DENISE: I have a problem with your website, I can't get off of it because I enjoy listening to the wonderful selections you've included. Tell us about your love for music and what we might hear when being invited to your home.

AARON: I grew up in rural New England, surrounded by music, art, literature, gardens, bountiful family feasts, and a host of animals. My father was a classical music professor with a passion for French composers. I inherited my fascination for Chopin from him and would frequently wake up in the morning to the sound of Dad playing the piano directly beneath my bedroom. The strains of mazurkas, nocturnes, and especially the waltzes were balm for my soul.  Dad was also passionate about Beethoven, Ravel, Debussy, Saint-Saens, Scott Joplin, and many other composers.

I grew up in the sixties, so there's a part of me that also loves music from that era. The Doors, Beatles, Stones, Jeff Beck, Led Zeppelin, etc. were my favorites. I also enjoy folk music and the blues.

If you visited our house you'd probably first hear the music from Thomas the Train! My two grandsons, Julian (3) and Gordon (2) live with us. But, if the boys were asleep and my daughter, Melanie, was home, you'd hear her singing an aria from Puccini or Mozart. If you could hear what's piped into my headphones while I work, it would be anything from Marcelo Alvarez (my favorite new tenor) singing in La Boheme, to Pine Tree Perkins playing a wicked blues piano. I also love musicals (gasp, yes, I'm admitting it!) My daughter, Melanie, was in all the shows in high school and I fell in love with them, from Annie to Quilters.

Opera does play a huge part in my life - which probably explains why my nightingale, Melanie, hopes to sing on the stage of the Met someday. I bombarded all three daughters with music from all of the above sources. They all played piano, French horn, trumpet, or violin at some point in their careers. Allison, Melanie's twin, loves the sixties stuff like I do.  It's so funny when I see her listening to my favorite albums.  Jennifer, mother of my two toddler grandsons, was in the band in high school and led the children's choir in church when she was very young.  I’m so proud of all of them.

One of the most moving experiences of my life involved the final performance by Luciano Pavarotti at the Met a few years ago. He performed in Tosca, one of my all time favorites. Each time he'd reach one of the soul-wrenchingly beautiful arias, I broke down. The tears ran down my face and I was deeply touched. It's embarrassing to admit, but it's true! The emotion came from two sources - first, for the end of an era: a great tenor who'd never sing in the States again; secondly, for the pure beauty of the music. It kills me. It's just gorgeous. 


DENISE: Gotta Write has just learned about you. We have a lot of catching up to do regarding The LeGarde Mysteries. Let's start from the beginning, tell us about your "cast of genuine, unforgettable characters," what setting might we find them residing in and what "unique predicaments" are they experiencing. And yes, we have all day.

AARON: My cast resides in a parallel universe that I assiduously tend. The setting is primarily in the towns of East Goodland and Conaroga, N.Y.  These fictional towns are based on Groveland, NY and the nearby historic college town of Geneseo. It's about an hour south of Rochester, NY, just west of Conesus Lake, the western-most Finger Lake.  Surrounded by gorgeous rolling hills and lakes, the area abounds with dairy farms, bountiful crops, orchards, forests, and antique homes. 

I hover over my characters like a worried parent in my waking and sleeping hours. They are my second "family," and I have a great affinity for them. Each character has a detailed back-story, some of which have actually been transformed into books.

Gus LeGarde, my protagonist, refers to himself as a "hopeless romantic, a wistful Renaissance man caught in the twenty-first century." No stranger to passion or heartache, Gus lavishes love on his family and dog as he mourns the loss of his lifetime soulmate, Elsbeth. He teaches music at Conaroga University, imparting the love of the classics to his young students. He is passionate about French Impressionist painters, nature photography, and gardening.  He spends hours cooking lavish gourmet meals for his family and friends. He drives an old Volvo sedan, plays Chopin etudes to clear his mind and feed his soul, and has an impeccable inner moral compass.

Gus was created to honor my father, who died shortly before I began the series. He lives in fictional East Goodland, N.Y. in a rambling 1811 farmhouse that overlooks the Genesee Valley. He is the head of a large and varied household, including his daughter, grandchildren, brother-in-law, housekeeper, and a menagerie of animals. Gus's predicaments are often two fold, and involve both family and nasty villains. As Double Forté opens, he despairs over the loss of his wife and soul mate, Elsbeth. In this book he meets and, to his great dismay, falls hard for Camille Coté. Bewildered by these unexpected feelings, he suffers through most of the book with a case of unrequited love. Meanwhile, his heroic nature gets him in trouble. He discovers and rescues a kidnapped mute child, unleashing the fury of the beast who abducted her and killed her mother.

