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New release... Blackbird Rising: A Novel of the American Spirit



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At the dawn of the 20th Century, the first city lit by electricity—Buffalo, New York—hosts a dazzling World’s Fair to showcase America’s march into the future. Unknown to organizers, the bold grandsons of a runaway slave plan to conquer the sky during a fateful presidential visit. They intend to show the world that nothing is more powerful than mankind’s oldest dreams—flight and freedom—meeting imagination in an age of possibility.

Gary Earl Ross is a professor at the University at Buffalo EOC. Fiction writer, public radio essayist, and playwright-in-residence for the Ujima Company, he is the author of the short story collections The Wheel of Desire and Shimmerville and the plays Picture Perfect, The Best Woman, and Matter of Intent (winner of the Edgar Award from Mystery Writers of America). Blackbird Rising is his first novel.

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Excerpt...

My grandfather was a big man.

Papa Joe stood more than six and a half feet tall, his shoulders so broad from fifty years of blacksmithing that any coat he wore seemed an uncomfortable fit. Even when he was in his seventies and beginning to complain of arthritis, his arms were hard and corded, his skillet-sized hands still remarkably strong. Beneath a sprinkling of white hair, his face was weathered and dark, with a wide nose and lips so full they looked as if they had been carved from volcanic rock. But it is his eyes I remember most. They were the deepest, wisest eyes I have ever seen, and they glittered like diamonds in the night sky. My grandfather was a dreamer, you see, a man who gazed into the future as easily as most men look back at the past. And he was in the perfect place to dream—America, where some dream of riches, others dream of freedom, and a select few dream of doing wondrous things.

            In another time and another skin, he might have been a teacher or a college professor. He read more books than anyone I have ever known. And he remembered what he read, quoting not just long passages of Scripture with the skill of a practiced preacher but also Shakespeare and Douglass, Dunbar and Dickens, Don Quixote, Williams’ History of the Negro Race in America, dime novels about the Wild West, Jules Verne, astronomy books, even pieces he had read twenty or thirty years past. He would have been wonderful in a classroom, a great bear of a man holding students enthralled with his deep voice and tireless stories. Instead, he was a blacksmith successful enough to own his own carriage, an ex-slave who somehow had acquired the documents of free birth—which I still keep in the family Bible. To the world that never saw him gazing at the stars or reading in his favorite chair or urging his son and grandsons to stand tall, my grandfather was a simple man. To my brother Will and me he was an inspiration. He made dreamers of us both.

            —From the unpublished manuscript Flight of the Blackbird by Augustus Lockhart

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Reviews...

"BLACKBIRD RISING is a captivating story, an original look at Buffalo's history and the unique place that those who were once enslaved, and their progeny, had in realizing its reputation as the “City of Light”. Gary Earl Ross has written a provocative, imaginative story of a former slave and the grandsons who actualize the meanings and mechanics of flight."

--
Alexis De Veaux, author of WARRIOR POET: A BIOGRAPHY OF AUDRE LORD and DON’T EXPLAIN: A SONG OF BILLIE HOLIDAY

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“BLACKBIRD RISING is a daring and ingenious book, richly imagined and vividly told. Gary Earl Ross gets it all right: the tang and texture of Buffalo at the turn of the last century; the deep divisions and complex bonds of race and brotherhood; the danger and exhilaration felt by those who have the sky in their blood. This is a deeply moving and memorable story of our longing for freedom and for flight; it is a celebration of the capacity of the human spirit and imagination, even in unpromising and unlikely circumstances, to soar.”

--Mick Cochrane, author of SPORT and THE GIRL WHO THREW BUTTERFLIES

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"Against the backdrop of segregation, deadly competition, and an assassination attempt set in Buffalo, New York, BLACKBIRD RISING poises the reader for flight. The challenges of lifting an unlikely aircraft and pilot to unparalleled heights depend on the winds of hope." 


--Sharon R. Amos, Ph.D, English Instructor at University at Buffalo EOC, poet, and co-author of a-work-progress on the St. John Baptist Church.


"BLACKBIRD RISING plunges you in the middle of 1901 Buffalo, a prosperous city roaring into the future, full of light, excitement, and possibility--the sky's the limit, and the airplane is being born. Blending history and fiction seamlessly, Ross tells a fine tale of creativity, suspense, greed, murder, fate, and hope thwarted and regained. BLACKBIRD RISING makes you feel as if you were there and, more than a century later, helps you remember the price of progress, mourn the casualties, and continue to hope."

--Gabrielle Burton, author of SEARCHING FOR  TAMSEN DONNER  and HEARTBREAK HOTEL

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“Brilliant and moving, Gary Earl Ross’s BLACKBIRD RISING  paints a panorama of a deeply divided society with stunning detail, wisdom, and a language so achingly beautiful you want to return to it again and again. This is a novel for everyone who has ever had a dream and tried to realize it against impossible odds. Ross is a master of suspense, his novel a tour de force!

 --Gunilla Theander Kester, author of WRITING THE SUBJECT  and  TIME OF SAND AND TEETH.

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Author Inteview...

What inspired you to write Blackbird Rising?

Some years ago I had a strange dream that made me bolt upright at 4 a.m. In my dream I saw Teddy Roosevelt on the porch of a Delaware Avenue mansion. A horse and carriage were coming from one direction, an early automobile from the other. Overhead was a biplane with a black pilot. I wrote four pages of notes before I went back to sleep.

What sources did you use to research this story?

I spent a lot of time in the Buffalo Public Library—in both the local history section, especially with newspapers on microfilm, and the science and technology department to learn the mechanics of flight. Also, I spent many hours in the Buffalo and Erie County Historical Museum, as well as the Wilcox Mansion, the Roosevelt Inaugural Site. With a valid excuse for travel, I visited the George Eastman House for information on early filmmaking, the Library of Congress for a look at the complete Edison films of the Pan American Exposition, and the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum to study early aircraft, particularly the Wright Flyer.

What surprised you in writing this novel?

I was surprised and pleased to learn William McKinley had given a grant to Langley of the Smithsonian to develop an aircraft for a weapon.

Was any aspect of Blackbird Rising daunting?

Trying to capture the history was daunting. I said to library staff I didn’t want people to read about the Expo; I wanted them to go there.

How is novel writing different from other forms of writing?

Short stories are, of necessity, slices of reality or unreality. Poems capture moments or feelings. Plays consist of dialogue and stage directions which give directors, actors, and set designers a world to create. Only the novel demands the creation of a complete representation of reality or unreality—in short, its own world.

What is your writing day like?

My day varies. Depending upon my mood, I will write different things. When I’m feeling angry I write op-ed pieces or public radio commentaries that amount to social criticism. When I’m emotional, I write poetry. When I feel scholarly, I research and write scholarly articles. When I feel like creating a world, I write fiction or drama. Some days I spend on the business of writing—researching markets, listing ideas, gathering information.

Have you considered making Blackbird Rising into a play or screenplay?

Absolutely. I think it would make an inspirational but fun film.

What message do want readers to glean from this novel?

Feel free to dream and pursue that dream.

What is your next project?

I’m working on a play and I have begun turning my play Matter of Intent into a novel.

What advice would you give a novice writer who wants to write a book?

Write, write, write, write, then rewrite, rewrite, rewrite . . . and of course, READ.

Do you ever have writer’s block?

Sure. Then I go do something else till it goes away.

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