Introducing Lazarus Barnhill, Author of THE MEDICINE PEOPLE and LACEY TOOK A HOLIDAY

July 25, 2009 — Pat Bertram

Isn’t the Internet a wonderful thing! Something happens almost two years ago, and there it sits like a time capsule for all to see.

I met Lazarus Barnhill during a writing contest on Gather.com in October 2007. Entrants posted the first chapter of their work for people to comment on and vote for, and the fifteen top-ranked chapters plus ten chosen by Gather management went on to post the second chapter for more voting. I read some of the chapters, including Laz’s The Medicine People, but I never knew quite what to say about them. Lazarus, on the other hand, wrote marvelous critiques of everyone’s chapters. And he responded to everyone who commented on his. (I didn’t realize this until tonight when I went searching for the comment I left him. Where did he get the time?)

My comment: I may have the (unofficial) lead now, but I have a hunch that things are going to be heating up. Great entry! Good luck. (I still don’t understand by what fluke I ended up in first place for a couple of weeks, but there it is.)

Laz’s response: Pat, I’m looking forward to reading More Deaths Than One. Your entry has run away from the rest of us and I suspect there’s good reason for that. Continued good luck in the contest. BTW, stay healthy. If something happens to the guy in first place, who are they going to suspect, eh?

Neither of us won the contest, but we ended up finishing consecutively, and yes, Lazarus passed me by. Almost a year later, we met again at Second Wind Publishing, which has released both More Deaths Than One and The Medicine People.

Now that I’ve read The Medicine People, I still don’t quite know what to say. Well, yes I do. “This is a good book. Read it.” But that’s not exactly a review, and I promised to write one. I can tell you that the book is a mystery with a sub-story of love in all its guises, but that’s not a review, either. I can tell you that it’s my favorite type of story, where some past action — in this case a murder that was committed twenty-five years ago — affected the characters’ lives, and now the search for the truth turns those lives upside down again. Hmmm. Maybe you could check out The Medicine People for yourself. That will get me off the hook!