Inspired by the Sunshine State - A Guest Post by Joanna Campbell Slan

This month, Fabulous Florida Writers is pleased to welcome guest blogger Joanna Campbell Slan. Joanna is the national best selling award-winning author of four mystery series and several non-fiction books. Her newest mystery, All Washed Up, will be released on March 21. Joanna  was our featured writer on August 9, 2012. 

Five years ago, I found my dream house, a cottage on Jupiter Island. “Seaspray” was a foreclosure property that had been sitting vacant for more than three years. The hibiscus and sea grapes blocked the view of the ocean. Rats had taken up dwelling in the attic. The paint outside was peeling. I fell in love right away. I knew I’d come home.

I was born here in the Sunshine State, up in Jacksonville. My father was stationed in the Navy there. My parents paid for the hospital and delivery costs by winning a bet on a greyhound. (I’ve always loved dogs—no wonder!)

The large room upstairs in Seaspray offers a nearly panorama view of the beach. I use it as an office, but it was originally an artist’s studio. When the artist’s daughter dropped by for a visit, she clasped her hands to her chest and said, “Mother would be so happy to see you working here.”

Happy, happy me. What could be better than to walk the beach when I get stuck? The Treasure Coast inspires me daily. Life here on Florida’s Treasure Coast sparks my creativity. While picking up trash off the sand, I conjured up the idea of a collection of cozy mysteries, written in the style of Agatha Christie, and just as varied as the debris that rolls up in the tide. And so "Happy Homicides" was born. With my friend from Vero Beach, Linda Gordon Hengerer, we hammered out the details.

Happy Homicides 1: Thirteen Cozy Holiday Mysteries was a riptide of a success, propelling many of the authors (including me) into Amazon’s Top 100 Mystery Author category. Happy Homicides 2: Thirteen Cozy Mysteries/Crimes of the Heart came out on Valentine’s Day. Sales have been brisk.

On March 21, All Washed Up, the most recent book in my Cara Mia Delgatto Mystery Series will be released. Each book in the Cara Mia Delgatto series shares a bit of Florida history and lore. Tear Down and Die, Book #1, explored the Highwayman Paintings, those fantastic landscapes once sold for a pittance but now worth tens of thousands of dollars. Kicked to the Curb, Book #2, delved into the sorrowful history of the Dozier School for Boys. All Washed Up, Book #3, features Lilly Pulitzer and the birth of the CIA. (Yes, it happened here in Florida.) This week I’ll start work on Cast Off, Book #4. I’ll weave a tale around a stunning coral rosary, one of the pieces destined for the Queen of Spain and lost when the Spanish Armada sank in 1715. The rosary is now owned by my neighbor, Bill Brisben, who owns the salvage rights to the wrecks.

I once read an essay by a writer in Seattle who claimed the miserable weather was responsible for the success of many local authors. To that I say: Phooey. The sunshine, the views, and the diversity within our great state provide ample fodder for any writer worth his (or her!) salt. 

Joseph Collum - Focus on Fort Lauderdale

Even though he was born in New York, award-winning writer Joseph Collum has always thought of Fort Lauderdale as home.  His family moved there when he was five, so it was where he spent his formative years. “It was like a paradise back then,” he recalls. “I used to play at Whiskey Creek, and I was always out on the water. It was a great place to grow up.” Collum’s fondness for his childhood home has inspired a series of mystery novels set in the city he knows so well.

“Novelist” is a relatively recent addition to Collum’s resume. Although he’d wanted to write a book since age 12 when his dad introduced him to John D. MacDonald’s novels, Collum chose a different career path. “I took a journalism class when I was at the University of Florida and got hooked,” he says. “It was during Watergate when Woodward and Bernstein were all the rage. I liked digging up stories, so I became an investigative reporter.”

This proved to be a wise decision. Collum distinguished himself by garnering more than 100 major journalism awards for tackling issues like elder care and political corruption. His exposé of racial profiling by the New Jersey State Police raised national awareness of the practice and resulted in Collum being credited for coining the term. But it was Collum’s final assignment that caused him to transition from reporter to novelist.

