Get to know Jake Bible

Jake Bible is an author I've followed on Twitter for a while, and, as you'll see, his writing career is something I've followed from a distance. He's got a new book out, Metal and Ash. It's the end of his Apex Trilogy that started with Dead Mech. I asked him the other day if he wouldn't mind answering some questions. He said yes, so I sent him a few. These are the answers he sent back. Take a couple of minutes to read them and get to know Jake Bible, then go buy his books. Links are at the end.


Give us the elevator pitch for Jake Bible, not your latest book. You’ve got 150 words. Go.
I'm a writer. From military scifi to hardcore erotica, if it can be written I can write it. Pure and simple. My life's goal is to be a working writer that can support my family with words alone. That is my entire focus.

How do you classify yourself?
I don't. I have always refused to be classified. Story of my life.  I write the stories that are in my head. If they can be put into a category then great! But I am not a writer that can be thumbnailed. I wirte the story that needs to be written. I lean towards scifi/horror/thriller, but most of my novels are a nice mix.

OK, now tell us about the newest book, METAL AND ASH.
Here's the official description. It really sums it up:

"What began in the wasteland of DEAD MECH, continued alongside in Europe and Asia in The Americans, now has its epic conclusion in Metal and Ash!

Commander James Capreze and his team of mech pilots no longer must battle just zombies, cannibals, religious cults and the ever dreaded dead mechs. Now they will be put to the test by the forces of the Three as the evil alliance bent on dominating every inch of the world attacks from two fronts, forcing Capreze to split his forces and make alliances with those he had been sworn to defeat. The wasteland becomes the setting for an epic fight for basic human survival like it hasn’t seen in hundreds of years.

Will fifty foot battle mechs be enough against hundreds of thousands of techno-zombies ready to wipe everything living off the scorched map that is the wasteland?
Join Capreze, his mech pilots, the refugee Americans, end every denizen of the wasteland as they make one final stand to keep the Three from bringing humanity’s downfall. Alliances are formed and broken, mech pilots are made and murdered, secrets are revealed and agendas destroyed, and thousands of bodies fall and rise again in the Apex Trilogy finale: Metal and Ash!"

I write all my own summaries, descriptions and synopsis so I hope the above works.

Where did your interest in mechs come from? Were you a Robotech or Voltron fan as a kid?
I have always loved the idea of a pilot inside a massive battle machine. I'll be honest though, I really never got into BattleTech or Mech Warrior. I did watch Voltron as a kid and Transformers. I just really liked the idea of mechs smashing zombies and also of a zombie controlling a mech. It was something I had to write.

DEAD MECH is the world’s first drabble novel. Your use of the drabble makes me think you’re a fan of flash fiction. Am I right? Why or why not?
 I'm a fan of all fiction, great and small. I do like flash fiction, but to be honest I am really a novelist. I rarely write short fiction anymore because my mind just keeps expanding the stories. I have a hard time nowadays keeping a story short. I do still write my weekly free drabble, though. Each week I have the Friday Night Drabble party on my website so fans can have a free drabble if they like. There's hundreds there for people to peruse, if they choose.

You’re a self-published author. What’s that journey been like for you?
A long, strange trip, for sure. I started self-publishing because my first publisher just wasn't ready for ebooks. He understood print books only. I was lucky to get my rights to DEAD MECH back; the publishers was easy to work with. I published DEAD MECH as an ebook and as print in February 2011. I have since published two more novels, a novella and short story collection, and have a YA novel on the way. Plus, Stark- An Illustrated Novella, which is ebook only and has some fine illustrations to go with the brutal, violent story. It has been crazy, for sure, being a self-published author. It is a lot of work, and actually I would prefer not to do any of it other than write. That's why I have an agent. My hopes are to sell some of my novels for traditional publishing- as long as the contract is fair and good! ;)

You are a name I’ve seen for a while. You appear to have the kind of success that lots of other indie authors would like to have, me included. You have any secrets to share? Are there publishing gnomes whose palms I should be greasing with freshly printed twenties?
Okay, gonna have to be brutal and crush dreams. There is no secret. I may have my name out there, but I am no where near making a living at writing. Only about 5 percent of writers make a living at it. Seriously. The successes I have seen have been short lived. Publishing is publishing, whether self or traditional. I'd say there is the same percentage of success in either one. All this press about self-published writers making money hand over fist is all about the same group of writers. It's all BS. The gold rush is over and all that is left is the same old back breaking work that has always been there. Sorry there aren't any gnomes. :(

You are sitting at home. A masked man kicks in your front door and screams something unintelligible. You sit in stunned silence for a couple beats, and then the man raises his mask and says “Come on, I’m kidnapping you, and we’ll never return. But grab three books to bring with you. I’m not a monster.” What do you grab and why?
They'd be three empty composition books so I can keep writing! I don't tend to re-read books. I'm one of those people that can't stand spoilers so re-reading books is anti-climactic for me. Not that I haven't done it, just that it isn't on my priority list at all. Writing is what I can't give up.

Give us the names of some writers we may haven’t heard of, but we should have? And what work of theirs should we read to get an idea of who they are as a writer?
James Melzer, Phil Rossi, Justin Macumber, Paul E Cooley are just a few. Read everything by them. Great stuff. You can't go wrong there. I might also recommend Scott Roche, Shannon Michaels, Mur Lafferty and Jeremy Shipp. Go get their books! Oh, and Robert R. Best and Timothy Long. Too many! Too many!

What about overhyped? You bold enough to name any names?
No such thing as overhyped, in my opinion. Hype is a writer's dream. I long for the days when my name is as ubiquitous as James Patterson's!

What’s next for you? Anything coming up that we should look for?
My first YA novel, Little Dead Man, will be out in mid-November. It is for middle school and up. It is the novel that landed me my agent, but we just couldn't find a home for it. I didn't want it to sit around, so I am publishing it myself. Just in time for the holidays! What's it about? Glad you asked!

"Garret Weir has just turned seventeen. For any normal teen this would be quite the milestone. But for Garret it’s even more amazing he’s made it to this age, because in Garret’s life the human population of the Earth is gone, changed and turned into flesh hungry zombies, or “necs”, as he calls them. In the world he was born into, except for his parents that have kept him safe in a small compound hidden in the mountains of southern Oregon, Garret has never known another living soul. However, he is not the only seventeen year old in the family. Just the only one living. For Garret is alive and breathing and his twin, Garth, is undead, has been since birth, leaving him the size of an infant and attached to Garret’s spine. And he won’t leave his brother in peace. Set decades after the zombie apocalypse, Little Dead Man tells the story of conjoined twins Garret and Garth Weir. A fast-paced, high-action tale that doesn’t pull any punches as Garret, with Garth always attached, must struggle with a mother that is mentally unstable, a missing father that has kept too many secrets and the fact that the world he had always been told was completely dead, actually has well-developed human survivor pockets. And not all of those are friendly. Not even close."

