Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I started out as an archaeologist and participated in excavations in Israel, Bulgaria, and all around the United States. In my mid-thirties I switched over to writing. I’ve done everything from guidebooks to military history and a lot of novels, a total of more than fifty books so far. I’m a professional ghostwriter so about half my work is under other people’s names.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
Tangier Bank Heist: An Interzone Mystery is set in Tangier in the 1950s, when it was an International Zone run by half a dozen major powers. Life was crazy then, with many things legal there that were not legal anywhere else. Tangier is a little less crazy now, but still a great place to have a writing retreat. I go there two or three times a year. The book is inspired by a real case in which a man stole a bank.
No, he didn’t rob a bank, he stole it.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I always have at least two different projects going at the same time. This helps me keep up a better daily word count. If I need to think a scene through or figure out a character motivation, I can switch to the other project for a while and maintain forward momentum.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
My first great inspiration was Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea series. I read those several times when I was a kid. Then the Beats as a young man (I’m less enthusiastic now), the Russians of course, and I’m reading a lot of Arabic literature lately.
What are you working on now?
I’m working on the next book in my Interzone series of mystery novels, with many of the same characters as Tangier Bank Heist. The provisional title is Three Passports to Trouble.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Advertising in newsletters when a book is on discount.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Write every day, without fail. All else is distraction.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
When I was just starting out, a multi-published mystery author told me, “If you write a page a day, by the end of the year you’ll have a book.” My initial response was, “What if I write two pages a day?”
What are you reading now?
I just finished Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi, a retelling of the classic tale set in Baghdad during the American occupation. Mindblowing. For nonfiction I’m reading The Battle for Spain by Antony Beevor, a classic book on the Spanish Civil War. The detective of my Interzone series is a veteran. Too keep up my Spanish I’m reading La Belleza de la Serpiente by Lou Carrigan, pen name for prolific pulp novelist Antonio Vera Ramírez.
What’s next for you as a writer?
After I finish the second in the Interzone series, it’s back to Cairo to research the third book in my Masked Man of Cairo series. These are mystery novels set in Egypt in 1919, when the first wave of the independence movement was rising.
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?
Books I haven’t read. Thick ones. It’s going to take a long time to build that outrigger canoe.
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