Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
As the title of my memoir attests, I was born and raised in the deep South. After a stint in the Air Force (ours), I got just enough education to be dangerous (an MS in Mass Communications from the University of Louisiana-Lafayette) and took my show on the road–literally. For ten years I was an itinerant disc jockey and sometimesTV sports anchor. When I came to my senses, I became an advertising copywriter (okay, scratch coming to my senses).
Lost in the 50s: In Meridian, Mississippi, a coming-of-age memoir, is my seventh published book. The others include four novels, one history book and a spiritual/self-help book.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
A few years ago, I published a novel called The Great Pretender: Confessions of a Semi-Incorrigible Southern Catholic Boy, a thinly disguised memoir of my formative and teen years.
Lost in the 50s: In Meridian, Mississippi cuts to the chase, focusing on my adolescent years–a time of young romance, raging hormones, and, in my case, a wildly dysfunctional family. It’s a fun book.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
None that I can think of. Unless you count chewing sugar-free gum until the flavor is a dubious memory. Does hair pulling count?
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Wow, too many to count. Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Robert Penn Warren. In more recent times, Richard Russo, Kate Atkinson, Donna Tartt, Richard Ford, Annie Proulx…
What are you working on now?
I am almost finished with a period piece tentatively called The Gallaway Girls, a tale of two sisters in their twenties in the middle of World War II. They are mostly happy survivors of a traumatic childhood in which they lost both parents and spent their adolescent years in a boarding school. It is ten years later when the unsolved case of their father’s murder is suddenly reopened and becomes the focus of their lives.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Kindlepreneur has been helpful.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Don’t wait for inspiration to write. Let your writing inspire you.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Just write, come hell or high water. Every day, sit down and write, even if you have to write about not being able to write.
What are you reading now?
I am re-reading Don DeLillo’s Libra.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I am presently at work on a novel about a quirky romance (not a romance novel) between two basically sweet, but dysfunctional young people whose relationship is challenged by the traumas of their adolescence.
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’d probably want to have a book or two on mindful meditation and a good manual on how to survive on a desert island.
Author Websites and Profiles
Robert Randall Amazon Profile