Fascinating Authors

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What excites you most about your book’s topic? Why did you choose it?

Author: Ever since I was a young boy growing up in that small city in the American heartland, I have been fascinated by persons from different countries and cultures, although we did not come across too many of them there.  During these years, there was World War II, the Korean war, and Vietnam war, as well as the cold war. The international intrigue fascinated me, especially as I grew older and began to travel. The prospects of writing a book about international intrigue and cultural identity excited me from the first time the thought of writing a book popped into my mind back in the 1980s. It took me until 2006, though,  to actually get it down in writing, and then I was even more excited about some other sub-topics of spiritual and personal development that found their way into the book because they have been major interests of mine.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: How long did the book take you from start to finish?

Author: Right at two years.  Because I work full time to keep body and soul together, I had to make the time. But with the ideas and thoughts clamoring to come out of me, it was easy to move this to the top of my priority list for “spare” time.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What aspect of writing the book did you find particularly challenging?

Author: Keeping it a reasonable length and it is still long, well over 600 pages. Not getting too involved in complex side issues, but still keeping enough there to make it interesting.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What surprised you the most about the book writing process?

Author: The bizarre way the coincidences just kept coming to me out of the clear blue.  Cigarette smugglers into Canada were caught in Dearborn Michigan just as I was writing about cigarette smugglers into Canada from Lackawanna, New York. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police uncovered a plot to bomb several places around Toronto by an al Qaeda cell centered around a store-front mosque in Mississauga  just the next day after I had my characters at a store-front mosque in Mississauga. A war occurred in Lebanon just at the time my characters were involved in events in Lebanon. A suspected al Qaeda smuggling ring in Mesquite, Texas, was uncovered just days after I picked Mesquite randomly to locate an al Qaeda cell. There is more of this in the Afterword of Three Kisses.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Did you have any favorite experiences when writing your book?

Author: The serendipity of having things happen, or just pop out of my deep subconscious when I needed them. Having a conversation at a sidewalk café in a foreign capital city over wine about Episcopal churches in the U.S. and knowing just where it would fit in my book.  Remembering from the deep recesses of my memory the wonderful apple fritter I had for breakfast in Lovington, New Mexico, and fitting it into my book.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What do you hope your readers will gain from reading your book?

Author: Be entertained by fascinating characters on fast-paced romps across the world and the intrigue of government agencies trying to figure out what’s going on. At the same time, being informed and challenged as people and events face challenges of our times: terrorism, changing public opinion, cultural integration.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What projects are you currently working on?

Author: My characters told me that they are not through with me. They have lots more adventure to get involved with. A sequel is maybe one-half to one-thirds done.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Is writing your sole career? If not, what else do you do?

Author: I am a sort-of consultant on various matters of international interest.  It is a full time job.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Did you do any research for your books, or did you write from experience?

Author: We all write from experience to some extent. I have done plenty of research in my life and have plenty of experiences, so it wasn’t much of a challenge to get started. But then I hit many stumbling blocks and learned a whole different kind of research. Almost anything can be found on the web now.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: How did you come up with your title?

Author: All the way through, I was frustrated because I couldn’t come up with a title.  When I started, I had this misguided notion that a good author had to have a title from early on. Finally I realized I should be patient and the title would just come to me when the time was right. I was a little bit anxious as I was writing the last few lines and I still didn’t have a title.  Then it hit me as the two characters exchanged three Arab kisses on the last page of the book. Throughout the story different characters had exchanged three kisses because it is the Arab custom. Instantly I knew this is my title.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What books have influenced you the most?

Author: It would be too long of a list to tell you all of the books, but maybe I can tell you a few of the authors whose books that have influenced me.

John Le Carré’s spy stories of international intrigue really sparked my interest. Tom Clancy’s stories with a military theme were influences too.

Now that I look back on it, I can see that some of the books I like best are those set in ordinary places with ordinary characters. Tony Hillerman was a genius developing stories using ordinary people, most of them Native Americans, in places like Window Rock, Arizona, Shiprock, New Mexico, and also in Albuquerque and Flagstaff. They dealt with the Native Americans’ problems of integration into society, preserving their culture, other common problems of the day, and telling an entertaining story along the way.  John Grisham brings small towns in Mississippi to life with ordinary characters but with real issues affecting almost everyone concerned—and telling entertaining stories as he does it.  Alexander McCall Smith uses the lady detective in Gaborone, Botswana, and her amusing adventures to introduce us to the delights of Botswana, its people, and its culture. Arthur Upfield did much the same for rural Australia. So why shouldn’t I do the same with Arab Americans, Mexican Americans, and  ordinary “red-blooded” Americans in Lackawanna, New York, Roanoke, Virginia, and Duluth, Minnesota? Only I also have my characters hop around through Mexico, Cuba, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh contributed a lot, the latter especially in bringing New Zealand so vividly to life, as did Martha Grimes, P.D. James, and a few others to numerous to mention.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Who was your publisher and why did you choose them?

