Official Review
Amazon (free on Kindle Unlimited)
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1. Why do you write?
I write to entertain and to educate. I want my readers to enjoy my novels and learn something new.
2. What is your interesting writing quirk?
I don’t outline my books. I get an idea that I think will make a great story, then I think about it for a while, developing the main characters. Then I let my characters tell me the story.
3. As an author, how do you use social media?
I’m not much of a computer guy and the only social media I use is Facebook.
4. Let's talk about your book The Presence of Justice. It involves a quest to find a murderer. What genre(s) would you say the book fits in and why?
The main genre is a murder mystery. But with all the side stories, it could also be considered a coming-of-age story, a high school football story, or a love story. I wanted to write a story where everything in the novel could actually happen. I consider a good fiction novel as “life with the boring taken out.”
5. How did you come up with the idea for the book?
This was my first novel and I didn’t have a clue how to write one. I couldn’t decide if I wanted to write a book about a father and son coming of age novel or a murder mystery. I knew people generally like a good love story and everyone likes humor. So, I decided to add all of these elements into my book to get a wider audience appeal. Then I made Andy Hanson and he told me the story while I slept. I wrote most of this novel between 4 am and 8 am.
6. Which of the characters do you most relate to and why?
I guess it would be Scott Hanson because I was a police officer for thirty-five years. But I also love Colonel Lightfoot because he is the best horseman I have ever known, and we both served in Vietnam. He is a real person and looks just like what I described him in the book.
7. The reviewer mentions that the book has the right amount of everything. How did you achieve such a balance?
I’m not sure. I knew that there was a lot that happens in my characters' lives other than the murder case in a time period of a year. I wanted my characters to seem real. I wanted my readers to relate to them and to be in the book with them. That is why I wrote my novel in first person.
8. What else is in the works?
My second novel is called Dual Therapy. I’m writing a sequel to it called The Raven and the Dove. I’m on chapter 21 on that novel. I wrote a screenplay from Dual Therapy which got a recommendation from Extreme Screenwriters out of LA. No one has optioned that script yet. My third novel is The Presence of Conflict, which is a sequel to The Presence of Justice. I’m doing research on the third book in that series called The Presence of Peace. I also wrote a short story called Christmas in New Iberia that was published in a collection of Christmas Stories for a fundraiser for the Children’s Hospital. My good friend, John McCarney, wrote a screenplay from it called The Long Way Home. The script was recommended to be made into a movie by Extreme Screenwriters and it is in the semi-finals of a major screenplay contest now. Four production companies have requested the script so far.
I like to end with fun questions.
9. What do you need in your writing space to help you stay focused?
My imaginary friends. I only get writer’s block when they stop talking to me.
10. Would you rather walk on ice or hot cement with bare feet?
I would want one foot on the ice and the other foot hot cement. By average, I should be comfortable.
11. What are you reading right now?
A Glorious Nightmare in Forty Shades of Green by Gamble Dick.
12. What three items would you take if you were stranded on a deserted island?
A computer, food, and cold beer.
