http://tinyurl.com/2b74ww

KTVO-TV 3
http://www.ktvotv3.com/Global/story.asp?S=6218547

New Book Reviews

http://www.newbookreviews.org/Book_Reviews/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=1_28&products_id=194

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