Camille Coté is a spirited, vivacious woman whose heart aches for the lost children of Upstate New York. In her capacity of social worker and therapist, she defends unwanted children and lavishes them with all of her love. She adores animals, theater, international cooking, and child psychology, and within these activities she very successfully hides from the traumas of her past. Divorced for five years from her abusive husband Greg, Camille faces the world with a bright smile, yet still harbors deep wounds. Maddy, Gus's secretary, introduces Camille to him in Double Forté. Camille has long, mahogany-colored curls and luminous chestnut eyes. She joins Gus in the quest to help the young mute child recover her voice and to keep her from the animal who seeks to reclaim her.

Okay, I'm going to admit this. Siegfried, Elsbeth’s twin, is my favorite character. He is a true gentle-giant, whose child-like soul encourages solid friendships with men and mothering instincts in women. Bob Williams, a reviewer for CompulsiveReader.com, calls Siegfried, "a man of true splendor - simple, true and fearless." Siegfried is fiercely devoted to the LeGarde family. Gus calls Sig his "behemoth brother-in-law." He stands at 6'8," has a long, blond ponytail, and relates exceptionally well with animals and children. Siegfried suffered severe brain damage due to a boating accident at the age of twelve. The brilliant young boy awakened after the coma with severely limited faculties. After much therapy and retraining, he graduated from high school at the age of twenty-one. He lives in the updated carriage house on the LeGarde property and works at Freddie's veterinary clinic.

I've included characters to honor all four of my grandparents. Oscar and Millie Stone are my maternal grandparents, to a tee. Madelaine Coté and Sid are my paternal grandparents. I planned this as therapy and as a tribute to them, having lost them all in the past decade. It's a bit selfish, but when I create a chapter with them, it's like a visit. I know that sounds nutty, but it's true! I miss them all dreadfully, and this is the best way I've found to deal with the loss.



DENISE: For this interview, let's focus on "Double Forte  and "Upstaged."  You've explained on your website http://www.legardemysteries.com/doublefort.htm that "Double Forte" is set in East Goodland, New York and the Belgrade Lakes of Maine. Tell us about your chilling mystery which begins with small-town college professor Gus LeGarde's emotional struggle dealing with his wife's suicide and his second chance at love with the daughter of his secretary. How is the actual mystery introduced? How does Gus become involved?

AARON: While skiing over the hills of the Genesee Valley on a cold January morning, Gus discovers a mute child shackled to a bedpost in a secluded cabin. While he attempts a rescue, the kidnapper suddenly arrives home. Baxter, an ex-cop gone bad, escapes with the child on a snowmobile that tumbles over a steep incline. Gus follows, to find the snowmobile flaming at the bottom of the gorge and the child trapped on the side of the cliff. He nearly dies in a daring rescue and discovers that Baxter, who leapt from the vehicle before the crash, has escaped into the woods.

Meanwhile, Gus is thrown together with Camille Cote’, the vivacious, dark-eyed social worker who's called in to help with the poor child. The mystery deepens as they learn that Baxter murdered the child's mother. The ex-cop terrorizes Gus and his family as he lurks in the woods, stewing in hot revenge.

The action escalates when Gus's grandson, Johnny, disappears. Gus and his daughter, Freddie, are frantic. Harold, Freddie's rotten-to-the-core, philandering husband, is off on another amorous rendezvous while they search for the boy. Meanwhile, Harold's business partner turns up dead in Gus's back woods. Siegfried, Gus's best friend, is unjustly accused of the murder. Gus struggles to prove Siegfried's innocence as Baxter relentlessly threatens his family.

Add a heart-pounding chase through the foggy woods, a monster snowstorm, and a near drowning in a cold Maine lake, and you have Double Forté.



DENISE: You've said that you gathered material for "Upstaged" while your daughter, Melanie, took part in a high school production of Bye, Bye Birdie. What amazed you about the entire production is "the art of taking a group of relatively scattered young people and creating a cohesive, dynamic, entity." Why did you feel driven to capture it in a novel?

AARON: It's hard to explain, but everything that comes in through my senses ends up coming out in a book.  Sights, sounds, aromas, textures, and emotions… they all bubble around in my mind and bump into each other with increasing ferocity until they're released again.  It's kind of like an artist, I suppose. I need to get these images out on my "word canvas," so to speak, and then I can breathe again. Is it compulsive? Yeah.  Obsessive? Indeed.  But I can't control it and am never sated until the job is done. 

Bye Bye Birdie was a very colorful musical. It featured a huge cast with spirited fifties-style music. I sat in the back of the auditorium every night while the cast rehearsed.  The resonance of the process stuck in my head - the vibrant colors and sounds, the teenaged angst and drama, the wild array of costumes, the hard work that went into the set construction behind the scenes, and even the personal tragedies and triumphs that occurred in the background.  They haunted me until I was able to capture them in Upstaged. 

DENISE: Tease us a little with the plot of what Gus and Camille are up against when a disturbed stage mother, a deviant predator and a twisted saboteur lurk backstage.

