Guest Post: Today I have the dynamic author, Lloyd Lofthouse on my blog. The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova. #Crime #Fiction #Mystery #Thriller #Suspense

More great news! 

The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova is the 1st place winner in the mystery category at the 2015 Beach Book Festival!

Congratulations Lloyd Lofthouse!!!!!!!!!!!!

Guest Post 

Why did you choose this topic for this book?  

The answer to that question is complicated and starts with me as an infant. The themes running through The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova deals  with the collision between a sexual education and religion—often seen as a sin by many religious sects, because those same themes ran through my childhood like an invisible super highway.

My mother was extremely religious. As an infant, I was baptized a Catholic and attended kindergarten through first grade in a Catholic school with tough, no nonsense nuns as my teachers. All I remember to this day was the ruler one nun used to whack us across the knuckles if our printing and/or cursive writing wasn’t perfect, and then we had to go to the corner, kneel and pray to Mary for forgiveness.

My father, on the other hand, was an alcoholic and a gambler, but he did work in construction and earned enough to pay off a house and feed his family. He also went to church each Sunday with my mother but refused to be baptized by any religion. Later in my life I’d learn that my father had a number of sexual affairs with other women that my mother refused to believe even though the evidence was strongly in favor of his guilt. In fact, he had an affair with my Catholic godmother whose husband often picked up women in bars and had affairs, but in Catholicism such sins are easily forgiven through weekly confessions that go along with your weekly contribution to the Church during Sunday mass.

Then when I was twelve, my mother converted from Catholicism to the Jehovah Witnesses and that was when we stopped celebrating Easter, Christmas and everyone’s birthdays. As far as the topic of sex was concerned, joining the Jehovah Witnesses was my mother jumping out of a frying pan into a blazing fire, because the Catholic Church forgave our mortal sins through confession but the Witnesses didn’t.

My parents dropped out of high school at age 14 during the Great Depression, but they were both avid readers. My father loved mysteries and westerns, and my mother focused on sanitized romances where holding hands and maybe a brief kiss at the end was standard practice as the girl always got the right guy. If my mother was reading a book and ran into a sex scene—no matter how it was written—she stopped reading and tossed the book in the fire without an explanation because any topic about sex and sexually was never mentioned in our home to the point where it wasn’t even forbidden.  In fact, talking about the birds and the bees didn’t exist, but that didn’t protect me from the hormones that hit when I was age twelve or thirteen. I was totally unprepared for that collision and spent my adolescence living in guilt for what I was feeling and thinking about girls.

My fumbling misdirected sexual education started after I left home and joined the U.S. Marines right out of high school and ended up in Southeast Asia fighting in one of America’s endless wars.  That education would stretch for seventeen years culminating in an MFA during the early 1980s when I was teaching days in the public schools and working nights and weekends as a maître d’ in a palace of a nightclub-restaurant combination in Southern California called the Red Onion—that chain lost its liquor license and went bankrupt in the 1990s.  The description of the Aphrodisiacs Academy, the nightclub in The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova, was modeled after the Red Onion where I worked. While earning the MFA, one of my research papers focused on the art of seduction, and I used the night club as my own personal laboratory to see if what I was learning from scientific studies worked. In short, yes, what the scientists discovered was correct.

This novel came out of a question I asked myself after I left that maître d’ job in the bar and nightclub industry that rakes in about $24 billion annually—an industry with more than 70,000 businesses that employs almost 400,000 people, a sector that is mostly about sex and seduction.

– http://www.ibisworld.com/industry/default.aspx?indid=1685

Instead of sex being a forbidden and a never talked about topic as it was in my childhood, what happens when sex and seduction is the focus of a child’s life, because it’s the family’s business and tradition?

Instead of writing about my life as a child, I wanted to write about a child who grew up in a family that was totally different from mine. In other words, he grew up learning from his parents and grandparents everything it took me seventeen years on my own to learn after I left home. Even the string of murders in the novel is linked to that war between religion and our libidos.

The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova by Lloyd Lofthouse: 

 

Publisher: Three Clover Press (May, 2015) Category: Crime Fiction, Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Tour Date: May/June, 2015 Available in: Print & ebook, 325 Pages

From the award winning author of 'My Splendid Concubine' and 'Running With the Enemy' comes 'The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova'!
 Don Juan Casanova wants to discover what it’s like to be loved by only one woman. His problem is that he was raised by his grandparents to become a Lothario, who loves and then leaves women for the next conquest, and as he approaches 40, he is facing a crisis. His grandfather and then younger brother have been viciously murdered, and Don is the prime suspect. As he struggles to stay out of jail and end his life of serial seductions and find one woman to love, he’s discovering it isn’t easy to kick an old habit, and his mother isn’t helping by quoting scripture every chance she gets in an attempt to change her son’s lifestyle of sin for one of piety.

