Rami Ungar The Writer

Hello, and welcome back to another interview. I’m so glad I’m able to spotlight so many different authors lately. Really livens things up a bit, and it’s a great way to connect with new friends and new readers. And today’s interview is with a new acquaintance whom I met through the Horror Writers Association. She’s a writer, editor, and she’s hear to talk about her work.

Please welcome KG Finfrock.

Rami Ungar: Welcome KG. Tell us about yourself and your novel House of Redemption.

KG Finfrock: I love to listen to people’s stories. I had a friend in high school who was a pathological liar and I didn’t care. I loved to hear the stories she would weave as truth. I love to get people to open up about what’s going in their lives and where they’ve gone. Being a homebody, I’m happy to live vicariously through their experiences and yes it’s true. Anything and everything you say to me may end up in a story.

House of Redemption is about eight strangers who come to Blackstone Resort, a large luxurious plantation house in the middle of nowhere. After a lovely evening of good food, drinks, and music, the guests discover they cannot leave the house. All the doors and windows are sealed shut. As they try to find an escape, they each meet the ghosts of the people they have harmed. There is no escape for the guests until they repent their evil ways.

RU: It sounds like an interesting idea. How did you come up with it and what was it like writing it?

KGF: One of my favorite films is Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians. I play the DVD repeatedly as my comfort background noise. I was attracted to the large house. The idea of the whole island to your self is heavenly and I realized, when I wrote Good Thoughts for Bubble Off-Plumb, I like the concept of people not being able to escape punishment for bringing harm to others.

There are eight characters in House of Redemption and I began by writing each person’s situation and how they ended up at Blackstone. I then realized one quarter of the book was all backstory and it was several pages in before the real story began. I had to cut it all out and, that was all right, as I had a firm grasp on who they and what kind of person they were. The story begins with the arrival of the guests, as it should. As a bonus, I included the characters stories at the end of the novel.

RU: You’ve also been involved as an editor for the collection Good Thoughts for Bubble Off-Plumb and put together The Daily Ten-Minute Writing Prompt (Volume I). How did those projects come about?

KGF: I believe being offered the position of editor for Bubble Off-Plumb was the result of good networking and being in the right place at the right time.  And I would like to add, it was a blast working with the other authors. Some stories in the anthology still stick with me. I also learned something about my own writing in my story contribution Good Thoughts. I realized I write about the bad guys getting their comeuppance which is probably why I enjoy House of Redemption so much.

I host a monthly writer’s group with small selected membership. The Daily Ten-Minute Prompt came about when I saw how much fun the members in my writer’s group had when I set the timer and gave them a sentence. They had ten minutes to write and in some part of their story, the sentence had to be in the story. I saw what fantastic stories could be written in only ten minutes. Even as a first draft, they were great. There were moments of hysterical laughter (because the story was funny) and moments of stunned surprise.  Since I had been posting a daily writing prompt on my blog for three years, I figured I might as well put them all together and publish them in a few books.

RU: What are you working on now?

KGF: I’m working on a sequel to House of Redemption, I have two more volumes of the ten-minute writing prompts, and I have a ghost story on the back burner which is more on the side of a cozy murder mystery that happens to include a ghost living with the main character.

RU: When it comes to writing, do you have a routine or a process?

KGF: I need a routine, and I keep trying to stick to a routine, but life events constantly interrupt and thus I have not been as productive as I should be. I’m hoping that will change when the youngest child in my family starts school full time later this year.  As far as process goes, I’m off to a good start as soon as I put fingers on the keyboard and I just go with the flow.

RU: Is there any kind of story you’re particularly drawn to, as a reader and a writer?

KGF: I like mythical monsters, beasts, and a bit of the paranormal.  I like reading about large houses and places I’ve never been.  I admire Fredrik Bachman’s style of writing where he brings the community together and is able to show the faces behind the masks.

RU: What advice would you give other writers, no matter the background or experience?

KGF: Put your butt in the chair and just start to write. It can be done if you make it a priority, a must do, but it won’t be accomplished without you actually writing.

RU: And finally, if you had to go to a desert island for a while and could only bring three books with you, which would you bring?

KGF: I would pick the three that are on my table waiting to be read. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah (a book my sister gave me) Kill Creek by Scott Thomas (May’s book-club selection) and Parasite Life by Victoria Dalpe, a book I chose supporting women horror writers (and the synopsis caught my attention).

RU: You’re going to love Kill Creek. It’s my current favorite. Thanks for joining us, KG. I hope you join us again soon.

If you’d be interested in reading House of Redemption, you can get it from Amazon. And if you’d like to find out more about our guest today, you can find her on her very own WordPress blog, as well as on Twitter and Instagram.

If you would like to see some more of the conversations I’ve had with various authors, head over to my Interviews page. And if you yourself are an author with something coming out you’d like to promote, then send me an email at ramiungar@ramiungarthewriter.com with the subject line “Author Interview” and we’ll see if we can’t make some magic happen.

That’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. Until next time, pleasant nightmares!