1. Do you write a single genre or do your fingers flow over the
keys creating tales in many forms? Does
your reading choices reflect your writing choices? Are there genres you
wouldn’t attempt?
Actually, I’m just now starting to expand my horizons, or
genres. My initial jump down the rabbit
hole was into the Erotic Romance genre.
That resulted in my first short story, “Sweet Chocolate’s First Taste,”
which appeared in Zane’s anthology, “Chocolate Flava 3.”
While I was deployed to Afghanistan on my 2d tour of duty with the
Combined Special Operations Task Force-Afghanistan (CJSOTF-A), I wrote a weekly
journal to family & friends, which became a fictionalized account of my
weekly happenings. It had to be
fictionalized because everything I did was pretty classified. When I
returned to the states, everybody raved about it. They all said I had to send it to a
publisher, so I did.
This became my Espionage Thriller, “Say Goodnight.”
Then, on a bet, I thought I’d try my hand at a Horror story,
having long been enthralled by Washington Irving’s “the Legend of Sleepy
Hollow,” it seemed like a good choice for a current, more recent update of the
story line. Hence, my most recent
novella, “Into Darkness Eternal,” launched on September 2. Although I had my drafted before the Fox TV
series, “Sleepy Hollow," mine launched after the series aired.
With that said, however, my story stayed true to the original
tale, while the TV series wanders astray almost immediately. I’ve been told my many people that mine is a
very exciting, thrilling tale.
I so liked my characters, Mike Juppe & Maggie Castro that I
decided to make a trilogy of the tale, continuing on that Paranormal/Horror
Suspense theme. Like I said, the 1st
launched on September 2d and the 2d should be out within a month, and hopefully
the 3rd right around Halloween.
2. Heroes, Heroines,
Villains. Which are your favorite to write? Does one of these come easy and
why?
So far, my heroes & heroines have all been real people that
I’ve given a name change. Most of my
villains are to, perhaps morphed a couple into one. I really have no preference or difficulty in
writing either character. My stuff is
actually pretty erotic too, since sex and relationships are such a part of our
daily lives, I try to expand on the relationships, a lot!
Now when I say that, yes,
my stories have their fair share of sex, and it’s pretty steamy. But sex without romance, is really just that,
sex, a simple biological function. It’s
the romance that adds the intensity, the blistering heat, and I want my heroes
and heroines, if nothing, to be intense!
Now, I’m not going to waste all that time and effort crafting a nice
erotic love scene for a villain, so from that perspective, I suppose it’s more
fun to write the hero & heroine Point Of View (POV).
3. Heroes. How do you
find them? Do pictures, real life or plain imagination create the man you want
every reader to love? Do they come before the plot or after you have the idea
for the story?
Typically, they are people that I admire and respect with some
decent measure, if I am going to use them in a story. And I meet these people all of the time! Come to think of it, sometimes, I don’t even
meet them.
For example, in my book, “Say Goodnight,” everybody I wrote about
in that book, was a real person who served with me in Afghanistan. Now, I did take the liberties of taking
people from my first tour (2003), and inserting them into my second tour, but
they are all people I admire and respect. The only character I made up, was my director,
Brigadier Ferguson, and because he is the product of my imagination, I kept his
part to a minimum.
4. Heroines. How do you
find them? Do pictures, real life or imagination create the woman you want the
reader to root for? Do they appear before the plot or after you have the idea
for the story?
Once, I’m stuck taking the bus to work for a couple of weeks. I’m standing at the bus stop, a very pretty
Hispanic woman walks up and is waiting with me for the bus. A song is playing on a car radio parked on the
street and the volume is pretty loud, so we can easily hear the radio as a Macy
Gray song fills the air.
Soon, we are both tapping our feet, slightly bobbing our heads,
slightly swaying to the music. We are certainly
friends, nor even acquaintances, and we are certainly not dancing. But we are sharing in the music of the
moment.
As a former Chicago Police Officer, I can see a thousand ways that
I can take that moment and craft a story out of it. I could make the man a Detective who’s car is
in the garage, I could make her a body at his next crime scene. Or, more interesting, I could make her the
suspect at the next crime scene!
