Hello Jac. Welcome to Ja čitam, a ti? blog. It’s really a
pleasure to have you here. I have some questions for you so let’s start.
1. For starters can you tell us something about your book The
Reckless Engineer?
The series lead, Jeremy Aiden Stone, is and electrical
engineer. He is very versatile and
adventurous like MacGyver. He is
courageous, cerebral, and highly skilled like Barney in Mission Impossible.
The first story in the series is also about an engineer,
Jack Connor, who is a brilliant and charismatic guy whose character fault is
that he is weak in love, someone like John F. Kennedy. Then I built the characters of the four very
different women who are in his life who pull him in different directions. Jack is weak in character and very
confused. He gets drawn into different
conflicting and rather irresponsible actions as he is pulled by these women in
different directions. The resulting
intense conflict has come to a head with one of the women getting killed, and
Jack getting arrested for her murder.
Jeremy had lost his job working beside Jack in Portsmouth and had
returned to London. The story begins
with a call to Jeremy from Jack from the police station.
Jeremy returns to Portsmouth with a top London attorney to
handle his best friend's defense.
In Portsmouth nothing
is what it seems at first sight.
Everybody has secrets. Who is the
bald man with the tattoo of a skull seen entering the victim's house? Who is "KC" who Caitlin makes
secret calls to from a untraceable mobile?
Has powerful Douglas McAllen already killed his daughter's first partner
and is he capable of killing again? Is
Caitlin's brother Ronnie McAllen's power struggle with Jack for the control of
McAllen Industries so intense that he is prepared to kill and frame his
brother-in-law? Is the divorce from
Jack's first wife as amicable on her part as they believe it to be? Are his sons prepared to kill for their vast
inheritance? Who are the ghosts from
Caitlin's past in Aberdeen, Scotland haunting the marriage? What is the involvement of Jack's manager at
Marine Electronics?
The cast of characters is made even more colorful by the
supporting entourage: the big Scott and his gang, Hosé and Heineken, who carry
out Douglas McAllen’s “troubleshooting;” McAllens' bumbling solicitors McKinley
and Magnus Laird; Caitlin McAllen’s handymen, Cossack and Levent; and Jeremy’s
sidekick, the gay black actor working in the London West End.
While Jack is charged and his murder trial proceeds in the
Crown Court under barrister Harry Stavers’ expert care, Jeremy runs a race
against time to find the real killer and save his friend's life, if he is in
fact innocent, in a tense saga of love, desire, power, and ambition.
2. From the blurb we can see that there are some mysteries
around the whole story. Was it hard to connect all the dots and still keep a
mysterious?
Actually weaving the plot and connecting the dots was great
fun for me. I can guarantee you will
never guess who the committed the crime until the final chapters that reveal
the person. I had to plot it very
tightly and I admit it wasn't easy balancing the conflicting interests of
different characters, but when it did finally come together it was worth the
work. It was very rewarding.
3. Also it easy to notice that there is big spectra of
different characters from different layers of society. I’m sure it adds to the
story. Which one is your favorite?
Many of the characters are from the educated middle
class. I include the Scottish
aristocratic upper class family, the McAllens – Jack Connor's wife, Caitlin
McAllen, his father-in-law, Douglas McAllen, and his brother-in-law, Ronnie. I then have the lower working class
characters in Aberdeen, Scotland. I have
included European immigrant workers and tourists from Australia. The book has a cross-section of today's
British society.
Strangely enough my favourites are two of the supporting
characters.
The first one is Magnus Laird, a bumbling solicitor. He is definitely a loveable Dickensian
character who I created specially as a tribute to Charles Dickens whose writing
inspired me early on in life.
The second character is Otter, the gay half-black actor
working in the London West End. I
develop him further as Jeremy’s sidekick in the second book in the series,
“Buy, Sell, Murder.”
4. There is some romance in the story too and from the blurb I
can see that mostly all situations are realistic. Was was easier to create for
you - romance or mystery?
The romance was much harder for me. I have been a suspense, mystery, and thriller
reader and viewer all my life. I had not
read many romances other than the classics. I am also from a very conservative family in which the rule is “one does
not speak of such things.“
The main romance in the story is the one that Caitlin is in
which resolves in a fairy-tale fashion in the end. (I'm trying not to give away any spoilers
here.)
And then I have the personal life of my series lead which
evolves in the background through the book.
This story will continue into the next book and through the series.
5. If I’m correct you plan to make this a series. How many
books can we expect?
The second book in the series – Buy, Sell, Murder – set in
the London branch of an American Investment Bank, is half written.
I have a second book in my short fiction collection,
Summerset Tales, titled The Bank Job is alo half written to accompany Buy, Sell,
Murder. Both of these will be published
in 2014.
6. What inspired you to become an author? Do you have a
favorite author or book?
I have loved English literature since my mother enrolled me
in weekend Speech & Drama classes when I was 3 years old. My mother had this rack full of books like The
Pickwick papers, The Tale of Two Cities, Lorna Doone, The Animal Farm etc.
stacked on it along with piles of Readers’ Digests. My mother used to read to
me from them when I was too young to read; and soon I was reading them
myself. That sparked my interest as a
reader and a spectator very early.
I started writing seriously when I took my Freshman English
class during the first year at Stanford, and then I kept writing over the
years. I first thought about presenting
my work for publication only from about 2007.
I have always been a writer because of my upbringing. However I thought of it as merely a hobby for
a long time. My primary education has
been in engineering and I thought of myself as an electronic engineer only by
professio
n. There
was one aspect of the culture and education at Stanford University when I was a
student there – the idea that you need not be pigeonholed into just one area of
talent – that liberated me. You can be a “Renaissance man” who can excel
at many things that are considered the opposites of each other. I started
writing seriously when I took my Freshman English course during the first year
at Stanford, and then I kept writing over the years.
I first thought about presenting my work for publication
only from about 2008. One needs a level
of maturity and life experience to write with impact for a large audience. One also needs to bridge that mental gap to
want to go through that lengthy process of publishing the work. I reached that state of mind about 2007 or
2008.
If I had to give a short answer to this question I would say
that my mother's love of reading she instilled in me and Stanford's humanities
education program inspired me.
7. I tend to finish my interviews with author’s favorite quote.
So can we hear yours?
Seize the day. “Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of
the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.” - Buddha
Thank you for stopping by my blog. I wish you all the luck
with your book.