Praise for 'Running With the Enemy' by Lloyd Lofthouse:

Runner Up in General Fiction: 2013 Beach Book Festival Honorable Mentions in General Fiction: 2014 Los Angeles Book Festival 2013 San Francisco Book Festival 2013 Hollywood Book Festival 2013 New York Book Festival "Obviously drawn from the author's first-hand experiences as a Marine serving in Vietnam, Running with the Enemy is a rough but occasionally heartfelt war story. ... The book is sometimes too obviously drawn from his experience. But ultimately that's a small complaint about a book that, on the whole, is quite good and has a lot to say about the nature of the conflict ." - 21st Annual Writer's Digest Self-Published Book Awards commentary from an anonymous judge "This book grabbed hold of me. It has left me knowing just how horrific conditions were for those who fought in Vietnam, and I applaud those who survived."-Lisa Binion, The News In Books “I found Running with the Enemy captivating and well worth reading and enjoyed such a different type of historical novel from Mr. Lofthouse than his previous. Since Mr. Lofthouse is a former Marine and Vietnam veteran, I am sure he drew from some of his personal experiences and I shudder to think of some of these experiences.”- M. Denise C. “Running With the Enemy is a gut-wrenching page-turner at once a historical rendering of the Vietnam-American war, a suspense-thriller involving the framing of an innocent man forced to go on the run, and a passionate love story. As an historical novel, it renders an intricate tapestry of the era, the geography, and the several cultures in confrontation at that time. As a suspense-thriller it grips on page one and keeps your heart racing page after page with hardly a paragraph of relief. As a war story, it depicts war as the bloody, hell that it is–a place in which the mettle of the honorable is tested and honed in the same landscape where sociopaths thrive and reach the heights of power and influence. As a love story, it portrays the way a bond between two hearts can transcend race, religion, politics, national identity and family loyalty, defying all convention, tradition, prejudice and law to claim their right to have each other. The characters are all deftly drawn and believable and if they exist beyond a page or two they will leave their mark on the reader who has come to care about them whether it is to love them, admire them, hate them or simply be amused by them. I can wholeheartedly recommend Running With the Enemy as a story that rewards the time and effort invested. Its impact will linger long after the last page is turned.”-Joystory

Praise for 'My Splendid Concubine':

Finalist in Fiction & Literature: Historical Fiction: The National "Best Books 2010" Awards, December 2010 Honorable Mentions in General Fiction: 2012 San Francisco Book Festival 2012 New York Book Festival 2012 London Book Festival 2013 DIY Book Festival “My Splendid Concubine is packed cover to cover with intriguing characters and plot, a must read for historical fiction fans and a fine addition to any collection on the genre.” Midwest Book Review “Lloyd Lofthouse believes Hart was motivated to destroy his papers not out of shame but out of privacy: ‘What he had with Ayaou was something special he wanted to keep to himself. I don’t think he would approve of My Splendid Concubine … but we live in a different age than Victorian England. I feel that this love story deserves to be told.’ ”- Anneli Rufus , East Bay Express “Historical fiction potboiler, yes. But where the `Concubine’ saga truly shines is its thought-provoking passages on relationships, attitudes and cultural differences.”-Tom Carter, author of China: Portrait of a People “Told in descriptive detail and such beauty of the Chinese culture that I did not want it the story to end. A very well written and impeccably researched story that I highly recommend to the historical fiction fan. A lot of history but not written like a history book. This book does have a lot of sexual content in it but told in a very tasteful way. I really enjoyed this book.”- Kathleen Kelly, Celtic Lady

About Lloyd Lofthouse:

Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran, who worked as a maître d’ in a 15 million dollar nightclub for a few years. He also taught English literature in the public schools for most of 30 years where he explored Romeo and Juliet with thousands of high school students. A romantic at heart, in his award winning novels, he tests true love in difficult situations and the challenges of keeping that love alive. My Splendid Concubine, his first novel, is an epic love story that teaches acceptance and respect for other people and their cultures. Running with the Enemy, his second novel, is a love story that will either cost the characters their lives or will complete each other’s hearts. The Redemption of Don Juan Casanova, his third novel, is the story of a man raised in a world of sin and seduction, who craves the love of one woman but fears, because of his infamous reputation as a libertine, that he’ll never find a woman to love who will trust him to be faithful. Lloyd Lofthouse lives with his family in California’s San Francisco Bay area. Website: http://lloydlofthouse.org/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/lflwriter Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lloyd.lofthouse Google+: https://plus.google.com/116728680363586998839/posts

Buy 'Redemption of Don Juan Cassanova' by Lloyd Lofthouse:

Amazon Barnes and Noble Apple Scribd Kobo

Follow the 'Redemption of Don Juan Cassanova' by Lloyd Lofthouse Tour:

So Many Precious Books May 4 Spotlight & Giveaway Reviewing Novels Online May 5 Review Cassandra M's Place May 6 Guest Post & Giveaway Mythical Books May 8 Guest Post & Giveaway I feel so unnecessary May 11 Review The Cheshire Cat's Looking Glass May 13 Guest Post Lisa's Writopia May 14 Review & Interview What U Talking Bout Willis? May 18 Excerpt Denise C. May 20 Review & Interview Inspire to Read May 22 Guest Post Pinky's Favorite Reads May 26 Interview So Many Precious Books May 27 Review Deal Sharing Aunt May 28 Review, Interview, & Giveaway The Discerning Reader Jun 1 Review What Jenna Thought June 2 Interview & Giveaway What Jenna Thought Jun 3 Review A Father, Writer, and Logistics Wizard June 3 Interview A Father, Writer, and Logistics Wizard June 4 Review Sapphyria's Steamy Books June 5 Guest Post