Today we get to have a visit with Creston Mapes, author of the Rock Star Chronicles. His books, Dark Star and Full Tilt, are currently touring so look for them on the internet.
Thank you for joining us today, Mr. Mapes. Here are our questions:
What brought you to write The Rock Star Chronicles?
I bought my first rock album for $2 from my older brother when I was about 13, and from then on, rock n roll had a huge impact on my life. As a youth I was fascinated with rock stars, their wealth, influence, and music. In many ways, like many kids, I used rock music to express the many emotions I experienced while growing up, from love and hate to fear, rebellion, uncertainty, and hopes and dreams for the future.
After having made a living as a marketing freelance writer for many years, my freelance business slowed and I felt God prompting me to try my hand at writing fiction. Having become a Christian as a 28-year-old after many years of walking in rebellion—including extensive experience with alcohol and drugs–I sat down at the computer and pretended I was a mega-rock star, writing my memoirs.
The main character in Dark Star is Everett Lester, bad-boy lead singer for the mega-popular rock group, Deathstroke. After every attempt to find peace, contentment and satisfaction in his music, stardom, money, materialism and drugs, Everett finally turns to a personal psychic, Madam Endora Crystal, for solace. When Endora turns up murdered, Everett is charged with the crime.
Meanwhile, Karen Bayliss, a teenage girl from Topeka, KS, is led to pray for Everett, and even to reach out to him with the love of Christ by sending letters and gifts.
The story ratchets back and forth from Everett’s past to present circumstances. It is the type of high-speed thriller, with a spiritual premise, that I enjoy reading as a fiction lover. The original working title was, “The Memoirs of Everett Lester.”
Many of the book clubs where I go to speak, the ladies say things like, “I would never have picked up Dark Star in the book store, because of the cover…” I think visually it comes off as a bit dark, however, virtually everyone who reads Dark Star, and its sequel, Full Tilt, love the books and tell us they were touched by the stories.
We have heard from hundreds of people who’ve read and passed on the books to inmates, drug addicts, troubled teens, and the like. God gets all the credit as I try to use the gifts he’s given me to draw others closer to him.
How did you come up with the idea for Full Tilt, the sequel to Dark Star?
After Everett Lester’s life is changed by Karen Bayliss and God, he turns over a new leaf with the desire to touch the world for Christ with his music, but that journey is not going to be without trial. What would such a journey be like, in real life? Everett is still tempted by many things, plus, like it or not, he still carries baggage from his former way of life, including a meth-addicted nephew who is out for revenge and a brother who is steeped a dangerous life of organized crime, which threatens to ruin Everett.
My editor on this book, Julee Schwarzburg, really stretched me, encouraging me not to make this some unbelievable, preachy fantasy and just another sequel. She challenged me to make Everett deal with some of the remnants and results of the sins of his past, as well as the trials and temptations he would most certainly face in his new life.
Did you always know you wanted to be a writer? If not, how did you catch the writing bug?
Yes. I had a printing press as a kid and wrote and printed a neighborhood newspaper. An average student, I always did best on essay questions, where I could allow my creativity to make up for my lack of knowledge! I majored in magazine journalism in college and dreamed of being a feature writer for Sports Illustrated and Rolling Stone. I lived that out to some extent in Dark Star, where a writer for Rolling Stone interviews Everett Lester for one of its cover stories!
Thank you for joining us today on A Good Day To Read!
{ 1 trackback }