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WORK TITLE: Kasper Mutzenmacher’s Cursed Hat
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.keithfentonmiller.com/
CITY: Kensington
STATE: MD
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: n 2017038101
Descriptive conventions:
rda
LC classification: PS3606.E59
Personal name heading:
Fentonmiller, Keith R.
Found in: Kasper Mutzenmacher's cursed hat, 2016: t.p. (Keith R.
Fentonmiller) page 404 (practices law in Washington,
D.C.; graduated from the University of Michgan with a
degree in philosophy)
================================================================================
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS AUTHORITIES
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL
Married; wife’s name Laura; children: Stoney, Bay.
EDUCATION:University of Michigan, B.A., 1990, J,D,, 1994.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Lawyer. Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker, associate attorney, 1994-96, 1998-2000; admitted to the bar of District of Columbia, 1995; U.S. District Court for DC, Washington, DC, law clerk, 1996-97; National Senior Citizens Law Center, Washington, DC, staff attorney, 1997-98; U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Cincinnati, OH, law clerk, 2003-05; Federal Trade Commission, Washington, DC, senior attorney, 2000–. Has also toured colleges in the Mid-Atlantic States with a professional comedy troupe.
MEMBER:Authors Guild.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to legal journals and also short fiction to literary journals, including the Stonecoast Review.
SIDELIGHTS
Keith R. Fentonmiller is a lawyer. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in Philosophy and toured colleges in the Mid-Atlantic States with a professional comedy troupe. Fentonmiller subsequently attended law school and began working in the field of consumer protection law in Washington, DC. He has served as a senior attorney with the Federal Trade Commission since 2000. He has contributed a number of articles to legal journals and also short fiction to literary journals, including the Stonecoast Review.
Fentonmiller published Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat in 2016. Hat maker Kasper Mutzenmacher is a jazz lover. While in a jazz club in Berlin in the early 1920s, a sharp-tongued woman named Isana insults a group of Nazis who raid the club. Knowing that he may never see her again after such an affront, Kasper takes advantage of his family curse to save her. A hat that had been stolen from the Greek god Hermes allows for its wearer to be transported to any location. But its use comes at the risk of an unhealthy addiction to its powers. Kasper rescues Isana but puts their lives and that of his hatter family in peril as tensions rise with Nazi ascendency.
In an interview on the Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb website, Fentonmiller talked with Deborah Kalb about how structured he was going into the writing of Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat and how frequently he made changes to the story arc as he wrote. Fentonmiller recalled that he started the novel “as a single book set in the present. The events of the story were no more than a few paragraphs. After years of expansion and tinkering, those events morphed into Book One of the Life Indigo series.” Fentonmiller admitted that even though he had determined “how I wanted to end the series, I did not know how I would end the Cursed Hat when I started writing. The key was figuring out the story I was trying to tell.” Eventually, Fentonmiller “focused on one theme: the persistence of family tradition. Like the curse in the story, traditions—whether religious, cultural, or familial—have a powerful binding effect. But when traditions are perpetuated mindlessly, selfishly, or demagogically, they become vice-like, oppressive.”
In an interview on the Curiosity Quills website, Fentonmiller discussed the challenges he faced in writing his debut novel. He shared: “My greatest difficulty in writing the book was figuring out how and when to reveal critical information to the reader. This was very important because much of the novel centers around confused and hidden identities. Thankfully, I could draw on beta readers and professional editors to (hopefully) achieve a good balance between subtle foreshadowing and explicit revelation. Also, time proved to be my greatest friend. Putting the manuscript aside and allowing it to marinate for long stretches allowed me to return to the story with a fresh perspective on the narrative’s evolution.” Fentonmiller mentioned that “at the end of the process, I produced something that I feel reflects my personality, for better or worse. In a hundred years, if someone’s interested to know what Keith was like, they can read this book and get to know me.”
