CHARACTER INTERVIEW: Richard Langley (The Poe Predicament, Phil Thomas)

Meghan: Hi, Richard. Thank you for agreeing to sit down with me today. What is one word you would use to define yourself?

Richard Langley: Resilient.

Meghan: Do you see yourself as the “good guy” or the “bad guy”?

Richard Langley: I’m for sure the good guy, a victim of circumstance.

Meghan: What does the plot require you to be? How does this requirement limit you?

Richard Langley: It requires me to be strong and resilient. I’m a stranger in a strange land, cast into 1830s New York City from the twenty first century against my will. I’m limited in several ways, but most notably the unfamiliarity with my surroundings.

Meghan: What is your quest?

Richard Langley: After acquiring a signed book by Edgar Allan Poe at a local bookstore, I soon find myself in a different time period. My quest is to find my way back home to modern day New York.

Meghan: What do you hope to accomplish, find, or become during the course of your book/series?

Richard Langley: Along the way, I need to figure out how and why I ended up in the nineteenth century. I uncover a lot of mystery and meet many wonderful characters along the way, including another time traveler named Alice, and also Edgar Allan Poe himself, who I must help exonerate from a false murder accusation.

Meghan: What do you like about the other main characters? What do you least like about the other main characters?

Richard Langley: I like their companionship and kindness, their willingness to help me when in need. There are other main characters, antagonists that are vile to the core. I like nothing about them or their ill intentions towards me and Edgar Allan Poe.

Meghan: When was the last time you lied? What made you do it?

Richard Langley: I lied when asked about my modern-day attire. I had to lie to protect my identity.

Meghan: Who have you betrayed lately? What happened?

Richard Langley: In the context of the novel, I haven’t betrayed anyone. I’m the good guy.

Meghan: Would you say that you are an optimist or a pessimist?

Richard Langley: I’m an optimist. I have to keep my head up and hope alive if I expect to make it back to modern-day New York City.

Meghan: What is your superpower?

Richard Langley: I’m a problem solver and possess the uncanny ability of observation.

Meghan: What is your biggest secret?

Richard Langley: My biggest secret is that I’m a time traveler.

Meghan: Do you live in the right world?

Richard Langley: Well, the setting is literally not my home since I’m a time traveller. However, I feel that I’m extremely necessary to that world because I have a very important purpose for being there. If you’d like to find out just how important I am and follow my adventures, you can do so in the novel, The Poe Predicament.

Meghan: What is your role in this setting? Are you okay with this role or would you like it to change?

Richard Langley: My primary role is to help exonerate Edgar Allan Poe from a false murder accusation, as well as to help others along the way. At first it was a scary role, not knowing why or how I’d ended up in 1830s New York, but I soon learned just how important I was to keeping history’s natural timeline in order.

Meghan: Did you turn out the way you expected?

Richard Langley: Life has a way of twisting and turning, so I didn’t turn out exactly as I expected.

Meghan: What, if anything, would you change about your life?

Richard Langley: I would have told Alice about my affection for her sooner.

Meghan: How do you feel about your author?

Richard Langley: You mean Phil Thomas? I have nothing but positive feelings towards him.

Meghan: If the two of you got together for coffee, what would you want to say to them?

Richard Langley: I would tell him that my story doesn’t need to end where it does. We have more work to do.

[I hope you enjoyed this character interview of The Poe Predicament’s main protagonist, Richard Langley. If you’d like to follow his adventures further, the book is available to Amazon and other online outlets.]

Boo-graphy:
Phil Thomas is an author and screenwriter from the suburbs of Philadelphia. He is a member of the International Association of Professional Writers & Editors and The Horror Writers Association. He is also the former co-host of What Are You Afraid Of? a weekly horror and paranormal show that lasted for over 150 episodes. The show still airs on Para-X radio on Friday evenings at 9:00 pm, where you’ll find interviews with wonderful guests such as Lloyd Kaufman, Katrina Weidman, Joe R. Lansdale, Grady Hendrix, Greg Bear, Daniel Kraus, and many more.

Check out his website and sign up for his mailing list so he can further control your mind, and please direct your angry hate mail to him here. You can stalk him on Twitter and Facebook.

His short stories have been featured in several anthologies, including Monsterthology 2, Nightside: Tales of Outré Noir, Coming Through in Waves: Crime Fiction inspired by the Songs of Pink Floyd, Books of Horror: Volume 3, Part 2, and the upcoming collection, Seven Doors of Fate, set to release in 2023.

His debut novel, The Poe Predicament, was published by Foundations Books on October 4, 2021 and hit the bestseller list.

Stuck in another time, Richard Langley just wants to find his way back home.

Richard is a former college professor, wandering a local neighborhood bookstore, where he stumbles upon the find of a lifetime: a signed copy of Tamerlane and other poems.

He is soon swept to another era. He is alone, confused, and his only mission is to get back to where he came from.

While struggling to adapt to his nineteenth-century environment, Richard meets a man he must help exonerate from false accusations in order to restore history’s original timeline and, ultimately, find his way back.

What Richard did not count on, was that man being the owner of the signature—Edgar Allan Poe.