On September 11, 2001, Collum was assigned to cover the collapse of the Twin Towers. “Standing in the midst of all that death and destruction was overwhelming,” he says. “I was struck that all these people had gone to work thinking it was such a beautiful day, thinking they had the rest of their lives ahead of them. And then they were gone. I spent a week at Ground Zero. Nothing I’d ever experienced came close to that. It left me emotionally spent.” Collum also realized that if he really wanted to do something, he shouldn’t put it off until tomorrow. So he moved back to Fort Lauderdale and started working on a book.

Collum’s first book was actually his second to be published. The Black Dragon: Racial Profiling Exposed is an extensive history of racial profiling by the New Jersey State Police. Drawn from over 200,000 documents and personal interviews, the book weighed in at around 800 pages. Collum was unable to find a publisher, so he decided to try his hand at a novel.

“In 2000, while I was still living in New Jersey, I came to Fort Lauderdale for vacation,” he says. “I noticed that by 2 p.m., the beach was in shadow because of all the high-rises that had been built. This stuck in my mind.” It also became the genesis for Brady’s Run, a mystery novel that introduced Collum’s signature character, Max Brady. Brady, an ex-cop and ex-attorney, moves home to Fort Lauderdale after losing his wife in the World Trade Center collapse. “I needed to write about 9/11,” Collum explains. “Max came to Fort Lauderdale in grief, and so did I. It was a catharsis for me to write about it.” Like Collum, Max discovers that the place he remembered has substantially changed. The mysterious deaths of owners of Mom-Pop motels along the beach prompt Max to investigate the “shadow world” of rampant development. His involvement places him in the crosshairs of some dangerous adversaries.

Following the publication of Brady’s Run, Collum asked his publisher to take a look at The Black Dragon. After substantial editing that cut the page count in half, the book was accepted for publication. “I’m happy that it was finally published,” Collum says. “It was an important story that needed to be told.”

Collum’s next release was the second in the Max Brady series. Et Tu Brady is based on a murder that took place at Whiskey Creek in the late 1960s. “It freaked me out that a place I associated with such good childhood memories could be the scene of a gruesome murder,” Collum recalls. “I decided to write about it someday, and over the decades I played with the idea. When I wrote Et Tu Brady, I decided it was time.” In the story, the murder of a boyhood friend has Max looking for a connection between the crime and a mysterious sunken treasure. Along the way, he is forced to unearth some painful memories to prove the innocence of the girl who was his first love. As the story segues between past and present, Collum gives readers a taste of what life was like in the Fort Lauderdale he once knew.

After pouring so much heart and soul into Et Tu Brady, Collum took a break from writing. “Sometimes, when I look back on the three books I've written, I wonder how I managed to plod through them, word by word, sentence by sentence, writing, re-writing and re-writing ad infinitum,” he says.  “The idea of starting from scratch on a new project seemed so daunting. “ In spite of this, Collum has begun two books since Et Tu Brady was published.

Collum’s first attempt involved a story he covered as a young reporter about the mob assassination of a cop who was one of his sources. “I had tried to write a non-fiction book about it way back then but didn't have the time or discipline to complete it,” he says. ”I still have a cabinet filled with my original files on the case and immersed myself in them, but my attempts to turn the story into a Max Brady novel were not satisfactory to me, so I put that project aside. I plan to return to it someday soon and give it another go. It is an incredible story. My challenge will be doing it justice.”

During the same time, Collum was writing some articles for a friend who publishes a shipping magazine. One of the pieces was about cruise ship passenger safety. He was shocked by what he found, and because Fort Lauderdale is the cruise ship capital of the world, he decided it would be a great setting for a Max Brady story. “In the name of research, my wife and I took a cruise with some friends last year,” he says. “I gathered a lot of good color which I am employing in the story.” The book, titled A Bullet for Brady , starts out on the inaugural voyage of the world's largest cruise ship out of Port Everglades.  It will take Max Brady and his girlfriend - the indomitable Rose Becker - to some exotic locations. According to Collum, “I'm having fun with it but still have many miles to travel before it is ready for public consumption.”