A contributor to Kirkus Reviews admitted that “taking the concept of a transporting hat seriously can be difficult.” The reviewer conceded, though that Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat’s “odd tone inevitably brings the reader to odd places. And they are places that culminate in an undeniably imaginative journey.” Writing on the Foreword Reviews website, Claire Foster pointed out that the novel “is not a comedy, but you can’t help but laugh.” Foster commented that “Fentonmiller weaves an incredible, breakneck story that jumps from the personal to the political in a single breath. His wonderful sense of humor skewers tense scenes of explicit anti-Semitic violence.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 2018, review of Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat.
ONLINE
Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb, http://deborahkalbbooks.blogspot.com/ (May 5, 2017), Deborah Kalb, author interview.
Curiosity Quills, https://curiosityquills.com/ (March 31, 2018), author interview.
Foreword Reviews, https://www.forewordreviews.com/ (November 17, 2017), Claire Foster, review of Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat.
Keith Fentonmiller website, http://www.keithfentonmiller.com (July 10, 2018).
Talking with Authors, http://www.talkingwithauthors.com/ (July 10, 2017), author profile.
Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat
Author Keith Fentonmiller joins me to share his novel “Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat”. A fascinating story that starts in pre – World War II Germany and moves to Detroit. Keith combines jazz, magic, mythology and history to create a compelling story that will have you compel to read just one more page. “Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat” is the first book in Keith Fentonmiller’s Life Indigo series. A book and series that tells a family saga in a new, bold and interesting format. Keith uses a finely tune layer of humor to lighten the tone of a story that has a very difficult time in world history as its backdrop.
Keith is also the author of two very interesting short stories. In “Non Compos Mentis” Keith uses the form of a legal brief to tell the story of a lawsuit involving a ghost and the estate of a deceased werewolf. In Keith’s other short story, “Exodus”, a Brooklyn transplant follows his beloved Dodgers to L.A. and then unexpectedly reunites with his boyhood crush.
Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb
Check back often for new Q&As, and for daily historical factoids about books. On Facebook at www.facebook.com/deborahkalbbooks. Follow me on Twitter @deborahkalb.
Friday, May 5, 2017
Q&A with Keith R. Fentonmiller
Keith R. Fentonmiller is the author of the new novel Kasper Mützenmacher's Cursed Hat. His work has appeared in Stonecoast Review. He is a lawyer in Washington, D.C., and he lives in Kensington, Maryland.
Q: How did you come up with the idea for your novel?
A: A complete answer to this question would require a depth of psychoanalysis more appropriate for a Neurotics Anonymous blog, so I’ll try to keep it short.
I trace my novel’s inspiration to two sources. First, my late grandfather, Dr. Meryl Fenton, whom we all called Papa. Like my novel’s protagonist (Kasper Mützenmacher), Papa was a squat fellow with a big nose. Unlike Kasper, Papa didn’t have a facial scar, nor was he cursed (so far as I know).
Papa always reminded me of Zoot, the jazzy, saxophone-playing puppet from the Muppet Show, which may explain why Kasper loves jazz and plays the cornet. It also may explain Kasper’s overwhelming sense of being manipulated like a puppet, whether by Nazis, women, his children, or Fate.
Second, there was an incident when I was 10. Growing up, my family had a Sunday breakfast tradition with bagels, cream cheese, lox, eggs, and—the best part—Sara Lee pecan coffee cake.
One day, my dad carved out the coffee cake’s center for himself, leaving a thin, bready rind for everyone else. I remember thinking, Is he having a stroke? Is he possessed? Turns out, he was just indulging a whim. (Full disclosure: My father claims not to recall the incident.)
Granted, as childhood traumas go, a gutted coffee cake is pretty mild stuff. Yet it’s stuck with me all these years because of what it symbolizes—the psychic void inside us all, a void we spend a lifetime trying to fill. So it was only natural I wrote a novel about cursed hat-makers, right? Right? Of course, right. Think about it: What’s a hat but fabric wrapped around an empty center?
Q: Did you need to do much research on the historical periods you cover in the novel, both in Germany and the United States?
A: I read many books to get a sense of what life was like for Germans, and German Jews in particular, during the ‘20s and ‘30s, and for black Detroiters during World War II.
