Welcome to the weekend - I'm delighted to have author Joseph M. Rinaldo in the house. We're talking about his latest release, A Mormon Massacre, so grab a cup of coffee, a mug of hot chocolate or your favorite tea - let's talk with Joe!
What’s
your favorite thing about being a writer/author? The freedom to be as creative as
written language allows.
What’s
your least favorite thing? Marketing the books I've published.
Do you
read the same genre that you write? Why or why not? I am proud to say that my books do NOT fall in a genre! When you read
one of my books, I refuse to guarantee a happy ending like you know is coming
in a Romance novel. The conclusion might be to your expectation, or not, or
somewhere in between.
When did
you first consider being a writer? While reading Three Weeks with
My Brother by Nicholas Sparks, I learned he received a million dollar advance.
I thought, "He's good, but I can do this." That was in 2004, and I've
been writing ever since. The confidence to do this came from my English teacher
in my freshman year of high school. For the short story we had to write, she
told the class that I was one of five people who wrote so well she could help
them with their stories. She was a tough teacher and never dispensed any
compliments unless they were true. At that moment I knew I could write, but
never thought much about it until 2004.
What do
you like to do when you’re not writing? As a family we enjoy boating. We have a
seventeen foot motor boat and being on a lake relaxes us. That's the thing we
love to do the most.
What’s
the inspiration behind your current release? Given these differing opinions I
had to write A Mormon Massacre: Approximately 150
Arkansas emigrants were shot at Meadows in Utah Territory from September 7th to
September 11th in 1857. Everyone agrees on the first sentence. Mormons, or
officially the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, claims that Indians
attacked and laid siege to the Arkansas emigrants. Historians, forensic
anthropologists, and everyone who has ever seen a Western movie would claim the
one absolutely indisputable fact would be that Indians did NOT attack these
people. No Indian tribe in North America in 1857 laid siege to anything.
Specifically, the Southern Piautes were most definitely non-warlike. The only
people capable of committing this attack would have been white settlers. At the
time, only Mormons inhabited this area as they ran off any non-Mormon whites
with intentions of settling there.
What’s
coming next for you as an author? I never tell anyone about what I haven't
released. Somewhere out there is the next big author who could take my idea and
finish it faster than I could. I don't want to give that person any help.
Are your
family and friends supportive? My goodness YES! Vivian, my wife, makes
this whole process easier. Someday, we'd love to own our own publishing house
full time.
What
other occupation do you have (or did have) in addition to writing? Or, in short, what’s your day job? By
day I work as a Financial/Credit Manager for a heating, ventilating, and air
conditioning distributor. We sell to the people that come to your house to fix
these things. At first I thought being a numbers guy in the literary world
would make me an oddity. That has not been the case; in fact, many of the
people I meet are related to the accounting side of business in some way.
Share a
memory that made it into some of your writing. In my novel A Spy At Home
Garrison starts a yard fire. I actually did that. Fire spreads pretty dang
fast! That event made me feel pretty stupid; I hope that same feeling comes
across in A Spy At Home.
Self-promotion
– love it or hate it? I don't work in sales and I H-A-T-E that
side of publishing. I really struggle with how I can convince people to read
one of my books. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Contact me through
www.josephmrinaldo.com. If someone has an idea on how to help sell my books,
I'll work out a deal with that person.
A MORMON MASSACRE, A Blurb:
This modern-day novel is informed by the actual
massacre of 150 innocent Americans allegedly by Mormon zealots in the Utah
Territory in September of 1857. This reigned as the largest mass slaughter of
Americans by Americans until the Oklahoma City bombing, excluding the Civil
War. In present-day Nashville, Tennessee, Jeremiah Cameron grows up with a
prejudice against the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the
murders in 1857. Many Camerons died at the hands of Mormon assassins at
Mountain Meadows.
Jeremiah’s hatred multiplies when his father, Luke,
informs him that his mother suffered abuse at the hands of her Mormon husband
after being forced into marriage at twelve years old. Due to his father’s
association with the Mormon Victim’s Action Committee, Jeremiah gets an
opportunity to go undercover in hopes of exposing Mormons as abusers. With his
father’s encouragement and the knowledge of his mother’s horrific experience,
Jeremiah accepts M-VAC’s offer to train and insert him into an LDS community.
Jeremiah’s objective broadens when he sees more than
he expected. Now he wants to expose the
entire Church as a violent and dangerous fraud.
A MORMON MASSACRE, An excerpt:
Facts
- On the
recommendation of local inhabitants the Fancher-Baker wagon train of
Arkansas emigrants camped at Mountain Meadows in the southern corner of
Utah Territory.
- On
September the 7th, 1857, the wagon train fell under attack. On September
the 11th, 1857, the attack ceased. None of the members of the
Fancher-Baker party survived with the exception of an indeterminate number
of children all less than eight years of age.
- Both
agents traveled through Mountain Meadows in accordance with my orders.
They found a pile of bodies and many more lying about the area. The
remains had been scattered, consumed, and torn to pieces due to the
activities of scavenging animals.
- The
vast majority of the deceased clearly died from bullet wounds to their
heads, which tells us that the assassins stood close to the victims. The
circumstances in this event would be wholly unique and unprecedented for
an Indian attack, based upon my conversation with Acting Commissioner
Charles E. Mix of the Bureau of Indian Affairs in particular respect to
the Paiute tribes' passivity and acceptance of white settlers.
- My
agents counted the mostly intact skulls, which totaled fifty. From what
they saw of partial skulls scattered about the Meadow, one agent suggested
the total amounted to a hundred or so dead. The other agent guaranteed the
number to be well over a hundred victims.
Buy
Links for A Mormon Massacre:
**********
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