Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I was rabid about the arts as a young adult. Then life happened.
I married my high school sweetheart as a teenager when Uncle Sam drafted me into the military for two years. Instead, I enlisted in the US Coast Guard Search & Rescue Teams for four. Two children magically appeared.
Suddenly, my child bride and I began a three-decade quest for the American dream. That quest carried me all over the world and damn-near killed me. When I retired early from this successful career in high technology, my creative alter-ego burst back onto the scene.
Once more unshackled, my wife Kay and I traveled almost non-stop. First we went to sea aboard a fat old pilothouse motorsailer. I like to think of “Sojourn” as our personal tramp steamer, our passport to adventure.
We reduced life to its essentials.
After many years, we moved ashore to a home with wheels. For most of the last four years we’ve lived and thrived in a magic bus. Kay plans our extended trips and navigates while I drive, write, paint & craft Native American style flutes out of indigenous desert plants. Together we meditate, conjure amazing vegan dishes, explore mountains and valleys on our motorcycles & celebrate life.
Now we’re in a crazy holding pattern in an insane world, magic notwithstanding.
I’ve written two non-fiction books (my literary training wheels) that sold maybe a hundred copies. I have a large family. I just recently finished and independently published two contemporary thrillers with two more near-future science fiction thrillers on the way in a few months. From there, nobody better get in the way of two-to-three more books a year, probably more near-future science fiction thrillers. How about a sci-fi cozy mystery? No bridge too far!
Not too long ago, I also published a seventy-four poem anthology complete with my original images and essays. I call it “A Narrow Painted Road – An Adventurous Collection of Provocative Poetry.” If you love metaphors but hate social injustice, you’ll adore this eclectic collection.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
The book I finished recently, currently on pre-order at Amazon with a May 31st release date, is called “Fractured Dreams.” This is the second book in my Dream Runners series.
The first, “Dangerous Dreams,” is now available in ebook and paperback editions worldwide at all online retailers. They say the most fascinating characters originate from real-world experience, and those in “Fractured Dreams” are no exception.
By living for a few weeks to a few months in each of over forty US states in the last four years, we have met and made friends with so many amazing people or heard unlikely stories told by others. For example, have you ever heard of anyone living in a truck camper who mines antique bottles from the sites of nineteenth outhouses in the Pacific Northwestern US and considers himself a forensic archaeologist? Or a grandmother who lives in the deep desert in a Ford Focus with a 3×3-foot tent that doubles as her outhouse and her solar shower? How about a flute player who performs at a casino and tames rowdy tourists with his naked Native charm? I just couldn’t have infused that sort of authentic inspiration into my writing sitting at a computer in just one location.
Those stories became the genesis of the characters in “Fractured Dreams,” and the story lines continued from the first book, even as they evolved: large-scale intrigue, political conspirators attempting a palace coup within the White House, assassins foiled by underdogs, conflict with undertones of sexual tension, deep-rooted friendships between unlikely characters, and flawed players seeking redemption.
That is the soul of “Fractured Dreams.”
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I write from 4am to about 9am. That’s when Kay awakens. I write in the pre-dawn hours, when she’s sleeping, so when she gets out of bed we can do non-writing stuff together. Then I write for several more hours after she retires. The words must tumble onto the (digital) page, or this author doesn’t sleep. That isn’t odd, is it?
Living first in a boat, and then in a bus, every cubic inch of space has always been precious. So unlike many authors who use six-pound doorstopper reference books, index cards or post-it notes stuck to every vertical surface in their study or their den, or hoard stacks of paper journals or construct physical “murder boards,” I’ve adopted what has evolved to a paperless writing workflow.
My writing flows seamlessly between my iMac, my iPad & my iPhone. Some of my best ideas get recorded on my iPhone in the car while waiting for something or someone. EVERYTHING is backed up on the computer, & in the cloud, & on flash drives.
Nightmares of computer crashes or RV fires drove me to this extreme. When you live in a house that is regularly subjected to earthquake conditions for HOURS at a time, well, you take precautions that might seem unusual to most Earthlings.
Only final formatting is confined to my Big Mac but still backed up on DropBox “out there.” There just has never been any room for paper in the boat or in the bus.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
First, fiction: Any author who combines unlikely tropes in a single book influences me. For example, hints of supernatural or transcendental insights with military fiction. Huh? Yup, that floats my boat.
Or a touch of horror mixed with comedic tropes. When everybody else gets scared, I’m fascinated by authors who smooth the way between awful & scary& and funny & heartwarming & especially weird. The allure of the obscure.
Douglas Preston and Lincoln Childs and all their Pendergast novels: tragically hilarious.
Dean Koontz and his Odd Thomas series. A perfect character navigating twisted story lines.
John Sandford’s characters: Virgil Flowers, Lucas Davenport: big city police procedurals and rural hicksville deductive reasoning interwoven artfully. And they’re also tragically hilarious.
