Muse: Pamela Glasner, first of all Whispers of the Muse welcomes you and Finding Emmaus to the site. Your book is amazing and we’re guessing the author is too. Tell us a little about yourself. What part of the world do you live in? Tell us about your background?
Glasner:I was born in New Your City. When I was 17, my parents dragged me kicking and screaming to a small town named Uncasville, CT, which I equated with “Green Acres” - remember that TV show with Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor?  I was convinced I’d never hear rock and roll ever again and would live out my days with a pig following me down dirt roads. 

Where I grew up, you never needed a car. There were trains and busses and so much to do so close at hand that going into Manhattan or “out on the Island” were considered “outings” worthy of white gloves, a dress, and matching shoes.  Each neighborhood seemed to be tiny microcosm all to itself, with tons of kids to be friends with and movie theaters and candy stores and schools and synagogues and bowling alleys and ice-skating rinks and a kazillion places to eat hot dogs and pizza and White Castle burgers.

I used to say, after I moved to CT,  “In NY, if you couldn’t find a million friends and something to do - at any hour of the day or night - you might just as well have slit your wrists.”  Kind of dark in retrospect, but it gets the point across.

Then we moved to CT, and within my first few weeks here, I heard a radio host announce an upcoming event: He spoke of a wood-chopping contest and referred to is as “fun for the whole family.” 

I was appalled.  A 17-year-old New York City girl transplanted against her will onto Mars!

I spent the rest of the day feeling sorry for myself, sitting alone in the house, looking out my bedroom window, keeping an eye out for that pig…

Muse: Who are your favorite authors?
Glasner: Stephen King, Anya Seton, Willa Cather, Sharon Kay Penman, Marge Piercy, Terry Brooks, Stephen R. Donaldson, Patricia A. McKillip, David E. Stannard, David Baldacci, Chaim Potok and Maeve Binchy - just to name a few.

Muse: Why do you write?
Glasner: I write because I love it.  There’s nothing I’d rather do.  Oh, I have other interests, of course, people I love and lots that I get involved with, but writing literally takes me away.  I think it must be similar to what cyclists or runners experience - that high they talk about - it’s almost a hypnotic state.  I’ve jokingly said that when I’m writing, not “just writing” but when I’m in that altered state when the words are just flowing down my arm and onto the paper, that dinosaurs could walk down my street and I’d never know it. 

I don’t mean to sound so flippant about it; it’s a deeply moving experience. I can “come to” after having written an entire chapter without coming up for air and suddenly realize there’s a blizzard howling around outside my window and a foot of snow has already fallen and I never had a clue.   

There are lots of wonderful people and wonderful experiences in my life and nothing - nothing - makes me feel the way writing does.

Muse: What is your writing regiment? How often do you work on a novel? Do you set daily time or word goals? What keeps you meeting your deadlines?
Glasner: I don’t have a writing regimen.  I write when the words are there and need to come out, which is most of the time.  I can sit up suddenly at 3:00 in the morning with a phrase or a paragraph or that “lost word” I just couldn’t think of earlier in the day bouncing around in my head and I just have to get up right then and put it on paper. 

What I can say about how I write is this: I can write anywhere as long as I have these few things:

1. a couch or a love seat so I can sit on the left-hand side with my left leg curled up under me
2. a coffee table with either a cup of hot coffee or a glass of red wine (depending on the time of day!) in front of me
3. A supply of Uniball Micro-Fine pens (black ink)
4. Ampad yellow lined pads of paper
5. No-one talking to me

While I was writing “Finding Emmaus” I spent a lot of time at the club (I’m a member of Town and County, a private club in Hartford), sitting on the pink sofa in the library, just writing for hours.  The staff there is fabulous - and once my pen is flying across the paper, they don’t interrupt me.  Or I’d curl up in my own living room if the house was empty.

I don’t set times or schedules or deadlines, although I must say I did keep a log of the number of words I wrote on any given day, but that was more out of curiosity.  It was mostly so I’d have a running total of the number of words in my book. 

I don’t need to set a time to write; I have never needed to discipline myself or make myself write.  Rather, more often than not, I need to be pulled away from my writing or the laundry doesn’t get done and the shopping doesn’t get done and dinner doesn’t get cooked and by the time I remember to eat lunch it’s nearly dinnertime. I eat lots of pizza, pepperoni being my favorite.

Muse: Ms Glasner, I’m totally enjoying my secret sneak peek at Finding Emmaus. It intrigues me from the first few words, and offers an interesting, rather surprising look at where and when pharmaceutical abuse really began … and all this in a startling backdrop of history, paranormal activity and emotion. Where does your explosive creativity come from?
Glasner: First of all, thank you. 

Secondly, as far as where my creativity comes from, I think it comes from a combination of places.  I have an extremely strong sense of faith.  I believe my ability to write is a God-given gift and I am eternally grateful for it.

On a more temporal level, I come from a creative family. 

My mother’s father arrived at Ellis Island with the shirt on his back and two strong arms.  He became an iron worker and joined the ranks of those who left their legacy in the form of New York City's incomparable skyline.  I've always believed my love of architecture started with him.

Both of my grandfathers were gifted artists.  As are my father’s sister, Belle, and her daughter.  As my son is, and as I am - though I've not done any drawing or painting in ages and ages. 

I've always been able to write, far back as I can recall.  My parents used to send me to camp for half the summer when I was a kid and I remember my friends used to joke about living in fear receiving a letter from me because they were more like short stories!  The longest one I ever wrote was to a friend in Pennsylvania - it was 23 pages.

Sure wish I’d had the forethought and wherewithal to copy and save them back then - it would be a trip to read them now!

