I am an author of Literary Mainstream Fiction. My debut novel, The Secret of Lies, was released in June, 2011,
I grew up in a small town in Dutchess County, New York, the third of five children. Although I started my first novel in 4th grade, I didn't recognize what would eventually become a lifelong passion until several years later as I found my thoughts routinely wandering off to inhabit imagined places - spinning elaborate tales curiously populated by ever-changing collections of mostly peculiar characters that seemed to arrive from nowhere, yet remained, willing to live within my fictitious worlds.
It would be impossible to determine or otherwise explain where the intense obsession to draw pictures and unreel emotion with words on paper originates from, just as it would be unfathomable to ever abandon. It is simply there, deep, unquenchable, eternal.
Influences are everywhere and in abundance - people I've known over a lifetime, as well as those who have merely crossed my path and gone, yet touched in such a way to remain memorable. Places I've been or merely absorbed - fallen into through the pull of a photograph or description in a book. Experiences of love, loss, injury, joy, and impossible tragedy. Events in our everyday world that sink so deeply they cannot be discarded from thought or memory. And more than any single thing, my Divine Creator who inspires me in all things - not simply with the desire to create, but the faith to pursue and persevere for as long as it takes.
Laura Hoopes takes you along as she tries to enter science in the 1960's in the post-Sputnik science education frenzy, only to find doors closed to women. She persists, makes a career of molecular gerontology and insists on making space for marriage and children in her life. This inspiring read says, "Yes, you can," to women who have dreams of their own.
It was really the most innocent thing, my motivation to sit down and start writing this book, not at all profound or remarkable and yet it became a twenty year obsession over an intense and rocky highway. I clearly recall standing at the kitchen sink on a late summer afternoon washing dishes and staring out the window at nothing in particular, when this little seed of an idea came rolling through my head, and I found myself wondering what it would be like for someone to just get up and walk out the door - not tell anyone, or take anything, just walk away from their entire life and start-over on a new page somewhere else. And then what circumstance or event in a person's life would compel them to such drastic action. That was it. I had no characters, no ... brilliantly written. Whispering Winds Book Review Named BOOK OF THE MONTH at FemmeVip.com, October 2010: Barbara Forte Abate resolves the conflict and does not leave the readers hanging...The author brought everything to life and made you feel you were a part of the family. The dialogue was enjoyable and true to life. The words were descriptive and continued to propel the story forward. Barbara Forte Abate has written a creative, entertaining story in The Secret of Lies, which makes any reader understand the hidden secrets in any family. J.Andrew, Book Pleasures Barbara Forte Abate has such a gift for bringing to life real relationships between ordinary people that she creates an ongoing challenge to her readers by beginning her book with the lowest point of her character’s life: being drawn to run away and face her inner demons alone... Barbara Forte Abate is a sensitive writer who knows that there are no neutral observers in a dysfunctional family... For The Love of Reading Book Review plan, no plot ideas. Just that one little thought that once I started writing it, took off at a gallop. It became so many things I hadn't anticipated when I started.
<div class="data_field">... brilliantly written.<br />Whispering Winds Book Review<br /><br />Named BOOK OF THE MONTH at FemmeVip.com, October 2010:<br />Barbara Forte Abate resolves the conflict and does not leave the readers hanging...The author brought everything to life and made you feel you were a part of the family. The dialogue was enjoyable and true to life. The words were descriptive and continued to propel the story forward. <br />Barbara Forte Abate has written a creative, entertaining story in The Secret of Lies, which makes any reader understand the hidden secrets in any family.<br />J.Andrew, Book Pleasures<br /><br />Barbara Forte Abate has such a gift for bringing to life real relationships between ordinary people that she creates an ongoing challenge to her readers by beginning her book with the lowest point of her character’s life: being drawn to run away and face her inner demons alone...<br />Barbara Forte Abate is a sensitive writer who knows that there are no neutral observers in a dysfunctional family...<br />For The Love of Reading Book Review </div>