Rachel Thompson

Friday, June 28, 2013

Author Interview – Brian Francis Heffron

Did writing this book teach you anything and what was it? It taught me that I could start and finish a large task. It taught me that I could organize a story and get it down on paper. It taught me that a tale begins and end in the same place. It taught me that PTSD is a problem that can be healed. It taught me that LOVE is the oonly answer.

Do you intend to make writing a career? I am now an established Poet and Novelist and I intend to be so for the rest of my born days. 

What is your greatest strength as a writer? I can describe things so that you are able to see them in your own mind’s eye. Description is my forte. Whether it be a landscape or a person I feel that I can bring a person or place to life through my prose.

How did you come up with the title? A Mandala is Sanskrit for “magic circle” and is used to meditate on to raise one’s concioisness, or it can represent a person who is fully actualized and complete in their development. Colorado Mandala was the place where all three of my main characters became themselves, some after a very long and difficult effort.

How much of the book is realistic? All of Colorado Mandala is based on real places and real people. But I invented all else. I took the characters I knew and put them into a place I knew best and let them just live their lives there. It seems to have worked.

With refreshing depth, distinct literary merit, and highly original poetic phrasings that spill from the pages like paint, Colorado Mandala is poet Brian Heffron’s debut work of literary fiction. It mines the complex landscape of post-Vietnam America to unearth the deep connections that bind individuals together, and also ferociously rip them asunder. Illustrative, luscious, seductive, and engaging, this rare piece of craftsmanship will stir the senses of any one who thirsts for artistic expression, or who longs for an era in our country now utterly, irretrievably gone.

In the heady, hippie backdrop of Pike’s Peak, Colorado, in the tumultuous 1970s, three souls swirl together in an explosive supernova. Michael is the flinty-eyed, volatile former Green Beret, whose tour in Vietnam has left unbridgeable chasms in his psyche and secrets that can never find light. Sarah is his fair-haired paramour, the ethereal Earth Mother widow of a fallen soldier and single mother to a ten-year-old son Stuart. Paul is a young wanderer, who is drawn in by Michael and soon bears the mantle of both minister and scourge. As they are drawn together, and torn apart, each is changed forever. And our hearts race along with them, through the rocky, raw Colorado terrain amidst the blood sport of man and beast.

Laying bare the loss and acceptance of a pioneering age, Colorado Mandala shines revelatory light on the crazy, glorious, and romantic notion that each generation conceives anew: that love can be a spiritual gift shared openly rather than coveted, or hidden, or hoarded. If you wish to go barefoot again and climb an unspoiled Colorado trail, look no further. If you long for something to wake you up in simple, clean language, a shimmering story awaits. Awaken to what you have always known: simple truths show you the way home. With his gripping and unforgettable Colorado Mandala, it is clear that Brian Heffron knows the way.

Buy Now @ Amazon

Genre – Literary Fiction

Rating – PG

More details about the author

Connect with Brian Heffron on Facebook & Twitter

Website http://www.brianheffron.net/brianheffron.net/Welcome.html

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