JACKSON – Township resident Leonard Apa is a school teacher, a new dad and a relatively new author whose new work introduces a film noir/pulp style hero called “The Scarlet Scrapper” and the journey to get him from concept to the printed page has made for an interesting adventure all its own.
His book is set in the 1940s the era of pulps and film noir “about a little boy who is into the radio show The Scarlet Scrapper. He thinks it is a real hero running around New York saving people and they are just broadcasting his adventures. The boy ends up witnessing a murder and goes in search of the hero but finds the actor (who voices the character) and they save the day. It is very much influenced by the old pulps and noir and old radio shows. In many ways it emulates that format.”
Apa has been enjoying the book signing circuit and made a recent appearance at the Toms River Book Show. He said he is finishing up a sequel and plans to make the saga a trilogy.
Apa said his interest in writing was inspired from watching a PBS show from the 1990s called “The Ghost Writer” “which was a show that tried to get kids into reading and writing and that is what got me into writing. There was a character from the show who was a kid and he was reading one of the short stories and I thought, ‘wow that was awesome, I could do that’ and that started the whole bug of writing.”
He added, “English was the subject I was good in. I’ve been a resident of Jackson for about two years now. I was born and raised in New Jersey and have been a Jersey resident my entire life. I lived in Toms River and Little Egg Harbor for a while. This is much closer to my work (he teaches in nearby Howell Township).”
“I like to read a lot and I like to write so that is my life – along with a baby so that takes up a lot of my time along with being a teacher,” he added.
“More interesting to who I am is how I came up with the story while in high school where kids are going on dates and being really cool, I was one of those kids who discovered that radio serials was a thing so that is what I did,” the author laughed saying.
“I was always interested in comic books as a little boy and somehow I discovered there was a radio show of Superman and I thought ‘wow, that is amazing.’ I found it at the library and was listening to it and just fell in love with these radio serials and listened to all of them: The Shadow, The Green Hornet, The Phantom anything I could get my hands on and that is really where the basis of The Scarlet Scrapper came from,” he explained.
Apa noted, “it took 20 years later but that was my inspiration. There is an author named David Morrell who created (John) Rambo in (his debut 1972 action-thriller novel) “First Blood” which the Rambo movies are based on and I befriended him back in 2010. I call him my official mentor and he and I would meet up every year when he would come to Pulp Thriller Fest in New York.”
“We would always talk about writing and he knows I loved superheroes and he said to me ‘why don’t you write a superhero novel that isn’t a superhero novel?’ and that kind of clicked with me. I thought it was brilliant and so I wrote this book and he was very kind and said he would read it for me when you are ready and because someone was willing to read it for me I rushed it and sent it to him and I get the notes back and I am ready and he says ‘this story is broken it will never be published’ and I cried under a desk for about a week and I thought I’ll never write again. Why am I even trying?” Apa asked himself.
Like the character he created however, he persevered. “I looked at the actual notes and what he was really saying and I started the book over from word one and now it is published. I sent a copy to him and he gave me a great review and here we are,” he noted in relief.
“He is a really good guy and if you haven’t read him, you probably should,” Apa added.