But the personality that I would give her would have to be that of
somebody I know, just so that I could craft a dialog, plan her reactions to
given situations. I could make up an
individual, but I don’t think those characters are as stimulating.
5. Villains or
villainesses or an antagonist, since they don’t always have to be the bad guy
or girl. They can be a person opposed to the hero’s or heroine’s obtaining
their goal. How do you choose one? How do you make them human?
In the case of “Say Goodnight,” all I had to do was affix some
names to the enemy, Al Qaeda. Pretty
easy, really.
In the instance of my latest, “Into Darkness Eternal,” that was
already done for me by Washington Irving, that villain being the Headless
Horseman. Now here, all I had to do was
stay true to the original tale, and of course, history. Which is why you will see on the book cover,
contrary to the TV Series, “Sleepy Hollow,” the horseman’s uniform is green,
since he was a Hessian cavalryman in the original story, not a British red coat
as in the TV show.
My headless horseman is a demonic, spectral killing machine with
no human value or content. I also made
his horse a sort of demonic-spectral-villain support mechanism. I certainly wanted neither villain, nor horse
to be sympathetic to the reader. I
wanted the readers to stand and cheer when the good guys got in a hit.
6. What is your latest
release? Who is the hero, heroine and or the villain?
As I said above, my latest is “Into Darkness Eternal,” which is a
21st Century addendum to “the Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” My villain; THE Headless Horseman and my hero
and heroine are consistent throughout the trilogy.
Now in the sequel to that story, “Into Darkness Again,” I’ve
placed my hero & heroine, Mike & Maggie, into 1780 Tarrytown, New
York. Since Tarrytown is right across
the Hudson River from West Point, I thought my characters should be better,
made of studier stuff than the typical college couple, who do little more than
run through the woods screaming, only to die groveling at the feet of some
monster, like in all of the current slasher films.
I decided to make my characters tough, make them a clever pair, of
a Combat Veterans, one from Iraq and one from Afghanistan, who were selected
from the ranks of the Army to attend West Point. Then for the sequel, I decided to bring into
the story, General Benedict Arnold’s plans to surrender West Point to the
British Army during the Revolution. So,
this story became a Paranormal Spy Thriller of the time. It’s really very exciting, with riveting
suspense, if I do say so myself.
I’m told by an objective person that it is a real page
turner! I was meticulous in my timeline
and research on this story, so I am pretty sure it is riveting. However, the villain, Benedict Arnold,
actually plays an extremely small part in this story, essentially because the
history is already written and I didn’t want to deviate from it too much.
The 3rd installment of the trilogy, “Into Darkness Once
More,” was a horse of another color. In
this story, we revert back to a headless horseman (Yes! That’s right, there is another headless
horseman legend in the US), not from the revolution, but from the American
Civil War and takes place in West Virginia.
And as we all know, not every story can have a happy ending. Furthermore, the story takes a couple of
drastic turns. No more to be said on the
subject now.
7. What are you working
on now?
Right now, since I now find myself back in Afghanistan, it might
be a good time to get started on a sequel to “Say Goodnight.” The Sequel would have to pick up and go
through the “Arab Spring,” just to bring me up to today, then bring me back
here.
Naturally, I would draft my storyline to fit the day’s current
events and happenings. That’s what’s
great about these types of novels, they write themselves! All I have to do, is insert my characters
into the real-life action and excitement, tweak the actual events and what
happened, create a romance to add some sexual tension, etc etc. It’s too easy. Once I get started, the book practically
writes itself! All I need to do is find
time to put it on paper.
And for any aspiring writers out there, that IS the toughest
part! Writers, write. I’d like to get at least a minimum of two
hours, just to get warmed up and allow the story to start flowing. But that is going to be much harder than you
probably think. If you have kids, or a
PAYING Job… A friend or two, a family
member in need… You get the idea.
8. How can people find
you?
Blog
Twitter
Facebook: I have my own Author’s facebook page, however
I also have FB pages for each of my novels/novellas, and they are:
1)
Sweet Chocolate’s First Taste
2)
Say Goodnight
3)
Into Darkness Eterna
SOON TO LAUNCH
4)
Into Darkness Again
5)
Into Darkness Once More
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