I also visited the Library of Congress to view old issues of the sci-fi magazine Amazing Stories, elements of which made it into the novel. I also reviewed century-old issues of the music magazine Metronome, which documented the evolution of ragtime into jazz and the shifting attitudes toward that syncopated, improvisational musical form.
Through Google Books, I discovered early 20th-century books about millinery, which proved invaluable for the scenes where Kasper teaches his children to make hats.
Q: The book incorporates both history and fantasy. What did you see as the right balance?
A: History and fantasy aren’t necessarily oppositional story elements. This is my modus operandi: whatever elements an author invokes—whether it’s history, fantasy, absurdity, romance, violence, humor—and to whatever degree he or she invokes them should serve the narrative, not the other way around.
The Cursed Hat is primarily a family saga about the fluidity of tradition, faith, and identity. The curse, the wishing hat, and the historical settings were means to instantiate these themes through the struggles of the Mützenmacher family, hopefully in a colorful way that does not digress from the core narrative.
I invoked Greek myth because it taps into the psychological archetypes that both animate our personalities and embody the communal schema that, for better or worse, define families and cultures across generations.
The horrific events of the mid-20th century likewise possess a mythical, almost unreal quality for me. I was born long after World War II. I am temporally and geographically separated from the Nazi genocide and the race riots that plagued American cities. My ancestors endured no losses of lasting significance during that era.
Nevertheless, those events haunt me in a very palpable way: I owe my very existence to accidents of geography, genetics, and good timing. As far as I’m concerned, the line between history and myth (a type of fantasy) is blurry and arbitrary, assuming such a line even exists. This is certainly the reality that the Mützenmachers occupy.
Q: Did you know how the book would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?
A: Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat began as a single book set in the present. The events of the story were no more than a few paragraphs. After years of expansion and tinkering, those events morphed into Book One of the Life Indigo series.
Although I knew how I wanted to end the series, I did not know how I would end the Cursed Hat when I started writing. The key was figuring out the story I was trying to tell.
Ultimately, I focused on one theme: the persistence of family tradition. Like the curse in the story, traditions—whether religious, cultural, or familial—have a powerful binding effect. But when traditions are perpetuated mindlessly, selfishly, or demagogically, they become vice-like, oppressive.
The English word “tradition” comes from the Latin word to transmit, hand over, or give for safekeeping. That definition presumes the existence of a willing recipient, which is not always the case with traditions, let alone curses.
The intended recipient may balk. He may see resistance as his only option, even his obligation. As German-Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin once said, “In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest the tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it.”
This is the tension with which each Mützenmacher generation must grapple. Once I teased out this struggle, the character arcs for Kasper and his grandson Chance became clear, and the ending I ultimately chose felt right, if not inevitable.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I am working on Life Indigo Book Two: Memoirs of a Water Nymph. I hope to publish it by late 2018. I’ve also been writing shorter pieces. My short story, "Non Compos Mentis," was recently published in the Stonecoast Review. I’m honored that the journal nominated the story for a Pushcart Prize.
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: A few weeks ago, my wife discovered the stiff, lifeless body of Butter, my daughter’s goldfish, on the kitchen floor. Evidently, it had leaped out of its aquarium during the night. It happened to be the same day my book came out. What’s the significance of this piscine suicide? There’s only one logical conclusion: Buy my book—if not for me, do it for Butter.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
Posted by Deborah Kalb at 6:25 AM
Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat is my debut novel published by Curiosity Quills Press. The book is available in print and digital editions at Barnes & Noble and Amazon. I also have published two short stories, one of which was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Click on the "Works" link for more details.
When not wearing my fiction writer hat, I practice consumer protection law in Washington, D.C. Rest assured your tax dollars are hard at work as I battle marketers of "modern miracles" like weight-loss earrings and penile-enhancing herbs. (Please let me know if you spot an ad for penile enhancement earrings.)
I graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in philosophy, which, surprisingly, did not qualify me for gainful employment. In short, it was on to graduate school. Well, almost. I spent a year touring with a professional comedy troupe, writing and performing sketch comedy at colleges in the Mid-Atlantic States. After that frolic and detour, it was a blur of law school, falling in love, cats, marriage, a dog, children, a fish, more dogs, another fish, a chinchilla, guinea pigs, and an assortment of uninvited rodents that have since burrowed through the foundation. Storybook.
