Steve Forman - A New Kind of Hero

Go to any bookstore and you’ll find shelves of novels featuring young, virile, handsome heroes who conquer evil villains and save the world. But where is a protagonist that aging Baby Boomers can call their own? Enter Eddie Perlmutter, a 60-something ex-Boston cop with bad knees, occasional erectile dysfunction, and an acerbic world view that will have you laughing out loud. Eddie Perlmutter is the creation and alter-ego of Boca Raton writer Steven Forman, a man who believes that the people he calls “Usetabees” (as in “I useta be an accountant”) still have a lot to offer. 

Born in Boston, Forman graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in business. In 1968, he started a seafood marketing company which eventually grew into Forman Industries, a diversified holding company where he still serves as CEO. Tired of being “the first footprints in the snow” and longing for a warmer climate, he moved to Boca Raton in 1992, where he continued working full-tilt. But inside the successful businessman was a frustrated writer waiting to make an appearance.  When Forman turned 65, he realized he was running out of time, so he decided to reinvent himself.

“I had no doubt that I could write a book,” Forman says. “Writing was always a passion, but it was too arduous to do while running a business.” He found that writing and being a businessman had a lot in common: both required discipline, originality and creativity. He decided to set his book in Boca Raton, a place he had come to love for its people and lifestyle. “Boca is a charming place, if you know how to use it,” he says. “There’s something for everyone.” He calls the people in older communities “a rich source of talent who sometimes have to be reminded that they are of value.” So Forman created Eddie Perlmutter.

Eddie Perlmutter’s namesake is a boy Forman met as a youngster in summer camp. “The real Eddie Perlmutter was this little kid who reminded me of one of those punching dolls,” he says. “Every time he got knocked down, he’d bounce back up.” Forman thought he’d make a great protagonist. “I wanted to create the kind of guy who says everything you wish you could have said and does things to bad guys you’d want to do but can’t because you’re too civilized,” he explains. After two years of writing, Forman brought Eddie Perlmutter to life in Boca Knights, a quirky mystery in which Eddie battles Russian mobsters and Neo-Nazis to become a senior citizen superhero dubbed “The Boca Knight.” The book was quickly picked up by a publisher and was praised by Booklist as an “impressive crime debut ... an entertaining mix of comedy and drama.”

Building on the success of Boca Knights, Forman penned a sequel titled Boca Mournings which has Eddie trying to solve a double kidnapping while simultaneously dealing with a rabid anti-Semite, an enlarged prostate, and a condo association battling over an elevator. Boca Mournings was followed by Boca Daze where Eddie agrees to investigate the murder of a homeless man and comes up against pill mills, ghetto gang-bangers and a Ponzi scheme that would make Bernie Madoff blush. Forman has also penned a prequel, Eddie the Kid, a novella that tells about Eddie’s younger days.

Forman currently has two new projects in the works.  His next novel, titled Small Giants, will be a departure from his Eddie Perlmutter series. Forman describes it as “a family saga that spans the period from WWI to the mid-80s and involves three families and three decisions that affect three generations.” To satisfy Eddie Perlmutter fans, however, Eddie will make a cameo appearance. Forman has completed a screenplay which he co-wrote with Steve Ginsberg, a professional screenwriter who worked for Cagney and Lacey and Jack Klugman on Quincy. The screenplay is a one-hour pilot made from the best adventures from Forman’s Boca books.  Forman is also a popular speaker at clubs and bookstores, where he donates the proceeds of his book sales to charities.

Forman hopes that his readers will be entertained by his stories but will come away with food for thought. In addition,  he has a message for all the “Usetabees” out there: “It’s never too late for anything. You were wonderful once, and you still have that wonderful in you.  If you can’t be the runner, you can still go to the track meet.”

For more information, visit the author’s website at www.stevenmforman.com.

 

Diane Capri - She Knows Jack

Lawyer turned New York Times and USA Today Bestselling novelist Diane Capri calls herself “a kind of Martian – someone who doesn’t think like the crowd.” Her ability to see hidden relationships others often miss served her well in her career as an attorney, where she ranked in the top 1% of lawyers nationwide. Her unique perspective is also reflected in her writing, tales she hopes will make readers take a closer look at what they assume to be true. And her refusal to accept things at face value has set her on a literary quest to uncover the secret life of one of crime fiction’s most mysterious and elusive characters.

