AuthorViews Video Podcast

AuthorViews is proud to bring you two minutes with Gary Thomas in which we talk about his contribution to the Pelican Press book Louisiana In Words. We had the privilege of catching up with Mr. Thomas at the 2008 Tennessee Williams Literary Festival in New Orleans where he shared with us some truly explosive fishing stories and more. Take a quick foray into the wilds of Louisiana with Mr. Thomas at the helm.

AuthorViews is excited to bring you the latest in our ongoing series of two-minute interviews with authors around the world. In this installment, we get the privilege of hearing from Betsy Carter, the founder of the award-winning magazine New York Woman. A former writer for publications such as Esquire and Newsweek, she continues to write for a variety of national magazines. This is far from Ms. Carter's first foray into the land of book-length writing. Her memoir Nothing to Fall Back On was a best seller and her fiction debut, The Orange Blossom Special, was part of NPR's Summer Reading 2005 program. The conversation we had with her at Tess Fest 2008 was about her newest novel Swim To Me, a book praised by numerous reviewers. Joanne Wilkinson of BookList says, "In her warm, appealing second novel, Carter displays a sure feel for her 1970s Florida setting, right down to the aqua color schemes." Publisher's Weekly says of her work, "The results are sensationalist, predictable and satisfying." Get your feet wet with us as we join Betsy Carter on a romp that takes us from the Bronx to Weeki Wachee Springs in Tampa, Florida!

AuthorViews is proud to present two minutes with the legendary GiO! We had the honor of catching up to this New Orleans icon during the 2007 Tennessee Williams Festival right here in the Crescent City. In this brief 120 seconds, GiO talks about her time on Bourbon Street as well as her contribution to Louisiana in Words. GiO came to perform in New Orleans during the 1988 Republican Convention and got hooked on the architecture and feeling of decay exuded by the city. With ten years of dancing behind her and degree from New York's Pratt Institute, she moved to New Orleans possessed of a vision. A vision of re-igniting the fires of classical burlesque and bringing it acknowledgement as a legitimate art form. Dubbed "The Burlesque Queen of New Orleans" by The Times-Picayune, she reigned on Bourbon Street for seventeen years. This highly educated woman has also been a radio host, poet, performance artist, and much, much more since the day she came to New Orleans and discovered that it was her home. Eloquent, playful, and lovely to behold, even with only two minutes, GiO is not one to miss!

Ladies and Gentlemen, AuthorViews is proud to announce two minutes with Pamela Davis-Noland. It's an intimate video chat that we performed at the 2008 Alternative Media Expo in New Orleans, in which she spoke about her debut novel, Coffee Colored Dreams. Ms. Davis-Noland deserves points for persistence. If she had crumbled when her first promised book deal fell through, then theater goers would have been deprived of a powerful stage presentation. That's right, after pursuing the tricky route of self publication Ms. Davis-Noland has brought her story to the stage where it is garnering rave reviews. Take two minutes and get to know this rising star!

AuthorViews is proud to present two minutes with Vicki Lane, author of The Elizabeth Goodweather Appalachian Mysteries. We had the pleasure of catching up to Mrs. Lane at the 2007 Virginia Festival of the Book where she speaks about Old Wounds, her most recent book in the series, as well as her own personal background. Originally from Florida, Mrs. Lane has lived in Appalachia for more than thirty years now. Describing her past as that of a "back to the earth hippie," she keeps her books rooted in the realities of daily life in the mountains outside of Asheville, NC. She takes particular pride in the fact that she is often told that she got the dialect of the area right. Step into the mountains with Vicki Lane and you will never look at them the same way again!