Get a copy of any of Jake Bible's books for your Kindle by clicking here.
Get a copy of any of Jake Bible's books for you Nook by clicking here.
And if you prefer Smashwords, click here.
And check out Jake's blog, Brain Squeezin's, for more from him.

Steve Umstead on the end of a series

Steve Umstead is a guy I met through Twitter. He’s a sci-fi writer, travel company owner, and a generally nice guy. He’s recently finished his Evan Gabriel trilogy, so I sent him a few questions. He sent me a few answers. Update: In the few weeks since we did this interview, Steve has announced that he'll be releasing a prequel novella that goes deeper into Gabriel's backstory. (And, no, this isn’t the first time we’ve done this. I’ve interviewed him before. You can read that here.)

Without giving too much away, give us the Evan Gabriel story. Tell us why we should commit to this three book series.

The Gabriel trilogy is a science-fiction adventure story, set in the near-future, that follows the arc of a disgraced Navy Special Forces Commander as he travels the road to Redemption (to find his way back into the life he once knew), his Return (a mission to the site of his most haunting memories), and finally his Revenge (as the final straw in his rough life has been placed on his shoulders).

As someone who is also working on a series of books, I have to know, what's it like to type that final "the end?" Is it more relief that you're done? Or is there some disappointment that it's over?

I don't think it's either, relief or disappointment -- not even sure if it's sunken in yet. It's been an entire year living with the story and the characters, but knowing how the story would end from day one meant I was prepared for it. Writing the last scene was very exciting, wrapping it all up, all 220k+ words in three stories, but relief or disappointment I don't think characterizes the feeling. Maybe just exhaustion?

Are you finished with Evan, or will we see him again? If not, is he going to be a character you can easily let go?

I thought I was finished after the first book, only to find I wanted to (a) explore that universe more, and (b) go further into the characters and Gabriel's past, so I kept going. I knew, I swore, I was done after the trilogy was complete, but in the weeks following, as I thought more and more about it, there were several places within the arc that spoke of a deeper backstory for Gabriel. I also had several readers asking the same question - will we see him/them again? Which leads naturally into a further story, but this time a prequel. I've already got a few things sketched out in an outline, as have two chapters written, of a prequel showing how he became who he was at the beginning of book one.

Is a series something you want to tackle again?

Most definitely. It was a blast creating the universe the characters lived and acted within, so to create that for one story only seems like a waste. Also, the characters themselves didn't get developed enough in one book, which was actually my impetus for doing a second and third book (even though I knew how the story would end, I never planned on a trilogy, believe it or not).

What's up next for you?

Well, drats - answered that to some extent above. In addition to the prequel, I've had a couple other non-Gabriel stories dancing around in my head (including one non-military scifi that was getting in the way of completing book three) that I will try to put to paper this year. My goal is to write and release three full-length novels in 2012, as well as maybe some novellas, perhaps tangents to the Gabriel universe (I've had several readers comment on some of the secondary characters as well).

So, where have I been?

Please don't look at the dates on the top of these posts. If you do you'll see that I haven't been posting often. Once a week, actually, and it's been interviews. Good interviews, I think. But I haven't been posting otherwise. I'd planned on it. I've meant to, I just haven't done it. This looking for a job has been eating up all of my time. And the time that hasn't gone to that has been eaten up by the baseball playoffs. If you haven't noticed, the Texas Rangers are back in the World Series. I'm a fan. A big one, and I've been sucked into the playoff experience again.

Just because I haven't been here, though, doesn't mean I haven't been writing. I have been and I've made some good progress on the second book in the New Eden series. I've also started and made some progress on another story that could easily develop into an ongoing serial. I'm thinking it could be something in the tradition of the old pulp-style stories.

I've also got a few ideas that are still in the "thinking" stages. These aren't necessarily stories but something bigger. Depending on where these ideas go I'll let you know more about them soon.

Anyway, sorry about the lack of posts here. Hopefully you are liking the interviews, even though there isn't one for this week. I'm enjoying doing them.

Get to know Court Merrigan *UPDATED*

I'm just now getting to know Court Merrigan. He joined a writers' critique group that I'm part of so I've read some of his fiction. But I didn't know anything about the man other than he's a fantastic writer. Read some of his stuff here. Then, when you're done reading his fiction come back and read the answers to the questions I've sent him. We talk short fiction. It's good stuff. And after reading this you're going to follow him on Twitter. Click here to do that.

First, tell us a little about you in under 200 words. How'd you get started writing?

There's a picture of me, 5 years old, writing my first little story.  My mom used to put together little books with cardboard covers and yellow-paper pages, sewn together and everything.  I remember from the very first stories I was able to read, wanting to write my own.

I wrote off and on for a long time, through high school, college, wandering around Asia; but I didn't get really serious about it until about 2004.  And I didn't start getting really serious - e.g., getting up at 4 o'clock to write - until 2005-ish.  

I recently read about some 16-year old girl who has a chapbook or something coming out and has already started college and wants to be in an MFA program before she can legally drink.  God, I would have broken my hands punching walls if I had tried to chain (as is necessary) myself to a desk any time before age 26.  

You said 'wandering around Asia.' What took you there? What kept you there? And what brought you back?

What took me to Asia was 22 years in Nebraska.  I was done with college and I just wanted out into the world.  Got a job teaching English in Japan and went about as far away from my homeland as I could go without starting to come back again.

What brought me back was my daughter.  We were living in a village in Thailand and I knew I couldn't send her to school in the Third World.  Someday she (and my son, who was born later, in the US), may choose to go cross the pond and live for a while on that side of their heritage, and that'd be wonderful.  But I felt it was my responsibility to bring them up here so they'll have that choice to make someday.  For lots of reasons, going from the US to Thailand is far, far easier than the reverse.

 

And what are you doing when you aren't writing?

At the day job at a community college.  Playing with my kids.  On FB and Twitter and the blog more than I should be, probably.  During the fall, watching the Cornhuskers on Saturdays.  Exercising. 

 Writers require a lot of endorphins and dopamine and you can't get it all from bourbon.  Exercise helps keep those flowing and you feel better the next morning.

I gallivanted around in my younger years, but I'm a pretty staid family man these days.  Mortgage and everything.  In bed by 10 at the latest.

Does your time in Asia affect your writing? If so, how?

Absolutely.  When I'm not writing about my rural homeland, I'm writing about Asia.  The experiences I had over there gave me an inexhaustible trove of material to work with.  (Not that you need to go to Asia or anywhere, really, for that.  Wasn't it Flannery O'Connor who said that anyone who's survived childhood has enough stories to last for life?)

I'm working on some stuff these days that mixes the two.  Imagining characters who look like my kids will twenty years from now, and then having bad things happen to them. 

What attracts you to short fiction?

The rush of finishing, I think.  The fact that when you start there's always a glaring light at the end of the tunnel.  

A novel can be such a slog.  I've written 3 of them.  (Want to see?)  Gearing up to write another, but I keep getting sucked into the gratification of keeping it short.

We swapped some messages on Twitter and you said you are moving from literary fiction to crime and pulp fiction. Why?