I live in Kensington, Maryland with my wife, Laura, and two children, Stoney and Bay. Among my current menagerie of furry critters are a silver lab, Gracie, and a Boston Terrier, Beanie.
Keith Fentonmiller
Author, Consumer Protection Attorney
Washington D.C. Metro Area
Government Administration
Current
Federal Trade Commission
Previous
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker, National Senior Citizens Law Center
Education
University of Michigan Law School
Websites
Personal Website
Experience
Federal Trade Commission
Senior Attorney
Federal Trade Commission
March 2000 – Present (18 years 4 months)Washington D.C. Metro Area
Law Clerk
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
2003 – 2005 (2 years)
Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker
Associate Attorney
Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker
December 1998 – March 2000 (1 year 4 months)
Staff Attorney
National Senior Citizens Law Center
October 1997 – December 1998 (1 year 3 months)
U.S. District Court for D.C.
Law Clerk
U.S. District Court for D.C.
August 1996 – October 1997 (1 year 3 months)
Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker
Associate Attorney
Paul Hastings Janofsky & Walker
October 1994 – August 1996 (1 year 11 months)
Education
University of Michigan Law School
University of Michigan Law School
JD, LAW
1991 – 1994
University of Michigan
University of Michigan
Bachelor of Arts (B.A.), Philosophy, High Honors, Philosophy
1986 – 1990
Volunteer Experience & Causes
Causes Keith cares about:
Animal Welfare
Arts and Culture
Civil Rights and Social Action
Science and Technology
Skills
Fiction WritingLegal WritingLitigationLegal ResearchPublic PolicyCivil LitigationCorporate LawIntellectual PropertyAppealsCommercial LitigationPolicy AnalysisGovernmentAdministrative LawPublic Speaking
How's this translation?
Great•Has errors
Languages
English
Publications
Non Compos Mentis
The Stonecoast Review (nominated for a Pushcart Prize)
December 2016
A ghost has sued the estate of a deceased werewolf. Now a judge must settle the dispute.
Authors:
Keith Fentonmiller
Reflections on the Mirror Image Doctrine: Should the Federal Trade Commission Regulate False Advertising for Books Promising Wealth, Weight Loss, and Miracle Cures?
110 W. Va. L. Rev. 573
2008
Authors:
Keith Fentonmiller
Where Age and Disability Discrimination Intersect: An Overview of the ADA for the ADEA Practitioner
10 Geo. Mason U. Civ. Rts. L.J. 227
2000
Authors:
Keith Fentonmiller, Herbert Semmel
Getting Beyond Mendacity: The Erosion of the “Falsity” Approach to Proving Discriminatory Intent
23 Emp. Rel. L.J. 13
1998
Authors:
Keith Fentonmiller
Reconciling the Seventh Amendment with the “Pattern or Practice” Class Action
24 Emp. Rel. L.J. 55
1998
Authors:
Keith Fentonmiller
The Continuing Validity of Disparate Impact Analysis for Federal-Sector Age Discrimination Claims
47 Am. U. L. Rev. 1071
1998
Authors:
Keith Fentonmiller
Damages, Jury Trials and Class Actions under The Civil Rights Act of 1991
12 ABA Lab. Law. 421
1997
Authors:
Keith Fentonmiller
When Does Retaliation Count under Title VII?
23 Emp. Rel. L.J. 31
1997
Authors:
Keith Fentonmiller
A WARN Act Road Map
11 ABA Lab. Law. 273
1996
Authors:
Keith Fentonmiller, Ethan Lipsig
Verbal Sexual Harassment as Equality-Depriving Conduct
27 U. Mich. J. L. Ref. 565
1994
Authors:
Keith Fentonmiller
Exodus
Running Wild Press (forthcoming 2017)
A Brooklyn transplant follows his beloved Dodgers to L.A. and then unexpectedly reunites with his boyhood crush.
