An Abundant Life - Finding The Words

A few months ago I was at an art and fashion and design event in Manhattan that was produced by Pim Shih who I have written about in these pages before, who is the Founder of Pim Comedy and The SetNYC. Pim always has a wonderful group of Artists of all kinds at his events, both in the audience and showing their work, and on this particular day I met a young man named Christopher M. Struck who told me that he had just completed a novel that would be released from the publisher BHC Press in the next few months. My biggest first love in the arts was reading which was closely followed by writing - I was reading so much before I began elementary school that the teachers told my parents they had to stop teaching me, and I wrote my first plays and my first stories when I was too young to even remember how young I was. Of course those early years of childhood joys were very small fry compared to what was to come later, and I cut my teeth listening to my mother reading Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, To Kill A Mockingbird and Pride And Prejudice. In high school when everyone else was struggling with Shakespeare class and reading Charles Dickens, I'd already read and seen the movies and the plays and novels and was helping coach everyone else through their agony. I loved reading, and read everything I could get my hands on, and the only thing that has stopped or slowed me a bit is that sometimes the things that are newer just don't excite me the way the books of yesteryear could do, and I just don't have the luxury of time any more that I once did. But there was something about Christopher that made me think it was important to keep in touch with him - it's hard to tell why, but there was just something about him that led me to give him my card and tell him about my blog and say I'd be interested in hearing more when the novel was published. It might be because he also told me he writes for Cabaret Scenes Magazine, a publication that I've had a history of my own with because of the people I've known who are in the Cabaret and Broadway community, or perhaps it was his presence, something very quiet and gentle yet also full of life, with a smile hiding behind an otherwise serious and even tempered, thoughtful demeanor. He spoke well, and that is something that I always notice - I'm an actress and I hear the sounds and qualities of people's voices that either make me want to find out more or walk away, and with Christopher I continued the conversation.

Fast forward with a jump cut to a few weeks ago when I received an email from him that his novel was available in a PDF format and would be released in hard copy shortly. I'm one of those people who love books in book form, but I thought I would at least give it a try and see if it was something I wanted to continue. The first night I sat down to read it I didn't want to stop. It's so beautifully written and such an interesting story that it was a pleasure to read in a way I haven't felt about many of the newer novels I've read over the years. I was feeling a bit of Fitzgerald, who is my all time favorite novelist, but there was something else as well, something that can only be described as the style of the novelist Christopher M. Struck. I read for as long as I could that first night and had to stop because of needing sleep for a long next few days, but as soon as I could I was back into the novel, and enjoying the reading of it in the all consuming way I hadn't read in many, many years.

Titled Kennig and Gold, Christopher's novel was inspired in part by the life of Nils Hanson, a World War II Marine Veteran and author of Lillian Lorraine: The Life and Times of a Ziegfeld Diva, and it takes you into a world of history, a time when writing letters was a regular thing that people did and when telephone calls of any kind were few and far between. It was refreshing to read this story in a way that is very hard to describe unless like me you're a fan of old movies, old novels, and the stars who populated the big screens and smaller pages. I felt like I was coming home again or that somehow I'd found myself back in the past while living my life of today with the new friends I was making in Christopher's world populating the pages of my own history and memory.

When I wrote to Christopher to tell him how much I was enjoying his writing, he responded that he put a great deal of effort into the art form and it shows, though not in the way that sometimes is the case with writers whose writing seems full of effort. The effort Christopher takes with the craft and art of writing show in the fact that the very words are knit together in a way seems effortless. There is a beautiful flow and feel to the words and story that bring us from moment to moment, emotion to emotion, without ever feeling forced or jarring. And the writing, though reminiscent of some of my favorite works, is wholly Christopher's own. In every moment I felt that I was in a new world, one that only he had created. My hat is off to this talented and hard working young man who prior to writing his debut novel had already received 6 degrees, traveled to 19 countries, taught at 3 universities, and studied 2 foreign languages. May he go far and touch the lives of many with his beautiful words.

Christopher M. Struck

New York  City
https://www.struckchris.com/
Author Photograph And Novel Cover Art
Courtesy Of Christopher M. Struck
Publisher BHC Press
https://www.bhcpress.com/

Blessings,

Jannie Susan