Dale Brown (military fiction), Dan Brown (religious legend) & Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (cosmic consciousness of Transcendental Meditation)
Brad Thor, Vince Flynn, Lee Child, Tom Clancy, Terry Brooks, and of course, James Patterson
Non-fiction: Chris Fox (all his Write Smarter, Write Faster series); Gary Provost (Beyond Style); Angela Ackerman & Becca Puglisi (their Writer’s Thesauri series); Nancy Kress (Beginnings, Middles & Ends); the list is endless… Tammi Lebrecque, David Wogahn, Derek Murphy…
What are you working on now?
My Mayhem series of near-future science fiction encompasses burning social issues of the day, like reckless technology proliferation, and the impact such issues play in unintentionally creating a dystopian future.
“BENEATH the Mayhem,” the first in the series, reads like a collision between Dean Koontz and JD Robb but with less sex and more conspiracies.
My protagonist’s current caper sounds like a bad joke: an ex-Jesuit priest, a nun, a Chicago detective, a goggled and hooded telepathic girl who hides in a tunnel all partner with a storyteller named Zaya French who lives in a flying bus to solve a string of murders meant to look like accidents or suicides. Zaya and his new friends reveal a conspiracy of planetary proportions as they unravel this mystery. They will not be silenced. But will they survive? Will anyone?
Twenty-eight years later in the second book, “BEYOND the Mayhem,” you’ll meet another generation of telepaths, prescients, and a band of gifted vagabonds, not to mention a cabal of despicable villains you’ll love to hate. This alternative future seems defined entirely by technology but ultimately is still eclipsed by the astounding power of the human mind.
I’m also working on at least two non-fiction manuscripts, one of which may ultimately transform into a memoir of sorts. The other will be a writing and publishing guide for aspiring authors, likely focusing on sharing what I’ve learned about a paperless workflow for independent authors & publishers.
So many ideas, so little time!
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
In order to slowly ramp up my promotions to show the Amazon algorithms I’m on a slow burn rather than an anomalous sales spike, and since I currently have a relatively short email list, for this launch I plan to use a prelaunch sequence of 1) Fussy Librarian, 2) Awesome Gang, and 3) EreaderNewsToday. Circa launch day, I’ll hit as many of the free sites as possible from the Awesome Gang’s awesome resource list.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Gosh, where to start? Okay. NEVER QUIT! Plus don’t JUST focus on writing (like I did when I started out all shiny and enthusiastic). You need to think about other stuff too, like the business side of being an author. Now. Toward that end, this is what I do:
Accomplish one thing, every day, even if just a little, within at least two or three of the following five categories, but each week hit them all.
Keeping a daily journal helps to track how I can do each thing just a little better next time:
1. Write (“How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice!”)
2. Read (Too busy to read? Don’t worry. When you fail as a writer, you’ll have more time to read)
3. Learn (never, never, NEVER, NEVER stop learning about the craft or “the biz!”)
4. Market (What good are books nobody knows exist? An ebook doesn’t even make a good doorstop)
5. Business (To sustain a career in writing takes more than “just” writing & publishing, even though these are the launch platforms to greatness)
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Write at least a little every single day, and I’ll say it again: Never quit!
If you’re writing just for yourself, and not concerned about book sales, let ‘er rip. But if you wish to sustain a career as a writer, you need to sell books. Pick a genre you love, find a sub-genre within that genre that is underserved, and then write to the readers of that segment of the market. Give them what they want and write what you enjoy at the same time (credit: Chris Fox in “Write to Market”).
What are you reading now?
Chris Fox, “Ads for Authors Who Hate Math”
Tammi Lebrecque, “Newsletter Ninja”
Gary Provost, “Beyond Style – Mastering the Finer Points of Writing” (again)
Stephen King, “The Stand”
What’s next for you as a writer?
I’m going wide across as many marketing channels as possible. No longer just Amazon and just Kindle. I’m now using IngramSpark as my distributor to 40,000 channels worldwide (as well as KDP on Amazon).
In the process of learning as much as possible about independent publishing, I’ve established my own publishing imprint (company) called UpLife Press. Right now I have one client: GK Jurrens (me). Thank you for the guidance, David Wogahn.
“Amazon-brightness” is next. God bless Dave Chesson and Kindlepreneur.
Writing to market expectations within a genre I love (science fiction) will be another next turn of my evolutionary crank. They say what can be measured can be improved, so I’ll measure everything, test, and respond to the data, as dry as that sounds. If it works, great. If not, do something different and try again. Thank you, Chris Fox.
As part of my new diversification strategy, I’m learning as much as possible about email marketing on autopilot. This is an essential element in sustaining my author business.
By documenting and repurposing all I’m learning about writing, editing, formatting, graphics design, publishing & marketing, I plan to pull together a book useful to newer authors like myself before I forget what it’s like to be a rookie in this business. No new author should remain myopic and naïve for very long. I am fortunate to have both experienced mentors and devoted mentees in the author biz. But like all of you, I could always use more of both.
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?
Bible
Bhagavad Gita
Bardo Thodol
Desert Survival Guide
Author Websites and Profiles
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