Q&A: Evy Journey, Author of The Shade Under the Mango Tree #Q&A #Interview

Evy Journey writes. Stories and blog posts. Novels that tend to cross genres. She’s also a wannabe artist, and a flâneuse.

Evy studied psychology (M.A., University of Hawaii; Ph.D. University of Illinois). So her fiction spins tales about nuanced characters dealing with contemporary life issues and problems. She believes in love and its many faces.

Her one ungranted wish: To live in Paris where art is everywhere and people have honed aimless roaming to an art form. She has visited and stayed a few months at a time.

Website or Blog: https://evyjourney.net

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ejourneywriter/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/14845365.Evy_Journey



Thanks for this interview, Evy.Would you say it’s been a rocky road for you in regards to getting your book written and published or pretty much smooth sailing?  Can you tell us about your journey?

This is my seventh book and I’ve  self-published. I know where to find beta readers and editors, so at this point, it’s been smooth sailing.

When not writing, what do you like to do for relaxation and/or fun?

I do art. I’m hooked on digital “painting” at the moment. No mess, so no clean-up. At night, I watch movies or Netflix/Amazon Prime TV series. I also love to travel and have traveled quite a bit before Covid.

What makes your book stand out from the rest?

The Shade Under the Mango Tree is not typical women’s fiction. It has a literary and multicultural twist in its inclusion of a multiracial female character who goes as a Peace Corps volunteer to an ancient culture with a deadly history. There she encounters a different way of life and survivors coping with the ravages of a genocide. 

Can you give us the very first page of your book so that we can get a glimpse inside? 

Prologue

Luna: February 2016 

Ov’s thin upper body is slumped over his crossed legs, his forehead resting on the platform. His brown, wiry arms lie limp, the right one extended forward, hand dangling over the edge of the platform. Dried blood is splattered on his head, and on the collar, right shoulder, and back of his old short-sleeved white shirt.

It seems fitting that he died where he used to spend most of his time when he wasn’t on the rice fields—sitting on a corner of the bamboo platform in the ceiling-high open space under the house. It’s where you get refreshing breezes most afternoons, after a long day of work.

The policeman looks down at Ov’s body as if he’s unsure what to do next. He lays down his camera and the gun in a plastic bag at one end of the platform untainted by splatters of gelled blood.

He steps closer to the body, anchors himself with one knee on top of the platform, and bends over the body. Hooking his arms underneath Ov’s shoulders and upper arms, he pulls the body up, and carefully lays it on its back. He straightens the legs.

If your book was put in the holiday section of the store, what holiday would that be and why?

I have to beg off on this question. There’s no scene in the book that celebrates a holiday.

Would you consider turning your book into a series or has that already been done?

This book is #5 in the series Between Two Worlds. All books in the series are standalone novels.

When you were young, did you ever see writing as a career or full-time profession?

Yes, but my parents discouraged me. They wanted me to go into a science profession. Eventually, we compromised and I studied psychology instead.

What’s next for you?

This month, I’m launching Book #6, The Golden Manuscripts: A Novel. I haven’t seriously thought beyond that. The series ends with #6.

 




The Shade Under the Mango Tree: Between Two Worlds Book 5
Evy Journey
Sojourner Books
 
288 pp.
Women's Fiction/Cultural Heritage Fiction

After two heartbreaking losses, Luna wants adventure. Something and somewhere very different from the affluent, sheltered home in California and Hawaii where she grew up. An adventure in which she can also make some difference. She ends up in place steeped in an ancient culture and a deadly history.

Raised by her grandmother in a Honolulu suburb, she moves to her parents’ home in California at thirteen and meets her brothers for the first time. Grandma persuades her to write a journal whenever she’s lonely or overwhelmed as a substitute for someone to whom she could reveal her intimate thoughts.

Lucien, a worldly, well-traveled young architect, finds a stranger’s journal at a café. He has qualms and pangs of guilt about reading it. But they don’t stop him. His decision to go on reading changes his life.

Months later, they meet at a bookstore where Luna works and which Lucien frequents. Fascinated by his stories and his adventurous spirit, Luna volunteers for the Peace Corps. Assigned to Cambodia, she lives with a family whose parents are survivors of the Khmer Rouge genocide forty years earlier. What she goes through in a rural rice-growing village defies anything she could have imagined. Will she leave this world unscathed?

Inspired by the healing effects of writing, this is an epistolary tale of love—between an idealistic young woman and her grandmother and between the young woman and a young architect. It’s a tale of courage, resilience of the human spirit, and the bonds that bring diverse people together.

Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08KFMR9SG

Also available as an audiobook: 

https://www.amazon.com/Shade-Under-Mango-Tree-Between/dp/B09X7CPYFD/

Barnes & Noble:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-shade-under-the-mango-tree-evy-journey/1137986157?ean=2940166256980

Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-shade-under-the-mango-tree-1

iBooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-shade-under-the-mango-tree/id16069

 

 

 


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