📚 A Bookish Chat with ‘The Dance We Shared’ David Tindell #AuthorInterview

The Dance We Shared (Men of Honor Book 3) follows Ben Fletcher, a former radio announcer in his early 50s who transitions to working for a college in La Crosse, Wisconsin. It is an emotional tale centered around a man who has lost the love of his life. Can you tell us more about Ben and why he went from radio announcer to working for a college?

In some ways, Ben is modeled on me. I went to college to get a degree in broadcasting and worked the next 20 years in radio. My last stop in that journey was in Rice Lake, a town in northwest Wisconsin. On my first day on the air, I had to do a phone interview with the manager of a local travel agency. I thought it went a little rough. What did I know about travel? I’d never been anywhere. My boss suggested I go down to the lady’s office and meet her, so I did. We started dating about a year later and married two years after that, and we’re still together today.

I left radio in ’99 to see if there might be something else I could do and build up my retirement. I wound up working for the Social Security Administration for nearly 16 years, which was the second-smartest decision I’ve ever made. (Marrying Sue was my smartest, by far.) So, I thought it would be natural for Ben to make a change in his life, especially considering what he’d been through with Ronnie. In his case, I didn’t make it as drastic as mine was. Ben takes a job in media relations for UW-La Crosse, which includes calling the school’s football and basketball games for local radio stations. 

Who are the other characters in the book?

Veronica Starr, the glamorous TV news anchor and love of Ben’s life, is a woman of accomplishment and one who employs different personas, depending on who she wants to be at the moment. As Veronica, she’s the respected professional, the highest-rated personality in local television, first in La Crosse and then in the Twin Cities. When she’s with Ben, she’s Ronnie, still beautiful and intelligent, but more playful and carefree. Then, when she has to leave Raymond, she becomes someone else, about as far from Veronica and Ronnie as she can get, but that transition also serves to cut her off from Ben, perhaps forever. 

Besides Ben and Ronnie, the major characters are Raymond Harvey, Veronica’s ex-husband, and Sam Davis, a former Marine who works for the private investigator Harvey hires to locate his ex-wife. 

 Harvey is a man who’s always been in control of his life and his career as a banker, but then he gets into something that’s way over his head. That has a serious impact on his marriage to Vernonica, to the point where she leaves him and goes into hiding. As his proverbial chickens come home to roost, Harvey begins a desperate search to find her and gain access to her own funds, hoping he can get himself out of his jam once and for all.

Davis had to leave the Marine Corps under less-than-honorable circumstances and now is employed by a Twin Cities private investigator, assigned to the borderline cases that might require unorthodox methods to satisfy the client. As he assists Harvey in the search for Veronica, Davis begins to have second thoughts about this particular assignment. He’s approaching a critical point in his own personal life, and if he goes too far in helping the desperate banker, he might have to cross a line he doesn’t want to cross. 

Which specific scene or chapter gave you the most difficulty to write, and why? 

The scenes where Ben struggles with his decision to contact Ronnie. It’s a long shot, and he thinks it’ll probably fail, so why bother? But he’s carried a torch for Ronnie for twenty years, and although he’s built what most men would consider a pretty nice life for himself, he’s never been able to excise the terrible regret he still feels over how it ended with her. Now he has one last chance, literally in front of him on his kitchen table. Will he take it? And if he does find her, will she take him back? He’s not sure he could survive being rejected by her a second time. 

The scenes were hard for me to write because I had to channel some feelings I once had. Like any relationship, Sue and I had a little rough sledding in the beginning. For a time, it looked like I had lost her to another man. Although now she says she never had any doubts about our long-term prospects, I was anything but confident about them during that episode. There were some sleepless nights, some very strong emotions. I knew she was the love of my life, and I wondered how I’d ever survive if we didn’t make it. It was a pretty desperate time for me emotionally, and dredging up those old feelings and writing them for Ben was tough. 

What do you think sets The Dance We Shared apart from other books of the same genre?

This is my first venture into romantic suspense. My previous work had always been in the action/adventure genre. Thrillers, if you will. Some had elements of romance in them, but the focus was on the action and how the characters dealt with challenges, some of them life-or-death. Having read a few entries in this new (for me) genre, I can say that the story of Ben and Ronnie is not a simple finding-your-lost-love story. There’s real danger involved; some seriously bad actors have an interest in making sure they get what they want, even if it destroys Ben and Ronnie’s lives.

Plus, this book is set largely in northwest Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. You won’t find a whole lot of books from any genre set up there. It’s a beautiful region, remote and isolated in many respects, and because of that there can be lots going on that nobody ever sees or hears about. 

 

Do you think writing romantic suspense is more complex than writing books of other genres?

It has been in my particular case. I had to focus more on the emotions of the characters and less on the action. There’s some of the latter, enough so that readers of my previous books will enjoy the story, I hope. Writing in this genre means you have to balance the emotion with the action. There’s going to be more of the former than the latter, compared to the average thriller, and in many cases thrillers don’t have any romance at all. But in every novel there has to be something the main characters are searching for. What is their goal? What are the stakes? Life and death, or just happiness versus misery? I had to make the stakes for Ben and Ronnie serious enough so that the reader will get excited, and maybe a little worried, about what will happen to them, and yet I didn’t want to get away from the core of the book, which is the great love this man has for this woman, and his quest to find her again.