A Sucker For Love   [2012]

Q & A   

Q. What led you to write a novel?

A. I’ve always read books as a kid growing up, especially biographies of historical figures. History was my favorite subject in high school. I thought about majoring in it in college and becoming a teacher. I was also very good at writing term papers when I was in school. In fact I used to write papers for some of my boys in college to make some beer money.

Q. What is your writing process like?

A. Everybody has his or her own individual style of writing. I find that I am most effective when I come straight home from work and immediately get on my laptop. If I do anything else before then not much writing gets done. Even then nothing is guaranteed. Some of the time stuff will come to me faster than I can organize and type it out. When that happens I jot down the jest of it on paper…least I forget it. Other times not much happens at all no matter how hard I try. When that occurs I go back and tighten up stuff previously written…or surf the Internet and catch up on current events. It’s not the ideal situation for me but it’s still productive.

Q. What are you working on next?

A. Right now I am working on a story very loosely based on the Greek play ‘Lysistrata’ by Aristophanes. I first heard about his tale in a Humanities course that I took in college and never forgot it. It is taking me a heck of a lot longer to complete this project than anything I’ve written before because it involves lots of drama, which I think is a lot harder to write than comedy. Hopefully it will have been time well spent.