After graduating cum laude from Detroit’s Wayne Law School, Capri spent nearly 13 years working for a Detroit law firm before going into private practice. Although she was always a voracious reader, her writing was limited to non-fiction until a business catastrophe changed the course of her life. In the early nineties, she relocated to Central Florida at the request of her largest client. When that client later went bankrupt, destroying her legal practice, Capri turned to writing mystery/suspense novels “so that I could restore order to an unjust world, and maybe provide a little literary catharsis for my dead law practice.” While rebuilding her practice, she penned two Florida mystery series featuring female protagonists: Judge Wilhemina Carson and Attorney Jennifer Lane.

After joining the newly-formed International Thriller Writers in 2004, Capri met and began a longstanding friendship with fellow writer Lee Child, #1 New York Times Bestselling author of the Jack Reacher thrillers. Reacher, Child’s shadowy anti-hero who lives by his own rules and metes out justice without regard for legalities, became a source of fascination for Capri. “Jack Reacher is a character as old as time - a stranger who rides into town, straightens things out and leaves,” she explains. “I thought it would be interesting to explore how a man like this would impact the people he interacted with, so I asked Lee where Reacher spent his time between books. As we talked about it, an idea came to me – that the people who meet Jack are forever changed, that crime begets crime, and someone would want to get even.” That idea was the catalyst for Don’t Know Jack, the first in what would become Capri’s “Hunt for Jack Reacher” series.

Don’t Know Jack introduces FBI Special Agent Kim Otto, the antithesis of Jack Reacher. According to Capri, “I made Kim the opposite of Reacher in every way. She’s driven and ambitious, plays by the book, and has strong family connections. Even though she may be afraid, she does what she has to do. I think that makes her even braver than Reacher, and she’s going to need it!”  Kim and her partner, Agent Carlos Gaspar, are assigned to investigate Jack Reacher. This sets into motion a chess-like game of cat and mouse, with each move bringing them closer to the cagey Reacher.  Lee Child praised the novel as “Full of thrills and tension, but smart and human, too.” The book has become a huge reader favorite worldwide. The second Reacher novel, Get Back Jack, was another bestseller. It follows Lee Child’s characters from his novels Bad Luck and Trouble.

In addition to her Reacher books, Capri released Fatal Distraction the first in a new series featuring Jess Kimball, a victim’s rights advocate Capri says is “like Jack Reacher, only nicer.”  Fatal Distraction opened at #3 on Amazon.  Capri is also publishing a serial novel similar to Veronica Mars titled False Truth featuring rookie multimedia journalist Jordan Fox.

Besides providing an entertaining reading experience, Capri wants her books to make readers challenge their own assumptions, particularly in matters concerning justice. “People often accept things at face value, but there’s always another side to the story,” she says. She hopes that readers will join her characters as they strive to grasp what seems to lie just beyond their reach.

For more about Diane Capri, visit her website at www.dianecapri.com.

IT'S OFFICIAL! This morning, I signed a contract with Anaiah Press to publish Jacqueline, my middle grade historical novel. It's based on an experience my dad (a WWII vet, now 98 years old) had while stationed in Rennes, France shortly after D-Day. Writing this has been a true labor of love, and placing this book in my father's hands will be one of the defining moments of my life. I couldn't be more excited!

D. J. Kelley - Finding Love Online

Not too many years ago, few people would admit to dabbling in internet dating. In the past decade, however, the growth of online dating services rose by 154% per year, and over a third of the current US population either uses online dating services or knows someone who does. Recent surveys show that 280,000 marriages each year are attributable to online dating, and the number of people who find love on the internet is continuously on the rise. But, according to writer and online dating coach D.J. Kelley, so are the pitfalls facing those who dare to venture into this brave new world of romance. Kelley has chronicled some examples in Imperfect Heroes, a novel he describes as “a comic story of love and survival in an internet world.”

