Q1. Hello, can you please introduce yourself? Readers would love to know more about you.
A1. My name is Wayne L. Wilson. I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. My father was a policeman and homicide detective, and my mother an executive secretary for L.A. County. I received an MA in Education from UCLA and a BA in Sociology from UCSB. Prior to becoming a professional writer I owned and operated for well over a decade a manufacturing company that pioneered and published innovative multicultural greeting cards and related gift items. Since then I have authored novels, short stories, screenplays, PSAs, memoirs, biographies, history books, college textbooks, and a wide array of books for children and young adults. Furthermore, I’ve served as a ghostwriter and researcher for various book projects and publications. I’m also a member of the Writer’s Guild of America. More importantly when I’m not writing, you can find me playing with my German Shepherd, Koda.
Q2. What were the key challenges you faced while writing your book “The New Frontier”?
A2. Since the novel takes place in the early 1960s, one of the key challenges was to thoroughly research that period of time. To me this is critical in order for the reader to walk down that same path as the narrator and understand his truth. The New Frontier is in the realm of historical fiction so it was essential to be as accurate as possible to capture the era’s mood, ambience, politics, the way people spoke, dressed, music, and historical events pertaining to the story.
Q3. What books or authors have most influenced your own writing?
A3. There are a plethora of writers who have greatly influenced me. The ones that immediately come to mind are James Baldwin, Ray Bradbury, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Paine, Nadine Gordimer, Playwright August Wilson, Pat Conroy, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Harper Lee.
Q4. What’s your favorite spot to visit in your own country? And what makes it so special to you?
A4. One of my favorite spots to visit is Carmel, situated on the Monterey Peninsula in Northern California. It is a beautiful quaint city with its white-sandy beach, picturesque natural scenic bluff paths, museums, libraries, art galleries, fairytale cottages, and historic Carmel Mission. It’s meditative and a great place to walk, hike, and think creatively.
Q5. What inspired you to write the book ‘The New Frontier’?
A5. It was inspired by my own life journey as a child whose family moved into an all-White neighborhood and experienced racism followed by White flight into suburban areas. However, this is not a memoir. It is a fictional tale with completely different characters, situations, and incidences that Samuel Cole experiences. And it is injected with quite a bit of humor within the narrative.
Q6. How long did it take you to write your book ‘The New Frontier’?
A6. About 30 years of gestation in my mind… And then finally sitting down and writing the story, which took about 6 months.
Q7. On what platforms can readers buy your books?
A7. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, Joyride Bookshop, Hicklebees, Independent Publishers Group (IPG), Browse About Books, Chaucer’s Books, Book Culture, One More Page Books, Thriftbooks, Wild Rumpus, Google Books,
Bank Square Books, Penguin Bookshop, Target, Powell’s City of Books, Tattered Cover, Rakuten Kobo, and many more.
Q8. Tell us about the process of coming up with the book cover and the title ‘The New Frontier’?
A8. The title of the book is derived from Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy’s acceptance speech during the July 1960 Democratic National Convention held at the Memorial Coliseum, Los Angeles, California. The speech outlining his goals and policies later became famously known as “The New Frontier.” It was a plea for Americans of the twentieth century to be pioneers and to rise to new challenges such as achieving equal opportunity for all of its citizens. This served as the sparkplug for Samuel’s father to act as a pioneer and move the family into a nice new home in an area where Blacks had never lived with the hope that in this new era they would eventually be accepted.
The concept for the book’s cover design was to capture the mood and the feel of the book within the illustration. The publisher and I feel that artist and illustrator Hillary D. Wilson did a magnificent job of conveying that ambiance with her cover. As you can see, Samuel approaches this “new frontier” with both trepidation and hope as illustrated by the dark clouds and dawning of a new day.
Q9. When writing a book how do you keep things fresh, for both your readers and also yourself?
A9. I try my best to be original, but not for the sake of going way out there to find something that’s never been done before. It still has to be something that fuels me with the desire to want to write it and allow myself to be vulnerable, yet proud enough to put my work out there for critical eyes to review. There are thousands of Westerns out there, but it’s your voice that can make it different from all the others. It’s important to read inside and outside whatever you may consider your genre to be. I try to maintain freshness in my work by reading a variety of books and articles, not only out of interest, but also because you may never know how they might interact and merge unexpectedly into something you are writing. Sometimes it’s important to walk away from the book you’re working on whether it takes days, weeks, or months so you can come back with new ideas and add a fresh and more unique vision to enhance your work.
Q10. What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve been given about writing?
A10. When you start writing a book, don’t stop to spend time perfecting it as you’re moving along in the work. Focus on getting the entire idea and story of the work out in the first draft. Otherwise, you may lose your thought process and momentum in trying to perfect and correct words and sentences in the process. Moreover, you may find yourself getting stuck and unable to proceed forward. Before you know it, you’ve spent a year on two chapters, forgot where you were going in the first place, and lost your steam! It doesn’t matter how bad and absurd it may look while you’re writing the story. Don’t let your ego rule you. The point is to get all your ideas and thoughts out and finish the story. Revision is the “real” writing. Now that you’ve laid out the whole narrative, you can truly work with it. Revising and reconstructing the work is where you will find your buried gems and treasures that will provide you with the impetus and motivation to advance your writing and pursue your vision.
Buy The New Frontier on Amazon
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