Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I spent most of my professional life in various manufacturing management positions, ranging from labor relations manager to plant manager, mostly in the automotive industry. But I had a secondary career as a college instructor of rhetoric and literature.
My current novel TRIOS is my first book launch, but I have for the past year had serialized a novel online, one chapter per month, with Spillwords Press. That novel is LOCUST HILL, a touching family saga set in the Mid-Ohio Valley of West Virginia.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
My most recent novel is entitled TRIOS: DEATH, DECEIT, AND POLITICS. It was inspired by today’s headlines: the state of modern journalism and higher education coupled with ever (at least it seems eternal) corruption in American politics. Not many characters escape the novel with their innocence in tact.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I begin a novel or short story with a sketch book. The first item in the sketchbook is the complication of the story. That is, what is the problem that will drive the plot? Next, I determine who must deal with this problem (the protagonist) and who presents it (the antagonist). Then I focus on developing these characters: What do they look like? How do they speak and think? What are their strengths and weaknesses? As these characters develop, so does the plot. As key moments in the plot become clear to me, I write them into the sketchbook to be cut and pasted later into the manuscript. Soon, something magical happens–namely, the characters take over the plot and determine what they must say and do according to their character parameters. I’ve found that it is not a good idea to contradict them.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I especially love American Southern literature and most of all William Faulkner. But I also love the work of Paul Horgan, an American author too many of us have forgotten. (So look him up!) Also, the short stories of Irish author William Trevor–I hold those in high regard.
What are you working on now?
Currently, I am working on a dystopian novel entitled SHANTEYBOAT.
The whole idea of dystopian literature is to push current social-political trends into the future to see what they will produce. Just the title of the novel may give a clue!
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’m just learning about book promotion, so I’m a poor one to offer advice on that subject. I have cobbled together a set of Facebook groups that constitute about 250,000 contacts and therefore potential book purchasers. The question is how to convert contacts to buyers and fans. You can’t do that without a great book!
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Try different things. Start with short stories. Try to write one without a narrator, dialogue only. That will teach you about character voices. Publishers and agents are always talking about the writer’s voice but can never define what it is. I think that they are wrong even to try. What was Shakespeare’s voice? Always and only that of his characters and what was appropriate to them.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
It’s hard today, when realism dominates fiction writing, to avoid:
SHOW ME, DON’T TELL ME.
What are you reading now?
I just finished Shirley Hazzard’s THE TRANSIT OF VENUS and trying to decide how, on the balance, I feel about it. In the process of reading it, my thoughts were: Too much of the narrator and too little of the characters speaking for themselves.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I have a number of partially completed crime novels that I need to finish before starting on an historical novel set in West Virginia, my home state.
What is your favorite book of all time?
For craftsmanship–Flaubert’s MADAME BOVARY.