Collum is also plotting another Brady book that he hopes to start soon and perhaps write simultaneously with A Bullet for Brady.  “While my production has been fallow since Et Tu was published, I am hoping 2016 brings a surge of productivity and that I’ll have two more books at least written, if not published, by the end of the year,” he says. “I love writing, and I hope to have a few more years on this earth to write a few more books. I hope I’ll get better as I get older. My goal is to have sparks fly off the page.”

For more about Joseph Collum, visit his website at www.josephcollum.com.

Tom Winton - Writing from the Heart

Tom Winton is a man who writes from his heart.  This Jensen Beach author who now spends part of his time in the Georgia Mountains has penned seven novels he describes as “emotion-packed with a literary edge.” His books all debuted on Amazon’s “Hot New Release” list, putting him in the ranks of Amazon’s 100 Most Popular Authors in both literary fiction and mystery/thriller/suspense. He has been described as “a man who writes with his pen dipped in his soul.”

Winton’s success as a writer would certainly come as a surprise to his teachers at Flushing High School in his native New York. “My high school grades weren’t good,” he admits. “In fact, I barely made it through.”  He joined the Air Force after graduation, then drove down to Florida in a snowstorm to marry the woman he’d been dating "for a record 89 days.” Although he held a number of different jobs, he never considered writing. “Until I was 35, I was like a lot of other guys my age,” he says. “For the most part I only read the sports pages, fishing magazines and Playboy. But then I discovered novels and always had five or six alongside my easy chair. Whenever I had free time and wasn’t out fishing I read voraciously. Although I put the better authors on a pedestal, about the time I turned 49 I began to think, ‘I can do better than most of these writers.’ That’s what I believed, anyway. It took me two full years of looking at the same blank page of a Spiral notebook before I started scrawling words.” He completed two manuscripts, but when he couldn’t find a publisher, he became discouraged and stopped writing.

Even though Winton didn’t write for 11 years, he never lost the desire. “When I threw those manuscripts into a closet for all that time, I left of piece of my soul alongside them,” he recalls.  Then one day, he heard about an online writer’s site and decided to upload one of the manuscripts he’d abandoned for so long. Entitled Beyond Nostalgia, it is the story of a young love that is lost and rediscovered 25 years later. And then things started to happen—and quickly. Only five weeks after Tom submitted Beyond Nostalgia, it was nominated for the Random House site’s Book of the Year. A year later, when he was 62 year years old, Winton was approached by a publisher and signed his first contract.

   

Over the next five years Winton wrote six more novels, and they all soon became bestsellers. Although most of his books have scenes that take place in Florida, two of them, Four Days with Hemingway’s Ghost and A Second Chance in Paradise, are set for the most part in the Sunshine State. His other titles are Forever Three, The Last American Martyr, Within a Man’s Heart, and his newest, A New Dawn in Deer Isle. The latter, a heartrending story about a widower who drives across America, following much of the route famed author John Steinbeck did in his Travels with Charley, became an Amazon bestseller and “Hot New Release” just two days after its release.

Although Winton admits that coming up with ideas for a new books is not always easy, he’s already working on yet another Florida Keys based novel. As he tries to do with all his books, Winton hopes that his readers will again enjoy experiencing the range of feelings he puts into his stories.  “Rather than just reading words, I want them to feel the emotions,” he says. “When you can make readers feel what happens to your characters you know you’re at the top of your game.”

For more information about Tom Winton and his books you can visit his Amazon page at http://www.amazon.com/Tom-Winton/e/B005H2T7AA/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0 or his author’s website at www.tomwintonauthor.com

J.J. White - Writing As Fast As He Can

Some may question how author J.J.White explains his impressive writing output. His answer? “I started late, so I have to write as much as I can, as fast as I can.” White moved from Vermont to Florida’s Space Coast in 1963 when his father, who worked for the space program, relocated there. White went on to earn a degree in engineering from the University of Central Florida and became an electrical engineer. Although he describes himself as always having been creative, writing was never something he pursued until he was sidelined with a back injury in 2006. “I was flat on my back for two weeks, so I started writing,” he recalls. “I progressed from horrible to better.” Later, he started going to writers conferences and joined a writers group to hone those literary skills. To date, he has written over 300 short stories, many of which were published in magazines and anthologies such as The Sherlock Holmes Mystery Magazine and The Saturday Evening Post. Along with the short stories, he has penned eight novels, three of which have been published by Black Opal Books

