Meet the Underground Authors

What makes your stories unique?

Especially in my historical mysteries and thrillers, I believe each sentence, each paragraph, each book should have impact and hit with the force of an explosion. 

Bam. 

It’s short.

It grabs you. 

It’s punchy.

It holds you. 

It intrigues you. 

It mystifies you. 

Bam. 

It’s over.

And you remember every haunting scene, every fascinating character, every twisted plot as though it were a lingering dream – always out of your reach but never out of your mind.

As August Wilson said, “The simpler you say it, the more eloquent it is.”

If you met one of your characters in person, who would it be, and what would you ask?

To me, Ambrose Lincoln is the most fascinating character I’ve written. It was back in the 1930s, and he was selected to undergo secret experiments, including shock treatments, so the government could control his mind and remap his brain. He is a secret agent, and the experiments erase his mind and remove his memories. The government believes that a man who can’t remember is a man unafraid of dying. He will go places where others would never dare go and accomplish things others are too frightened to achieve. 

I would ask him: “When the electrodes touch your brain, where do you go? What do you see? Who do you meet? Is it a dark world, and is it more mysterious than the one in which we live? Do you visit with the dead, and what do they ask you to do for them? Or do you merely step off the edge of the earth and tumble into a dark abyss where you may fall forever.”

Who or what has influenced your writing, and in what way?

Every author writes differently, and many of them have influenced me in many different ways. For example, I read Robert Parker for his short, punchy dialogue. I read Leonard Elmore to see if I can figure out how he brings such outlandish, warped, and dark humor to a story. I’m a fan of James Lee Burke because he taught me that you can write literary fiction in any genre, even hard-boiled mysteries. And I have long read Hemingway to learn that good writing is not simply a collection of words. It’s a collection of the right words. Don’t use a word unless it’s the best word you can find to create the vision, the emotion, and the impact you want to deliver in a sentence or in a story.

What is your secret guilty pleasure?

Watching my eleven-year-old grandson play soccer and baseball, and watching my nine-year-old granddaughter dance and then try to figure out how she’s going to rule the world, and I’m not betting against her.

They say ‘write what you know’. But do you reach a point where research is needed? 

I’m bored with what I know. I’m fascinated with what I don’t know. As a result, I do as much research before writing fiction as I do writing nonfiction. Research, especially for us who prefer to write historical fiction, takes us to places we’ve never been, do things we’ve never done before, and meet intriguing people we never knew existed. I may have my character walk into a town with one story in mind, and by the time he walks out, he has told a better story than I originally had planned for him. Research makes the difference. Research can turn an ordinary story into an extraordinary piece of literature.

How do your family and/or friends feel about your books?

My friends and family pay as much attention to my books as they do the yard when I cut the grass. It’s what I do. When the family sits down at the dinner table, everyone talks about what they did that day. Made a presentation at work. Took Jackson to soccer practice. Carried Avery to dance. Finished a legal brief before court on Monday. And I say, “Lincoln met the dead man today. The dead man has been following him ever since the night Lincoln shot him in the alley.” I look up, and everyone has quietly eased out of the room.

How do you choose the books you read? By genre? Author?

I choose books by the author, primarily because the authors I like write the genres I like to read.

What advice would you give a new author?

I have one piece of advice for aspiring writers. Forget the rules for fiction. There are no rules that count. Simply write the story the way you want to write it, and tell it in the voice you want it told. Write as if you are sitting at a table and telling the story to a stranger, from one heart to another. But never tell the reader too many secrets too soon. 

How do you feel about rewrites? Describe your process after the first draft is complete.

I’ve been told many times, don’t re-write until you’ve finished the book and have the story on paper. I can’t do it that way. I re-write as I go along. I may write six good pages today. Tomorrow, I will edit and re-write those six pages, and that puts me smack dab back in the middle of the story. Then I write another six pages and will re-write those tomorrow. It’s a drill that may not work for everyone, but it works for me. However, when I finish the manuscript, the real re-write begins, and I wind up cutting twenty pages and adding forty, or vice versa.

What project are you working on next?

I am presently working with J. Ronald Hardin on a narrative nonfiction book about the boomtown of Borger, Texas. The town did not exist until oil was discovered on a patch of isolated ground in the Panhandle in the 1920s. Borger was wild, a town of shanties and shacks crowded with gamblers, bootleggers, moonshiners, con artists, and outlaws. It was known as “the wickedest town in Texas.” Its first forty murders were never solved. It all exploded when the district attorney was murdered, and the governor declared Martial Law and sent in the Texas Rangers and National Guard to clean up the town.

Back in the 1950s, Ron Hardin worked for the Borger Herald and was fascinated with the town’s history. Night after night, he used an old manual typewriter to type the stories of Borger that appeared in newsprint from 1926 to 1929. It was a tumultuous time. He has turned those pages over to me, and I have created the newspaper as the narrator who tells the story of Last Dance at Sundown. 

Death Stalks a Small Town.

Magnolia Bluff waits.

With apprehension.

With dread.

With terror.

May twenty third is coming.

Somebody always dies on May twenty-third.

Why?

No one knows.

A killer walks in the shadows.

The killer is ready to strike again.