Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m a retired bank robber. When I was nineteen two drunks jumped me. I left them lying in the street and delivered the young boys I was bringing home from the beach to their parents. The mayor of our little town gave me sixty days and sixty dollars. That night I broke out of the sheriff’s jail. With cop’s chasing and shooting at me, I managed to get away from them, but being on the run requires money so I began robbing banks. Eventually, I was forcefully retired by seven FBI gunslingers. I pulled fifteen years. At one time they had me scheduled to be transferred but my congressman got it canceled. Robbing banks was the only crime I ever committed. I was wild, and I was hungry. Since my release, I have built six big houses, two successful carnival rides, and created a company that I sold to MacDonald’s who has put the play units in many of their stores. I’m also a painter. I have hung my paintings in two churches and twenty-four federal buildings. When reading my novels you might notice that I have transferred my youthful wild side into my eleven novels.
While I have been shot at by the police, I have hurt anyone with a gun.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Bum Rap. It’s a term used by convicts to claim they are innocent, and I lived with them for fifteen years, many of them famous like Martin Monti who stole a fighter plane and flew it into Italy and became a friend of the German SS. And Douglas Chandler an aristocrat who made anti-American recordings for the Germans, and David Greenglass who told me more about the atomic bomb than he told the Russians. He ratted on his sister who was executed and he had to live with that the rest of his life. The barroom fight at the start of Bum Rap is actually true and that’s what started the novel. The remainder of the novel is not planned. It just happens.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I began writing when I was in the carnival. Banks didn’t want to send my money home for me so I would go to the post office and buy money orders. I noticed the missing children posters and decided to write a book that might make parents aware of the dangers their children were exposed to. To do this I made “Eula’s Jug,” exceedingly graphic.
I have no planned approaches to writing. That is, I have never made an outline. My books always start with a character that has carved himself a inch in my brain and who is hollering to get out. What he does when I let him out is mostly up to him so many times he gets me stuck. Then if he doesn’t figure it out I stick the unfinished novel in my documents file until my character starts making a lot of noise again, then I let him back out to try again.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I have always enjoyed historical fiction more than anything. For my first five years in prison, I read only technical books and took college correspondence courses. The last ten years I read fiction because I found out that I would never be able to get a job because of the background checks that all the companies were using hat made all my technical training useless. Most of the authors that I’ve enjoyed I have forgotten their names, but two of the earliest are Steven king and John Grissom.
What are you working on now?
I’m about two-thirds of the way through a novel about a young man who was raised in the red light district of Wheeling, W. Va. As with all my novels, it’s a badass shoot-em-up and right now my character has gotten himself into a dilemma. He’s going to have to figure it out himself because I have developed a TV binge.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I do not have a web site. I have never promoted or advertised in any way, any of my books. I got sent to this site by Dave Chessen.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Damn straight. Unplug the tv. Read books! Sit in a soft recliner. Get a remote keyboard. Put your computer on a table about four feet away from you. Keep some liquid beside you. Now just open a page and let er rip. Write about anything at all. Your childhood. How far back can you remember? Describe the prettiest girl in the seventh grade. Write your first sex experience. Who pissed you off in high school? You get it? Nothing is sacred. Think sideways. That last half hour in front of the tv could have been the start of a beast seller.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
If anyone ever gave me any advice, I didn’t hear it. My fourth-grade teacher had a sign on the wall which read: Character is what you are. reputation is what people think you are.
What are you reading now?
I have read over five-thousand books both technical and fiction. If I were to do it again, I would choose all fiction. I read my own books constantly looking for errors, so let me share this little tale. When I was fifteen, I worked in my dad’s saloon. The clientele all had wonderful stories to share. I loved everything I ever heard from them, and yet, I doubt if any of them ever heard about an adverb or conjunction. They were storytellers. I doubt if any of them would have inspected a book for the correctness of the text. If they read a book, it was to read the story.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I’ll just keep pecking away, and not expect any pulitzer.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Regeneration, Provoked and Sneaking out of prison…every day