AARON: Upstaged opens as Gus agrees to help Camille with the high school musical, Spirit Me Away. Somebody's playing pranks on the cast and crew.  A snake is dropped from the catwalk into the prop room.  Camille is violently shoved from the stage when the power goes out during a storm.  The star performer crashes to the stage when the platform railings are sabotaged.  The pranks turn deadly as one of the crew members is killed. Gus was standing beside the victim, and may have been the target.

Gus suspects handsome Brazilian exchange student, Armand Lugio, who exudes sexuality and has Camille in his sights. The police question the philanthropic school superintendent, whose past is sealed in an official state file. Agnes Bigelow, stage mother extraordinaire, goes beserk when her daughter isn't cast in the lead role.  She seems troubled, but could be crazy enough to be responsible for the pranks.

In the background, Freddie, Gus's daughter, is pregnant with the child of her murdering ex-husband.  When she goes into labor on Thanksgiving night, no one expects driving rain and a sliced radiator hose that strands them on the side of the highway in the middle of the night. 



DENISE: You created a musical of your own while running into obstacles attempting to gain rights to use existing musicals. Share this challenge and how it led to writing the seventh book in the series.

AARON: I originally wrote Upstaged to the tunes of Bye Bye Birdie. I'd assigned my characters to the specific roles of the musical, and even had interspersed some of the song lyrics into the scenes. I knew, at the time, that I'd need permission to quote the songs, but wasn’t sure about referring to the characters. I finally contacted the song owner's agency and discovered that using the lyrics would be prohibitively expensive.  And I never found anyone to answer my questions about the intellectual property rules for referring to copyrighted characters. So, I finally gave up and decided to write my own musical! To make it even more interesting, I decided to create a musical that Gus was supposed to have "written" back in his days as a college student at the New England Conservatory. It was written in the early seventies, and the setting was Boston.  The Boston Sound had just been "discovered," and hippies flocked to the Commons for love fests.   Because I always wanted to do a flashback book to the sixties, it all gelled. I rewrote Upstaged, focusing on the new musical, at the same time that I wrote Portamento. Portamento is the first time readers are able to meet the adult Elsbeth, other than through Gus's memories. The musical, Spirit Me Away, includes many fictional "songs  to which I wrote "lyrics.  The characters have their own history and back stories, and the complex plot is filled with an unrequited love quadrangle. It's fun, and actually, rather like the plot of the most outrageous operas! I often thought it would be fun to hand it to a composer who'd actually write the music - whether operatic or musical theater style - and see it come to fruition in a real production!


DENISE: What's life like living in upstate New York? Tell us about your family, two dogs and three cats. It wasn't clear if you all share one home. If you do, how do you keep the peace? How do you also get three cats to get along without observing behavior problems. I have two and one likes pouncing on the other. I guess he thinks he's a toy.

AARON: Upstate New York is bucolic and lush. The ground is exceptionally fertile, and crops cover the rolling hills. We live in the country on three acres. I have massive gardens that cover about an acre and a half. Vegetables, flowers, fruit trees, and berry gardens fill the property. Within a half mile are dirt roads. We used to ride our horses everywhere, before my wife became ill with Multiple Sclerosis. The cover of Double Forté is actually Hunt Hill Road, just a few minutes' walk from our house. Our house is an 1811 Greek Revival home, with a large addition recently built for my wife's mom. She's a sweetheart, and we get along fabulously. My wife and I live in the "old" side of the house with my daughter, Jenn, and her two boys. Jenn is studying to be a nurse. My twin girls, Melanie and Allison, both attend college. Melanie is a voice student at the Eastman School of Music, and Allison studies art at Keuka College.  When everyone's home, it's a wild household.  The family feasts are large and noisy.  And I love it!
We now have one dog and four cats. Sadly, Frisky, the longhaired mini-dachshund on whom the Boris character is based, had to be put to sleep recently. He was my mother-in-law's companion and is sorely missed. Max, our lovable mutt, is the same dog who's featured in Double Forté, except he's not quite as heroic.  He's a great watchdog, good with the kids, and loving - but he'd rather sleep on our bed than chase villains through the foggy woods! 
Now, those four cats are another story.  Milo is the newest and the troublemaker.  He's a young male, with a sleek white coat and blue-green eyes.  He attacks, pounces on, and basically terrorizes the three older cats by trying to get them to play with him.  Jasmine, Allouette, and Tristan spit and run when they see him coming! It's a madhouse, some days! 


DENISE: Tell us about your experience with your publisher(s) and about your personal challenge toward publication.

AARON: I've learned a great deal about this very complex business since Double Forté was released in January of 2005.  I walked into it rather naïve and clueless.  At this point, I've confirmed that the most likely path to financial success in this business is through the traditional publishing world.

