What is your writing process like?
I'd love to paint you a picture of a quaint office, with a pastoral view. Or perhaps even a dedicated corner, but currently I write with my laptop or notebook on a large white plastic cutting board, seated in my 20 year old recliner. It's comfortable.
My favorite setup was a secret room within a room I'd made by arranging bookshelves to carve a little character into a rather sterile apartment reminiscent of a Soviet block. But I cranked out a ton of stories in my clandestine little hutch, until my new bride complained that she was a writing widow.
How do you come up with ideas for stories and characters?
For one, I read and write a lot. I listen to a lot of talk radio, and the news. Print news is dead in my town, so I have to get it over the airwaves. I have a little background as a columnist and it's easy to sift out what's slush and what's worth writing about.
My first novel, Frank Testimony came out of nowhere. It just poured out on the page. Everything else I've developed from the things that irk and affect me. I'd imagine just like everyone else.
What do the words “writer’s block” mean to you?
It's a line of crap. It's a myth perpetuated by people so pretentious they can't get over themselves. I worked for a newspaper, was I just going to tell my boss, nope can't work today my mind is constipated?
On the odd occasion that the words won't flow, there's a reason. Am I working on a complicated plot? Is there something agitating going on in my space? Is the dog looking at me funny? Do I need to take a breath, handle my business and be an adult?
I think I see it differently because I got cancelled before it was cool. I also spent several years recovering from a bout of PTSD that almost killed me. So I work as often as possible.
How do you process and deal with negative book reviews?
I write those people into white chalk outlines in violent crime stories. Goes for editors who run afoul of my temper also. I'm a small markets guy, and I do what I do, I don't address the fickle trends of pop culture social issues so I'm not everyone's cuppa.
What is the most challenging part of your writing process?
I had a nine year hiatus for a number of reasons, so knocking the dust off the tools will be a challenge. Publishing my backlist will be another. I'm considering a number of options, but aiming higher than the last time around.
As for the actual writing, as a good friend said, writing is butt glue and time- glue your butt to the seat and write.
How long have you been writing, or when did you start?
I've been a writer all my life. My first complete piece was a teleplay for my favorite show in the 6th grade. Professionally, I published my first article in 2009. My first sale to a publisher was 2012. I self published a novel in 2006. It was still a stigma to do so and I wonder if that was a brake to pending success or just a gatekeepers game.
What advice would you give writers working on their first book?
Finish something. I had decided I wanted to write a screenplay in the early 2000s. By happenstance a friend sent me to the workshops at zoetrope. I rarely talked to Sherry after that but it changed everything. I got into writing for a flash fiction thing weekly. So that I had to finish a 1000 word story every week. It was always based on a prompt from a gal who ran two online fiction magazines. For two years this was my writing routine and it made me organize my process. Because I worked more than full time, was a single parent and had more important things than my pastime going on. So, my advice from a practical standpoint is write every day and finish something. After that, worry about the fundamentals, but first finish something.
How do you develop your plot and characters?
Usually begins with figuring out the situation the characters are in before I meet them.
X Day on death row. A young cop on the hardest day of his first year in the street. An aged though young war hero asked to guide an expedition.
It helps in occasion to cull the dregs of headlines for the bad news and build on it. Listen to the talking heads and find something that really ticks you off and use that as inspiration.
How many books have you written, and which is your favorite?
If you look at Amazon there are eleven anthologies with my short stories from several publishers. There are four books in my Champion City Series and usually a few over priced copies of my out of print novel, Frank Testimony.
Frank is my favorite. Without a doubt the best, most honest story I have ever written.
What part of the book did you have the hardest time writing?
To be honest Frank Testimony just poured out of me like a dam broke. The first draft was 144,000 words, I published it at 111,000. The story just told itself, revealed itself to a writer who frankly had no idea what he was doing. It was the easiest process ever.
What inspired the idea for your book?
At that time I was reading a lot of legals, both thrillers and procedurals and I have always watched a lot of crime stuff, night line and other nightmare fuel.
What was your hardest scene to write, and why?
I have trouble with not overdoing it. People these days want a novel experience on a gum wrapper and it ruins a lot of storytelling. Details are not the devil, but the devil is always in the detail and not fleshing out the background leads to a framework story that lacks warmth and depth.
What do you need in your writing space to help you stay focused?
I've already discussed my space. I envision going back one day to the clandestine secret room with all the spoils of my adventurous life hung about me on the makeshift walls like a tactical operations center, but for the time being, my space is also a figment of my imagination.
If you could spend a day with another popular author, whom would you choose?
That's a hard one, I know so many great guys at, just above it on pedestals all of whom have talent I envy and must insult... David Morrell, Michael Connelly, are pedestal level idols. Above my level but great guys to pal around with are Terrence McCauley, Jack Carr, William Meikle, Ramsay Campbell and down here in the trenches I try to be a friend to anyone who doesn't apply for victimhood in a story.
When was the last time you Googled yourself and what did you find?
I used to do this regularly when I was a columnist for The Albany Journal. I don't anymore, I was cancelled before it was cool and now that everybody's doing it, it's become blase` and everyone knows why.