Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
From a quiet, introspective young boy, to whippings and scorn, I became a fighter and am only now growing back into the gentleness I had lost through so many battles. Never one to follow or acquiesce, I was swept away with the sixties and it was not until my forties that I looked back and realized I had gone down the wrong fork in the road. Then, with my mind set to writing, you could not tear me away from it.
I compiled six novels and a memoir in the span of fifteen years, all while holding down the proverbial day job, then found success as a ghostwriter four years back. In the intervening span, I have written something in the order of two dozen novels and memoirs for my clients. I feel grateful every day to wake up and know that I make my living as a writer, but of course I hope to find some modest form of recognition for my own literary efforts before this is all through. I recently relocated to the shore of New England, where I was born and don’t know that I have ever felt so much peace as I have felt since arriving here.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The Last Love of Eleanor Sands, and let me preface any thoughts here by saying, there were always two very personal novels I needed to write, The Trip Into Milky Way, which was based on my adventures as vagabond and draft resister during the Vietnam War and my ultimate incarceration in a Mexican prison for smuggling, and Eleanor Sands, which derives its inspiration from the love affair I had with a college professor when I was a young man. That romance forever transformed my life, and as proof of its importance to me, that college professor and I remain the dearest of friends to this day. Forty years have passed and I have yet to experience a relationship that provided me with the same laughter, joy and intellectual succor.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I have three basic elements that are a constant in my writing. I am religious about going to work first thing in the morning. No phone calls. No emails. Nothing until I have written for several hours. Once locked into my work for the day, I can go off and deal with the world as responsibilities demand and return to my work productively later in the day. Like Perseus’ golden thread, once in touch with my muse, I can reel myself back in from other distractions. Conversely, if I let the world in or go off to run errands first thing, any attempt to commence my work thereafter is a monumental struggle. You may as well have people banging pots and pans next to my head. As such, you will frequently find me in my bathrobe and slippers all day. A shower first thing would be as if washing away the threads of last night’s dreams.
Second, I always start work by editing what I wrote the previous day. Editing is writing and that exercise never fails to sling me nicely into a story.
Third, I have a rain storm CD that I play constantly while working, unless of course it’s actually raining outside. I began writing seriously when I still lived up in the Seattle area and did not realize how meditative the rain had been for me until I relocated to Southern California. Distracted constantly by the bright sun and buzz of activity around my beach cottage, a light went on. I ordered the CD online and have been busy wearing out that CD ever since.
There are other tools I use, like stopping every hour or so to read something that inspires me, like Zen sayings, or simply pushing away from my desk and trying to remember where I am in the universe, i.e., in the far flung arm of a spiral galaxy, but the three above are the main ones that help me to stay productive.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
As a boy it was London, Stevenson, Kipling and the likes for the sheer adventure of a story. Later, in high school and as a young man, I read Vonnegut for his imagination and wry humor, the Russians for their realism and closeness to nature, and there was a smattering of other useful writers, like Twain and Brautigan, who showed me how to dispense with the stifling trappings of syntax. As Gertrude Stein told Hemingway, the point is to be understood, so feel free to streamline language, as long as your message is clear. I was never that much of a Hemingway fan as a young man, but once I began to write seriously, I found a few passages from The Sun Also Rises or A Farewell to Arms helped to put me back on track. I am not at all awed by Hemingway’s drinking prowess or his chauvinism, only by the sparse, economical quality of his prose. The same could be said of Bukowski. I do not find myself called to his state of debauchery, but I know of no one who writes more directly or honestly. I also enjoy reading a Simenon on occasion for the same sparse quality of his prose. Beyond that, I read mostly history and science. Enrich the mind and it will bleed into your work.
What are you working on now?
Aside from my ghostwriting work, I have a sci-fi novel in progress. It’s set in roughly the time frame of 2150. Earth is an environmental disaster, mostly depleted of natural resources, so all the action is now in raping the asteroid belt of its resources. Billionaires are a dime a dozen, trillionaires are the equivalent of today’s billionaires and your own private luxury asteroid is the equivalent of owning your own island today, since all of those are underwater and the sea is an acidic, algae ridden soup. I don’t want to give way too much here but the moral twist is, the protagonist goes off to make his fortune in this wild west of outer space, haunted by the knowledge that his quest for personal aggrandizement is simply a continuation of the very self-centeredness that led to the destruction of earth.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
You are really talking to the wrong guy here, when it comes to promotion. If I have to choose between a day of writing and a day of marketing, I always go with the writing. So, I become continuously more accomplished but no more well known.
I can tell you that when I launched The Trip Into Milky Way this past spring, I Googled around, found a master list of all the Free & Discount Book websites, did roughly 20 different buys at 10, 20 bucks a piece and reached # 52 on Amazon’s free book rankings. However, that did not translate into actual sales.
Having been consumed with ghostwriting for the past eight months, I’m back to releasing more of my literary works and trying to figure out what works for me in terms of promotion. Facebook, Twitter, all these things help, but how much time can I dedicate to marketing and still be productive as a writer? More will be revealed.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
As already mentioned, read well. Good writers and the riches of mankind’s knowledge about the universe will always make your own writing better. Beyond that, get yourself experience, and I don’t mean a two week cruise. Go somewhere faraway with no idea where you will be when you get up the next morning. Casting my fate to the wind as a young man continues to be a wellspring of inspiration for my work. I suppose as much as anything, it lent a sense of wonder and adventure to my perception of the universe that still abides.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
When I sat down to write my first novel, lo these many years ago, I happened upon a cantankerous old writer and he told me two things. Write what you are enthusiastic about and tell the story. Stay out of your head. And there is not a day that goes by where I don’t remember that simple advice. My best diatribes always seem to rot overnight, but good storytelling always feels fresh and sincere the next morning.
What are you reading now?
I always have a stack of books going. Right now, it’s Herodotus’ history of the Persian Wars, Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Theodore H. White’s The Making of a President, 1960 and Gordon Wood’s Revolutionary Characters.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Once I finish with the sci-fi novel on my plate, there are three other novels brewing in my subconscious mind. One would be the second installment of my crime novel series, which started with South on Pacific Coast Highway. Long story on how I came to write a crime novel but I thoroughly enjoyed the backdrop of mystery and adventure and look forward to continuing the character of Michael Devlin. Then I have a black comedy about my Irish/Italian family that has been wanted to be told for too many years. Then I have a book which I’m not sure I can even describe yet, but if I had to choose a title off the top of my head, it would be, The Story of Life. My god, isn’t amazing that we’re here, aware that we are? And wondering how it all got started? To capture the adventure and magic of existence. I suppose that would be goal.
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?
That’s a really tough one, but if I could have collections, I would have to say the Bhagavad Gita, for its sheer majesty of spiritual awareness, the complete Shakespeare, for a compendium of man’s many vices, virtues and aspirations, the Bible as a mythical source and the complete collection of Simenon for some simple, curl up by the fire reading. I would miss many by their absence from this list, but if I had to choose…
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