You know what Nabokov said: "You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style."

The older I get, the more I like stories.  Plot.  Forward progression.  Something besides beautiful sentences to keep me flicking through the pages.   Don't get me wrong. I like artful sentences strung together one after another.  I just want them to tell me a story.

I feel likewise in my own writing.  I want to tell a story.  To quote Brad Green in his intro to the PANK Crime Issue, "Whereas the literary story is often concerned with how characters react to a given situation, the [pulp story] is obsessed with showing us how we behave during the situation itself."  I agree with this wholeheartedly.  

I would say, though, that there's a difference between good pulp fiction and the formulaic potboilers put out by the James Patterson and Nora Robertsons or whoever of the world.  A story's no good if it's wrapped in turgid prose.  The sentences still have to sing.

What I'm writing now is story.  If it doesn't contribute to the forward narrative of said story, I delete it.  No subtext.  No symbolism.  Just story.  

 

Which is easier to write? I assume that many people would hear you're switching to pulp/crime fiction and they'd think it's because it's easier to write.

I don't think any good writing comes easily.  Emphasis on the good.  For me, it's all about mutilated drafts, dozens of them.  The process hasn't gotten any easier; it's just that the categories are different.  In some respects, writing pulp is a lot harder, because you can't hide limp-wristed character development and hackneyed plot lines behind pretty sentences.  

Literary fiction at its best moves you to a state of aesthetic bliss; pulp at its best keeps you riveted to the story.  Both are rare.

When you finish a piece of mediocre literary fiction, you're thinking, "So what?"  Finishing is like eating a whole bowl of cold oatmeal because you don't want to waste anything on account of the kids starving in Africa.  (Which may have something to do with why so few non-writers start such stories in the first place.)  

A mediocre piece of pulp, you're not likely to ever finish.  You'll start yawning and find a better way to spend your time.  All perfectly guilt-free.  Pulp that doesn't keep you entertained isn't doing its job, and that's how it should be.

Maintaining the fictive dream in the reader is a hard job to pull off in any genre, but it seems to me that it's harder when the reader has no qualms about looking away.  

I looked at your blog and your current acceptance rate is roughly 10 percent. I think someone who doesn't write would look at that number and say, "What's the point?" So, what is the point? How do you keep from getting discouraged?

An unknown writer like myself is paid in the currency of hope.  It only takes one after all, right?  The right magazine, the right editor, the right agent, the right Twitter contact, the right amalgam in the marketplace, the right google algorithm. 

The amount of luck required is outrageous.  

But thanks to the internet, we're living in a world where the supply of fiction vastly outweighs the demand.  Them's the facts.  I don't think you do yourself any favors by ignoring reality.  

I don't keep from getting discouraged.  I'm discouraged all the time. All the time.  Especially now that I've been writing a lot for a number of years, and success remains elusive.  Every time another rejection arrives from one of those prestigious, super-cool mags I lust to see my name in.  Every irretrievable day passing by that didn't see me get any worthwhile writing done.  

I always feel like I'm on the outside looking in.  Like all the real, successful writers are enjoying solitary parties in vast mansions of acclaim and prestige and money up on the hill, and I'm in my jackshack in the valley, one naked light bulb strung from the ceiling, that distant music tinkling through the warped tin roof.

Possibly I suffer under the delusion of the sunk cost fallacy.  But then that dionysian demon Hope raises her ravishingly hideous face, and it's back to the page I go.

 

What makes a good piece of short fiction?

If you read it all the way through in one setting.

How about flash fiction? It has so many different definitions, but, in general, what are your feelings on it? I know that, for me, if it gets too short I find it a little too sparse and the stories hard to follow.

I really like the form, myself.  But, like any other form, it has to be done well.  A thousand words or less is an excellent length to explore one incident or impression, maybe two.  Sort of like the Iambic tetrameter or tanka poetry, it enforces a certain discipline, an insistence that every word be pared down to its maximum meaning.  

It's a mystery to me why, in this Twittified and Facebooked era, flash fiction has not achieved more prominence outside writerly circles.  I suspect it's because we're all doing it wrong, somehow.  

  

Usually I ask for three essential books, but since we are talking short fiction here can you give us three essential pieces of short fiction. Pieces that either shaped who you are as a writer or just stuff you thought was really cool.

"Atomic Supernova", by Scott Wolven

"The Need," by Frank Bill

"Escape From Spiderhead," by George Saunders

"The Peony Garden," Nagai Kafu

 

What about some writers you think are underappreciated. Who's out there that more people should know about?

Writers who aren't nearly well-known enough:

Scott Wolven is my nomination for best unknown out there.  Why this guy isn't famous, Hollywood directors flocking to his door, editors stepping over dead bodies to get to him, is beyond me.  I wrote more about him here.

The British writer Danny Hogan wrote a cracking good novella called Jailbait Justice.

David Cranmer, editor of Beat To A Pulp, is single-handedly transforming the Western into a noir showpiece with his Cash Laramie & Miles Gideon series.

Google Matthew C. Funk and you can't go wrong.  Everything that guy writes crackles like a live wire.  

My friend Brad Green can elevate a sentence to Elysium in a single comma splice.  

Marc Horne wrote my favorite indie novel of all time, Tokyo Zero.  

Glenn Gray is also a doctor and therefore knows how to induce delicious willies.

Roxane Gay has a following among the internet literati, but on the strength of her writing she deserves more.  I think she's going to get it in due time.

 

What's up next for you? Anything coming up that we should look for?

I've got stories coming out next year in All Due Respect, Yellow Mama, Flywheel, and Necessary Fiction.  I'm also going to be in the Off The Record anthology put together by Luca Veste, and the upcoming inaugural Dirty Noir quarterly.

I'm also going to be editing a special Pulp Issue for PANK  that will come out next spring.  Subs are going to open next month, so send your best stories my way. 

Get to know SM Reine

This week's interview is with SM Reine. She's a great writer, a wonderful cover artist, and, now, a publisher. Her new book, Death's Hand, comes out next week. She has a great blog with great tips. Take a couple of minutes and get to know SM Reine.

Give us the elevator pitch, not for your book, but on you. Give us the down and dirty on SM Reine.

By day, I'm immersed in information systems (mainframe and server operations, to be exact), general office work, and motherhood. By night, I'm sleeping. I cram writing and publishing somewhere in between all of that.

Now, how about your books. What do we need to know about Six Moon Summer, All Hallows Moon, and The 19 Dragons?

Six Moon Summer and All Hallows' Moon are in the same series. They're a refreshing take on werewolf mythology following a character named Rylie Gresham, who's this teenage vegetarian that ends up turning into a flesh-hungry monster. She's her own worst enemy. The 19 Dragons is a steampunk novella with a surrealistic fantasy bent... if I can get away with crossing that many genres.

You're a fantasy writer. I assume that means you're a fantasy reader. Have you always been and what is it about the fantasy genre that draws you in as both a reader and a writer?

