Randy Overbeck was a public school teacher and administrator in SW Ohio for decades. Now retired, Overbeck has become an accomplished novelist. His most recent book, "Cruel Lessons," mines the author's deep personal knowledge of what it was like to be an administrator who has been charged with investigating a crime. In "Cruel Lessons" some young boys are the victims of a drug dealer and our investigator is trying to determine where these dangerous drugs originated and how they got into the hands of those unfortunate youngsters.
"Cruel Lessons" is the first book in a new series by Randy Overbeck. He returned to the program to talk about it and to discuss his current occupation as a novelist.
Bonus Segment:
"Flying" by Eric Kraft
(original recording made in 2009)
In 2002 I interviewed the novelist Eric Kraft for his novel "Inflating a Dog." Seven years later I talked to him again about "Flying," a collection of three novellas that were a continuation of his engrossing and somewhat bizarre series of fictional memoirs. When we recorded this segment I was under the impression that 'Flying" was the last book in this series. Upon further research, I'm not so sure. I would appear that in 2017 he published a book with the title of "Albertine's Overcoat" and this certainly sounds like another one of Kraft's fictional memoirs. His memoirist, Peter Leroy, is apparently still at it!
Here's the description I found on-line. I assume this synopsis was written by the author:
Peter Leroy is in danger of becoming an arrogant, insufferable little egoist. Then something happens that saves him. He falls in love with Albertine Gaudet. That is the end of egoism-and the start of one of literature's great romances. Peter doesn't merely tell the story of his
wooing and winning Albertine. He interweaves that story with an account of the troubles that beset him during the writing of the story. Among the obstacles are self-doubt, procrastination, and the demanding clients for his memoir-ghost-writing service, 'Memoirs While You Wait'- but that's not all. He begins getting telephone calls intended for a local business, Peerless Television Service and Repair. These oddly compelling calls lure him out of the isolation of his writing room and into the lives of the callers. The result is a poignant, thoughtful meditation on the frustrations of everyday life, the transitory nature of fame and success, persistence, loyalty, the vanity of human wishes, luck, realism, and romance.
The Book Nook on WYSO is presented by the Greene County Public Library with additional support from Washington-Centerville Public Library, Clark County Public Library, Dayton Metro Library, Wright Memorial Public Library, and Tipp City Public.
