What was the inspiration for your piece, “Where the hell have you been?”
“Where the hell have you been?” is something we have all heard. I just decided to come up with a fairly original answer to the question.
Which characters, created by you, do you consider as your masterpiece(s)?
I like all of my characters or I would abandon them to their fate. All of them are based on people that I know and none of them are! They are all synthesised from the characters in my life.
The last three books which Angela and I produced all contain the characters Craig and Micah McLairy, not forgetting their dog, Barker. I think these three characters have grown and grown more interesting during the course of the last three years.
Are you a plotter or a pantser when it comes to writing, or somewhere in between?
I am definitely somewhere in between. Arthur Conan Doyle always knew the ending of the story before he began writing it. Stephen King never did. So I take the advice of both!
How do you find the editing process once you’ve finished writing?
My wife is my editor but I also enjoy reading through what I have written. I thought of this as a guilty pleasure until one reader pointed out that if I didn’t enjoy reading my stories then my audience couldn’t be expected to.
Are there any books that you are currently reading and why?
I have just finished reading Dan Brown’s “Origin” and although I found the central thesis a bit thin, the adventure story and the background detail made it a good read. It was also a ‘whodunnit’ which kept me guessing.
Have you read anything that made you think differently about fiction?
The first book I ever read was about King Arthur and his Knights. It told the story with economy without losing any of the excitement of the story. Likewise, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy which was written during a paper shortage and therefore had to ‘cut to the chase’ as some of his later books did not. I think brevity is the soul of wit – that sounds good, might almost be Shakespeare 🙂