I'm actually into speculative fiction at large. As a kid, I sharpened my teeth on writers like Tamora Pierce, KA Applegate, Christopher Pike, you name it. Of course, I also had a hearty dose of the classics-- HP Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle... Choking down realistic fiction is like trying to swallow rocks for me. I have no interest in it, although I couldn't tell you why. Maybe I'm too much of an airhead.

How about steampunk? You describe The 19 Dragons as a steampunk novella. Steampunk is a sub-genre that fascinates me. How did you get interested in it? And what's it like once you start writing a steampunk story?

Steampunk is something I discovered through movies and TV shows rather than literature. It's been one of my creative influences for years. For instance, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is a great example of early steampunk. I should have known I was in trouble when I found myself lusting for the goggles and gloves worn by Caractacus Potts as a kid! 

But I found writing steampunk to be a harrowing experience. The subculture is huge. People will put so much money and time into adapting their appliances, fashion, and even their entire house to this elaborate Victorian aesthetic, and since I took a lot of artistic license with the genre, I was afraid of disappointing the fanatics. I really second- and third-guessed myself over The 19 Dragons for the weeks leading into its release. It turns out the fans are forgiving. The warm reception was pleasantly surprising.

I love your book covers. You do those yourself, at least as far as I know. What's your background in graphic design and, as far as covers go, what's your creative process like?

Thank you! Yes, I do all my covers, and I also offer inexpensive cover design for some of my indie friends. I've made covers for Kindle-bestselling writers like Heather Hildenbrand and John O'Brien. That said, I have no background in graphic design whatsoever. In the industry, I'm what's called a "self-taught Photoshop hack." Years of fiddling with personal photos turned into fiddling with stock imagery to create photomontages, and then it somehow became an important (and fun!) part of my career.

When I'm about to embark on a project, I spend time researching similar books and how their covers were designed. I focus primarily on recent and upcoming releases, although I also like to dig into the history a bit because what's fashionable in design is cyclical. Then I pick out hundreds of stock photos I think might fit the project and start whittling down concepts. I usually make at least 3-5 covers for any one book. It's horribly inefficient! My process is growing more streamlined as I mature.

What's the biggest problem you see with most book covers from indie authors and how can it be fixed?

The biggest issue I've seen is distorting photographs. A lot of sins are forgivable in the indie world, but when you have an image stretched to a different ratio, it looks horrible and it screams "unprofessional." Good typography also determines if your cover is effective or not.

OK, on to Red Iris Books. How did that come about and what's the plan for it?

I've been sitting on this business plan for a small, web-based publishing company for years. I actually went to college for business (which, as anyone can tell you, might be one of the less useful degrees you can obtain) and I developed this idea as I trudged through classes on accounting and marketing. Since then, I've been sitting around tweaking it as I see changes in the market, and dreaming of the day I would get the time and capital to make it happen. There will always be excuses to put off big decisions. It sounds cheesy, but becoming a mother made me realize how fleeting time is, and I decided I was done waiting.

I am currently building a platform as one of the best sources of dark fantasy for teen and adult audiences. In the next year, Red Iris Books will slowly open its doors to adding new authors, although it's going to remain extremely selective. I want to help foster careers. The idea is to provide quality control without requiring the authors to sacrifice creative control.

I was at a sci fi convention recently and I listened to a panel of small press publishers talking. Most everyone in the crowd wanted to know what the publishers were looking for. Specifics on lengths, rights purchased, services provided to the authors. If Red Iris were on that panel what would have the answers been?

I am currently acquiring projects by invitation only. As such, the answers to these questions vary widely depending on the needs of the individual author. In the future, I will open submissions to novel-length dark fantasy, and provide editing, formatting, cover design, and promotional services to the authors. Since we will be adding authors to the Red Iris family selectively, we will be able to give each project a lot of individual attention to ensure it reaches its full potential.

What's been the most surprising thing you've learned since starting Red Iris?

Publishing, as with all small businesses, is much more than a full time job. You don't take vacations. You don't get breaks. You can only get out of it as much as you put into it. Yet while it's definitely a tough industry -- and this economy makes it tough to get into selling a product -- everyone involved shares a passion for books, so I make quite a few friends and have a lot of fun while exhausting myself with work. Readers, reviewers, authors, and publishers-- they're all fantastic people. I couldn't do any of it without my support network.

A scenario: A benevolent tyrant comes to you and tells you he's going to ship you off to a small, unpopulated island. He hands you a bag that will hold just three books and tells you to fill it. Which books do you put in there and why?

Firstly, Peter Pan. That book is very special to me. I loved the adventure and fantasy of it as a child, but as I've matured, the book becomes a deep meditation on childhood, aging, and death. They say in the book that Peter takes children who have died partway to the afterlife so they aren't afraid on the journey. It's touching and frightening.

The second book I would take is the Lord of the Rings omnibus edition. Can I get away with that? I could hardly be much of a fantasy fan if I didn't adore the original work of fantasy by the master of world-building.

Finally, I would have to take the unabridged edition of The Stand by Stephen King. It's not my favorite of his books, but it's a heck of a read. If I'm going to be on some boring island (I hate beaches!) I need something long to distract me. Of course, every time I read it, I get a horrible cold and become convinced I'm going to die, but I'll consider that part of the excitement of being abandoned.

Give us a recommended reading list. What are a few underappreciated books you love that others need to know about?

Benighted by Kit Whitfield is the first book to come to mind.

Wrap this all up by telling us what's up next for you and what's next for Red Iris Books.

My next release is Death's Hand, which I'm using to launch Red Iris Books along with Angela Kulig's Skeleton Lake. It's the first in an urban fantasy series about an exorcist and her warlock partner who have gone into retirement, and what happens when old enemies catch up with them. After that, I have some very exciting things planned for the Seasons of the Moon series, but I don't want to talk about it too much yet. I'll be announcing a new author or two for Red Iris by summer 2012, and we'll be opening for submissions by the end of next year. These next few months are going to be very busy!

Thanks so much for having me!

Get to know Neal Hock

As part of this interview series I wanted to talk to more than authors. I wanted to talk to book reviewers. I wanted to talk to editors. Well, Neal Hock is both. He's also another person I met through Twitter. Are you noticing a pattern here?  I think I got his name through Misty Baker, but I'm not sure. Take a few minutes and get to know Neal and what makes someone want to be an editor or book reviewer tick. 

On your blog you are a book reviewer, yet there's a link to your editing services on there also. So which came first, the editing or the reviewing? And is that one your first love?

Well, I guess it depends on your perspective. When I worked in the corporate world, I was the informal editor of performance reviews and business-related materials. However, I didn’t consider pursuing editing at that time. I started a book-review blog because I have a consuming passion for good books. So with regards to sharing my views on the Internet, the reviewing came first. As to what my first love is, I’d have to say I have a love of well-written, good stories. That’s my motivating passion for both editing and reviewing. However, real life has a way of funneling you in certain directions, and due to time constraints, my book reviewing is taking a backseat right now.

