Mike Hartner is the author of I, James, an historical fiction/romance novel about a young boy ripped from his family. Here’s the official description:
James Crofter was ripped from his family at age 11.
Within a year the prince was a pauper in a foreign land.
Is nature stronger than nurture? And even if it is, can James find the happiness he so richly desires?
Read on for Hartner’s interview with me, as well as for a chance to win a $25 Amazon gift card!
S.R.: How and when did you become a writer?
M.H.: I started writing in my elementary school days. Up until I graduated university, my writing was casual at best. Then, around the turn of the millennium I started writing about my family genealogy, and my son’s birth. From then onward, I’ve been a writer.
S.R: On your website, you said on of your passions, in addition to writing, is math. How does that influence your writing? Do you have stories that incorporate math in some way? If so, what kind of math?
M.H.: I have been a math tutor for most of my life, and I’m currently a licensed private instructor. My passion is helping others to understand math. And one of the biggest problems, in my mind, is giving young women something to inspire them. Male mathematicians are a dime a dozen. There are many of them, and most people know about them. But female mathematicians, including this year’s Field Prize Winner, are mostly anonymous. If we gave these background to our female students, they’d have more inspiration and more reasons to learn about mathematics. There are a large number of VERY successful women in STEM over the last five hundred years.
S.R.: I, James is the second book in your series where all the books are
connected in a non-obvious way. Can you give a hint as to how they are
connected?
M.H.: I, James connection is a simple one: James is Walter’s son. Anyone who read I, Walter will probably be excited to read I, James. More than that, the series is a number of books about the human condition, and the challenges we face.
S.R.: What do you want readers to takeaway from I, James?
M.H.: I, James, like I, Walter is a(n) historical fiction, and a romance, and a coming-of-age. The Eternity Series, including I, James, is meant to make people realize that what we see, the images others present, don’t tell the story. Chaucer did it with The Canterbury Tales, and others have done it as well. Each of us is fighting our own demons. Some demons are physical, others emotional, or mental.
S.R.: Your other series is an historical fiction account of your own family’s genealogy, which a great way to document your family’s history. What inspired you to start this series? What facts about your family have you discovered that have surprised you the most?
M.H.: The Hartners in America series comes out of a conversation with a few relatives. One, a distant relative, asked “If you know so much about the family, why don’t you write it down?” And so, the series was born. We presently have three books in the series, and there will be plenty more to come, during pauses in The Eternity Series. For Hartners in America there is still a book about the Michigan branch of the family, and an attempt at a story about The Alaskan branch of our family.
S.R.: What books are you working on now?
M.H.: Book Three in The Eternity Series is presently being written; Book four is on the drawing board. The Eternity Series, in my own mind, has been seperated into a number of trilogies. Book Three is again the Crofter family, and then we will step away from that family, and encompass others. The reader won’t see the connection with each of these later books until mid-way through the series when things start to come together again.
Mike Hartner was born in Miami in 1965. He’s traveled much of the continental United States. He has several years post secondary education, and experience teaching and tutoring young adults. Hartner has owned and run a computer firm for more than twenty-five years. He now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, with his wife and child. They share the neighborhood and their son with his maternal grandparents.
Mike won first place blue ribbon for the 2013 Chaucer Award for Historical Fiction and first place blue ribbon for the 2013 Dante Rosetti Award in the YA category for I, Walter.
Purchase your copy of I, James, here.
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