Interview - The Crimson Inkwell by Kenneth A. Baldwin

- If you were not a writer what would you be doing?

I have a couple of day jobs, but they all involve writing! By day, I’m an attorney. Specifically, I work at a university in an office that specializes in copyright law. There’s a lot of writing involved there, too. I also teach comedy writing at that university. If I didn’t do any writing for work, I think I’d like to work at a nursery. I love plants and being outside.

- If you wrote a book about your life what would the title be?

I’ve always struggled not to do too much at once. As a result, I have my hands in a lot of pots all the time. So, I think I’d title a book based on my life A Bit of This and Bit of That. The title is not very enticing. I don’t think it would sell. 

- What is the hardest thing about being an author?

I think the hardest thing about being an author is trying to get everything needed in a story out of my brain and on paper. If it goes on paper in a suave and elegant way, that’s a major plus.
I think it’s also hard to create, manage, and satisfy expectations. In some ways, I think writing a story is an exercise in creating and keeping promises. When you fulfill a promise in an unexpected way, there’s no telling how a reader will take it.

- What is the best thing about being an author?

I absolutely love it when a stranger really connects with my work in a significant way. Sometimes that is really bonding with a character, sometimes it’s a reader being unable to put the book down, and sometimes it’s someone reading something you wrote more than once. What could be better than that?

- Have you ever been star struck by meeting one of your favorite authors? If so who was it?
  
Thankfully not. I haven’t met a lot of authors. I’m one of those people who believe in the phrase “don’t meet your heroes.” That being said, I have standing lunch invite out for Suzanne Collins, Neil Gaiman, Ernest Cline, or Pierce Brown. They haven’t responded yet. I’m sure they’re just busy. 

- What book changed your life?

Honestly, Pride and Prejudice. The characterization Jane Austen achieved is nothing short of a miracle. When I finished it the first time and remembered that Elizabeth Bennet was, in fact, not a real human being, it felt like a relative died. The Fellowship of the Ring was very similar to me as a lad. I was in a daze for days after that book. It also happened to me when I finished Les Miserablés. Enjolras’ last scene was phenomenal. I’m sorry. What have I done? You asked for one book.

- What were your some of favorite books growing up?

When I was young I would read and re-read The Count of Monte Cristo and The Princess Bride. I loved the tragic revenge tale in Monte Cristo, and was enamored with what I now consider the logistics of a heist book. The Count of Monte Cristo and Ocean’s 11 have a lot in common if you think about it. The Princess Bride taught me that books can be funnier than films. The literary voice by William Goldman really just tickled me.

- What books are currently in your to be read pile?

I’m one of those miserable human beings who read books concurrently. So the pile on my nightstand is growing. I’m just about done with The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern. I’m also in the middle of Brandon Sanderson’s The Way of Kings, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain, and The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett. An English friend of mine explained that while the rest of the world consider J.K. Rowling to be the great British author of today, it’s really Terry Pratchett, and everyone from Britain knows it. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s certainly worth finding out.

- Which do you prefer ebooks, print, or audiobooks?

I like to say I prefer print to ebook because it sounds much more romantic. Practically speaking though, I simply read more on a phone or an eReader because I always have one with me, and it supplies its own light source. I’m also always listening to an audiobook for when I’m commuting to work or driving anywhere.

- If you could live inside the world of a book or series which world would it be and why?

Certainly not any world made by George R.R. Martin. It may be cliché, but I’ve always loved Rivendell and The Shire. What could be better than celebrating a friends’ 111th birthday party with the Shire-like charm of fireworks, dancing, fresh-grown vegetables, well-meaning jabs, and not a cell phone in sight? 


Thanks, Paranormalists! It’s been a pleasure!

The Crimson Inkwell
The Luella Winthrop Trilogy
Book One
Kenneth A. Baldwin

Genre: Gaslamp Fantasy, Historical Fantasy
Publisher: Eburnean Books
Date of Publication: May 8th, 2019

ISBN: 1095674749

ASIN: B07Q76QYMW

Number of pages: 277

Word Count: 97,000

Cover Artist: Vikncharlie

Tagline: A Gaslamp Fantasy Novel

The Crimson Inkwell is a story about journalist Luella Winthrop. In her journey to become Dawnhurst-on-Severn's most acclaimed writer, she discovers that her city houses dark, magical secrets too uncomfortable to believe.

When an enigmatic carnival worker offers her a pen that can turn fiction to fact, she quickly learns that tampering with the unknown can be intoxicating, lucrative, and dangerous.

