As well as a successful author, Kay Williams is a professional actress. She earned her Actors Equity card in San Francisco where she played many roles, including the title role in Miss Jairus, Cybel in Great God Brown, Rosalind in As You Like It, and Amelia in The House of Bernarda Alba for the nationally famous Actor's Workshop. She was with the Pittsburgh Playhouse for two years, and from there moved to New York City, living in a 6-floor walkup (a women's residence that provided free breakfast!!) while she made the rounds. She was hired by the Jackson, MS Theater Center to replace Mercedes McCambridge as Regina in The Little Foxes and stayed on to do several other plays including originating the role of Queen Elizabeth I in a new play, Masquerade, that opened off-Broadway. She has also acted in TV shows and in movies, but finds stage acting more challenging and rewarding.
A lucky break landed her a job with a prize-winning independent filmmaker and that gave her flexible hours to audition and rehearse. She was cast in a number of new off-Broadway plays (it was an exciting time for theater in NYC).
When acting roles began to dry up, it seemed natural to gravitate to writing, and she's surprised to find she doesn't miss acting all that much (although she still has occasional nightmares of being onstage and not knowing which play she's in). A big plus with fiction writing is: you can play all the characters!
The author's move into the crime-ridden, sleazy Hell's Kitchen of 1977 provided the catalyst for the award-winning thriller, Butcher of Dreams, co-authored with Eileen Wyman. Kay's wide ranging acting credits and theater experience gave focus to this character/plot driven mystery that centers around the struggling 42nd Street repertory theater where much of the action takes place.
Kay's years with the filmmaker gave her production credits for two films, respect for the courage of independent filmmakers, and took her to the Cannes Film Festival, where for a month she shared a villa overlooking the Mediterranean with cast and crew. She traveled with the filmmaker to Leningrad in 1991 where she received the idea for The Matryoshka Murders. Anything could happen here, she thought, in this city at this desperate time (just a few months before the USSR broke apart).
Eileen Wyman, Kay's writing partner, helped organize photos and notes collected from the trip, and together they drafted a plot and wrote thi...
Eileen Wyman
(May 25, 1930 - Sept. 6, 2013)
Eileen (known to her friends as "Jo") studied Fine Arts for two years before transferring to Ohio State University, where she graduated with a B.A. in Radio/Television. Her first love was comedy, and she spent her life learning the art and craft of it, filling file box after file box with her bon mots and wry, pithy descriptions. She raided this gold mine when she and Kay began writing their thrillers together.
Eileen crafted jokes for speech writers and comedians, humorous fillers for various magazines, and captions for cartoons. She could come up with a witty retort at the snap of a finger. She was a writer of short fiction. She edited many books and film scripts. She wrote additional dialogue for films. During her long career, she held a variety of jobs to make ends meet: television traffic clerk, classified ad-taker, third grade teacher, social worker, gal Friday for an independent filmmaker, and human resources administrator.
When Manhattan Plaza ("The Miracle on 42nd Street") became available to artists in June 1977, she moved in. At that time, the neighborhood (Hell's Kitchen) was very scary, and considered one of the worst areas in New York City for crime. It eventually proved to be the catalyst for Butcher of Dreams, a suspense/thriller about the theater, which she co-wrote with Kay Williams. The book has won several awards and was adapted by the two women into a screenplay.
Several years ago Eileen was diagnosed with COPD, which severely affected her mobility and stamina, but she never lost her quick wit and her compassion for others. She persevered with her writing and editing. She loved to collect cartoons (her standards were high) to distribute to friends and neighbors; she loved to find funny pictures to write her own captions on.
Before her death in 2013, she completed (with Kay) The Matryoshka Murders, a political/historical thriller that opens in Russia, with filmmakers competing at the 1991 Leningrad International Documentary Festival, against the chaotic backdrop of a disintegrating USSR.
"The Matryoshka Murders is a thrilling page turner and great read for anyone. Set in Gorbachev era Russia and NYC the characters are alive, engaging, human and deep. Important political and gender issues are woven in, add value and enhance the plot. A tour de force by authors, Kay Williams and Eileen Wyman! Truly terrific!" Mack Lipkin, physician, writer
"This is a fascinating, disturbing look at conditions in Russia (Leningrad, 1991), particularly what women endure. . . An engaging thriller from first to last, with a serious look at the lengths some are willing to go to force others into compliance. A reminder that liberty is not a given, but must be fought for on a multitude of levels." Carrie K90, Blogger
"I wanted to read this book because I am fascinated by Russian culture. This didn't disappoint, I learned a lot about Russia from part 1. This is a real page turner, so fast paced you keep waiting for it to run out of steam, but it doesn't. Wow. I loved the characters, they were really well thought out and realistic. There were lots of little plot twists and the pace was kept throughout. I was sad to reach the end, I could have kept reading! A real eye opener." Laura Smith, Publisher
Kate Hennessey has arrived with colleagues in January, 1991 to take part in Leningrad's Second International Documentary Festival. The USSR is in severe economic and political crisis. Crime is rampant, shelves are bare. Kate stumbles into an "illegal meeting" of women and audiotapes their descriptions of the harshness of their lives as well as their criticisms of current leaders. There, Sveta, age 17, confides to her that she is afraid she will be killed. Kate offers to help, and is swept up in a series of frightening events, beginning with Kate's and Sveta's abduction by Kolya, a drunken cab driver, to a cemetery on the outskirts of Leningrad. Kate is robbed of earrings her lover Gilly has given her, then left to die in the bitter cold. She makes it to a nearby inn, believing that Sveta also escaped.
Was the abduction random, part of the escalating crime wave? Was it meant for Sveta who feared for her life? Or was Kate herself the target?
She might be under scrutiny, Kate decides, because when she first arrived, she inadvertently videotaped an officer with a scarred face talking with a baby-faced civilian in a gray designer suit in the hotel bar. Since then a red-haired soldier—one of the many soldiers roaming the hotel—seems to be following her. Her guide book warns, No pictures allowed of the military.
Kate's more worried about the fight that she and Gilly had just before she left the U.S., and she throws herself into gathering more footage, her "Messages from Leningrad" for her NYC course in guerrilla filmmaking.
As rumors circulate of an impending coup, Kate discovers that Sveta is missing and tapes a video interview of Sveta's lover, 17-year-old Nadya, who has been beaten and raped by the police because she is rozovaya, pink, gay. Kate learns to her horror when she and Nadya visit the Kafé Dusha (Café Soul), a dairy bar where the "moonlight" women socialize, that Sveta may be incarcerated in a Psychiatric Clinic for the Cure (drugs and shock therapy). Or she may be dead.
After an invasion into her hotel room while she sleeps and a near miss by a speeding convoy truck at the Palace of Pavlovsk, Kate understands that she is not a victim of Leningrad's rising crime wave but that there is a real plot to kill her as well as to confiscate her videotapes. An attack against her as she shops along the Nevsky Prospekt and a devastating fire in the wing of her hotel force her (her videos taped to her body) to flee Leningrad with the help of new Russian friends. She is pursued by the scar-faced KGB officer and the local police who have found Sveta's frozen body in the cemetery pond.
Back home in her NYC apartment, Kate finds that the danger overseas has come s...
Título : The Matryoshka Murders
EAN : 9780984779994
Editorial : CalliopePress
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