Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I’m a Gerber baby, being born in Fremont, Michigan, home of Gerber Baby Foods, but I live in Madison, Wisconsin now. A place described as 77 Square miles surrounded by reality.
I wanted to be the greatest motorcycle racer in the world until reality set in. After all that, I wrote a piece for a bike magazine and they paid me for it. I was in love with two vixens, writing and greed. I took greed and went into business long enough to meet my creditors and their hate mail.
911 reminded me we are mortal and why the hell am I doing this. I went back to the other vixen and wrote a book. Many times. Same book, just again and again. I learned the craft and get hate mail from my friends now.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
I despised writing until I mastered patience. That took 35 years and spell-check. My mind races ahead of my keyboard and splinters into a dozen pathways as I type this. Once I learned how to stay on target, writing became magical. The pure power of creation is why I write. I don’t know what will happen next until it falls out of my mind.
And just before that happens, this wonderful feeling of pleasure fills your being and then reveals itself; each scene a new discovery. Who inspires me? The list is long and crosses over to music. Jim Croce is an early influence. His use of emotion, delivered in written form is pure genius.
What was the question? Oh yeah, and my book title is At First Light. It was born of a single incident when a jet airliner flew over me while I was going to work, and I wondered where those people were going.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I write in public places such as coffee houses, or the Union on the campus of UW. I put on my iPod and I observe. The creativity flows like hot butter.
All my plots come from observing people. Many times a small scene plays out on the street between two people, and I read the subtle signs of who they are, a gesture, a gust of wind, a look; and my imagination runs and runs, playing out the entire scene in micro-seconds. Then I apply that emotion into the scene or plot that I need.
Is that unusual? Yes and creepy.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Jack London and Robert Lewis Stevenson for pure adventure writing, Jim Croce for writing emotion with the use of the written word.
Steven King and Eric Jerome Dickey for characters who blossom upon the page so bright you must send them Christmas cards. David Westheimer for pure storytelling chops that is the magic of books. I will stop here before we have to cut down another tree, but the list is long.
What are you working on now?
We vacationed in Hawaii and I was unprepared fro the beauty of the place.
So I set my next novel there.
A widowed jewelery store clerk sends her last child to college. She sells her house and moves to Hawaii to begin the life she never had. She lives her dream of collecting sea glass and designing jewelery.
That’s when things go bad.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
Word of mouth, reviews and sites like Awesomegang!
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Dream it, and envision it, and wish until it hurts. The best advice is persistence, and the will to become better each day. Never stop until you love the story and are proud of it a year after you forgot all about it. Then it is ready, and you are a writer.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Balance, Grasshopper. Balance
What are you reading now?
Duma Key by Steven King. It’s really good.
Go ahead, ask me about my favirote book.
That’s a Tough call. I can argue for a half dozen but because you backed me into a corner and held a knife to my throat; Jack London’s The Sea Wolf.
The protagonist is alone in a world where every person lords over him and he pays the price with pain and frustration, beautifully displayed with London’s pen. Awash in a ship where he has no skills among hard men, he flourishes through guts and a great mind.
And the will to survive as he dominates all on his pathway of destruction with one of the great antagonists of the written word; London’s Captain Wolf Larson.
What’s next for you as a writer?
write-rinse-repeat
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?
Jack London, Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac just to hear the embellished stories that poured from them; stories spiced with a beautiful mind.
Okay, that’s the writers I want to meet.
Books, that’s a hard call.
The Sea Wolf by Jack London
The Other Woman by Eric Jerone Dickey
Beautiful Joe by Margaret Marshall Saunders. A YA book long before it was a genre. The story of an abused dog who overcomes his trials and spreads his love to all in his triumph.
Song of the Young Sentry by David Westheimer
Author Websites and Profiles
Spike Pedersen Website
Spike Pedersen Amazon Profile
Spike Pedersen’s Social Media Links
Goodreads Profile
Facebook Profile