Book Description:

Magic exists where we cannot see.

It lives in unexplained phenomena, in attraction to strangers, in a pen and crimson inkwell, from a trunk, in a tent, at a fair, in the fog.

I didn't believe in magic.

Before he died, my father taught me the world was solid. Reporting was more like science, anyway. Hard facts. Logical inferences. Of course, I wasn't exactly an award-winning reporter so what did I know about it? But, when Detective Edward Thomas told me he had seen a phantom, something woke up inside of me. I could have tried to dismiss it as a trick of the lamplight, but how else could I explain the body on the cobblestones?

Instead, I simply believed him, and not just because he was arrestingly handsome. I was engaged, after all, to a sensible, though older man--the same man who published my articles, in fact.

No. I believed him because somewhere, deep down, I knew magic was real. What's worse, I knew it was a part of me. The detective's ghost story had just woken me up.

As soon as I accepted this truth, everything changed. My writing career, my family, my domestic prospects, and my freedom.

What woman, pray tell, can fit three men and a writing career in her life and still keep her sanity?

But there I landed.

Byron was my fiancé. He was sensible. He could provide a modest life of means for my sister and me. He could also continue to publish my little articles in his weekly magazine. He adored me.

Edward was my detective, so good and true, straight as an arrow and noble as a knight. He inspired me to be something more. But, I could never live up to such a high standard.

Bram was a mystery. Who could say where his life had taken him before he met me or what adventures he had endured. Everything he did was curious. I was drawn to him in ways I didn't understand.

Could I escape this journey with my engagement intact? Which course would lead me down a road to the woman my father always believed I should be?

And why did I feel so angry all the time?

My fingers still have that enchanted twitch even as I peck these words out on an old typewriter. Before another episode comes, let me tell you what happened that fateful autumn in Dawnhurst-on-Severn. . .

Amazon

Excerpt:

“Excuse me,” I said, after clearing my throat.

“Who’s missing?” The clerk didn’t look up.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Missing persons will file with Ms. Turner down the hall.”

“I’m not here to report a missing person,” I replied. This was enough to give the clerk at least a moment’s pause. He glanced his terrier of a face up at me and squinted one eye in the lamplight.

“Has your husband beat you?”

“I’m not married. I’m looking for Sergeant George Cooper.”

“Sarge, you’ve got a visitor!” he bellowed down the hallway behind him before turning back to me. “Right down the hallway, Miss. He’ll be happy to have a visitor that isn’t a felon. I guess, assuming you’re not here to turn yourself in… You aren’t uh, you know, soliciting wares and suddenly discovered religion if you catch my meaning?”

This I did not grace with a verbal response. Instead, I leveled my eyes at him the way I used to as governess of an impish child, took off my gloves menacingly, and started down the hall.

“Please have a seat,” said whom I presumed to be the Ms. Turner the clerk had mentioned. She wore a tweed skirt and vest, and her hair was done up into what was once a bun. She too was busy in paperwork, pounding away furiously at a typewriter. I brushed off a filthy chair and waited. I watched Ms. Turner for some time, wondering what pathway may have brought her to this desk. She appeared older than me. It’s difficult to guess the age of women around the middle of their lives, but the gentle lines around her eyes hinted to me that she was now closer to forty than thirty. I noticed no wedding ring.

I felt an almost immediate kinship to Ms. Turner. It wasn’t a large stretch to imagine that I was looking at myself in ten years, pounding away at a typewriter, perhaps trying to publish works of my own in my spare time outside of my professional duties.

I have Byron now. I had to remind myself about my fiancé so often. How silly. Even when I was here on his bidding, for his publication no less.

“I wasn’t drinking on the job, sir!” I heard a man’s raised voice through the sergeant’s door.

Ms. Turner slowly looked up at me. “They all say that.”

The door swung wide open, and I was struck by what I could only assume was the model for a police force figurine. The man had an acutely trim waistline that stretched up into a broad chest and shoulders. His hair was combed impeccably, as if each strand dared not stray from its assigned position. His eyes, alert and lively, were peculiarly warm for being steely grey. His brow furrowed, and his neatly trimmed policeman’s mustache curved downward into a disconcerting frown.

He swept through the office door and stood erect, as though he was at a self-called attention. Behind him, the large Sergeant George Cooper, a man whom I could only describe as a younger, meaner looking Father Christmas, filled the doorway.

“I don’t want outlandish stories, Lieutenant. I want arrests. I want brigands behind bars. I want young do-it-alls like you to stop trying to turn every little case into the next apocalypse,” Sergeant Cooper stammered. He was only mostly red in the face.