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In 2014, White’s first published novel, Prodigious Savant, was released.  A savant is a person who exhibits a superhuman mental ability like photographic memory or being able to do complex mathematical calculations in one’s head. Unfortunately, this unusual type of genius has a dark side.  Savants are usually significantly impaired when it comes to day-to-day functioning and normal social interactions (think Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man.”)  Among this group is a small percentage – fewer than 100 worldwide – who show abilities so outstanding that they fall into the range of genius. These are known as prodigious savants.  This is the phenomenon White explores in Prodigious Savant,  a unique thriller that takes readers into the savant mind.

 Prodigious Savant  is the story of Gavin Weaver, a typical 17-year-old living in Vermont in 1962. After surviving a head injury resulting from a horrific explosion, he awakes from a coma to find that he possesses savant-like abilities in art, music, mathematics and chess. While he doesn’t seem to be suffering from the accompanying mental impairment, it isn’t long before Gavin begins to realize that something's not quite right. White says the idea for the book came from two sources. “In Burlington in 1961, two boys were shooting at a building where explosives were stored. There was an explosion, and one boy was killed. The other was blinded, and I remember him riding through town on a bike built for two with his parents. That made an impression on me. Later, I read about Jason Padgett, an acquired savant. He was injured on the right side of his head and woke up able to do complex math.” For White, the hardest part of writing the book was the research – particularly learning enough chess to make that talent believable. He was rewarded for his efforts with a Royal Palm Literary Award from the Florida Writers Association and a second place in the Maryland Writers Association Novel Contest.

White's second novel,  Deviant Acts, is a crime story about “a reluctant hippie Vietnam vet PI.” White got  the inspiration for Deviant Acts from his brother Eddie, who used to send him letters from Vietnam describing the horrors of the war while at the same time sending letters to his mother detailing only the happy and banal events of a bored Marine. “Eddie would write about snipers and firefights to me while describing wonderful landscapes and museums to my mother,” he recalls. Deviant Acts begins in 1973, Charlotte, North Carolina, and is the story of Vietnam veteran Jackson Hurst, a poster child for losers. Jackson lives his nightmares from the war with his eyes open. Only the heroin he's been addicted to since Vietnam keeps the horror at bay. His addiction has cost him his job and his girlfriend. Jackson's hope for change comes in the form of his Aunt Camille, a Vermont millionaire who desperately needs his services to retrieve her twenty-year-old adopted daughter from kidnappers. Camille wants her back at any cost - and she wants the kidnappers murdered. Jackson desperately needs the money but isn't sure he can stay clean long enough to do the job. He also doesn't know if he can he kill again, despite the demons haunting him from the war.

On the cover of Deviant Acts is a blurb by noted author Sterling Watson who wrote, “White has reinvented the amateur sleuth.” Although White thought it an honor to have an author of Watson’s caliber offer such a flattering statement, he worried the words “amateur sleuth” might dissuade readers from buying the book. “After all,” White says, “why would anyone want to hire a private detective who has no experience gathering critical evidence or solving crimes?  When most readers think of fictional private investigators they envision men of confidence and cunning, morally upright detectives with a keen eye for detail, such as Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, and Spencer. These men had backgrounds from the usual sources you might recruit investigators, such as the police department or the legal profession." White, instead, creates an amateur sleuth who reluctantly enters the world of private investigation not for the cause of justice but to support his expensive drug habit while stumbling through his first case.” But this flawed protagonist is one of the things that makes the story so compelling.

White’s next book, Nisei, a historical fiction centered on second-generation Japanese Americans during WWII, is scheduled for release this summer. Nisei has already been named Grand Champion in the Columbus Creative Cooperative “Great Novel” contest. White believes he has created novels that will keep readers turning pages. “I hope they come away from my books entertained," he says. "I want them to feel satisfied they’ve read a good story.”