Authors:
Keith Fentonmiller
Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat (Book One of the Life Indigo series)
Curiosity Quills Press (forthcoming March 20, 2017)
Berlin hatmaker Kasper Mützenmacher’s carefree life of fedoras, jazz, and booze comes to a screeching halt when he must use the god Hermes’ “wishing hat,” a teleportation device, to rescue his flapper girlfriend from the shadowy Klaus, a veil-wearing Nazi who brainwashes his victims until they can’t see their own faces. Klaus eventually discovers the wishing hat’s existence and steals it on Kristallnacht. But even if Kasper gets back the hat and spirits his family to America, they won’t be safe until they break the curse that Fate imposed for stealing the wishing hat from Hermes.
Authors:
Keith Fentonmiller
Organizations
Authors Guild
Starting 2016
Stony Brook Southampton Writers Conference
Starting 2016
Yale Writers Conference
Starting 2015
The Writer's Center
Starting 2007
The District of Columbia Bar
Starting 1995
The State Bar of California (inactive)
Starting 1994
Keith is a consumer protection attorney for the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C. Before graduating from the University of Michigan Law School, he toured with a professional comedy troupe, writing and performing sketch comedy at colleges in the Mid-Atlantic States. His Pushcart-nominated short story was recently published in The Stonecoast Review.
31 Mar
Keith Fentonmiller
Read more from:
Author Spotlight Question and Answer
»
Joining Curiosity Quills for another edition of our Author Spotlight: Question & Answer Coloumn, is Keith Fentonmiller, author of recently released fantasy novel, Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat, which hit Amazon on March 20, 2017!
In the comments, please join us in asking Keith Fentonmiller anything you’d like to know about writing, his new book, and life in Kensington, Maryland. Or you know, just throw something completely random at him to keep him on his toes!
Who are you and where do you call home right now?
I’m Keith Fentonmiller, and I live in Kensington, Maryland.
Tell us about your latest book: your inspiration for it, how you got through your most difficult challenge in writing it, and what you love about it?
My latest book is also my debut novel. A work of adult speculative fiction, Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat (Book One of the Life Indigo series) tells the story of Jewish hatmakers threatened by a veil-wearing Nazi known as the ”stealer of faces” who must use the god Hermes’ ”wishing hat” to teleport out of Germany during Kristallnacht. They won’t be safer in America, however, until they break the curse that has trapped them in the hat business for sixteen centuries. Set against the backdrop of the Jazz Age, Nazi Germany, and the Detroit race riots of 1943, the Cursed Hat is a family saga about tradition, faith, and identity.
I trace my inspiration for the novel to an incident when I was ten. Growing up, my family had a Sunday breakfast tradition with bagels, cream cheese, lox, eggs, and—the best part—Sara Lee pecan coffee cake. One day, my dad carved out the coffee cake’s center for himself, leaving a thin, bready rind for everyone else. I remember thinking, What the hell? Is he having a stroke? Is he possessed? Nope. Just indulging a whim. Granted, as childhood traumas go, the gutted coffee cake ranks somewhere between bedwetting and overhearing my parents having sex. Yet it’s stuck with me all these years because of what it symbolizes—the psychic void inside us all, a void we spend a lifetime trying to fill. This probably explains why I wrote a novel about cursed hat-makers. What’s a hat but fabric wrapped around an empty center?
My greatest difficulty in writing the book was figuring out how and when to reveal critical information to the reader. This was very important because much of the novel centers around confused and hidden identities. Thankfully, I could draw on beta readers and professional editors to (hopefully) achieve a good balance between subtle foreshadowing and explicit revelation. Also, time proved to be my greatest friend. Putting the manuscript aside and allowing it to marinate for long stretches allowed me to return to the story with a fresh perspective on the narrative’s evolution.
At the end of the process, I produced something that I feel reflects my personality, for better or worse. In a hundred years, if someone’s interested to know what Keith was like, they can read this book and get to know me. Hopefully, they won’t then say, Jeez, what an ass-hat.
What are a few of your hobbies?