Kelley, a New Jersey native, came to Florida in 1976.  He had visited the area as a child and recalls boarding the plane in the sleet and debarking into a paradise of sunshine and coconut palms. The experience was so powerful that it never left him. He attended graduate school at the University of South Florida and pursued a career in business, but he always had a desire to write. “I’d wanted to be a writer since I was ten,” he says. “In the 90s, I spent some time in the Keys and tried a book, but I couldn’t get it right so I gave up.” It was a chance meeting with the publisher of a local paper that changed all that.

During a chat, Kelley admitted that he’d done some writing. He was asked to submit a piece to the paper, and he agreed. The publisher was so impressed with his short story that she ran it on the front page. Kelley followed this with several more stories, and soon he was on his way. “Seeing my work in print gave me validity,” he explains. “I finally felt like a writer, so I decided to give a book another try.” He made a New Year’s resolution to write every day. One day, while going through some of the pieces he’d written, he found an article on internet dating. “I knew I’d found a hot topic,” he says. “I started writing, and the rest came easily.” A year later, he had completed Imperfect Heroes.

Set in Tierra Verde, Florida, Imperfect Heroes is the story of Chris Osborne, an online dating novice who decides to find the love of his life on the internet (with some unpredictable and hilarious results). Kelley admits that his personal experiences fueled the story, “but I poured gasoline on them to give readers a good ride.” He wanted to present the pros and cons of internet dating and feels that the book doesn’t require much suspension of disbelief. “The internet can be an incredible tool to meet people, but you can get into trouble quickly,” he explains. “There are no boundaries online. It takes a seasoned person to understand that everybody’s not like you. Consumerism doesn’t apply to dating.”

In the end, though, Imperfect Heroes is a story about hope. The way Kelley sees it, “We’re all imperfect, but we’re all loveable in different ways. It may take a thousand people to find that one you value and who sees the value in you. But there’s always hope, and you have to stay in the game to find love.”

For more information, visit the author’s website at www.imperfectheroes.com.

Robert Lane - Suspense on the Beach

If you enjoy exciting stories with a beach setting, The Second Letter by Robert Lane is a book you won’t want to miss. This St. Pete Beach writer has penned a novel that takes readers on a thrill ride through the South Gulf Beaches. The page-turning plot and intriguing characters make it the perfect beach read.

Lane, who calls himself “a lifelong tourist,” came from Ohio to St. Pete Beach seven years ago when the last of his three children left high school.  “I’m very comfortable here,” he says. “When I’m in Florida, I lose the wanderlust to go any other place. I feel I’ve arrived.”  An investment manager with a degree in English, Lane has always loved to write. After graduating from Maryville College in Tennessee, where he was the editor of the college newspaper, he worked briefly as a proofreader. He also owned a local weekly newspaper in Knoxville, an enterprise he calls “a labor of love.”  He eventually went into investment management because “I needed a way to pay the bills,” but he never lost his desire to write.

The Second Letter was inspired by a visit to the Gulf Beaches Historical Museum in Pass-a-Grille. Lane became fascinated with Joan Haley, the museum’s original matriarch. “After seeing the displays, I became taken with the story of this lady who had come to Long Key,” Lane explains. “I went outside and sat on the bench and thought, ‘What if?’”  Eighteen months later, Lane had completed The Second Letter, a suspense novel that earned a five-star review from Foreword Clarion for its “solid structure and pace, along with a standout sleuth.”

The “standout sleuth” is Jake Travis, a wise-cracking special agent Lane describes as “larger than life, but with the same struggles and self-doubts we all experience.”  Jake is assigned to retrieve a missing letter written in 1961 by a CIA operative and buried on the grounds of the Gulf Beaches Historical Museum.  The letter has found its way into the hands of Raydel Escobar, a shady businessman who is using it to blackmail the IRS. Jake risks everything to reclaim the letter, including his life and his relationship with Kathleen, the woman he loves. Lane describes The Second Letter as “literary crime noir, a literary novel disguised as a PI romp.” The story starts with two lovers and a song – “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”  Fifty years later, it comes full circle with another pair of lovers and the same theme.