What makes someone decide that they want to review books?

A love for good stories. At least that’s what motivates me. I love the exhilaration I get when I finish a good story, and I can’t wait to find the next one.

What about editing? Were you the one weird kid in class who looked forward to diagramming sentences?

It’s funny, but I wasn’t that interested in grammar-related topics in school. Hell, I didn’t read a lot books throughout high school. I just didn’t get excited about The Scarlet Letter, The Good Earth, and The Great Gatsby. However, when I went to college, I had a professor for freshman English that encouraged us to discover modern authors, and from that moment on, my passion for interesting stories was ignited.

As to being a weird kid, I had my quirks. I’m probably a much weirder adult. My wife still gives me a strange look when I bring my Chicago Manual of Style to bed for bedtime reading.

Seriously, though, what kind of editing services do you provide? Do you work primarily with independent authors/self-publishers?

I provide proofreading, copyediting, and concept editing. The vast majority of my clients are independent authors, but I’ve also worked with publishers and websites.

What's the biggest error you find yourself correcting? Do you have a most infuriating mistake you find?

Wow, I’m not sure there is one that stands out. Each author has personal tendencies, so that kind of evens everything out. There are always wayward commas and misspelled or missing words. I guess the most common mistake I find across the board is missing hyphens in compound modifiers. I’ve never been infuriated when I find mistakes. It’s really quite the opposite, because mistakes mean I’ll continue to have work.

For years I did newspaper copy editing work. My favorite Associated Press style rule was for under way. It's two words except when it's used in a nautical sense. Do you have a favorite style or grammar rule? Please say you do. It will make me feel much less like a language loser.

Anyone who can appreciate such a nuance is not a language loser in my book. I’m a sucker for a hyphen in a compound modifier, and I love apostrophes of omission. When to use everyday and every day always gives me the warm fuzzies, too. See, now I look like the language dork.

Since you review books, it stands to reason that you've read a lot of them. What are three books that came across your desk that surprised you? And they don't need to be surprisingly good books. We all know that something can be unexpectedly bad.

Well, I’ll stick with the good. The whole point of my book-review site is to share good books. If I read something that I’m not crazy about, I usually just set it aside and keep my mouth shut. You know, the whole “if you can’t say something nice” thing. The biggest thing that has surprised me since I started reviewing books is the number of quality works being self-published. There are a lot of talented writers out there that are relatively unknown.

Three books that blew me away when I read them: As I Embrace My Jagged Edges by Lee Thompson, The Pack: Winter Kill by Mike Oliveri, and Identity Crisis by Debbi Mack.

I'm sure there are a few indie authors reading this. How can they contact you if they wanted to?

The website for my editing services is http://www.hockseditingservices.com. The website for my book-review site is http://bookhoundsden.blogspot.com. An e-mail address to contact me directly is on each site.

Can you give us a recommended reading list? What books do we need to read if we haven't yet?

Sheesh, you’re trying to get me in trouble here. I’m afraid I might leave someone out. Here’s a few authors everybody needs to try: Guido Henkel, Stephen James Price, Debbi Mack, Mike Oliveri, Lee Thompson, Anthony Neil Smith, Scott Nicholson, R.E. McDermott, Willie Meikle, David T. Wilbanks, and Jeff Bennington.

What's the biggest piece of advice you have for authors as a reviewer? What about as an editor?

From a reviewer’s standpoint, I’d advise authors to not argue with a reviewer about the reviewer’s review. Especially if you solicited the reviewer. Recently I’ve seen a couple of authors say all kinds of things about reviews they didn’t agree with. If you get a review that’s bad, see what you can learn from it and then move on.

From an editor’s standpoint, I’d advise authors to always continue to learn more about their craft. Continue to put tools in your writer’s toolbox. If there are things that you struggle with, pinpoint them and try to improve. In this new digital age a writer can’t afford to put out a subpar product.

Get to know Fingers Murphy

This week's interview is with Fingers Murphy. No, that's not his real name, as you'll find out. He's another someone who I met through Twitter. You seeing  a pattern yet? If not, give it time. You'll see it. Fingers has two books out right now, Follow the Money and The Flaming Motel. As you'll be able to tell from the questions, I really liked Follow the Money. The story is great, but I really loved how L.A. became so much a part of the story. I'm in the middle of The Flaming Motel now and it's just as good. Once you get done reading the interview go and buy the books if you don't already have them. You'll love them.


So where did FOLLOW THE MONEY come from? Give us the story behind the story in 150 words.

The murder at the center of the story was adapted from a real case that occurred in the Seattle area in the late-80s. The defendant in the real case was tried three times and lost every time. I thought that would make a great jumping off point for a much more sinister plot. The legal machination at the center of the story takes an obscure legal doctrine -- obscure to non-lawyers anyway -- and turns it on it's head.

I decided to try writing a legal thriller about ten years ago. I wanted something very accurate. That really captured the world I was in, which was one very much like the firm in the book. What I found interesting was that these white shoe law firms are not at all bad places like you see in movies. But there are compromises people make to work at these places and the result of those compromises is that people often end up very different than they intended to. That fascinates me. Very smart, ambitious, hard working people who sometimes contort themselves to justify who they are and what they've become.


Was it always a plan for Ollie's story to evolve into a series?

No. I had no intention to write a sequel to Follow the Money. That idea came from my agent. I was going to write a stand alone crime novel and she said that was crazy. Publishers wanted a series and she believed that if this was a series she could get me a very big deal with a major house. So, I sat down a came up with a second Ollie book, which became The Flaming Motel.


You're in the legal world. How much of you is in Ollie?

There are obvious parallels. We both come from blue collar backgrounds and knew nothing about being a lawyer.  I always tell people that the only lawyers anyone in my family ever knew were court-appointed.  And that's true. Ollie and I both went to work at major law firms, probably seduced by the same basic things, status, money, and the sense of surprise that someone from where we came from could ever even get access to this world.

But beyond that the parallels end. I'm still in that world and was probably never as naive about it as Ollie is.  Ollie's life in The Flaming Motel, which is the sequel, is much more the fantasy life I think about when I imagine how things would have gone if I'd chucked it all and walked early on.


What drew you to the law as a profession, and is it the same thing that draws you to it as a writer? Or is it more of a case of writing what you know?

I came to the law the way many people do: because I didn't know what else to do.  I'd gotten a psychology degree.  Your choices at that point are basically to become a teacher, go to grad school, or enter the job market and be one of a million others entering the market with no marketable skills.  I had no interest in teaching, so I went to grad school.  I settled on law because I thought I had some idea of what lawyers do and the subject seemed interesting.  Turned out that, like most people, I had no idea what being a lawyer is really like. But the subject is inherently interesting.

As for writing about legal settings, it probably is a case of writing what you know.  Although I do think there is a reason legal thrillers are so popular, along with movies and TV shows about law: the subject touches our lives in so many ways.  So, in that sense, the legal thriller is really just a framework to talk about anything else you might want to talk about because there are legal issues to just about everything.  So you can tell endless stories within stories in the legal genre.
That said, $200 and a Cadillac is not a legal thriller at all.  So I'm trying to get outside my comfort zone.


