When did you realize you wanted to write novels?
The bug to write bit me mid-way through my sophomore year at the University of Iowa. That was more than three decades ago. I have been writing ever since.
The urge to write novels came out of simply wanting to tell longer, more complicated stories that could not be told any other way.
How long did it take you to realize your dream of publication?
I wrote lots of industry content about legal technology before publishing my first book. While my first book, Lost in the Wild, was nonfiction, I feel as though I used fiction-writing techniques to tell that story, as well as in the other nonfiction books I’ve written. My first novel came out soon after my first nonfiction book. That all happened around 2010. By that time, I had been pursuing creative fiction and nonfiction for more than two decades. So, it took approximately 20-25 years to realize my dream of publication.
Are you traditionally published, indie published, or a hybrid author?
I am traditionally published. I have been able to sell all my books, fiction and nonfiction, to traditional publishers, without an agent. I admire and respect people who self-publish, or pursue the hybrid route, because I think it would be very difficult to handle every aspect of the publishing process.
Where do you write?
Kitchen, study, home office, coffee shops, restaurants … wherever I can find an electrical outlet and a few spare moments, I write.
Is silence golden, or do you need music to write by? What kind?
Silence is golden, but I can write with music in the background. Preferably classic. I would find it very hard to write while Bonnie Rait’s belting out Angel from Montgomery.
How much of your plots and characters are drawn from real life? From your life in particular?
I have met very few really bad characters like the antagonists I write about in my novels. That said, Sam Rivers, the primary protagonist in my novels, is very much interested in the same things I am, wilderness and its flora and fauna. As a boy, he spent countless hours experiencing the transcendence and solace of nature, and so did I.
Describe your process for naming your character?
I usually look for character names that sound good on multiple levels. Rivers is a great last name for Sam because it is indicative of his love of the outdoors and wilderness. Jon Lockhart, the primary antagonist in Killing Monarchs, is a very bad man, totally out of touch with his emotions. He has a locked heart.
Real settings or fictional towns?
A little of both. Usually, I like to keep settings fictional to avoid any potential reader backlash. That said, sometimes I can’t help myself. There is a line in Cougar Claw in which I suggest residents of Shoreview, Minnesota (a real town) like to “dress up and put on …” – that was an observation that raised some reader’s ire.
What’s the quirkiest quirk one of your characters has?
In Cougar Claw, Carla McGregor, the wife of the prominent businessman allegedly killed by a mountain lion, uses dice, numerology, and black magic to foretell the future. It’s only marginally effective.
What’s your quirkiest quirk?
In daily life I am superstitious about the use of some numbers. For instance, I avoid using health club lockers that contain the numbers eight or five. Of course, I know this makes no sense whatsoever.
If you could have written any book (one that someone else has already written,) which one would it be? Why?
A very, very, very tough question. There are so may I love and admire. Hemingway’s Old Man and the Sea because nearly every sentence moves me, Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath because it is such a well-told tale of family, poverty, and society. But if I had to say just one, it would probably be Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudicebecause it was confoundingly interesting, timeless, worked on so many levels, and was a beautiful love story.
Everyone at some point wishes for a do-over. What’s yours?
That I could have the success I enjoy now, writing and publishing books, when I was in my thirties.
What’s your biggest pet peeve?
For the life of me, I cannot find an agent. I have written seven books, both fiction and nonfiction, with more in the offing – some having won awards – but I have never been able to find an agent.
You’re stranded on a deserted island. What are your three must-haves?
Food
Water
The Complete Works of Shakespeare
What was the worst job you’ve ever held?
Laying sod.
Who’s your all-time favorite literary character (any genre)? Why?
Ulysses, a hero who goes out into the world and has many incredible adventures and returns home penniless and wise.
Ocean or mountains?
This is the toughest question on your list. I cannot choose.
City girl/guy or country girl/guy?
Both
What’s on the horizon for you?
I have three books coming out over the next year: Killing Monarchs and Dead Catch, both Sam Rivers Mysteries, and Gunflint Falling: Blowdown in the Boundary Waters (nonfiction).
Anything else you’d like to tell us about yourself and/or your books?
First, and foremost, thanks to Lois Winston for providing us writers with the space to talk about our craft, books, and whatever else comes uppermost to mind.
A Sam Rivers Mystery, Book 3
As a special agent for the US Fish & Wildlife Service, Sam Rivers has studied a variety of animals. He visits an elementary school to share photographs of the monarch butterfly, and he brings his drug-sniffing wolf dog, Gray, to give a demonstration of his partner’s remarkable skills.
Gray follows his nose to a school utility room, where Sam discovers the custodian, dead. Local police write it off as a drug overdose, but Sam is no stranger to crime scenes. He suspects foul play.
When Sam comes upon a second victim, the coincidences are too great to ignore. His instincts tell him there’ll be more deaths, but those instincts put him at odds with conventional law enforcement. Armed with his knowledge of the natural world and his wolf-dog companion, Sam must uncover answers to questions that few others believe exist—before anyone else is murdered.
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