The Phantom Glare of Day by M. Laszlo

 The Phantom Glare of Day

by M. Laszlo

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GENRE: Historical (Metaphysical) Fiction / Coming of Age Fiction

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BLURB:

In this trio of novellas, three game young ladies enter into dangerous liaisons that test each one’s limits and force them to confront the most heartrending issues facing society in the early twentieth century. The Phantom Glare of Day tells of Sophie, a young lady who has lived a sheltered life and consequently has no idea how cruel public-school bullying can be. When she meets Jarvis, a young man obsessed with avenging all those students who delight in his daily debasement, she resolves to intervene before tragedy unfolds. Mouvements Perpétuels tells of Cäcilia, a young lady shunned by her birth father. She longs for the approval of an older man, so when her ice-skating instructor attempts to take advantage of her, she cannot resist. Not a month later, she realizes that she is pregnant and must decide whether or not to get an abortion. Passion Bearer tells of Manon, a young lady who falls in love with a beautiful actress after taking a post as a script girl for a film company—and is subsequently confronted with the pettiest kinds of homophobia.

Excerpt One:

London, 29 September, 1917.

Sophie paused beside a stock-brick building, and she listened for the unnerving rumble of an airship’s engine car. How long has it been since the last bombardment? Sometime before, as she had stood in this very spot, she had heard the Zeppelin clearly enough.

At that point, a Royal-Navy carbide flare had streaked heavenward. Then, from the neighboring rooftops, fifty or more pom-pom guns had opened fire–and the night air had filled with the odor of something like petroleum coke.

Yes, I remember. Now she braced herself for a salvo of fire.

No deafening tumult rang out. Neither did any sickening, stenchful fumes envelope her person.

No, it’s just my nerves. She glanced at the sky, and she whispered a simple prayer of thanksgiving.

From around the corner, an omnibus approached.

She climbed aboard and rode the way to Mayfair Tearoom.

The establishment had never looked so inviting as it did that night. By now, the proprietress had decorated the tables with Michaelmas daisies the color of amethyst, and she had adorned the china cabinet with ornamental cabbage. Moreover, how appetizing the scent of the fresh Eccles cakes.

The tearoom had attracted quite a crowd, too, the young ladies all decked out in silken gowns.

I wonder why. Sophie removed her coat, and she suddenly felt underdressed—for she had not worn anything too fancy that evening, just a puffed blouse and a fluted skirt. At once, she sat down at one of the last available dinette tables.

An eclipse of moths fluttered through the transom, meanwhile, and even they looked better than she did. What beauty the creatures’ wings—a fine royal purple.

Don’t look at them. Alas, when she turned her attention to the doorsill, a dull ache radiated up and down her left arm.

Not a moment later, a tall, gaunt lad, his eyes a shade of whiskey brown, entered the tearoom.

For a time, he glared at the patrons—as if at any moment he might remove a musketoon from beneath his frock coat and shoot everyone.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

M. Laszlo is the pseudonym of a reclusive author living in Bath, Ohio. According to rumor, he based the pen name on the name of the Paul Henreid character in Casablanca, Victor Laszlo.

M. Laszlo has lived and worked all over the world, and he has kept exhaustive journals and idea books corresponding to each location and post.

It is said that the maniacal habit began in childhood during summer vacations—when his family began renting out Robert Lowell’s family home in Castine, Maine.

The habit continued in 1985 when, as an adolescent, he spent the summer in London, England. In recent years, he revisited that journal/idea book and based his first work, The Phantom Glare of Day, on the characters, topics, and themes contained within the youthful writings. In crafting the narrative arcs, he decided to divide the work into three interrelated novellas and to set each one in the WW-I era so as to make the work as timeless as possible.

M. Laszlo has lived and worked in New York City, East Jerusalem, and several other cities around the world. While living in the Middle East, he worked for Harvard University’s Semitic Museum. He holds a bachelor’s degree in English from Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio and an M.F.A. in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York.

His next work is forthcoming from SparkPress in 2024. There are whispers that the work purports to be a genuine attempt at positing an explanation for the riddle of the universe and is based on journals and idea books made while completing his M.F.A at Sarah Lawrence College.

https://www.amazon.com/M-Laszlo/e/B09PGPTWQ5/ref=aufs_dp_fta_dsk

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INTERVIEW With the AUTHOR

What would we find under your bed?

Nothing. I don’t have a bed, only the box springs and the mattress. Many of the writers of the nineteenth century didn't even have the box springs. As a matter of fact, the German poet, Heinrich Heine, had only a mattress. In the final years of his life, when he was growing steadily sicker with lead poisoning, he would refer to his mattress as his “mattress grave.” This is significant to me because I read that poet’s work in my youth—and he inspired one of the characters in The Phantom Glare of Day.

What was the scariest moment of your life?

Hiking on one of the Greek islands. People should know that when you go hiking on the Greek islands, the earth can be very unstable. Even if something looks stable, it could just be volcanic ash.

Do you listen to music while writing? If so, what?

Often, Satie is just the thing—especially his early, experimental works for piano. Traditional Chinese music is also conducive to writing. For that matter, you can never go wrong with traditional Japanese music. The sound of a koto is evocative in a way that no other musical instrument could ever be.

What is something you'd like to accomplish in your writing career next year?

If things go well and my writing marches along, there will be a sense of redemption—a sense of having successfully communicated the kinds of ideas that just had to come out. Whether the person is a writer, artist, or musician, the most important accomplishment has to be the furtherance of that sense of redemption that comes with the completion of each new work or opus. Maybe there are other ways of achieving redemption, but the completion of hard work is the only one that really resonates with me.

How long did it take you to write this book?

Back in the summer of 1985, it took less than two months to write my travel diary/idea book of London. Then that notebook sat in storage up until just a few years ago. As such, it took only a few years to write the book that follows from that aforementioned journal. It’s a funny thing to have a lifetime of diaries and idea books that date back to previous decades. It feels like a blessing and a curse.