What's the story behind the name Fingers Murphy? Why the need for anonymity and how did you decide on Fingers Murphy?

It's actually a joke between my wife and me. When she was pregnant with our son and we were going through the inevitable hand wringing over names, we kept trying to come up with good Irish names. We never settled on one that we liked, but during the process I kept agitating for what sound to me like old school gangster names. "Knuckles" Murphy was my favorite, but I liked "Fingers" too.  Needless to say, the name was still available when I needed a pseudonym, and it was thematically appropriate for what I was doing.

As for anonymity, I work in a world that is extremely sensitive about how even the smallest thing is perceived.  To the extent I say anything negative about the practice of law, or large firms, or even have the characters say negative or aggressive things about the law -- which they definitely do in The  Flaming Motel -- the pseudonym provides a buffer.  I've also published a legal book under my real name and the thinking was that it's better to separate the two identities.  One is the professional lawyer/legal scholar identity, the other is the fiction writer.

That legal book was published by a major publisher, so I actually did go through the process once.  It was a good experience, but when it was all done I thought: Is that it? Is that really all you guys do?  I can do this myself.


Any chance we ever find out who you really are?

Honestly, if some enterprising person who knows the legal world really wanted to figure it out, it wouldn't take too long to come up with a short list of possibilities. I challenge someone to do that, and make a big public spectacle of it too! Might sell some books that way.  New York Times? Are you listening?  I think we have next week's magazine piece all ready for you.


Without getting too specific and revealing your secret identity, give us your writing history.

Like a lot of writers, I knew early on that this was something I wanted to do. I wrote my first novel when I was 15 or 16.  Truly awful stuff. And I kept at into my early twenties. Then I realized I needed to have a day job, so I put the writing on hold, went to law school, became a lawyer and started practicing. Then, in my late-twenties, I started feeling this real urgency, like if I didn't get serious right away I never would.

I always imagined I'd write serious novels, whatever those are. The kind of crap people thinks is great when they're in college. But then I realized that, not only is that not what most people actually read, it wasn't even what I was reading. I used to look down on genre writing and then I realized that that's often where the most interesting stuff really is. So I challenged myself to write a legal thriller and I sat down and pounded out Follow the Money. 

I sent it off to some agents and, after a few months, I got one. Amazingly, this was an agency that specialized in mysteries and had a very good track record and I thought, what are people talking about when they say this is hard? This is easy! Little did I know.

Well, the agent was very excited. I had just turned thirty, she loved the book, started sending it around, and she told me I had to get working on a second in the series immediately. She was pretty convinced that we were going to land a major deal. This was 2003.  I was the perfect age to break out as a hot young writer. She thought the book was one of the best debuts she'd read in a long time. The certainty she had was infectious.

So the book goes out, editors at some major houses start asking to read the whole thing, they're asking if this is a series, if I have another book underway. It was pretty heady.  We got to that stage with three houses and my agent was talking about how to do an auction.  All of that.  And then it all just died.  It was stunning. 

The editor at St. Martins actually wrote us a letter (after she called my agent to tell her the bad news) where she said that she thought the second half of the book was one of the most addictive page-turners she'd ever read. And yet, they were declining because their marketing department didn't think the market would support another major legal thriller writer. It was just too crowded. Basically, because they weren't certain that they could sell a million copies, they weren't going to take the book at all.

I thought, what kind of insane business model is this?

So, freed up from having to write the series, I went ahead and wrote the stand alone crime novel I'd wanted to write, which is called $200 and a Cadillac.  At that point I was just having fun, writing for me alone. I sent it to my agent and she declined it!  She thought I'd lost my mind!  Then I sent it to another agent who had liked Follow the Money and he loved it, but he declined it too. He wrote me a letter, this was probably in 2006, and basically said, I love your book, it's exactly the kind of thing I personally love to read, but there's no way I can sell it.  No major house is going to buy it.  I appreciated the honesty.

So I sat down and wrote another. This one is a very dark novella. I kind of laughed when I was doing it, because I thought, a 25,000 word novella? Talk about something no publisher is going to buy!  But I didn't care anymore. I decided the guiding principle had to be to write something I would find interesting. I had to trust that there would be other people out there with similar taste.


What's your relationship like with the city of Los Angeles?

I'm not from LA. I often think that nobody really is. That's not true, of course, but I always find it curious when I hear someone refer to LA as their hometown. The city is a lot of things, but it's hard to think of it as a "hometown." The word just doesn't fit.

I first came to Southern California when I joined the Marines at 19. And I found it so iconic. I mean everyone in America has an idea about LA because it's so pervasive in our culture. It's weird to drive around as an outsider because the whole place is eerily familiar to you.  After all, you've seen it in moves and on TV since your childhood.

And yet, it's like seeing a famous person. You know who they are, but you don't know them at all.  And like any complicated person, LA takes time to get to know, and once you do, you discover that it's nothing like you thought. It's a complex, contradictory, interesting, and infuriating town. And it either works for you or it doesn't, but you won't know that until you've been there for a few years.


In FOLLOW THE MONEY I got a real sense of LA. I think I mentioned to you on Twitter that the way you described it made we want to move there, a place I've never even visited. Was it a conscious choice on your part to make LA as much a part of the story as it seemed to be to me? Or was I just reading way too much into it?

It wasn't conscious. But I do think that locations are important. The two books I have coming up, the crime novel $200 and a Cadillac and the novella called Everything I  Tell you is a Lie, take place elsewhere. The first in the Mojave desert and the second in rural eastern Washington state, and I hope the locations in each are equally evocative.

I am a believer that place defines us in more ways than we realize. We carry the place where we come from with us our entire lives, and that affects our relationship with whatever place we're in. How we react to it, what we see in it. Ollie comes from a poor, working class neighborhood. So he sees money in everything. From the opening page of the book where he's obsessing about the cost of the lunch and Jim Carver's shirt to the end, much of what Ollie observes about the world is economic. The place he comes from is economically deprived and the place he's in is one of the richest places in the world.


Time for another story-behind-the-story moment.  How did THE FLAMING MOTEL come together? This time take as many words as you need.

As I said before, I had no plan for a series, so when my agent demanded that I write a second book, I found myself scrambling to come up with an idea. The basic event that starts the book, the shooting of Don Vargas at a Halloween party, actually happened in LA. In the real case it was an actor who was shot. It was one of those terrible stories about police overreaction that are unfortunately too common.  I took that incident and built a plot around it.

I wanted to write a story about redemption and whether some things are just unforgivable.  I also wanted to explore the idea of ambiguity in relationships and the corrosive effect of secrets between two people. 

And I wanted all of it to get rolled into something that, for me, had the feel of an old school 50s or 60s detective novel.  Like a legal thriller written by Ross MacDonald.


God comes to you and says I need all of your books but three. Which three do you keep and why?

