Alum Thomas Black sets new book at IU campus

After publishing several of his short stories and novels, author Thomas Black said he now intends to build a readership through his latest novel “Death Mode” which is set on the IU campus.

“I love IU and Southern Indiana,” he said. “Besides, I thought that if I wrote about IU, I would at least have a small built-in audience.”

Black graduated from IU in 1982, but said he still continues to pay regular visits to the campus and has written several chapters while sitting in the Student Building.

“It’s fun to be around the kind of energy that we have, so I keep visiting twice or thrice a year,” Black said. “In fact, the name of one of the characters in my book has been inspired by Whittenberger Auditorium.”

Ray Wensits, his friend from IU who also critiques and edits his work, said Black’s style of writing has improved since his previous novel “Proximity Theory”.

He said he prefers the storyline of “Death Mode” to not only Black’s previous work, but to also his next novel “Die a Different Way,” which is a follow up to “Death Mode” and will remain unfinished until this fall.

Wensits said the protagonist of “Death Mode,” Jenna Longstrethis, is his favorite character in the novel.

“Jenna is a complex character,” he said. “She puts forth a brave front, but it is interesting to read about her insecurities and her stress that comes as a result of her responsibilities of being a professor.”

Kathleen Angelone, owner of Bookmamas Bookstore in Indianapolis, said she believes the novel will do well because it’s set at IU and has an association with the story of John Dillinger, who gang-robbed banks throughout the Midwest in the early 1900s.

The antagonist, Mathias Dillinger, is John Dillinger’s illegitimate grandson in the novel. He is a bitter psychopath who had been captured in prison for quite a while after he served in the military in Afghanistan. The subject of the novel revolves around the lines of Dillinger recovering the money his grandfather robbed.

“The Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library has already sold a couple of copies of the novel which is good,” she said. “It has a prominent position on our Indianapolis shelf.”

Although Black didn’t have any substantial experience in creative writing in his education, he said he sees himself as an author in the future.

“My grandmother had died in her sleep, and that idea got stuck with me,” he said. “I wondered what it must be like to die in your sleep. So that was what my first short story was about.”

Having read all of Black’s writings, Wensits said he believes Black puts everything he has into his work and wants to keep striving to become a successful author in the future.