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I was recently interviewed by the folks at Literal Exposure.

 
What is your favorite quality about yourself?

My biggest strength is that I’m persistent and I never give up.  In Sheep’s Clothing took 22 years from when I first began writing to when I finally got it published.  It’s not that I’m a slow writer—life got in the way.  I began this book a year before my daughter was born.  But once kids came along, many things that were front and center in my life got pushed to the back burner because I had other, far more important priorities.  The other challenge was my career.  As I began climbing the corporate ladder, my responsibilities and my job became far more complex.  I ended up moving half a dozen times over the course of my career, once for a three year stint out of the country.  It wasn’t until a few years ago that I had the opportunity to pick up what I had started and carry it to the finish line.

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Someone asked me the other day why I write fiction; why I write thrillers. I write what I like to read. I love thriller and suspense novels–medical thrillers, legal thrillers, historical thrillers, political thrillers—particularly ones that are full of intrigue and ones that are fast-paced, with lots of action & adventure. Brad Meltzer, Vince Flynn, Steve Berry, David Baldacci, Brad Thor—these are some of my favorite writers and they are a great source of inspiration. My taste in movies is the same. Intrigue, suspense and action & adventure—I’ll take that any day! When I read or watch movies, I want to escape and to live vicariously through the characters, even if only for a short while. I want to root for the good guy and hate the bad guy. I can only hope readers are able to experience that with my books!

A reader recently asked me if I always wanted to be a writer. To paraphrase George Carlin, “Well, not in the womb, but shortly after, yes!”

When I was 12 or 13, I remember seeing an ad that said something like, “Get Paid to Write Children’s Books.” I was intrigued and actually wrote a few things but I never did submit them. A few years later, I wrote a short story for a high school English assignment. My story was well received and was published in a school anthology. In college, I wrote another short story, again for a literature class, and it too was well received and published in a school anthology.

But after graduating, I guess I did the expected thing and followed a more traditional career path. I met my wife a few years later and we got married. A few years after that, we started a family. Frankly, between career and my family, I forgot all about writing for a while.

It wasn’t until a few years ago that I finally got up the courage to make a radical change–I gave up my more traditional career so I could spend more time with my family and focus on writing again.

There’s something cathartic about writing. It’s really cool to start with a blank page and watch as the story unfolds, sometimes taking twists and turns I never expected. I know that sounds like I’m not in control when I write but the characters and the plot tend to evolve over time and they sometimes go in directions I never envisioned when I first began.

You know, I wish I could find some of my early work! That would be really cool!