AuthorViews is pleased to introduce R. Scott Taylor, author of the supernatural crime thriller Stingy Jack. We had the pleasure of meeting with Mr. Taylor in New Orleans at the 2008 Alternative Media Expo to talk about his book and the Irish Ghost, Jack O'Keefe (no relation to Steve) that is one of its main characters. Because of O'Keefe's actions during his life, heaven did not want him. Having tricked the Devil twice during his life made hell equally inaccessible. Now Jack O'Keefe, a modern spin on the classic Jack O'Lantern myth, must roam the Earth in penance. It is through his eyes that 17th century Ireland is brought to the readers in the context of stories told to professional thief Adam Beesler.

AuthorViews is thrilled to introduce Scott Gold, author of the juicy and succulent meat guide book, The Shameless Carnivore: A Manifesto for Meat Lovers. We met up with Gold at the 2008 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival to talk about his gourmet debut, as well as the research, interviews and shocking taste-tests that make the book so informative, comprehensive and fun. The Shameless Carnivore is NOT an anti-vegetarian outcry for people to kill and consume animals recklessly. Rather, it's a thoughtful, humorous and research-driven exploration of the "integrity of meat," complete with personal accounts of Gold's experiences with different types of meat, the history of hunting and meat-eating, meat recipes and more. Was Scott Gold involved in an outrageous Vegan Conspiracy? If The Shameless Carnivore were a cut of meat, what kind of cut would it be? Find out now in this mouth-watering two-minute video. After the clip, if you're still hungry for a second helping, feel free to check out an excerpt from the book at the Random House website. Bon Appetit!

AuthorViews is proud to present two minutes with New Orleans-born author Alice Wilson-Fried, cut from her interview at the 2008 Alternative Media Expo in New Orleans. We met up with Wilson-Fried to discuss her fiction debut, Outside Child, a wonderfully written and believable mystery set in New Orleans. The main characters, Ladonis Washington and her brother HeartTrouble, grow up in the notorious Magnolia Housing Projects of Uptown New Orleans -- where Wilson-Fried lived for most of her childhood. Built in 1941, at its height, the Magnolia Projects housed more than 2000 people in over 1400 apartments. But by the time Hurricane Katrina flooded the area in August 2005, the Magnolia Projects were almost completely vacant. Now, almost 3 years after the storm, the city has begun to demolish the abandoned ruins. For the past couple of decades, the Magnolia Projects were known throughout the entire country for their insanely high violent-crime and drug-use rates. According to Wilson-Fried, however, the projects weren't always like that. In this video, Wilson-Fried talks about what the Magnolia Housing Projects were like when she was a child, before gangs, drugs and violence plagued the community. In Outside Child, Wilson-Fried takes the reader through a seemingly neglected period of New Orleans history. If you like the video, feel free to check out an excerpt from the book at Wilson-Fried's website.

AuthorViews would like to introduce cartoonist Caesar Meadows, creator of the comic strip Mumbeaux Gumbo, which appears monthly in the New Orleans magazine Where Y'at. Growing up in New Orleans, Meadows would buy his comic books at local K&B Drug Stores, which were bought out by Rite Aid in the late 1990s. He spent a great deal of his childhood enjoying comics and ultimately taught himself how to illustrate and write his own cartoons. In addition to Mumbeaux Gumbo, Meadows has another strip called Qomix published by Antigravity Magazine. Meadows self-publishes both strips as micro-comics -- miniature versions small enough to fit in your pocket -- and sells them in hand-made cardboard packages shaped like pyramids, robots, TV sets and microbuses. Meadows does most of his work out of Jigsaw Junction, a quaint house in Reserve, LA, that serves as both his own personal art studio and one of Louisiana's only public libraries for comics. In this video, Meadows discusses the role comics played in his childhood and why he chose to name his strip Mumbeaux Gumbo.

