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What inspired you to start writing?
Poverty! I was living in San Francisco. I was 19, barely able to pay the rent, buy groceries, etc. No TV, no radio, nothing that I could afford to fill the evenings other than reading. So I started writing to break things up just a bit.
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Can you tell us a little about your latest book?
Greg Scarpa, Legendary Evil is a biography of a Mafia goodfellow who was also an FBI informant for nearly 30 years. Nothing about this man was ordinary. His life was filled with violence, deceit, and treachery right up until the day he died in a prison hospital.
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How do you create your characters?
My fictional characters arise out of the plot as it moves, progresses, shifts, becomes more complex, unravels, and resolves itself.
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What does your typical writing day look like?
There is no typical day for me. One of my works of fiction took only two months for a first draft. I wrote every day for about two hours, usually from about 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. while holding down a full-time job. Another work took me more than two years to craft. My gangster bio took about two years of 4 to 5 hour days averaging about 5 days a week for the first draft.
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What has been the most rewarding part of being an indie author?
Completing a book. I've written 12 of them, and each one has given me a great deal of satisfaction to write.
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What’s one challenge you’ve faced in your writing journey?
Filtering out the noise, and there's a lot of it, about what is or is not "good" writing.
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What advice would you give to new or aspiring indie authors?
Read, read, read until you can't read any more. And then read some more.
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How do you handle book promotion as an indie author?
In conjunction with guidance and efforts from my publisher, WildBlue Press.
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What’s next for you? Are you working on a new book?
I was writing a 7th book in my Cold War thriller series, the Nick Temple Files, when I changed course and wrote Greg Scarpa, Legendary Evil. I intend to return to that project.
