Mystery, Romance, Skiing and those who love Vermont....an interview with the author

Moonlight in Vermont

John Hilferty: Here are two short summaries: 

Lying helpless and drugged with painkillers in an Italian hospital, Ethan Atwood, a World Cup ski racer, is visited in the dark of night by Lina Biancavello, who is wealthy, lovely and determined. Her visit upends Ethan's plans to marry Marie Queensbury, his long-time love in Vermont, sending him on a downward spiral of drunkenness and depression.   When a corpse is found frozen on a ski lift where it had been trapped overnight, the question arises: Was it a suicide, an accident, or something else? 

Moonlight in Vermont, a Novel, which is set in New England, Colorado and the Alps of Europe against a thrill-filled background of ski racing, deals with a man's struggle to exist without the one he loves the most. A summary reads:  "Like the mountain stream in winter rushing unseen beneath dark ice, the love that is forbidden will seek a coming out wherever it can, never finding lasting release in something as honest and soft as moonlight, but it will burst forth beneath the cold wind of seduction and betrayal, jealousy and rage, and finally, death itself."  

Lauren Smith: Why did you write this book? 

John Hilferty: Having been a news journalist all my adult life, I wished to find out if I could write an acceptable work of fiction.

 Lauren Smith: What is the message to the reader? What do you hope the reader gets from this book? 

John Hilferty: Thrills.

Lauren Smith: What about this process has surprised you the most?

John Hilferty: The way the plot came together during the writing, as if the characters themselves told me the story. 

Lauren Smith: You've won some awards for this book, did that surprise you or were you convinced of the quality of this book? 

John Hilferty: I was surprised.

Lauren Smith: Is it tough being a man in a romance category? 

John Hilferty: Now now, but when I began writing the book and decided that it needed a romantic angle, I decided to insert that from a man's point of view. The very first seduction scene concerns the rape of a man by a woman while he lay drugged with painkillers in a hospital. His reaction was confusion; slowly he begins to realize that he was a true victim, and that his life was changed forever.