One Writer Connection

CAN YOU BELIEVE THEY INTERVIEWED ME ?

Page to Page Interview

Thank you for joining us for an author interview. We have created a range of questions from your work, to some a little more personal, so that your current and future readers can become more familiar with you.

A Little on the Personal Side:

· What types of books do you read?

I read what I write—hardboiled crime novels. Just finished BUTCHERS MOON by Richard Stark (the late Donald Westlake), and before that two Sunny Randall novels by Robert B Parker. I’ve read most of them from Lee Child to Lawrence Block plus the masters, Chandler, Hammett, to paperback originals from John D. and Richard Prather. I have read literary types from Hemingway, Somerset Maugham, John Steinbeck, back to Dickens, Victor Hugo, Herman Melville and my pal Bill Shakespeare. I do like diversion occasionally and my next book to read is about the first man ever to ride around the world on a motorcycle, in 1912, aboard a 1912 Henderson, written by my good friend, Dr. Gregory Frazier, who himself has ridden five times around the world and has more than a million miles on different motorcycles. I only have a few hundred thousand miles on my motorcycles.

· What do you love most about writing? What do you not like?

I love the routine of looking forward to it. I write early mornings so when I wake, just before climbing out of the rack, I churn in my mind what I’ll be writing. It’s hard to begin a novel but once into it, I look forward to creating characters and scenes every day. When on a book, I write five to six hours a day, seven days a week. My “office” is the dinette table aboard my sloop where I live. What I do not like is easy: publicity and marketing. I dislike every part of it, it’s like peddling my books as if they were vacuum cleaners. Even though I know it’s necessary because publishers don’t do that anymore, it still makes me uncomfortable because I’m an introvert. Friends and family often accuse me of being a hermit, squirreled away in the dark cabin of my little sail boat ticking away on laptop keys.

· When you are not writing where can you be found?

I can be found in used bookstores (can’t afford new), although I do have a Kindle. Or sailing, maybe for a day sail if I can scare up a feminine friend or over ocean swells to Catalina Island for a weekend of fishing and snorkeling with or without feminine friends, or in my boat cockpit reading, or gold prospecting in Arizona and Nevada, or riding my dual purpose motorcycle, either on the highway or along fire trails and mountain roads in search of gold, or in a movie theater watching a film, usually alone because I like matinees. Or you might find me on a road trip, camping in the back of my Explorer.

A Little on the Professional Side:

· Of all of the characters you have written, which has been your favorite? Why? Least favorite? Why?

Before my novel THE FAREWELL HEIST was released I had another titled CROSSFIRE DIAMONDS. In it is an assassin, Yolanda Smart tall, thin, black, sharp who has become my favorite character because she is cold, calculating and professional besides being beautiful and looking like an African princess. A close second is the young woman from India, Asin Bhandi, in my forthcoming Logan Sand novel, THE CALCCUTTA DRAGON, because she is feminine perfection and knows it, and mentions it. Plus I love my villains. They are hissingly evil and commit detestable acts, the type of dastardly creeps readers love to hate. Me too. But of course my top favorites are my three series leads: Baylor ”Bay” Rumble (four books: BAD GIRL DEAD, BLEEDING SISTERS, CATALINA KILLERS, BAJA BULLETS), Logan Sand (two books: THE CALCUTTA DRAGON, PLUNDERED ANGELS) and Makayla Tuff (writing first book: PILLOW SHOT).

· What is your thought on eBooks being the new way to read?

eBooks are the future but they’re not the end all be all of books. They still don’t take well to color pictures. My Kindle doesn’t have page numbers. They are not as easy to read as books. They host several other undesirable traits. But the biggest danger for eBooks is price. The one looming attraction for them is books are cheap. But I see publishers submitting to their greed by charging $6-$8-$11 and even $13 for books that aren’t special except they come from a hot-shot author through a big name publisher. That will be the demise of eBooks. I have many books stored on my Kindle, including four of my own. I’ve read three books, one after the other. I still prefer books with pages I turn.

· Who is your ideal reader?

Readership for me is a slog. Because my books are tough and masculine to the point of pulp, most women don’t care for them. Not much display of woman empowerment in them. Since 80% of readers are women, and the majority of books published are a form of Romance, the landscape is kind of barren for my kind of tough crime novels. My ideal readers are men, likely working the hands-on trades. Prisoners like my books. But, with only a portion of a 20% readership, and I just read that 80% of men college graduates never read another book after graduating, and 45% of families don’t read books, it looks like an uphill crawl out there for my kind of books. Why not give in and write what they’re reading? Because I don’t read that stuff, and I don’t write it. Few of us are in this for the money. I live with the reality.

A Little Quick Fire:

*When it comes to books*

Good Guys or Bad Guys? Bad guys

Fiction or Non-Fiction? Fiction

Handwritten or PC typed? PC typed

Cozy Nook or Outdoors Oasis? Neither. Mean streets and guns.

Happily Ever After or Nail-biter? Nail biter

Writing or Reading? Writing

*When it comes to you*

Ice Cream or Cake? Neither, too much sugar

Chocolate or Vanilla? Neither, too much sugar

Coffee or Tea? Coffee