AuthorViews is pleased to present two minutes with author Edward J. Branley, cut from his interview at the 2007 New Orleans Book Fair. Computer consultant and avid blogger, Branley is all over the New Orleans online community -- and has been for over a decade. Whether it's food, news, politics, music or computers in the Crescent City, you'll have no trouble finding Branley's thoughts on the subject. He runs numerous NOLA websites and blogs, including the extremely popular YatPundit, a general interest blog about New Orleans. From YatPundit, you can find links to Branley's other work. In addition, Branley has been researching the New Orleans streetcar for years. He is the President of the New Orleans Street Railway Association (NOSRA) and runs the website and blog CanalStreetcar.com as well. In this video, Branley talks about his book, New Orleans: The Canal Streetcar Line, and explains why this line of public transportation in particular is so important to New Orleans.

AuthorViews would like to introduce mad scientist Dr. Milo Pinkerton III, a.k.a Lewis D'Aubin, founder and lead vocalist of The Consortium of Genius (COG). The COG is half rock band, half sketch comedy routine with an array of funny and sinister characters. They perform all over New Orleans and have even made several TV appearances. You can check out some of the COG's sketches, music videos and the television series, COG TV, on their YouTube Channel. We met up with Dr. Pinkerton at the 2008 Alternative Media Expo in New Orleans -- not so much to talk about the band, its accomplishments or its upcoming shows; but rather to discuss Dr. Pinkerton's ambitious goal of TAKING OVER THE WORLD. This is without a doubt the least educational video AuthorViews has ever released. It has no value whatsoever and will not enlighten you in the least about the COG or Dr. Pinkerton's musical talents. But that's okay because it's fun to watch and you can find out anything you want to know about the band, including upcoming "lectures," bios, lyrics, pictures, videos and reviews, at the COG's EVIL website, www.consortiumofgenius.com.

AuthorViews is proud to present two minutes with writer, musician, artists and Katrina survivor Michael C. Bevis, cut from his poignant interview at the 2008 Alternative Media Expo in New Orleans. Bevis' debut book, And God Looked Away: A Katrina Journal, is a graphic and vivid personal account of the traumatic experiences that Bevis and his girlfriend endured and witnessed while riding out the most destructive natural disaster in American history. But as Bevis discusses in the video, it wasn't the storm itself that did most of the damage. Levee failure, subsequent flooding and the pitifully slow governmental response were what really did New Orleans in.

AuthorViews is pleased to introduce Emmy-winning actress and author Louise Shaffer. AuthorViews interviewed Shaffer at the 2007 Tennessee Williams Festival in New Orleans about her most recent novel, The Ladies of Garrison Gardens, the sequel to her debut novel, The Three Miss Margarets. The Ladies of Garrison Gardens is a page-turning mystery about friendships, secrets and fortune in a small southern town. In this video, Shaffer talks about how her training as an actress influenced her ability to create realistic characters that readers can't help but believe.

AuthorViews is pleased to present two minutes with young adult fiction author Paula Chase-Hyman, cut from her interview at the 2007 Virginia Festival of the Book. Chase-Hyman met up with AuthorViews to discuss So Not the Drama, the first novel in her Del Rio Bay Clique series. So Not the Drama is a funny and meaningful story about friendships, name-calling and the pursuit of popularity in high school. What makes this novel different than your typical high school story, however, is its incorporation of ethnic and cultural diversity. Finally, a teen book in which not all the characters are white! There are now two more Del Rio Bay Clique novels available, as well: Don't Get It twisted and That's What's Up. In this video, Chase-Hyman talks about So Not the Drama, and her inspiration to write stories for teens that embrace -- rather than ignore -- diversity.

AuthorViews would like to introduce the lovely Shelley Lynn Jackson, New Orleans bike mechanic and co-author of The Chainbreaker Bike Book: A Rough Guide to Bicycle Maintenance. We interviewed Jackson at the 2007 New Orleans Book Fair, right after we interviewed her co-author Ethan Clark. The Chainbreaker Bike Book is part repair guide and part zine -- an interesting read for bike enthusiasts and would-be mechanics. In this video, Jackson talks about The Chainbreaker Bike Book and her experiences as a female bike mechanic.