Don Silver, Author
Asheville author Don Silver’s second novel, Scorched, draws upon his knowledge of the music industry gleaned from time spent as a musician, talent scout and record producer, among other professions. “I’m a big music fan, so music from the 1970s is referenced throughout the first half of the book,” Silver says. “There’s a bit of a parallel between producing music and writing a novel: they both blend creativity and discipline; vision and organization; commitment and revision—which, at least compared to many activities, make them both pretty inefficient.”
The novel began for him with a character that Silver found familiar and strange at the same time. “Once I had a clear sense of him and could guess what he thought and would say, I found a point of view and setting,” he says, “Philadelphia in the 1970s, where I grew up, along with a cast of characters who, I suppose, are composites of people I knew.”
Silver’s first book, Backward-Facing Man, was also a coming-of-age story that followed its characters into middle age, but Scorched, he says, morphs into a thriller as its character tries—and fails—to outrun his past. “It’s been likened to Stephen King’s The Stand and to The Catcher in the Rye,” he adds. “I’m interested in characters and the experiences of life, but I love a good thriller with high stakes and deadlines.”
Scorched, May, 2024, literary fiction, paperback $12.99, eBook $6.99, by Don Silver, and published by Holloway Press. Learn more at DonSilver.net.
