Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m just your average blue-collar working dude, who also happens to be an avid reader, a keen observer of what’s going on in my surroundings, and as my wife puts it, “a very active imagination.” Heaven’s Door, a Novel is my first book – the first of many in the pipeline. My writing started with short stories, then something happened locally that I had a strong opinion on, so I did some research and interviews, penned a rather long and detailed Letter to the Editor, and submitted it to my local newspaper. That letter got picked up as a news article, got the whole page from top to bottom, and was later called “investigative journalism.” Years later, I got subpoenaed into court by both parties as a witness, but that was quashed because someone decided I had “press privilege” – a great compliment for a guy with no degree, who was just interested in a community hot topic! So I guess that was the start of my real writing career. This book was the next thing, and I have twelve years of research into it, even though it’s fiction. You have to be kind of careful with crime fiction – there are readers who are very well-informed about guns, the law, mechanisms of internal injury, that kind of thing, and there are also victims to think about. You want the narrative to be respectful and to move the reader in the right direction emotionally. My worst fear is to have a reviewer call a section where someone dies “thrilling.” I would rather readers be shocked, horrified, sickened, repulsed. I have a lot of outlines, a lot of ideas, a great deal of draft, and big plans!
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Heaven’s Door, a Novel is my first book. It’s a cheap rip-off of a song about a Sheriff’s deputy who is at risk or near death – you’ve all heard it. But it’s also very appropriate to this story: Our Hero starts on one side of the door, and as terrible, horrible events progress, we see him going further and further through Heaven’s door, until just his fingers are left clinging to the near and mortal side. It was good imagery to describe what was going on. Great in a movie, in flash-out closeups, if it was done right.
The book itself was inspired by bones found in my hometown. Someone died and was (probably) left to decay in the open air on this unconsecrated ground. It struck me as horrible and terrible and unfair. I wanted this person to be remembered. I did some research, came up with something that was, if not plausible, then at least possible, and set about making this now fictional person a story that would bring readers to the grief and terror of a last moment.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I write in an unusual hybrid of first- and third-person narration called “free indirect discourse.” It’s a very literary technique for an advanced reader, and can be a bit hard to follow at first. The advantage is that the reader is free to experience every character’s viewpoint, and either empathize with it or detest it. The overall narrator makes no judgement – you could write up an axe-murder, and the folks that are afraid of axes would think the author is on their side, while the sociopaths who like swinging the hickory would think the writer is one of them. Some other authors have tried it, here and there. I use it through and through. It lets you, the reader, into characters’ heads and puts you right there on the street and in the action with them.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
(Smiling, here…) I was very moved by some of Ian McEwan’s work; threw down one book and cried for an hour. Also very moved by some of the bitter-sweet themes in some Neville Shute. I tried to make Heaven’s Door a mashup of McEwan, Shute, and Grisham meet the screenplay writers of “A History of Violence” and “Copland.” I’m told the book is actually reminiscent of Sons of Anarchy and Twin Peaks… I’ve never seen an episode of SOA, but I was a big fan of – and horrified by – the Twin Peaks movie. I didn’t consciously think of that movie when I was writing, but I can see it what they mean.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on a followup to this novel, a Prequel, actually. The manuscript is about 1900 pages, so I’m going to have to split it up into several books (Cut something? Never! These are characters LIVES we’re playing with!). I want to explore the OTHER side of crime fiction: the victims, and the lives of those who are waiting for the victims to come home. There are stories there, too. You have this victim in your crime fiction, but who was he? Who did he leave behind, waiting at a window every day, wondering when – IF – he’s going to come back? What kind of hole did that make in society when that person disappeared forever in a violent crime? Murder victims are more than a case number or a statistic, or even a person: they are integral parts of a community, one that sometimes becomes very fragile when one piece is carelessly and cruelly removed. I want to bring readers along on one victim’s journey through life, through the eyes of those who survive and still wait for him. I suppose that for years, somebody or somebodies were waiting for the owner of bones to walk back in the door. Jesus, what a tragic thing. Can I bring that angst to readers? I want to try.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I’m still waiting for the answer to that one, myself! Sometimes it seems like Heaven’s Door, a Novel is a “cult favorite” that’s still waiting for its cult following! Some people REALLY like it. I haven’t figured out, yet, how to reach the rest of those people. In my Beta Reader group, I found that veterans of actual shooting wars, survivors of violent crime or trauma, people who’d found dead bodies… those were the types of folks who best liked my work. How do you reach that demographic? Word of mouth, I suppose. I’ll let you know when I find what works!