The young lieutenant stood and, though he looked thoroughly unamused, took the tongue lashing admirably.

“You’ve got a visitor,” butted in Ms. Turner. Sergeant Cooper looked at me, and his expression instantly melted into a rehearsed sympathy.

“Ma’am, my deepest apologies,” he said, putting his hand on his heart. “Do you have a missing person to report?”

“No,” I stuttered. “I’m here… do you get a lot of missing persons?”

“Most of the women we see in here are reporting a missing husband or, regrettably, a missing child,” he replied.

“I’m sorry to hear that. But, and, well, I’m not sure how to put this exactly. I’m here from Langley’s Miscellany, and I—”

Before I could finish my sentence, the warm expression on Sergeant Cooper’s face melted away.

“You’re a reporter. Thank you, Miss, but the door’s over there.” He turned and retreated back into his office. I stuck my foot in the door, which was more painful than I thought it might be.

“I don’t want to be a bother. I’m just curious about the latest. I don’t mean to fabricate anything or inflate your efforts. I just—”

“You just want to be first to know about the dreadful muck the police force deals with each day.”

“Well, yes,” I replied.

“Like I said, Miss, the door is over there. I have a lot to do.” He put on a pair of spectacles and sat down at his desk. I felt a burn creep up my cheeks. It was one thing to be denied, another to be rejected right in front of a woman I had suddenly come to admire and a deeply handsome police lieutenant. The propriety!

“Please, you knew my father,” I said. He looked up at me over his spectacles. They were comically small for his large face. “Gerald Winthrop.”

“Jerry Winthrop?” the sergeant said with a laugh. “Devils blind me. You were the scrap of a thing always hiding in the corner, thinking we couldn’t see you.”

I nodded. He barked out a triumphant laugh.

“Your father was a hell of a man! Always sticking his nose in places it didn’t belong. Any mate of his in trouble, he’d be here before a spit trying to talk their way out it.” He stared into the air as if he could see my father in the office presently. “How is Jerry doing? I got into more arguments with him. He could take a yelling and deal it out in turn. If only my lieutenants had half the backbone. We exchanged words like lads in a fistfight.”

“Well, I hope you got the last word in then,” I said. His countenance dropped sharply.

“You don’t mean—how’d it happen?”

“Fever. Or something like that. I never did get a straight answer from the doctors.” I hated doctors. A fair majority of them might as well be bunkmates with critics.

“Doctors are thieves,” the sergeant said.

“I’m very sorry for your loss, Miss,” said a clear voice behind me. They were the first words the lieutenant said to me. The purity in his voice took me off guard. After losing my father, I’d heard “I’m sorry for your loss” time and time again. In nearly every case, it was mere etiquette, obligation, and passing fancy, as though someone might check a box of a tidy little list somewhere by saying the appropriate thing. This man, whom I barely knew, sounded arrestingly sincere.

I turned toward him, and he bowed slightly. Behind him, Ms. Turner slid into focus with two very inquisitive eyebrows.

“Yes, well, this is Lieutenant Edward Thomas. He’s our resident… bleeding heart and imaginist,” Sergeant Cooper said. Edward extended a hand.

“It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” I said. His eyes were smothering. I couldn’t seem to escape them. He had no shyness about looking a stranger squarely in the face, that’s for certain.

“The pleasure is mine,” I managed. “Imaginist?” I inquired of the sergeant.

“No doubt in it. In fact, Lieutenant Thomas may be exactly what you’re looking for,” he said with a coy smile.

“I’m engaged,” I spit out.

Sergeant Cooper erupted into an ungraciously loud belly laugh. I noticed Ms. Turner turn her face down to suppress a giggle as well. Edward flushed.

“I’m sure you are. I meant for the stories you’ve been looking for,” Cooper said. I immediately felt feverish as itchy perspiration appeared on the small of my back. Luella Winthrop. Gift with words, I have.

“He has a story for me then?” I muttered, eager to move on.

“Aye. Lieutenant Thomas here claims to have seen a ghost!”

About the Author:

Kenneth A. Baldwin loves stories you can sink your teeth into.

He lives nestled under the Wasatch Mountain Range with his wife and dog. He writes historical fantasy. When he's not working on his next book, he can be found teaching story mechanics or sketch comedy writing.

Kenny has worked as a staff writer for TV, Radio, web, and comedy scripts for years. The Crimson Inkwell is his first published novel.

https://www.instagram.com/kennethabaldwin/

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