Jake Travis returns in Lane’s next novel, Cooler Than Blood, scheduled for release this fall. The story centers around  Jake’s search for an 18-year-old girl whose past is mysteriously entwined with Kathleen’s.  Lane is currently at work on a third Jake Travis novel, tentatively titled The Cardinal’s Sin.

Lane hopes his readers will connect with his characters. “I try to put a mirror in front of readers so they can see a little of themselves in my characters,” he explains. “That’s what I like in a book and what I hope readers will take from mine.  I also hope my books will entertain, inform and enlighten. If they do, then I’ve done what I set out to do. I’m a happy camper.”

For more information, visit the author’s website at www.robertlanebooks.com.

The Circle of Truth - A Guest Post by Victoria Allman

This month, Fabulous Florida Writers is pleased to welcome guest blogger Victoria Allman.  Victoria has been following her stomach around the globe for fifteen years as a yacht chef. Her two non-fiction books, Sea Fare: A Chef's Journey Across the Ocean and SEASoned: A Chef's Journey with Her Captain, won First Place for Travel in the Royal Palm Literary Awards, and her essays on travel and food have appeared in Dockwalk Magazine and Marina Life Magazine. Wander is her first work of  fiction. Victoria was our featured writer on July 5, 2013.

When I was ten years old, I copied down the words to Elton John’s I’m Still Standing and told my mother I’d written it. Of course it was a lie, but for about a day and a half she believed me. She praised me, spoke of how gifted I was, how creative. In fact, she was so proud, she bragged to her friends about me, showing off the lyrics I’d copied. Apparently, her friends listened to the radio more than she did and it took about thirty seconds before I was busted.

It was the first and last time I’d written a lie…until recently.

My punishment had been so severe that in fear of getting in trouble again, I stuck with non-fiction. Inherently, non-fiction is the truth. It is something that can be verified and checked.  It is based on real life, facts, and events. That was something I could write about. Real life for me was being a yacht chef and traveling the world’s oceans. I wrote about the food I found in different ports, life on the boat, descriptions of places, and the people I met.

But, through my first two books, I found this sticking to the truth restricting. I was tied to what actually happened, when exactly it happened, and where it all took place, which meant I had little room for creativity. I was terrified a man I’d met once, ten years earlier, would recognize what I wrote and call me out for saying he wore a red sweater when really it was more of a burgundy color. 

One day, while I was diving in the Virgin Islands, I envisioned finding sunken treasure, but I couldn’t add that into the memoirs and travel adventures as I had never actually found treasure and remembered the early penalty for lying. So, I turned to fiction and started writing a novel set on a boat traveling from Savannah to the Virgin Islands. I invented characters, I dreamed up bad guys, I imagined boat chases – I was lying again.

Wander starts in Savannah, Georgia with Kevyn Morgan, an antique restorer, finding out the father she thought had died thirty years ago was really alive and living in the Caribbean searching for sunken treasure. Longing for answers, Kevyn sails her sailboat down to Ft. Lauderdale, Key West, the Turks and Caicos, and the Virgin Islands to find the father she never knew. 

The funny thing was it wasn’t all made up. I was writing about places I’d been and putting the characters in real buildings and restaurants. I was describing the smell of the ocean at midnight, the color of the orchid blooming on a palm tree, and the view from the bow of the boat. There was a truth to my descriptions, a sense of place that I hoped would have the reader trusting that I knew of where I wrote. I realized I was using the techniques of nonfiction in my made-up story.

The essence of non-fiction must be present in good fiction. The reader must feel like the tale could actually be true, that it might be something that could happen to them. It is this sense of place that has catapulted great stories into ones that have stood the test of time and become classics.

In Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell’s words transport you to Georgia and make you feel like you are in the Old South. Mitchell was from Atlanta and wrote of what she knew. You can envision the landscape in her words. It is this sense of place, this truth about where she is writing that made Gone With the Wind one of the most famous books from the South.

Can you imagine Steinbeck’s East of Eden set in New York or Hemmingway’s To Have and Have Not in Oklahoma? No, because it is the authentic feel of the setting that adds to the story.