Author: When I was doing my final proofreading, I was dreading the daunting task of finding a publisher while exploring literary agents. Then a very dear friend commented that he knew someone who had just had a book published by a publish-on-demand publisher. This led me to Virtualbookworm.com. So far it has been a very good choice.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Tell us a little bit about your book.

Author: Imagine that al Qaeda is moved to creative, almost desperate ways to get into the US. Doesn’t take too much imagination does it after we read about sleeper cells in the US, Arab-Americans caught trying to bomb buildings in Dallas and subways in New York? Al Qaeda is about more than just bombing, though; they need to infiltrate persons into the U.S. to do more clandestine things like get access to top secret material. Now imagine al Qaeda gets access to Russian medical technology to create duplicates of other persons like the Soviets did in the days of the cold war.  It’s easy enough to do these days. They could use this technology to make a duplicate who takes the place of a pilot on a commercial airliner again. Or they could use it to infiltrate a military installation like in Three Kisses. It’s not much of a challenge to find an Arab-American US Army officer working in a weapons system office.

Now imagine that a US Marine Corps officer is working in the same office, doing his job the best he can while keeping his private life private, and with a strong sense of duty to country and flag being third generation in the Marine Corps. Follow along as this Marine Corps officer discovers the duplication, cannot report it, but has to protect the country. He and his buddies take the perpetrators on a caper around the world. Follow along as they and the government agencies trying to figure it all out deal with current events in an intellectually changing story of intrigue and action.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What inspired you to create a work of fiction?

Author: At the risk of sounding flippant, it inspired me. The idea popped into my head well over 20 years ago, got buried, then demanded to be let out and have me write it. I speak to this a bit more in the blog and profile, and in the Afterword of Three Kisses.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What did you do to prepare – such as research – to write your book?

Author: I just sat down and started writing. It all just came to me. I had plenty enough accumulated experiences to give me plenty to write about. Oh, yes, I had to do lots of research as I went along. Thankfully there are places like Google and the Wikipedia that are treasure troves of information.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: How did you decide which information to present in your book?

Author: Interesting that you should ask this. Two reviewers have suggested the book is too long. If I were content to just tell a story and nothing more, it could have been shorter. I decided, though, that the characters needed to be developed more. The places they went needed to be presented more vividly and realistically. That took more space. It’s still a fair amount shorter than Gone with the Wind, though, Margaret Mitchell’s first and only novel.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What do you hope people will gain from reading your book?

Author: Mostly being entertained in an intellectually challenging way. Maybe having some stereotypes challenged and learn a few things along the way.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: How long did it take you to write the book – (was it longer or less time than you expected)?

Author: Right about two years. Remember I have a “day job”. I had no idea how long it would take me. I just knew I had to write and I did.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Did you seek the support of a writer’s group or class?

Author: No, not at all.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What surprised you the most about this process?

Author: The amazing number of “coincidences” that happened right at the time and place they needed to happen. It was like they were providential. I’ve talked about them in my blog and profile, and in the Afterword of the book.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What tips would you offer to anyone writing fiction for the first time?

Author:  Let your inner voice be your guide. Don’t get too hung up on negative feedback you’ll get as you go along. You’ll know when the negative feedback is such that you need to heed it. When a creative thought comes to your mind, just write it into the story. You can always go back and revise and tweak a bit later if need be.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: What can we look forward to in your next book?

Author: Characters in Three Kisses told me in no uncertain terms that I was not through writing about them. We’re still exploring some of the same themes: integrating recent immigrants into society, spiritual development and growth, intrigue and adventure. There is not so much fast paced hopping around the world, but it’s not all in the U.S. It still features ordinary people in ordinary jobs, in ordinary places, although quite a bit takes place in greater Washington, DC.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Is there anything we haven’t covered that you would like to include?

Author: I’m sure I’ll think of something just as soon as I submit this too you. But nothing comes to mind right now.

FASCINATING AUTHORS: Thank you for taking the time to be part of this interview!