Merriam-Webster defines a hobby as “a pursuit outside one’s regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation.” My regular occupation is as a consumer protection attorney. Writing is my outside pursuit. Writing, however, is not relaxing. No pursuit that entails this much concentration, exhilaration, and angst can qualify as relaxing. That leaves reading as my hobby, especially literary fiction. As a boy, I collected baseball cards. I especially loved the cards included with tobacco in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. I liked to imagine what it would’ve been like to open a pack of cigarettes in 1887 and find a mint condition card with the lithograph of a thick-mustachioed ball player. Perhaps these fantasies foreshadowed my subsequent passion for writing historical fiction. Fortunately, it did not lead to a nasty tobacco habit.
If you had your own food truck, what would it serve?
What makes you think I don’t have my own food truck? Very presumptuous, though in this instance you happen to be right. My truck would serve escargot, fulfilling my lifelong dream of driving a snail-car. People would see it on the road and remark, “Oh, it’s just a slow snail-car.” Then I’d punch the accelerator and show them that this snail’s got legs. Well, not real legs, of course. To be operational and street-legal, it would have to have an engine and wheels. And it wouldn’t be an actual snail, just a gigantic, carbon-fiber facsimile of one. So, the more I think about it, it would be a phony snail-car. This question has exposed my dream for the fraud that it is. Despair is setting in.
What do you want to get better at doing, writing-wise?
I have a lot to learn about other writing styles. I’d like to incorporate more variation in the syntax—more poetry, more musicality, more experimentation. At the same time, I want to use fewer words to set scenes, reveal personalities, and evoke emotions. If I fail, there’s always the snail-truck gig. Oh crap, I guess that’s no longer an option. See question above.
What TV series are you into right now and why?
There’s a shockingly good amount of television out there these days, so it’s very difficult to choose. Among my favorites are The Man in the High Castle, Game of Thrones, Westworld, and Better Call Saul. But right at this very moment, the show that really grabs me is the HBO miniseries Big Little Lies, based on Liane Moriarty’s novel. The four leads (Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, and Laura Dern) are phenomenal, as is the source material. They epitomize well-rounded characters. They are all flawed and wounded, and at times unlikable. But they also have wonderful qualities and make unexpected choices. They are battlers. They are self-aware. I feel like I know these people, and I will be sad to say goodbye when the show ends. My only criticism: no snail-truck.
What movie do you quote the most?
Total Recall. During Quaid’s (Arnold Schwarzenegger) struggle with the bad guy, Richter, Richter’s arms are pinned against the edge of an elevator shaft and then severed when the elevator suddenly plummets. Quaid is left holding Richter’s arms. He tosses the arms down the shaft and says, “See you at the party, Richter.”
What do you collect, even a little bit? Tell us about your favorite one.
I still have my baseball card collection from my youth. My favorite card is probably the Ty Cobb from 1909. He’s a Hall-of-Famer, the greatest hitter of all time, and a Detroit Tiger. Because the Cobb card was issued the same year my grandfather was born, it makes me feel connected to the past in a very personal way.
What’s your preferred genre of book when you just want to escape?
I’m genre-agnostic. I just want to laugh out loud a few times.
What do you like to do on vacation?
Explore the natural and cultural surroundings. Look for snail-trucks.
Is there another genre you’ve been itching to write in?
I’d like to write straight-up literary fiction one day.
What unusual object do you like to bring with you if you leave the house?
It’s usually a toss-up between the guillotine and the feather boa. I’m susceptible to road rage, so I like to flash the guillotine at drivers who cut me off. I just wish it didn’t take two hours to reassemble it on the side of the road. Still, when I’ve finished and I’ve hoisted the blade, I’m overcome with a Zen-like calm. I lied about it being a toss-up with the feather boa. I never leave home without the boa.
If you had a champion racing pigeon, what would you name it and what would its tagline be?
I would name my racing pigeon Noah’s Hope. His tagline would be: “Just poo it!”
Finally, give us one recommendation for something - movie, TV, game, food - that you enjoyed recently.
