Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I was born in Hollywood, California, and raised on the east side of L.A. I moved to northern California to attend college, and never left, earning my BA and MA degrees from San Francisco State University in Cinema Studies. While teaching and working on a post-graduate degree at U.C. Berkeley, an opportunity came to join the San Francisco Giants new Video Production Department, and I jumped at it. After seven years with the Giants, I returned to teaching, while also working as a private investigator. I am currently teaching Cinema Studies in the Bay Area, while writing. I live in San Francisco with mys wife Rena and have an an adult son, Cole. There are currently 4 books in circulation as part of the Lucky Lucas detective/mystery series. The next book should be released around Christmas 2014.
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What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Nola’s Future was released early 2014. All the books in the Lucky Lucas series attempt to provide the reader with a fun reading experience, while also touching on certain social issues. My first idea was that of a young student who falls under the spell of a married college professor and the subsequent difficulty she has when she tries to end the relationship.
A parallel storyline involves Jesse Santos, a San Francisco private investigator, and friend to our main protagonist, Lucky Lucas. Sant0s is wounded in a fatal shootout while trying to apprehend a bail jumper in the beach town of Santa Cruz and that case continues its own spiral down the looking glass when the deceased bail jumper’s brother is released from prison and comes looking for revenge along with his drug addicted female cousin sidekick.
The two dramatic and violent cases explore contemporary issues of abusive relationships and the personal and familial cost of unbridled drug use and addiction.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I don’t think i have any unusual habits. Like most writers I know discipline is the key. I try to write everyday, usually in the morning, either quite early before going to work, on during regular morning hours if my schedule allows for that.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I continue to enjoy and admired Elmroe Leonard, find Pete Dexter, Danielle Woodrell, and James Sallis books hard to put down, and thoroughly enjoyed the Robert B. Parker novels. There are so many others whose influence has undoubtedly seeped into my pores…Chandler, Hammett, Cain, and Don Delillo.
What are you working on now?
I am in the editing stages of the 5th novel in the series and hope to have it released by the end of 2014. We’ll see!
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
I have a website (markgummere.com), use social media outlets, attend periodic writing conferences and simply try to stay active and engaged with writers and readers. It is the most difficult aspect of the whole writing life.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Writers write. Try to enjoy it.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Write ‘something’ everyday.
What are you reading now?
I am simultaneously reading Elmore Leonard’s Pagan Babies and Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. My mood that day seems to determine which one I pick up first (of course, if I can’t immediately find one, I’ll grab that other…that also works!).
What’s next for you as a writer?
I plan to continue writing the Lucky Lucas series novels, and work in a couple short stories as well. I also hope to find the time in 2015 to rework a play from a couple years back titled Baby Blue.
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?
Man…how ’bout 5 choices…
1. Don Delillo’s Underworld (just for the language if nothing else),
2. At least one Elmore Leonard novel,
3. Daniel Woodrell’s Bayou Trilogy
4. A book pf poetry
5. Jim Murray’s The Last of the Best (a collection of articlse written for the L.A. Times on sports figures from Muhammad Ali, to Tiger Woods, to Fernando Valenzuela).
That would do it
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