I'm especially glad to be able to interview fellow Indie Writers Unite member, Randy Attwood about his latest release, Crazy About You. It's a fascinating book, so take a closer look!
Hi Randy! I’m glad you’re here to discuss your release, Crazy About You, a fictional novel about
asylum brats growing up on the grounds of mental hospitals where their
parents work. What is the genre of this work?
My works don't fit
very easily into genres. Crazy About You is written from the first person
viewpoint of Brad, a junior in high school. So it is Young Adult and Coming of
Age. But there is a murder to be solved. There is suspense and it gets pretty
thrilling at the end.
What inspired you to write this book?
My father was a
dentist and he worked at a state mental hospital. We were provided housing on
the grounds. So I grew up at an insane asylum. Maybe that's one reason I have
an odd outlook on life.
Are any parts of the story based on real
life? Does or did the Larned State Mental Hospital actually exist?
Larned State
Hospital did, and does, exist in the middle of Kansas. At the time of the
book's setting, it cared for about 1,500 patients. It was a small city with its
own police, fire hospital, and cafeteria. My first job was washing dishes in
the cafeteria and those scenes occur in the novel.
Your main character, Brad, has a series
of unusual adventures revolving around that asylum. Are his parent(s) who work
there aware of the scary events their son becomes involved with? If so, do they
take an active role? Are they afraid for his safety?
Most mentally ill
patients are not dangerous. Brad's mother has deserted Brad's father and run
away with a Cuban physician, so she's not on the scene at the time of the
story. Brad's father isn't worried that his son makes friends with inmates. He
knows they are mostly benign. The criminally insane, however, are dangerous.
But that building is completely secured, until, at the end of the book, you
find out it isn't.
Being a part of all these strange
happenings, is it difficult for Brad to fit in with his peers in his normal
high school life?
Larned State Hospital
was a main economic factor for the nearby town of Larned, which had a
population of about 5,000. Many fathers and mothers worked at the hospital, so
there was no stigma for their children. Not many of them, however, had housing
on the grounds.
What motivates Brad to solve the
mysterious problems in the mental hospital?
Brad is at the age
of discovery about himself, his surroundings, and other people. This first
person point of view is written with a bit of twist. It provides opportunities
for a future Brad to look back at himself and understand how he came to be the
way he is.
May I add, too,
that I donate $1 of every sale of the $4.99 ebook to Headquarters Counseling
Center in Lawrence, KS. Those folks work the suicide prevention hotline for my
part of the country. I respect and support this extraordinarily important work.
Brad does an
English assignment in which he writes a kind of essay on the history of the
treatment of the mentally ill. As I look around me today, and what we are doing
housing too many mentally ill patients with criminals, I can only conclude that
we haven't made much progress since the 1960s in caring for our fellow human
beings.
Description ~ Crazy
About You
By
Randy Attwood
Service
brats grow up on military bases. Asylum brats grow up on the grounds of mental
hospitals where their parents work. High school asylum brat Brad has a week in
1964 that tests his sanity and grows him up faster than he ever wished. The
potential for bizarre at the Larned State Hospital is coalesced into one week.
Brad thinks he's in love with the schizophrenic teen, who has to be tied up to
keep from picking her palms until they bleed.
The
brutal murder of a townswoman rivets the town's attention. Brad becomes a hero
when he leads campus police to the hiding place of an AWOL patient/suspect, who
believes he's John F. Kennedy.
A
group of employees who run a theft ring believe Brad is ratting on them so they
take him to see Alex Krout, mass murderer and the most dangerous of the criminally
insane.
It's
prom week. The desire for normalcy finds Brad with a dream date who's crazy
about him.
The
lit fuses hit the dynamite when a group of patients in the building for the
criminally insane hold guards hostage and Alex Krout, squealing in his cell,
waits to run amok.
Purchase Link ~ Amazon
Excerpt
“You’re not really going out with Jake
LaRue, are you?” I asked my sister. It had to be a joke.
“He happens to be one of the few guys
willing to drive out to this nut farm to pick me up.”
I couldn’t believe she was serious, but
her pug nose was pointing up higher than before, as if by challenging her it
was I who was stinking up the room instead of her by dragging into the house
even the name of Jake LaRue.
“Jesus, Sally, Jake LaRue drives around
in that car of his with panties hanging from his mirror,” I told her,
mentioning, for the first time between us, that unmentionable undergarment
word. I had to send a signal this was a serious conversation.
“Are you worried about my virtue, Twerp
Face?” my sister asked, saying “virtue” in a way that made it sound like it was
a vice.
“Did you tell Dad? Does he know this
guy?” I’d try a different strategy, an appeal to higher authority.
“Does Dad ask my permission to date his
nursies?”
“That’s different. He’s an adult.”
“I happen to be eighteen.”
“If you can’t do better than Jake LaRue,
you ought to give it up.” Another appeal, this one to her vanity.
“I find him kinda of cute. And that car
of his is so cool. He spends all his time on it. He makes more in one race than
you do in a month washing dishes at the creepy cafeteria here. He’s let me ride
along.”
“Jesus, Sally, if Dad knew you went
draggin’ with that guy you’d be grounded the rest of the school year.” I was
down to my last strategy–threats.
“Well, Dad’s not going to find out, is
he? And if he does, I’ll know you were the snitch. Then I’ll have to tell him
about the time you brought your little fruitcake friend from the juvenile
delinquent ward over here and sang songs to her, or whatever else you were
doing down there in your room.”
“Suzanne needed to get away from her
ward, and it’s called the Adolescent Rehabilitation Unit. All I did was play
the guitar for her and we sang some songs,” I said, acting as if I hadn’t tried
to kiss Suzanne and been turned aside and I could explain perfectly well to Dad
why I had had a girl patient down in my basement bedroom. Like hell. Sally knew
when she had me by the balls. If Dad found out, he’d kill me.
She pressed the advantage, “Do you know
how sick I am of hearing you singing in the basement, imitating Peter, Paul and
Mary? I swear, if I hear you sing 'Puff, the Magic Dragon' one more time, I’ll
break that damn guitar. And since you think you’re so qualified to criticize
who I date, who are you taking to your junior prom? Which, I believe, is only a
week away.”
She did know how to sink her fangs into
a raw nerve.
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