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Go Smashwords (for an E-book distributor). They distribute everywhere, very user-friendly, very forgiving of first-time author mistakes. Hands-down the easiest book platform to learn, they have a GREAT “how to” (formatting) manual that walks you right through it, and once you have a document that will work for Smashwords, that same document will breeze through other distributor compilers with very little tweaking. Once I have something that their “meat-grinder” likes, eligible for Premium Distribution, I find that I can take the same base Word Document, upload it to KDP, and have a Kindle Edition and an Amazon P-O-D ready to go right out of the box. That’s my advice for new authors. THAT was one of the things I got right when I started my year-long book-release process. The other advice? See the last sentence. I wish I’d done everything a year before my “release date.”
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
“Find a couple of mentors. You have no idea what you’re getting into.” Now I know what THAT meant! I’ll pass it along: find someone or someones in your area who are successful writers and who are willing to tell you a little about their experience. If you can’t find someone, look at blogs or author websites – however you have to do it. We beginning writers need that long experience, or we’re all just building the wheel from scratch every time. Read everything you can from Smashwords, and also check out an Indie writer’s E-magazine called InD’tale Magazine. The folks at InD’tale interview successful authors who are or were Indies, and ask a lot of questions that yield the answers you might be looking for….
What are you reading now?
“Lies She Told” by Cate Holahan. It’s a suspense-thriller. I’m to the point where I think I know what’s going to happen, and I don’t like it (the situation), and I’m starting to squirm a bit – it’s making me uncomfortable. Good! That author has REACHED me! Sign of a good book, a good author. So far, I’d buy it again. Next up are Bruce Chatwin’s “In Patagonia” and Marlena DeBlasi’s “A Thousand Days in Tuscany.” Sometimes I like to travel in my reading.
I also have a few standby favorites right here by the chair: a few from Robert B. Parker’s Spenser series, the Andrea Camilleri’s “Inspector Montalbano” Series, a couple of books by Peter Mayle, John Grisham’s “Playing for Pizza.” If I like a book, I read it again and again.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Well, I’ve written LITERARY fiction. For my prequels exploring other lives that intersect with characters from Heaven’s Door, I’d like to write POPULAR fiction – both in the sense of selling well, but also in the sense of being an easy-to-read, fun-to-read, and at times lighter adventure. I want to write something that the average reader would see as “comfort reading” for that cold, dark, snowy night: the literary equivalent of mac-n-cheese! Eventually, I want to bring the series back to Heaven’s Door – quite literally – when everything comes full circle and we’re with the detective as he takes his first lurching, falling step into the afterlife. Whenever we move into events that are out of a characters’ control, fraught with terror and danger, or simply overwhelming, I want to return to the original writing style in Heaven’s Door. I want to use style as a literary device to bring the reader on an emotional back-and-forth that is best experienced from the safety and comfort of a favorite reading chair – in other words, I’m going to try to manipulate emotions, play with minds, put the reader in some very frightening and unsafe situations. I’d like you, the reader, to know the hopes, joys, loves, sorrows, regrets, and terrors of my characters not just by READING them, but by FEELING them, or at least EMPATHIZING with the character. I’ve got some work ahead to make that come out right.
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?
I think I already touched on this… some books, I just want to read them again and again. “Comfort books,” I suppose I’d call them. Number one? “Round the Bend” by Nevil Shute – what an amazing, and amazingly imagined, story. How grateful I would be to have lived the last paragraph. “Home to Italy” by Peter Pezzelli – it’s a nice story. Really stranded, like, forever? King James Red-Letter Edition of the New Testament of the Christian Bible… I would find that very comforting in my long days and hours and years away from the Known World. Funny, really, considering the nature of what I’ve written – it’s as far from God and Heaven as one can go.
Author Websites and Profiles
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