I’d recommend the book Underground Airlines by Ben H. Winters. It’s a taut story about an alternate America, where black slavery persists to the present day. Winters covered the legal foundation about how this could’ve transpired without getting bogged down in minutiae. Also, the plot was propulsive. A quick and fascinating read.
About Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat
Kasper Mützenmacher keeps a divine “wishing hat”—a thought-operated teleportation device—locked in the wall safe of his Berlin hat shop. According to an old prophecy, after Kasper’s Greek ancestor stole the wishing hat from Hermes, Fate cursed his progeny to sell hats, on pain of mayhem or death. Kasper, however, doesn’t mind making hats, and he loves Berlin’s cabaret scene even more. But his carefree life of jazz and booze comes to a screeching halt when he must use the wishing hat to rescue his flapper girlfriend Isana from the shadowy Klaus, a veil-wearing Nazi who brainwashes his victims until they can’t see their own faces.
Isana and Kasper’s happiness proves fleeting. Years after her mysterious death, Kasper struggles as a lonely, single father of two until he meets Rosamund Lux, recently released from a political prison where Klaus took her face. Kasper soon suspects that Rosamund is no ordinary woman. According to the prophecy, certain Lux women descend from the water nymph Daphne, who, during Olympian times, transformed into a laurel tree to avoid Apollo’s sexual advances; they, too, suffer from an intergenerational curse connected to Hermes’ stolen hat. As Kasper falls deeper in love, Rosamund’s mental health deteriorates. She has nightmares and delusions about Klaus, and warns that he will launch a night of terror once he’s collected enough faces.
Kasper dismisses the growing Nazi threat until the government reclassifies him as a Jew in 1938. His plan to emigrate unravels when anti-Jewish riots erupt and the Nazis start loading Jews on boxcars to Dachau. Then Rosamund goes missing, and Klaus steals the wishing hat, the family’s only means of escape.
Kasper, however, will face his most difficult battle in America. He must convince his wayward son and indifferent grandson to break the curse that has trapped the family in the hat business for sixteen centuries. Their lives will depend on it.
Book One of the Life Indigo series, Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat is a fantastical family saga about tradition, faith, and identity, set during the Jazz Age, Nazi Germany, and the Detroit race riots of 1943. Comparable works include: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Everything Is Illuminated, and Underground Airlines.
About
Suggest Edits
CONTACT INFO
@author.Keith.Fentonmiller
http://keithfentonmiller.com
MORE INFO
Release Date
March 2017
About
This is the official Facebook page for author Keith Fentonmiller.
Biography
When not sporting my fiction writer hat, I practice consumer protection law in Washington, D.C. Rest assured your tax dollars are hard at work as I battle marketers of “modern miracles” like weight-loss earrings and penile enhancement herbs. (Please let me know if you spot an ad for penile enhancement earrings.)
I graduated from the University of Michigan in 1990 with a degree in philosophy, which, surprisingly, did not qualify me for gainful employment, so it was on to graduate school. Well, almost. I spent a year touring with a professional comedy troupe, writing and performing sketch comedy at colleges in the Mid-Atlantic States. After that frolic and detour, life became a blur of law school, falling in love, cats, marriage, a dog, children, a fish, more dogs, another fish, a chinchilla, guinea pigs, and an assortment of uninvited rodents that have since burrowed through the foundation. Storybook.
Fentonmiller, Keith R.: KASPER MUTZENMACHER'S CURSED HAT
Kirkus Reviews. (Mar. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Fentonmiller, Keith R. KASPER MUTZENMACHER'S CURSED HAT Curiosity Quills Press (Indie Fiction) $18.99 3, 20 ISBN: 978-1-62007-285-1
Debut author Fentonmiller presents a novel about a man and his supernatural hat.