Wow. That's a good spin on the favorite book question.  I guess I'd start with The Old Man and the Sea.  I really think that's one of the greatest books ever written.  I love it when a master who's been working at it for his whole life finally strips his work down to its barest elements. That book is Hemingway giving it his all, but at the same time employing total self-restraint.  I could say the same thing about Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

I would take McMurtry's Lonesome Dove.  To me, that book does everything a huge, sprawling epic should do.  How do you write something a thousand pages long and leave the reader begging for more?  I wish I knew.  I'd love to write a crime novel that long and engrossing some day.

Lastly, I'd take Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass.  I love him for that bold language.  I've been trying to teach my son to find his barbaric yawp since he first started to talk.  I think he's getting in touch with it. 

And hey, Whitman was self-published too, so we're all in good company.


Give us a recommended reading list. What are some little-known books that more people should be reading?

I tell everyone who likes crime and detective novels that they need to read Ross MacDonald.  He's not "little known" among fans of crime fiction, but the wider public has forgotten him.  I think The Chill is one of the greatest books of all time.  But you could say that about a lot of his books: The Underground Man, The Far Side of the Dollar, The Blue Hammer.  He's awesome.

James Crumley's The Last Good Kiss and One to Count Cadence are two books that should be in every bookstore in America.  I feel the same way about Jim Harrison's Letters to Yesenin.  I actually carry a copy of the recent Copper Canyon Press reissue of that book in my briefcase with me.  It goes everywhere I go.  It's been all over the world.  There may be no better book for a struggling writer to read.  How can you argue with a guy who writes: "Years ago I was ambitious/But now it is clear that nothing will happen"?  Especially when that guy goes on to become one of the best writers of his generation?  There's hope for us all.  I'd probably hide that one from God too.


What's up next for you? What can we look for in the future?

The next book, $200 and a Cadillac will be out as soon as I can get it out.  The novella Everything I tell you is a Lie comes after that.  Then I've got four different novels that are in various states. 
One is another Ollie book that, if it gets written, will be told in third person and will feature, Ollie, Liz, Detective Wilson, and Max Stanton from The Flaming Motel all in equal portions.  It's a risk because the book won't have that first person Ollie narration.

Another is an offshoot of the Ollie books.  Ollie could be a minor figure in it, but the central character would be Max Stanton, who is thrown out of his firm and ends up "retiring" in Montana, only to get drug into a bizarre case.  I've thought about writing that one as straight Ollie book too.  The plot is all worked out around the Stanton character.  But I could change that.

Then, I've got a stand-alone book about a man who abducts his son and takes him on a road trip from LA to Seattle, all the while being pursued by the FBI.  I love the story and have a bunch of great scenes written for it, but it hasn't gelled for me yet into a complete narrative.  I'm missing a couple key pieces.  Who knows if I'll ever find them.

Finally, the book I might actually complete first is a real departure for me.  It's a comedic picaresque novel about a mysterious guy who shows up in a small mountain town and tries to return to nature as a modern day Thoreau.  Of course, he ends up running for mayor, backed by a group of ultra-libertarian secessionists.  Given the political climate in our country, I actually think that one's pretty timely. 

Get to know Anthony Neil Smith

I met Anthony Neil Smith through Twitter, but I knew about him before that. I found his site Plots With Guns years ago when I first started researching writing markets. He was editing it at the time. He doesn't anymore. He's the publisher now. But he's also an author. Find his books here and buy one or two. They don't cost more than a couple of bucks, tops. And, if you're on Twitter you need to follow him there. Honestly, with all his promotion, I think he's responsible for about half the sales of Chasing Filthy Lucre.

In 100 words or less, give us the writing history of Anthony Neil Smith.

     Read HARDY BOYS in 2nd grade. Wanted to do that. Wrote little stories. Moved on to adult fiction. Loved crime stories. Then--comic books, rock and roll, guitar, religious conversion, more music, religious de-conversion, Creative Writing Classes, James Ellroy & PULP FICTION (same year, I think), grad school, published short stories, published novels. Now trying to write more.

 If you had to classify yourself as a writer, put yourself into a genre, which one would it be? And you don't have to stick to the traditional genres. Make one up if you think it'd fit better.

     Yeah, really, I have no problem at all with the label of crime writer. I embrace it. The coolest writers, to me, were always the crime writers--usually smart and respected by literary folks while simultaneously being accepted by the commercial crowd. I write stories about characters dealing with the consequences of crime. And I like that.

Following some of the conversations you've been having on Twitter with others, you seem to spend a bit of time contemplating the direction of crime and noir fiction. So, what is their future? What direction are they heading in, and is that good or bad?

     I don't know anymore. There are things I hope will happen, like a lot more literary writers embracing genre and thus doing cool shit with it, but I'm not sure what's going on with publishing right now. Seems harder for edgy crime writers. I see a lot more use of noir as a flavoring in other genres or lit fiction. I like that, too.
     With ebooks flourishing, I hope we'll see a return to shorter novels like they had in the 50s and 60s. And I'd like to see prices of ebooks settle at a level that will attract a lot of new readers rather than just folks with a lot of money. 10 bucks for a book just doesn't seem right. 10 bucks for an ebook, even less so.

Another Twitter based question. You seem to spend as much time promoting other people's work there as you do your own. Is that just the good, Christian thing to do, or do you have sinister motives?

     I've always been a fan. I started PLOTS WITH GUNS as a way to read more stories in the vein I liked, which we didn't get from the BIG TWO crime mags at the time. And when I get around other writers, I talk about the writers I like, and the ones I don't. If I find a new write through PWG who deserves attention, I work like hell to do whatever I can to get it. So with Twitter and ebooks, I've found a new way to do that. And it's fun.

I know your books are like your children, all little snowflakes and special in their own way. Still, crush the dreams of all of the others and pick a favorite. Then tell us why you love that one more.

     Well, there is an unpublished one about a nerdy, shy PI who, for some reason, is irresistible to women, so he ends up having sex with allllll sorts of people. Not a "pan to the curtains" type of thing you see in older noir flicks. And, well, he can't help himself, but it makes him tired. Oh, and his older sister has him trapped in an incestuous relationship, too, that he can't free himself from. Somewhere in there, he tries to find a missing pregnant teenager.
     I think that book really taught me how to write the sorts of books I've written since. It was my third one, and it didn't sell, so I moved on to YELLOW MEDICINE and HOGDOGGIN.

At what point in your career did you say to yourself, "I'm a writer."

     Either when I sent a story to Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine when I was 19 (terrible story. Rejected), or when I made the decision to go to grad school. At that point, I knew I wasn't going to stop until I got to publish books.
     What's been the biggest challenge of self publishing? Most rewarding experience of self publishing?
     The most rewarding is the surprise of having new readers get so excited about the books. The internet makes that easier than ever. I love to hear from them. The challenge is reaching them. How do I find these people and market myself in such a way as to make them want to give my stuff a try? I keep looking.

What's the one piece of advice you'd give to someone thinking of putting their own work out there?