Here in Florida, we have such a sense of place our fiction authors need to capture the feel of the oppressive heat of August or the buzz of Miami in their writing. If they don’t, the story will fall flat and the reader will be left disappointed. Writers like Carl Hiaasen, John D. MacDonald, and Elmore Leonard know this and have captured the feel of the state in what they write.

It is this combining of the two sides of writing that makes for great storytelling. Now, I’m not saying if I write a murder scene I am going to go out and practice just to get the right feel. That will be the fiction part coming through, but I am excited to explore the ability to lie and make up stories with the real world places and flavor that I learned from my years of writing about travel on a yacht.

My writing has come full circle. Now I lie and tell the truth.

For more about Victoria's life as a yacht chef, visit her web-site at www.victoriaallman.com.

              

              

                             

Jean Harrington - Designing Woman

She leads a life of crime but has never been jailed.  Meet Jean Harrington, author of the Murders by Design Mysteries, a series of novels with the unlikely combination of mystery, murder, and – interior design.

Harrington, a native of Rhode Island, has always been interested in writing. She spent 17 years as a professor of writing and literature at Becker College in Massachusetts. Although she enjoyed teaching, she always longed to be a full-time writer. So when her three children were grown, Harrington moved to Naples, Florida (a place she calls “Paradise”) and decided to pursue her dream. She penned three novels she describes as “learning experiences” before publishing The Barefoot Queen, a historical romance set in 17^th century Ireland. This was followed by a sequel, In the Lion’s Mouth, which follows protagonist Grace O”Malley to the shores of North America. “In these two books, I use the voice of my mother-in-law,” Harrington explains. “She was from County Cork, and of all aspects of the books, I’m proudest of that Irish voice.”

Looking for a change of pace, Harrington decided to try something more modern. “I wanted to create a heroine who was as sassy and witty as Grace O'Malley, but with a 21st century take on life,” she says. Enter Deva Dunne, a witty interior designer and amateur sleuth. While Harrington admits she has never been an interior designer (or a criminal, for that matter), she is inspired by her daughter’s interior design business, a connection that infuses her stories with a sense of realism.  “Many of the phrases that come out of Deva’s mouth come directly from marathon phone calls with my daughter,” she says.  “I get the interior scenes from her as well.  If my stories have authenticity, that’s where it comes from.”

Designed for Death, the first of Harrington’s Murder by Design mysteries, has Deva in an upscale beach condo, following a trail of blood on a white carpet. When the trail leads to the strangled body of her client, Deva looks for the culprit and soon realizes that the murderer has designs on her. Designed for Death was followed by The Monet Murders, where Deva stumbles upon a missing Monet and a murdered cook and becomes one of the suspects in the crime.

In the third book of the series, Killer Kitchens, all the murders take place in kitchens.  “The story starts with a bang,” Harrington says. “It was inspired by a restaurant explosion in Naples.” The fourth Deva Dunn mystery, Rooms to Die For, has Deva investigating the apparent suicide of the owner of her favorite antique shop.

In Harrington’s latest entry, The Design Is Murder (scheduled for release as an e-book on November 17), Deva is thrilled to snag two high-end clients until she learns that both men are vying for the affection of the same woman.  When the woman ends up in the bottom of a swimming pool, Deva becomes suspicious. Did her ex or her current lover kill her? Or neither one?  Then there’s the possibility that her death was an accident, though Deva doesn’t think so. The answer is revealed in the exciting final chapters of The Design Is Murder, where with the help of Charlotte, a five-pound Maltese puppy, Deva brings the villain to justice kicking and screaming all the way.

Harrington hopes her readers will enjoy following Deva as she romps through town creating beautiful homes and solving one crime after another. “My books are for fun, for the reader to take to the beach or an easy chair and enjoy figuring out who dunnit,” she says. She believes what Woody Allen famously said is true:  "A writer’s job is to entertain.  If at the same time, a writer says something meaningful about life and death, those are, in many ways, happy accidents."

For more information, visit the author’s website at ww.jeanharrington.com or go to www.amazon.com/Design-Murder-Murders-ebook/dp/B00M6G8MWY/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1413573355&sr=8-4&keywords=jean+harrington