Muse: Does the way you personally look at life reflect in your writing style?
Glasner: I think that’s true for any writer.  I've heard it’s supposed to be some kind of insult to be accused of being even the least bit autobiographical in your novels and I think that’s ridiculous.  Anyone who says that their creativity and passion does not come from their life’s experiences as well as their own views and values and beliefs is fooling themselves.

That doesn’t mean I think I’m Frank Nettleton - one of my characters - and that 300 years from now I think I might come back to Earth to help some civic-minded Empath save the world.  It means that true creativity comes from your heart and your soul and your gut and some inexplicable, insatiable need to express it.

And it can be anything.  It doesn’t have to be writing.  It doesn’t even have to be an art form.  Inventing the light bulb and the process of pasteurization came from the same place in Edison and Pasteur as my writing comes from in me.  Otherwise, who would spend so much time and energy doing something, over and over, in face of criticism or continuous failure, in the face of not knowing if you’ll ever succeed or be appreciated or even get one red cent for your trouble? 

On another note, as in real life, I made a point of not judging my characters or their actions - that’s up to each reader to do on their own. I tried to keep my personal values out of it.  My characters, just like all human beings, have their dark sides and have lots of opportunities to make all kinds of choices and, though I don’t necessarily agree with all the choices they make, I let the story and their personalities take them wherever they choose to go. 

Sometimes people celebrate; other times their choices result in death - but that’s real life. And even though these are fictional characters, who and what they are reflect - at least, I hope they do - reality.

Muse: What are the creative jumping off points for you? Are you inspired by dreams? Music? Nature? The occasional black nightmare? What triggers your imagination?
Glasner: People have referred to me in the past as a “visual” person.  I actually “see” the things I want to write about.  I first became aware of this - believe it or not - in the way I give directions!  I have to stand up and then face left or right as I’m telling someone how to get from point A to point B.  Turns out I utilize that same ability in my writing. 

I actually watched, in my mind’s eye, as Katherine’s SUV pulled into the front yard of the Great Blue Heron Inn in Weaver's Bridge, CT, and then saw Carly as she stepped through the screen door onto the front porch of the old Victorian to say hello to Katherine for the first time.  I saw what her hair looked like, the clothes and jewelry she wore, how she smiled and extended her hand in greeting. 

And later on in the story, when Frank Nettleton was caught in a burning building in the middle of the night, the way I was able to write that chapter and make it believable, as part of the research I did, I downloaded several photographs of houses completely engulfed in flames.

I stared at the photos, the orange-to-white flames reaching 20, sometimes 30 feet into the air, the eerie yellow glow in the windows and the doorway, making the house look as though it was leering at those who were standing helplessly by, watching it burn, looking for all the world like some tremendous, demented jack-o-lantern against a black sky. 

As I continued to stare at the photographs, I was able to put myself into the scene; I was able to imagine what it must have been like to be there, to feel the heat, to hear the glass shattering and the building groaning as it buckled, to hear disembodied voices barking orders about family members who might still be in bed, about buckets and nearby structures and trees where the sparks were floating dangerously near, to watch a lifetime of memories just disintegrate before my eyes. 

I put myself there and when I could actually feel the loss and the grief, I picked up my pen and wrote. 

Muse: Tell us a little about the story in Finding Emmaus.
Glasner: You mean besides the elevator pitch?  To me, it’s a story about people who want to be seen.  And heard.  For who and what they really are. 

It’s not easy putting yourself out there for the world to see.  Hell, it’s not easy putting yourself out there for even one person to see.  And sometimes the hardest thing to do is to look in a mirror and be honest about what’s staring back at you. 

Sometimes it’s easier to accept what others pound into your head about what they think you are rather than taking a stand and saying, “No, that’s not me, this is who I am.”  That kind of fatalistic acceptance - a belief that the Devil you know is better than the Devil you don’t  - can kill and, in fact, in the book, as in reality, there are times when it does. 

“Finding Emmaus” is about two very average people - people with ideals and courage and fears and flaws - who struggle against being invisible and being compartmentalized, trying to save themselves and, eventually, trying to “right a centuries-old wrong.”

Muse: What was your inspiration for this story?
Glasner: I know what it’s like to be intuitive and extremely sensitive to the world around me, and to spend a lifetime being ridiculed and feeling separate because of that, because that ability or talent or craft or personality trait, whatever you want to call it, is so easily misunderstood.   

When I began researching Empathy, it just came to me so clearly, all at once: what if I took that misinterpretation and carried it to the nth degree?  What if I took a perfectly normal but widely misunderstood way of being and did with it what society seems to prefer to do with “different” people?  What if I labeled them mentally ill?  And then segregated them from society?  And then gave them just enough light to begin inching their way through the darkness, to see if they could find out what was really going on, what they really were and what their potential effect on the world could really be?

So I had to research mental illness and that’s when I came across all the information about Big Pharma and what that “all but unstoppable” corporate machine is doing. 

And that’s actually how I met Kevin P. Miller, the film director and producer who wrote the foreword for my book.

Muse: What is your favorite scene from the novel and why?
Glasner: I do have one favorite scene but I don’t want to say too much about it because it would give too much of the story away.  What I can say is this:

I never really thought about what went on inside the walls of a hideous place like Bethlem Royal Hospital in the 17th century, but the information is pretty readily available if you know where to look, and the story of Gilbert Bond (who, in the story, is a 17th century Empath) is, with the exception of his name, a true and accurate depiction of the horrors and tortures inflicted on those deemed “lunatic” in his century.

Muse: Have you written other books and if not, is there another on the horizon?