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

Don Farmer and Chris Curle - An Inside Look at TV News

If you’ve ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes of network news, you won’t want to miss a new novel by two Marco Island authors. Deadly News by Don Farmer and Chris Curle gives readers what Farmer calls “a fun look into a strange vocation.” There are few people more knowledgeable about the subject than this husband-wife team. Between the two of them, they have logged over 99 years in the news business.

Farmer and Curle’s relationship started in a newsroom. In 1970, Curle was working as a news anchor/reporter for an ABC affiliate in Houston. Farmer, the southern bureau chief for ABC news, was in Houston on assignment. The two were covering an incident of social unrest when Farmer first saw Curle. “I asked her what she was doing after the riot,” he says. “I thought that was the best pick-up line ever.” It must have been – they were married two years later.

The newlyweds moved to Europe where they covered international news, then returned to the states where Farmer covered several presidential campaigns and spent five years as a congressional correspondent. When media mogul Ted Turner created CNN, he hired Farmer and Curle as two of his first on-air news anchors. Here they had the unique opportunity to interview some of the biggest names in politics, sports and entertainment. The two had a close working relationship in more ways than one. According to Farmer, “We both had desks in an office the size of a phone booth.” Following their stint at CNN, Farmer and Curle anchored the news for Atlanta’s WSB-TV.

In the mid-1990s, Farmer decided to try his hand at writing a book. “My frat brother was Skip Caray, the legendary sportscaster for the Atlanta Braves. We were talking about some of our crazy experiences, and I told Skip I thought we should write a book about them.” The result was Roomies – Tales from the Worlds of TV News and Sports, a book co-authored by Farmer and Caray.

After the publication of Roomies, Farmer thought he’d take a stab at fiction. “I enjoy collecting bizarre happenings and personal quirkiness,” he says. He began compiling funny stories about some of the people he’d known and worked with. “After spending my life writing non-fiction, it was liberating to be able to write something I could just make up,” he explains. The result was Deadly News, a book Farmer describes as “a humorous satire, with murder and mayhem, set in the news business.” Set in Atlanta and southwest Florida, the story centers around the murder of a movie star who is thrown off a 46^th floor balcony, landing on the tower of a TV news truck. With enough thrills and drama to keep readers riveted, the novel’s dark humor will have them laughing as they flip the pages. Fox News host Greta Van Susteren says the story “…cleverly weaves together the fast-paced worlds of media and crime.” Katie Couric praises Deadly News as “…an explosive, exciting thriller.”

Farmer credits his wife and co-author with the novel’s success.  While Curle calls herself “the back-up singer,” Farmer says he couldn’t have written the book without her. “She has so much more patience than I do,” he says.  Farmer hopes Deadly News will give readers an insider’s look at the TV news business and leave them wanting more. “If you’ve ever watched a news program and wanted to throw something at the TV,” he says, “this is the book for you.”

Farmer and Curle have another murder-thriller in the works. Titled Open Season, most of the action takes place in the Naples, Florida area, Atlanta, Georgia and the North Georgia Mountains. When eco-extremists kidnap a star TV news anchorwoman as she leaves an Atlanta restaurant, a media frenzy erupts nationwide. She’s threatened with death unless her captors’ outrageous ransom demands are met. The man behind the kidnapping is a flashy, low-life killer who passes as a wealthy man-about-town. The kidnapping of anchorwoman Nikki Z is part of a larger scheme, a world-wide crime ring and a tale of strong women who decide to do something about it.

For more information, visit the authors' website at www.donfarmer.com

The Perils of Writing What You Know Too Well - A Guest Post by D.J. Niko

This month, Fabulous Florida Writers is pleased to welcome guest blogger D.J. Niko. D.J. is an award-winning author, journalist and editor who writes archaeological and historical thrillers.  A lifelong traveler and adventurer, she personally visits and researches in the places she writes about. D.J. was our featured author on November 17, 2015.

 Every time I gear up for the release of one of my novels, I hold my breath. I don’t know if this happens to every writer, but it sure happens to me. Four books into my career, I still think: What will the critics say? Will anyone buy it? Will the reviews be glowing, scathing, or, worst of all, lukewarm?

