From the TBR Pile: Interview & Book Spotlight: City of Promises by D. Grant Fitter

Welcome author D. Grant Fitter who is promoting his book, He joins us today for an interview. Enjoy!

Publisher: CreateSpace
Date of publication: January 2013

When one credulous young country boy with lofty plans leaves his Mexican rural life for the promise and riches of the ‘big city’, will it live up to its reputation? In a unique fusion of fact and fiction, author D. Grant Fitter's social commentary gives a rare insight into life south of the border, recapturing the golden era of one of the world’s most eclectic cities.

"They call this the city of promise, Arturo, but it is a city of promises and very few of those promises are true."

Mexico City has always held a charm and allure that millions are unable to resist. Taking a trip back in time, CITY OF PROMISES revisits 1940s Mexico City, where one young man is coming of age with capricious gusto.

Arturo Fuentes' rise, his loves, and his relations with shady characters tell the compelling story of a place that both touched the hearts and shattered the dreams of millions.

Kari & Autumn: What inspired you to become a writer?

D. Grant: It was more like a progression of events which grew into an irresistible urge that suddenly exploded on me late one Thursday night while working in my office in Mexico City.

Let me try to explain without boring you with the minute details.

A big part of my business life involved the writing of marketing collaterals and that somehow lead to freelance hobby writing for a magazine for a couple of years. Freelancing was so enjoyable that it expanded while I continued in my decent salary paying position. It is kind of complicated, but at any rate I had been working in Mexico City for about five years and my family was home in Toronto. The more fun poor paying writing became, the more frustrating high paying business became. My family was growing up and I was missing out. The next day after that Thursday night was my monthly Friday to come home for a break. Without knowing how we all might live, I announced I was heading for the airport and that I would not be coming back.

That was my commitment to a life of freelance writing and so on, and so on, and so on.

Kari & Autumn: Where do you come up with the ideas for your books?

D. Grant: We all have thoughts we want to share and ideas that need expression. I am terrible about writing exam questions or long essay assignments because neither of those were my own idea. They belonged to someone else. Gathered personal thoughts are one’s own and it is just a matter of determining the proper vehicle through which to express them. In City of Promises, time spent in Mexico had presented me with a wonderful storehouse of observations a headful of interpretations and dreams about how life might have been.

The ideas for my books are just a matter of finding the right cast of characters and the proper settings to turn them loose on going on about their lives, working their way out of crisis, and coming up with valid explanations of matters I had been along time thinking about. My characters found their own way through history according to an actual calendar of events and I simply recorded it.

Kari & Autumn: What exciting projects are waiting in the wings?

D. Grant: Christ at War is the title of my next historical fiction. It is a mid-1920s story that establishes itself in Southern Colorado, shifts location for a while to El Paso, Texas before unfolding in its entirety in north central Mexico.

I like most of characters who showed up for audition and those I don’t much care for get their just treatment for being such nasty individuals.

Without revealing too much of the story line, Christ at War is about soldiers of fortune and my interpretation of United States involvement in a long and vicious upheaval south of the border.

That will be followed by another of my “truer than fiction” tales firmly in keeping with my Mexican novel theme. It spans events of a decade beginning in the mid-1960s and rise of a tyrant, President Luis Echeverria.

The novel is now planned for release in October, 2014

Kari & Autumn: Who is your favorite literary character and why?

D. Grant: Now your questions are getting tough.

But aha, there is a fellow who has stayed with me, sometimes even haunted me for oh so many years since I first met him in John Steinbeck’s masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath. Tom Joad is a symbol of hard times and a model of perseverance expertly molded by Steinbeck’s words. If he has stayed with me for so long, Tom Joad must be a favorite.

Kari & Autumn: Just for fun, if you could be any animal, what would it be and why?

D. Grant: Now you must be trying to prove how much you enjoy posing tough questions!

I would consider a tortoise because a tortoise lives for so many years and he can run just as fast the week before he finally dies as he could the week after he was first born. But no, he looks so bored. A rabbit is a better choice because they always look so sharp and happy. He would have to be a smart rabbit though. One like Bugs Bunny. He wouldn’t ever lose the race against the tortoise.

About the author:

D. Grant Fitter is a citizen of North America. Born in Ontario, Canada and educated in Colorado, USA, he is convinced he was Mexican in his previous life. How else to explain such a strong attraction to Mexico and all things Mexican, including his wife.

His business career includes long stints of work in Mexico before yielding to a pesky urge to pursue freelance journalism for seventeen years. Meanwhile, Fitter’s Mexican roots continued to call. City of Promises is the product of his curiosity to understand why the culture of our close neighbors is so distant from our own.

He lives in Toronto and whenever possible, in a sunny hillside casita in the colonial town of Taxco, Guerrero.