Book Title: Burton Blake by Robert Tucker
Category: Adult Fiction, 518 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Tell-Tale Publishing Group LLC / Wise Words Publishing
Release date: 1/06/2019
Synopsis
In this sequel to the well-received The Revolutionist, the American journey of three generations locks the neophyte company president, Burton Blake, in a vicious struggle with corporate intrigue, financial greed, and social corruption. Born to a taxi dancer at the beginning of the Second World War, Burton’s father, Elias Blake, never knows his natural father, who is killed in the South Pacific. He is raised by his mother and stepfather from her second marriage who makes his fortune during the post war real estate boom of the 50’s. Their untimely death by his business partner leaves the boy Elias in the guardianship of his mother’s best friend and her marine vet husband who introduces him to the macho culture of guns and hunting.
Elias’s youth is influenced by the adult world’s drive for personal material gain. Over the next decades, he expands his parents’ original real estate empire into the diversified multi-divisional, multi-national corporation that he leaves to his son, Burton. Upon his forced return from traveling and working with oppressed third world people, Burton learns increasingly more about the true nature of his deceased father as he undertakes the challenges of leading the company in a new direction.
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Interview
In the novel Burton Blake, you make a reference to The Cult of Wealth. How did you come up with this idea?
The idea is not new. The pursuit of wealth has been a driving force of societies and cultures for centuries. Wars are waged over it. Companies and political opponents compete with it. Every day in the news media, we read and hear about wealth and corruption often going hand in hand and being associated with power. Thousands of writers of books and film makers base their stories and scenarios on the concept.
Although first mentioned in Burton Blake, the concept pervades the dramatic conflicts and characters’ lives in The Revolutionist, as well, and is a prominent theme in both novels.
With all the books being published, what makes yours different?
The characters and their individual stories make the books unique. Most readers seek how writers work with and develop literary tropes in new and different ways, even within established genres. As with any of the fine and performing arts, writing today involves fresh variations on themes and ideas that may have been around for a long time. I see my role as an author is to provide readers with new perspectives that educate, as well as entertain.
How long have you been writing?
A long time, about fifty years, which provides me with a great foundation of life experience. I wrote my first story sketches for an elementary school newsletter when I was in fourth grade. I haven’t stopped writing since. I wrote my first publishable novel when I was a senior in college. That novel has now been contracted with my publisher. I’m working on my twentieth novel.
Do you write every day?
Every day is a writing day, even if ideas are whirling around in my head and have not yet been committed to written words. I often respond to what I call subconscious breakthroughs that become hastily scrawled notes that eventually grow into characters, dialogue, scenes, chapters, and entire books.
Have you ever written parts of your books on paper?
Before we had computers, I would write entire books on paper, then rewrite on an actual typewriter, first a Smith-Corona, then an IBM with the magical revolving ball. I thought technology could never get any better than that. What a surprise. I now compose on a MacBook Air and write only post-it notes.
Book Title: The Revolutionist by Robert Tucker
Category: Adult Fiction, 649 pages
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Tell-Tale Publishing Group LLC / Wise Words Publishing
Release date: 12/03/2017
Synopsis
Two different families escape from the political tyranny of their respective homelands, the Josephsons from Sweden and Matias and Kurt Bauman, brothers from Germany and Austria Hungary, with the aid of a Viennese opera diva, Sophie Augusta Rose, and Jean Guenoc, a former Jesuit priest, family friend and protector and partisan of the French underground. Their journey brings them to America in the throes of the industrial revolution during the 1890s and early 1900s.
Ingrid and Olaf Josephson settle on a small wheat farm in North Central Minnesota to raise their children, Newt and Julie. Among the Jewish entrepreneurs forced to leave Germany and Austria-Hungary, Matias and Kurt Bauman re-establish their transportation company in Chicago, Illinois. In search of a secret list of insurgent social democrats, the bounty hunter assassin, Luther Baggot, tracks his victims to the American heartland. Following the murder of their mother and father, Newt, Julie, and their friends, Aaron and Beth Peet, hide from the killer in a Northern Minnesota logging camp. Believing the children have taken possession of the list, Luther tracks them down and they are forced to flee again, this time to Chicago where a different world opens up to them as they are thrust into the turmoil and violence of an urban society and economy careening into the new century.
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About the Author
Robert is published by Tell-Tale Publishing Group LLC / Wise Words Publishing under a multi-book contract. The author of four previous earlier novels, Robert infuses his books with unique dynamic stories and characters that portray social and cultural conflicts of their time. His career encompasses many years as a business consultant that have given him access to a wide range of organizations and an appreciation for people in all areas of society. His life experience is reflected in the literary quality of his work. Born and raised in the Middle-West, he has traveled throughout the United States and abroad.
Now retired, he resides with his wife in Southern California where he devotes full-time to writing. Robert is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara with a Masters Degree in Communications at the University of California, Los Angeles where he received the Samuel Goldwyn and Donald Davis Literary Awards.
An affinity for family and the astute observation of generational interaction pervade his novels. His works are literary and genre upmarket fiction that address the nature and importance of personal integrity.
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Giveaway
Prizes: Win 1 of 4 ebook copies of both The Revolutionist and Burton Blake. One winner will also get a $30 Amazon GC (4 winners total / open to USA and Canada)
(ends July 5,2019)