The feeling is amplified when the book’s subject is something I am particularly close to. This month’s release, The Oracle, is one such instance. It is set in Greece, where I was born and raised, and delves into both the ancient history and the current state of this great nation. I’d always known I wanted to write a Greek setting, yet I’d hesitated, waiting to build up storytelling experience—or, perhaps, nerve. Since The Oracle was the third book in my Sarah Weston Chronicles series of archaeo-historical thrillers, I took a deep breath and told myself it was time.

The widely accepted “write what you know” logic might dictate that this was the easiest book for me to write. In fact, it was the opposite. I can’t tell you how many plot lines I scrapped and started over, each time sweating my looming deadline. I even had full-blown anxiety attacks—twice.

While writing what you know is a good policy, writing what you know too well is fraught with peril. It demands that you dredge up your deepest emotions, let go of long-held biases, and be unafraid of telling it like it is, even if you might be judged for it. It’s scary, anxiety-inducing stuff, but, if handled correctly, it can lead to some of your best writing.

In my case, there were two imperatives: to describe the settings with the authenticity one would rightly expect from a native, and to give some insight into the culture, past and present, and into the sociopolitical minefield of a nation bogged down by crisis and instability. The first part: no sweat. The second was harder to nail, and the jury’s still out as to whether or not I’ve managed that.

I’ll share an example. In the excerpt below, I describe the scene in Omonia, which in my childhood was the commercial and cultural hub of Athens but has since been blighted by neglect and crime. I struggled with whether I should tell it like it is or avoid it altogether. Writing is all about taking risks, of course, so I opted for the former.

 Sarah wandered the back streets of Omonia, the square in the heart of downtown Athens. She needed time to process what she’d just heard and a distraction to keep from doing something she’d regret.

She glanced furtively at the faces around her: Bangladeshi men, dressed in sarongs and tank tops, chewing paan as they sat idly on stoops of shuttered buildings; homeless waifs lying on filthy blankets on the sidewalk, staring vacantly at passersby and on occasion summoning the energy to extend an open palm; an emaciated young woman dressed in a cheap, skin-tight micromini, standing against a corrugated metal construction wall, cigarette in hand, soliciting business.

She couldn’t believe how Omonia Square had changed in the years since she’d visited Athens. Apart from the die-hard souvlaki stands and tobacco kiosks, businesses had gone under, leaving behind boarded-up buildings that eventually became magnets for posters and political graffiti. The apartments, once desirable real estate, had been left to decay and converted to low-rent immigrant quarters, many with no heat or running water. The Greeks had all fled to other neighborhoods, handing the spiritual keys to their Omonia over to poor, jobless foreign settlers—some legal, some not—and letting them turn this former hub into a cesspool of debauchery.

Sarah stopped by the temporary wall, behind which was an abandoned construction site now strewn with garbage. She took a cigarette out of her jacket pocket and fumbled for a lighter. The streetwalker walked up to her, offering a light. Sarah accepted it, noting the multiple needle marks on the woman’s arms. She met her gaze and realized she was probably no older than sixteen. The girl flashed a smile, a heartbreaking playfulness in it. Sarah nodded her thanks and walked on.

It’s a hundred percent accurate, yet it was hard for me to write. But I’m glad I did it. There is a certain acceptance that comes with committing something to paper and putting it out there for the world to see.

Many scenes like this one unfold in The Oracle, and—I hope—enrich the narrative. Though it cost me some sleep and tears, the decision to paint a true portrait of Greece, for better or for worse, ultimately was a good one—if for no one else, for me.

Truth is, after all, one of the paragons of ancient Greek philosophy. As Plato said in his seminal work, The Republic, “When the mind’s eye rests on objects illuminated by truth and reality, it understands and comprehends them, and functions intelligently.” It’s sage advice for all of us.

The Oracle is available this month from Medallion. For more information, visit www.djnikobooks.com or the author’s Facebook page.

Femmes Fatales

I was invited by Elaine Viets, one of our Fabulous Florida Writers, to do a guest blog about my book, Jacqueline, for the Femmes Fatales Blog. You can check it out here: http://femmesfatales.typepad.com/my_weblog/2015/12/the-best-book-i-almost-never-wrote.html
Thanks, Elaine!