An avid student of history, Carole Eglash-Kosoff is a native of Wisconsin. After graduating from UCLA, she spent her career in the apparel industry and teaching fashion retail, marketing, and sales at the college level. Her first book is The Human Spirit. She has also established the …a better way! Scholarship program, which provides money and mentoring for worthy high school students for both their first and second year of college. Carole Eglash-Kosoff lives and writes in Valley Village, California.
Her latest book is When Stars Align.
You can visit her website at www.whenstarsalign-thebook.com or connect with her at Facebook at www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=553077163.
I live and write in Valley Village, California. I graduated from UCLA and spent my career in business, teaching, and traveling, visiting more than seventy countries. When my husband died I volunteered and taught in the Black townships of South Africa for part of two years. This resulted in my first book, The Human Spirit – Apartheid’s Unheralded Heroes (www.thehumanspirit-thebook.com).
An avid student of history, I researched the decades preceding and following the Civil War for nearly two years, including time in Louisiana, the setting for When Stars Align. It is a story of bi-racial love. It is a story of war, reconstruction, and racism, but most of all, it is a story of hope. (www.whenstarsalign-thebook.com)
Q: It’s rare today to find an author who does nothing but write for a living. Do you have a day job other than writing, and if so, what is it? What are some other jobs you’ve had in your life? Have they influenced/inspired your writing?
A: I still maintain an active financial consulting and tax practice of nearly 200 clients. I have also established a small scholarship program for graduating high school seniors.
Q: What compelled you to write your first book?
A: Meeting amazing men and women who toiled during the worst years of apartheid in South Africa to provide services for the country’s most disadvantaged. Their stories yielded my first book.
Q: Have you always wanted to be a writer?
A: Yes. I wrote a great deal before I met my husband but I didn’t pursue it during the 20+ years we were together. I’ve now returned to that passion.
Q: Tell us briefly about your book.
A: The love that Thaddeus and Amy feel for one another can get them both killed. He is colored, an ex-slave, and she is white. In 19th century Louisiana mixed race relationships are both illegal and unacceptable.
Moss Grove, a large Mississippi River cotton plantation has thrived from the use of slave labor while its owners lived lives of comfort and privilege. Thaddeus, born more than a decade earlier from the rape of a young field slave by the heir to the plantation, is raised as a Moss Grove house servant.
Deepening divisiveness between North and South launches the Civil War and changes Moss Grove in ways no one could have anticipated. With the war swirling we see the battles and carnage through Thaddeus’ eyes. The war ends and he returns to Moss Grove and to Amy, hoping to enjoy their newly won freedoms. With the help of Union soldiers, schools are established to educate those who were formerly prohibited from learning to read. Medical clinics are opened and businesses begun. Black legislators are elected and help to pass new laws. Hope flourishes. Perhaps the stars will now finally align for the young lovers.
In 1876, however, the ex-Confederate states barter the selection of President Rutherford B. Hayes for removal of all Union troops from their soil in the most contested election in American history. Within a decade hopes are dashed as Jim Crow laws are passed, the Ku Klux Klan launches new violence, and black progress is crushed.
Q: What are you working on at the moment?
A: The sequel, Winds of Change, that takes my characters through WWI.
Q: Do you have a favourite character? Why is s/he your favourite?
A: Thaddeus….his struggles, his strength of character and his tenderness
Q: How did you feel the day you held the copy of your first book in your hands?
A: It was electric.
Q: What type of music, if any, do you listen to while you write? Do you need the noise or the silence?
A: A variety of music through Pandora…classic, jazz, Broadway
Q: How do you balance out the writer’s life and the rest of life? Do you get up early? Stay up late? Ignore friends and family for certain periods of time?
A: I get up early and write but at various times through the day I also find myself working through plot problems. I always find time for tennis, bridge, and friends.
Q: The main characters of your stories – do you find that you put a little of yourself into each of them or do you create them to be completely different from you?
A: Definitely…both the male and female characters. It gets a little complicated when describing a sexual moment, however.
Q: When growing up, did you have a favorite author, book series, or book?
A: Thomas Costain, Frank Yerby, Leon Uris and other historic fiction writers.
Q: What is your writing space like? Do you have a designated space? What does it look like? On the couch, laptop, desk? Music? Lighting? Typing? Handwriting?
A: I have a comfortable well-lit office where my dogs keep me company.
Q: In my experience, some things come quite easily (like creating the setting) and other things aren’t so easy (like deciding on a title). What comes easily to you and what do you find more difficult?
A: I find creating bad characters difficult…I always want to give them some reason or redeeming feature.
Q: Have you ever had a character take over a story and move it in a different direction than you had originally intended? How did you handle it?
A: Yes….I created Melanie, a lovely person and New Orleans prostitute who I wanted to connect to Thaddeus, the book’s main character. As I was writing, however, Thaddeus’ friend, Rufus, took over the story and Melanie…I was writing but they were directing the story.
Q: Do you have any book signings, tours or special events planned to promote your book that readers might be interested in attending? If so, when and where?
A: Barnes and Noble, Long Beach, July 23-24. Black Book Expo, Aug 20, LA Convention Ctr
Q: Now that you are a published author, does it feel differently than you had imagined?
A: Yes…promoting it is hard work.
Use this space to tell us more about who you. Anything you want your readers to know. Include information on where to find your books, any blogs you may have, or how a reader can learn more about you and writing.
I’m happy to discuss my work with readers. I can be reached through my email: ceglash@aol.com or through either of the two book websites shown above. I also am available to lecture on either subject, Apartheid Era in South Africa, or Reconstruction: A Decade of Summer, A Century of Winter. I have given such lectures as UCLA, various Kiwanis Clubs, etc.
