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PLEASE NOTE: If you need an item quick, don't order from us; amazon is your best bet. We do appreciate you ordering from us directly (the author and the publisher make more from the sale this way), but due to the increased number of orders and covid-related shipping changes, our shipping takes considerably longer than it used to. Please be patient, as it can take 2 to 3 weeks to process and ship orders. Please email us about an order only if it's absolutely necessary. We REALLY appreciate your patience for this, and appreciate your business! THANK YOU!
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Q & A with Nat Segaloff - author of new novel, "The Town That Said No"

 

 

 

Q & A with Nat Segaloff, author of The Town That Said No from BearManor Media.

 Q: You’re better known for your non-fiction. What compelled you to write a novel?

A: Dismissing the wisecrack that some of my non-fiction is fiction, when I couldn’t find a way of focusing my ideas in a non-fiction book, I chose the form of a novel.

 Q: Just what is your theme?

 A: Xenophobia (fear of outsiders) and religious bigotry..

 Q: How about a capsule synopsis?

A: Two stories play against each other. One is about a Muslim family that moves into a small American town and the reaction of the residents to their unwanted presence. It is also about a writer who returns to this town after being embedded with a platoon in Afghanistan and discovers that a man he saw commit a war crime is also there, possibly seeking revenge against him or kill the Muslim family.

 Q: That sounds like a stock dramatic situation.

 A: Not the way I stack the cards. First, the Muslim family didn’t want to move to the town of Hobart, Tennessee—they were sent there by the government when they fled Afghanistan. Second, Hobart is a diverse southern community with no racial strife and famously stood against an invasion by skinheads a few years earlier. But religious differences make the conflict more complicated.

 Q: Are you playing with stereotypes?

 A: Absolutely. Nobody is who you think they are. Stereotypes vanish once you get to know the people burdened with them.

Q: Who do you hope will read The Town That Said No?

 A: Well, it isn’t beach reading, that’s for sure, but it also isn’t a political or social polemic. It’s just a story that I hope is well-told.

 Q: Where did you get the idea?

 A: Part of it is based on people and a town I know, and the rest is drawn from something called “imagination.”

Q: How did you like writing a novel versus writing non-fiction?

A: It’s both liberating and confining. It’s liberating in that I can invent anything I want to, but confining in that it has to make sense because I can’t lay off inconsistencies on the people I’m quoting.

 Q: Is there any chance of having it made into a movie?

 A: I thought you’d never ask. The film rights were bought while the book was still in galleys and I am now writing the screenplay.

 Q: Who do you want to star in the movie?

 A: Gary Cooper and Robert Ryan, neither of whom is returning phone calls. I’m sure that the producers are more realistic.

 


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