The reader first meets hat maker Kasper Mutzenmacher in Berlin in 1923. Kasper is a feverish jazz enthusiast who likes nothing more than Duke Ellington and a glass of Bushmills. At a jazz club, Kasper meets a lively young woman named Isana, who mocks a horde of Nazis that storm the club. Her display draws the wrath of Klaus, rumored to steal women's faces. One can only imagine what will happen to Isana when she is taken away. Kasper, though, is no ordinary hatter. Thanks to a curse passed down for generations, he's forced into his trade. But he has access to some very peculiar headgear: a hat stolen from the Greek god Hermes that allows its wearer to transport to any conceived of location. If used incorrectly, the hat can lead users to become addicted to its powers. After Kasper uses the hat to rescue Isana, his life becomes even more perilous. But Kasper and his family's safety are merely part of what becomes an epic, international adventure. All at once, the story is serious, fantastical, and alluringly strange. Horrors of the buildup to Nazi power mix with the idea that a family is cursed to stay in the hat business (which, as far as curses go, seems a pretty light one). Later chapters involve life in America, race relations in Detroit, and a stretched metaphor that people cannot be forced to change--much how "you'll never make a bowler into a top hat." The adventure stirs these elements in a way that keeps the reader guessing and intrigued about Kasper's fate. Taking the concept of a transporting hat seriously can be difficult at times (one character is said to be "utterly powerless against the hat"); however, the book's odd tone inevitably brings the reader to odd places. And they are places that culminate in an undeniably imaginative journey.
Beyond fantastical, but it keeps the reader eager to uncover its final destination.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Fentonmiller, Keith R.: KASPER MUTZENMACHER'S CURSED HAT." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A530650589/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=c92e477f. Accessed 24 June 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A530650589
Kasper Mützenmacher's Cursed Hat
Life Indigo, Book One
Keith R Fentonmiller
Eugene Teplitsky (Illustrator)
Curiosity Quills Press (Mar 20, 2017)
Softcover $18.99 (346pp)
978-1-62007-285-1
2017 INDIES Finalist
Finalist, Fantasy (Adult Fiction)
Clarion Rating: 5 out of 5
This standout novel pulls no punches and paints an unforgettable Technicolor picture of a time we usually see in black and white.
Berlin 1938: what a time to be alive. Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat is a stunning, surreal historical fantasy that glitters with color and character. Although wartime Germany is often depicted as dull and grey, this novel sparkles. Set in a Jewish community during Hitler’s rise to power, Cursed Hat is one part noir, one part slapstick, and one part high-octane adventure.
Nothing is as it seems in Cursed Hat. The only rule seems to be “expect the unexpected.” Author Keith R. Fentonmiller dashes headlong into the topsy-turvy world of 1930s Berlin. Instead of being populated by characters dressed in dull felt, Fentonmiller’s Berlin is vivid and lush, packed with historic detail, colors, bright costumes, and hilarious dialogue. Cursed Hat celebrates life on the fringes of a fascist society.
Kasper Mützenmacher, inheritor of the family hat shop, the family “broad cockleshell of a schnoz,” and the family curse, is a complex, satisfying main character. His weakness for the magic hat that his mother keeps locked away sprouts into a full-fledged addiction. He can’t wait to slip the gryphon-skin fedora onto his head and explore the world, popping in and out of places he’s only ever dreamed of. Of course, it’s a magnet for trouble, including the terrifying Klaus, a veiled Nazi who steals women’s faces and brainwashes his victims.
The hat enables Kasper to escape the Nazis after he’s marked as a Jew. However, its curse is real, and Kasper must try to convince his family that it’s better off in the hands of the deity that created it.
Fentonmiller weaves an incredible, breakneck story that jumps from the personal to the political in a single breath. His wonderful sense of humor skewers tense scenes of explicit anti-Semitic violence.
Cursed Hat is not a comedy, but you can’t help but laugh. Why not? Kasper does. Fentonmiller also incorporates elements from contemporary politics, which adds to the novel’s noirish realism. Fentonmiller’s terrifying scenes of interrogation and transformation are phenomenal and add a dimension of thrilling psychological tension. Real life, he points out, is frightening—but the real enemy is hiding inside your mind.
Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat is the first in the Life Indigo series and promises more great writing to come. This standout novel pulls no punches and paints an unforgettable Technicolor picture of a time we usually see in black and white.
Reviewed by Claire Foster
November 17, 2017