Happy Five on Friday! Today, I’m thrilled to have Mr. Donald Platt sharing answers to his choice of five questions. He’s written 5 novels, and three of them are featured here today. He’s also had an interesting background with lots of Hollywood connections!
Man, if he ever has that last meal, I hope he invites me to join him. (Not for it to be my last, just to help send him off! :+) I don’t even know what half that stuff is, but it all sounds delicious!
Don’t forget…if you leave comments on the October Five on Friday posts, you will be entered to win a $10 Amazon gift card. Each post counts as an entry, so comment on all of them!
Thank you, Donald! I’m so pleased you agreed to take part in Five on Friday and I enjoyed learning some new things about you.
Author of five novels ROCAMORA, HOUSE OF ROCAMORA, A GATHERING OF VULTURES, CLOSE TO THE SUN, and BODO, the APOSTATE, Donald Michael Platt was born and raised in San Francisco. Donald graduated from Lowell High School and received his B.A. in History from the University of California at Berkeley. After two years in the Army, Donald attended graduate school at San Jose State where he won a batch of literary awards in the annual SENATOR PHELAN LITERARY CONTEST.
Donald moved to southern California to begin his professional writing career. He sold to the TV series, MR. NOVAK, ghosted for health food guru, Dan Dale Alexander, and wrote for and with diverse producers, among them as Harry Joe Brown, Sig Schlager, Albert J. Cohen, Al Ruddy plus Paul Stader Sr, Hollywood stuntman and stunt/2nd unit director. While in Hollywood Donald taught Creative Writing and Advanced Placement European History at Fairfax High School where he was Social Studies Department Chairman.
After living in Florianópolis, Brazil, setting of his horror novel A GATHERING OF VULTURES, pub. 2007 & 2011, he moved to Florida where he wrote as a with: VITAMIN ENRICHED, pub.1999, for Carl DeSantis, founder of Rexall Sundown Vitamins; and THE COUPLE’S DISEASE, Finding a Cure for Your Lost “Love” Life, pub. 2002, for Lawrence S. Hakim, MD, FACS, Head of Sexual Dysfunction Unit at the Cleveland Clinic. Currently, Donald resides in Winter Haven, Florida where he is polishing a dark novel and writing a sequel to CLOSE TO THE SUN.
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If you could choose your last meal, and you weren’t in prison, what would it be?
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Campari on the rocks with an orange wedge, a real Caesar salad prepared tableside, San Francisco sourdough bread, 10 oz filet mignon in a mushroom caramelized onion sauce, with a bottle of Super Tuscan Sassacaia or Mouton Rothschild with garlic smashed red potatoes, no veggies, aged cheese for dessert with Chateau de Y’quem, finishing with double espresso and XO Remy Martin.
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What’s the one thing you do every day that you enjoy the least, but do it anyway?
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Clean the cat litter box.
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If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be? Capitola by the Sea at the north end of Monterey Bay 5 miles south of Santa Cruz.
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What makes you laugh? The unexpected absurd.
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What’s the best advice you ever got…doesn’t have to be about writing. Never be a follower.
On Ascension Day May 22, 838, Bishop Bodo, chaplain, confessor, and favorite of both his kin, Emperor Louis the Pious, son of Charlemagne, and Empress Judith, caused the greatest scandal of the Carolingian Empire and the 9th century Roman Church.
Bodo, the novel, dramatizes the causes, motivations, and aftermath of Bodo’s astonishing cause célèbre that took place during an age of superstitions, a confused Roman Church, heterodoxies, lingering paganism, broken oaths, rebellions, and dissolution of the Carolingian Empire.
Professional ballroom dancers Terri and Rick Hamilton aspire to be world champions, but Terri’s recurring back and health problems place that goal well out of reach. They travel to Terri’s birthplace on Santa Catarina to vacation and visit their best friends and mentors who retired there. The scenic wonder is home not only to a unique sub-species of the black vulture, but also to a clique of mysterious women who offer Terri perfect health and the promise of fame—at a terrible price. Rick fears Terri is being drawn into a cult and his own life may be in danger.
Will it be too late to save Terri and himself after Rick discovers something even more terrifying lives beneath the tranquil, tropical veneer of the island?
Rocamora, a novel of 17th century Spain, is based on the life of Vicente de Rocamora, who struggles to make his place in a Spain obsessed with limpieza de sangre, purity of blood untainted by Jew, Moor, or recent convert.
Poet, swordsman, and master of disguise, at the insistence of his family, Vicente enters the Dominican Order and is soon thrust into the scheming political and clerical hierarchies that at Court. Vicente becomes Confessor and Spiritual Director for King Philip IV’s teenage sister, the beautiful Infanta Doña María, five years younger than he, protégé and possible successor of Inquisitor General Sotomayor, and an invaluable assistant to the King’s chief minister, the Count-Duke de Olivares.
Vicente needs all his skills and cunning to survive assassination by a growing list of ruthless foes in both Church and Court, solve a centuries-old riddle to quell rumors of his own impurity of blood, and above all suppress his love for the seemingly unattainable María.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/Donald-Michael-Platt?store=allproducts&keyword=Donald+Michael+Platt
https://www.facebook.com/donald.m.platt
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1085664.Donald_Michael_Platt