     Make sure it's ready -- editing and formatting solid, reviewed by several readers -- and then be smart about promotion. People want to get to know you, not constantly hear your pitch. Give it some variety. Play around.

Give us a quick recommended reading list. What little-known books have you discovered that more people should know about?

     That would take forever. And forever. Seriously, follow me on @docnoir on Twitter, and you'll see. I will say that I'm excited that PLOTS WITH GUNS alums (whom we call "Crimedogs") Frank Bill and Greg Bardsley both landed cool book deals. Awesome!

Now how about the three books you couldn't live without?

     Collected Stories of Flannery O'Connor, LUSH LIFE by Richard Price, and the Dave Berry book where he went to Japan. The single funniest opening 30 pages I'd ever read.

Finally, what's next for you? Anything we should know about?

     I've got a new e-book coming out in October called ALL THE YOUNG WARRIORS, more of a thriller than my usual noir chops. Still, very dark. Keep an eye out for that and the new company publishing it soon.
     I'm working on some new novels. Seems like I have so many I want to write that I ended up freezing myself. Chipping away, though.

Get to know Steve Umstead

I met Steve Umstead through Twitter. He's a great guy and a great author. He wrote a fantastic book titled Gabriel's Redemption. It's the first book in a planned trilogy and a great value at $2.99. (Amazon/UK/Barnes and Noble) It's an interplanetary adventure that races to an exciting finish. I sent Steve a few questions. He sent me a few answers back -- while on a vacation out of the country, no less. Take a few minutes and get to know him.

Give me a three sentence summary of Gabriel's Redemption.

Gabriel's Redemption is a near-future science fiction/adventure story of a man, a disgraced Special Forces soldier, who lost his team and his command on a far-off planet called Eden. Now, plucked from the slums of the Caribbean, he is given a chance for redemption, with a new team, a new mission, on a new world. However, the mission, and the people behind it, aren't quite as they seem.

Where did the story for Gabriel's Redemption come from?

The story was written during 2010's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), but the premise behind it was a scene I've had in my head for perhaps a decade. That one opening chapter, the people in it, the past that's behind it, created the entire story, and the character of Commander Evan Gabriel himself. I just knew there was a complete story behind it. And since it's an ebook, readers can download a sample and see what I mean by that first chapter...

Now pitch me on the next book in the series.

The next in the trilogy, Gabriel's Return, is, as of this writing, in the final editing stages and should be out for public consumption by mid-August. Commander Evan Gabriel and his team, having survived the previous mission mostly-intact, are being sent on a highly secret new mission, one to rescue an important relative of a good friend, and to take down a terrorist organization. However, the mission takes Gabriel back to Eden, the planet where he barely survived a massacre that killed his entire team five years ago, and the mission which cost him his command. Plenty of jungle-based combat scenes intermixed with political intrigue on three different worlds.

What are your plans for future books, both in and out of this series?

There is a third, and final, book in the Evan Gabriel trilogy (obviously!), tentatively titled Gabriel's Revenge. Things happen at the end of Book 2 that Gabriel struggles with and teeters on the brink of losing control, and he has his enemies in his scope. 

As for after that, I've already got a half a page of notes on a different type of science fiction story, one involving a planetary disaster and time travel (I'll have to ask my teen son, who apparently knows quantum physics better than I do, for assistance). Also, I plan to drift a bit out of my usual genre for a stab at a present-day technothriller, as I was a big fan of Tom Clancy (back when he actually wrote his own books).

I'm stealing a question from Declan Burke. What three words would best describe your writing?

Hmm, good question. Um, Pulitzer Prize worthy? No, probably not…let's go with imaginative, realistic, and enjoyable.

As a self-publisher, you're really the head of a small publishing company. Has your experience owning your own small travel business helped you in your publishing endeavors? If so, how?

Actually, yes. Last year, before the writing bug ever became real, I set up our company's social media program from scratch. Facebook company page, Twitter account, Flickr, LinkedIn, et al. That gave me a big leg up (in my opinion) on having to launch my own program soon after publishing the book. Yes, absolutely, I should have started the social media program before publishing the book…but I didn't expect to actually publish. It was done for fun, so, when it happened, I found it easy to put a social media program together. I also think I have a pretty good grasp on web design to appeal to customers, an understanding of the financial and tax processes, that sort of thing. Whether that will ever translate into success…we'll see!

What's the most surprising thing you've discovered in the writing/publishing process?

That there are SO MANY other people, great people, out there, that are all in the same boat. I've been alive for forty *cough…mumble* years, and I'm not sure if I've ever run into such an amazing group of people. Everyone with the same goal, the same challenges, the same drives. Real, true, down-to-earth people; best I've ever run into. Truly incredible -- if I never sell another book as long as I live, I know I've found a form of success in the people I've met, people I know will be there for years to come. (As an aside, yes, most of them have been online. However, I was privileged enough to meet nine of them in person at Readercon, and they're just as fantastic in person -- if not more so -- than online…and I look forward to meeting many more.)

How long have you been reading science fiction? What authors influenced you?

I have been reading voraciously since I was very young -- one of my first memories was when I was 7 and read both Jaws and All The President's Men in my mother's room. As for science fiction, Star Wars in 1977 changed everything for me. Reading-wise, early on Arthur C. Clarke (there's a nod to one of his postulations in my novels) would be one of the first I can remember. I'm actually not a classic scifi reader; most of what I enjoy have been fairly recent, most notably David Weber, Charles Sheffield, Peter F. Hamilton, and John Scalzi.

Give us a quick recommended reading list. What little-known books have you discovered that more people should know about?

The Ragamuffin series from Tobias Buckell I felt was so amazingly entertaining and well-written, but you never hear anything about it. And while Weber is widely known, his Safehold series (number four is in my TBR list) was fascinating.

Now how about the three books that you couldn't live without.

Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising was probably the book that influenced me most, and I might not have had the writing bug without it. Great multiple plot, world conflict, tech and characters blend. I think I've read it four or five times. David Weber's first in the Honor Harrington series was excellent. He's an absolute master at realistic (physics-wise) space combat. And let's go with Peter Benchley's Jaws, in the original printed form (not movie). I still, after thirty *cough…mumble* years, can picture scenes from it in my head, scenes that were not in the movie. It really had a profound impact on me as a reader.

Finally, what's next for you? Anything we should know about?

For me? Finishing off the Evan Gabriel trilogy, hopefully by the end of this calendar year, and closing out his story. A few new works I mention above, as well as working on getting the Gabriel name out there to potential readers. But maybe the most exciting thing I have coming up is helping further my son's writing career as best I can. He published his first work last month, a young adult science fiction novelette called Shifter, for Amazon/BN/Smashwords, which honestly blew me away. I knew, know, that he's an incredibly gifted and intelligent kid, but seeing 10,000 words on paper, as well-written as they were, took my breath away. It's the first in a series of novelettes about the same character, and he's spending his summer working on a full-length novel. Big proud papa here...

Check out more from Steve at his blog.