That said, Print On Demand (POD) is a great, flexible, resource-saving technology.  What POD means is that when a customer clicks on Amazon to order Upstaged, for example, the printer gets the order on the spot, prints, and ships the book directly to the customer.  He doesn't have to use up financial and printing resources to produce a large run of thousands of books.  It's a smart way to publish. 

However, there are problems associated with this business model.  Many POD publishers don't have the financial clout that the traditional presses do. The top publishers in the business have the resources to heavily promote their authors and provide large advances, although the trend is to eliminate advances on royalties altogether. But chances of being picked up by them are 1 in 50,000.  And chances that you'll become a bestseller are much slimmer than that.  Only 2-3% of the books produced today actually make it to the bookstores!  There just isn't enough shelf space.

Another huge difference is bookstore presence.  Most POD publishers won't take "returns,  and therefore aren't stocked in the chain stores.  However, as I'm writing this, I've just been informed that my publisher has decided to take returns, which is great! Being stocked in a store like Borders, for example, puts your book out there across the nation.  Most POD books these days are sold through online stores, publishers' websites, and the authors themselves.  It's not uncommon to find authors with boxes of books in their trunks.  But this model does not lend itself to large sales. An author who sells a few thousand in this capacity is considered very successful, as opposed to a best selling author who sells hundreds of thousands of books.
So, the short answer is that POD technology is wonderful, but the current model isn't conducive to financial success for most authors.  I'm currently seeking a new agent/traditional publisher for Mazurka, the third book in the series.

DENISE: Will you explore writing another series or a stand alone novel?

AARON: I've started another series that will run in parallel with the LeGarde series.  It features Sam and Rachel Moore. In The Green Marble, a sixty-two-year old gardener discovers a marble while rototilling the garden. He is whisked back and forth in time as he untangles the mystery of his young brother's disappearance fifty years earlier. Sam supports his wife, who suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, while fighting to prevent the murder of his grandson by a serial killer who has engaged in ghastly crimes for five decades.

Though I plan to continue writing the LeGarde series until I drop, I may also someday attempt to dabble in different genres.  Who knows, maybe I'll write a romance one day! 


DENISE: What is the most difficult part of writing for you?

AARON: The first thing that pops into my head is, "Not having enough time to write!" or "Having to wait forever to get all of my books to my readers," but, I don't think that's what you meant.  Seriously, the toughest part of the craft is editing. The easiest part is the creation phase, of course.  That's like a wild, whirlwind ride. I follow my characters through hair-raising adventures, concentrating more on getting the story out than whether or not it shines.  I'll do a bit of quick editing the next day, and then go on to write the next chapter.  The difficult and boring part is coming back to the book a year later and being ruthless. I cut out all the annoying adverbs (thanks to Stephen King's book, On Writing), activate ugly passive sentences, remove unnecessary adjectives and prepositions, and make sure I haven't goofed up the plot or created a conflict in the story somewhere. Usually, my editor friends pick up those inconsistencies for me, then I swallow my pride and move on. 

Another part that's tough is opening up your heart and soul to the whole world and waiting for the rejection or adulation that may come.  I'm going to plagiarize myself here and paste in a little bit from an article I wrote about this in my Seedlings column in Bob Burdick's newsletter, The Back Room:

…I have this persistent fear that I will be "outed" as a fraud by the next highbrow literary critic that comes upon my work. Even though complete strangers have given surprisingly glowing reviews to my first (and worst) book, even though my readers tell me otherwise, I can't get over the fear that a "real" writer will some day come along and renounce me, banishing me into the netherworld of faux writer fools who tumble around with ridiculous stories and are woefully inadequate when put to the task. 

I know it's absurd. I've told friends, many friends, who write beautifully, that they are writers simply due to the process. If it's in your blood, if you can't stop, if your day is filled with the details of the next chapter, if you write for therapy, then you are a writer! You don't need a degree in English Lit or Composition to qualify. Heck, my degree is in Engineering. You don't need a degree, period!  And yet, I have trouble applying that philosophy to myself.         

I guess I've been slowly improving. Taking part in an author's fair, being called a "local author" by newspapers and radio hosts, and being dubbed a "Genesee Valley Writer," has helped. As I receive more and more reviews from strangers (those who don't "have" to tell me I'm good), the anxiety has lessened a tad. But still, each time I know someone is reading the book, this annoying worry niggles around in my brain. Will they like it? Will they see through me and spotlight the flaws? Will my still-fragile author ego be smashed?
It's so silly. I really hate it. I have to stop caring that when I've bared my soul to the world, it might get trounced on, smashed, and spattered with criticism. I guess it's time to admit... I am a "real" writer. And that's a step in the "write" direction…

Thanks for your time, Aaron!

--Denise Fleischer, gottawritenetwork.com webmaven
September 16, 2005

a gottawritenetwork.com interview