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.
Click to check out the rest…
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!