Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I wear a lot of hats, always have. I’m a husband and dad first and foremost. I’m Pappy to going on five grand-kids. I’m a Marine veteran. I’m a biker, boater, sailor, scuba diver, rum critic, farmer, builder and fixer of things broken. Apparently, I’m a fair story teller, too. I’ve spun tales of my experiences in the Florida Keys and around the Caribbean to my kids, grand-kids, friends, and family. Meeting up with some old friends recently, my wife and daughter were shocked to find out all those stories weren’t fiction. After being urged by quite a few people to write, I decided to try again. I’d written a handful of short stories about a young guy, fresh out of the Corps who moved to the Keys, back in the eighties. Those were never published, though I submitted them to dozens of publishers and agents. So, I compiled the best three, updated the young Marine to a 45 year-old retired Marine and wrote two novels, Fallen Palm and Fallen Hunter, publishing both in 2013, through my own publishing company, Down Island Press. In 2014, I published three more novels, one a prequel to the first two. That book, Fallen Out, was an immediate, huge success, selling almost 10,000 Kindle copies in the first 90 days. I currently have six novels in the Jesse McDermitt Caribbean Adventure Series, with a seventh due out this summer and the first in a spin-off series due out in the fall.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
After writing the first sentence in the first book, my main character took the helm and has never relinquished command. I don’t plan very much in my writing. So, the series has taken a course different than what I’d first envisioned. My current work in progress is titled Fallen Honor. I took a firm grip on the tiller and am steering Jesse McDermitt to where I want him to be this time. I still write by the seat of my pants, but I know how this book will end.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I write and edit at the same time. Not exactly at the same time, but before writing the first word each morning, I go back to where I finished two days earlier. I read and edit the previous two days of writing, making corrections, expanding on ideas, deleting things that don’t fit and basically, getting my head back in the story. If I’ve been away from the computer for a few days, I’ll go back several days. By the time the book is finished, I’ve gone over every word and sentence at least twice.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Anyone who reads my books and has also read the late John D. MacDonald’s “Travis McGee Series” will see a similarity. Not just in character and plot, but in the way both of us viewed the world, though decades apart. I’ve read that whole series at least six times. MacDonald’s views on the world, south Florida in particular, are every bit as poignant and viable today as they were forty to fifty years ago. I know I’ll never come close to the caliber of that wordsmith, but every time my work is compared to his, I feel really humbled.
What are you working on now?
As I write Fallen Honor, I’m also slowly adding to Merciless Charity, the first book in my new series. Charity Styles is a troubled woman. More to the point, she’s a very dangerous, troubled woman. At the end of my last book in the McDermitt series, Fallen King, Charity disappears. She’s the helicopter pilot and close-quarter combat instructor for a clandestine group that Jesse is involved with. In the opening scene of Merciless, Charity accepts a deep cover mission from the director of the group. She’s to make it appear that she steals the government chopper she’s flying disappear. In reality, she flies it to an island in the Caribbean where an antique sailboat is waiting for her and begin her new life as an undercover assassin for the NSA.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
BookBub is without peer in promoting. When I get accepted with one of my books, I carefully build a campaign around the date they give me, utilizing not just the sales results that other advertisers provide, but also the time of day they send out their emails. This creates a steady rise in sales over several days before the BookBub ad, rather that start with it and put smaller ads after it. The Amazon algorithm is a deep, dark, mysterious thing and nobody knows what it is. To that I say, “It doesn’t matter.” We don’t have to know the particulars to see what it does. It gives decreasing weight to older sales to calculate rank. It’s nothing more than a very long and very simple mathematical equation, where each hour and day of sales is multiplied by a diminishing percentage, then added together to arrive at a “score”, for lack of a better word. When these scores are compared every hour by the Amazon computers, they’re ranked from highest score to lowest. By increasing sales in the hours and days leading up to a really big spike, the score is higher than compared to a big spike followed by decreasing sales. The higher rank then creates more sales through increased visibility.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Try to write every day. And try to write 1000 words every time you write. Sure, there’ll be days when you can’t, but strive for it. If you succeed every day, you’ll have a novel in three months. Add another month for editing, cover design, formatting and a million other little things and you can write three novels a year. If you come up short on that thousand words a day, you’ll still write two novels a year.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Write what you know. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to write about things you’ve actually experienced, but put a part of you into each work. I’m a Marine and I’ve lived and traveled all over south Florida, the Keys and the Caribbean Basin. I’ve never been to western Cuba, but I wrote about it. I doubt it’s drastically different than Gitmo, or many of the islands I’ve visited. My main character shares my moral compass, work ethic, and sense of justice. I write what I know.
What are you reading now?
Right now, I’m reading two books, though I rarely try to read more than one at a time. I picked up James W. Hall’s latest Thorn thriller, “The Big Finish” a week ago and was half way through it, when my friend Michael Reisig sent me an advanced copy of his new Caribbean Gold adventure, Treasure of Margarita, for review. I didn’t really have to read it to review it, but I skimmed through and saw that it was another of his great works. When it was launched a few days ago, I’d only completely read half, but gave it a great review, nonetheless. I’ll finish both of these in a couple of days, when I take breaks from working in the garden and move on to another friend’s new book.
What’s next for you as a writer?
Last month I released my first audio-book narrated by Nick Sullivan. It took a couple of months to get it out, but Nick’s now working on the second book in the series and hoped to have them all recorded, including the one I’m working on, by the end of summer. It’s a whole different thing, hearing the story unfold, as told by a really talented actor.
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?
One of John D. MacDonald’s for sure. One of Randy Wayne White’s books, which covers only a single day in time, though a full length novel. I’d also bring my signed copy of “Where is Joe Merchant”, written by Jimmy Buffett. His songs aren’t really songs, they’re stories set to music and Jimmy is a master story teller. If I could take a fourth, it would be “Following the Equator”, by Mark Twain.
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