Interview with thriller author Matt Fulton

Thriller author Matt Fulton is helping me wrap up the week, and the month, by talking with me about his new espionage thriller, Active Measures: Part I.

Bio:

Matt Fulton is an independent writer who has spent half of his life working on the Active Measures trilogy. At twelve, he found inspiration in the stories of John le Carré, Graham Greene and Tom Clancy and began slowly developing the key characters that eventually found their way into his own novel. He later attended college in Washington, DC, studying foreign policy and interning with Congress and the British Parliament. Before what would have been his senior year, he decided to drop everything and realize the story that was brewing in his mind for over a decade. He lives in New Jersey.

Welcome, Matt. Please tell us about your current release.

Active Measures: Part I is a geopolitical thriller and the first volume of a trilogy about the dangers of loose nukes, terrorism and espionage.

The bulk of the action follows three major plotlines: In Iran, the United States’ most valuable agent since the 1960s uncovers a faction within the hardline Revolutionary Guards that has been secretly constructing a crude nuclear weapon designed to fit in the trunk of a car—and all without the knowledge or blessing of the regime’s leadership. As the full might of the American intelligence community is mobilized to sabotage it, the CIA’s new director is forced to navigate a minefield of global power politics from Washington to Tel Aviv.

In Moscow—after an oil trader with ties to the Kremlin is found burned alive in his Geneva home—an aide to Russia’s adored and despotic president is caught between opposing powers. At one side is an eccentric billionaire with lofty dreams of reorienting Russia toward the West, and at the other is the autocratic strongman whose ardent quest for resurgence has brought Russia into an open confrontation with NATO, and threatens a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the hasty climax of the Syrian civil war has brought the Middle East to a dangerous crossroads. Israel is set to begin peace talks with the fragile new government in Damascus, which promises to reshape the balance of power in the region. Hezbollah has been left bloodied, humiliated and exhausted with discontent simmering inside the ranks. Against this backdrop, a brilliant CIA officer in Beirut stumbles upon the trail of a master terrorist and the shadowy menace whispering in his ear conspiring to drag the world into the abyss.

What inspired you to write this book?

There was no single light-bulb moment for this story. The oldest material in the novel dates to August 2009, but it’s been fourteen years from inception to publication. The names of the five core characters in the trilogy—Jack Galloway, Ryan Freeman, Nina Davenport, Robert Harris, and David Kazanoff—were first jotted down in the school cafeteria when I was in the sixth grade. I had just read Tom Clancy’s The Sum of All Fears, this was a few months after 9/11, and the environment just threw a switch. That was when I decided I wanted to be a writer. I didn’t exactly understand who these characters were or the world they would inhabit, but I think I always knew, ultimately, what I wanted to do, even if twelve-year-old me was completely incapable of doing it at the time. It was there, a glimmer of light on the horizon; I couldn’t describe it, but I refused to lose sight of it. So I kept going. The story matured as I’ve matured, evolved as I’ve evolved. Fourteen years later, here’s what I have to show for it.

An author should write the stories they want to read that haven’t yet been written. That’s my cardinal rule, my guiding philosophy. Certainly it’s wonderful if others want to read my work (and I eagerly invite them along for the ride), but I think every story has to begin with a degree of selfishness. That’s the case with Active Measures. I wanted to tell a story that attempts to tackle the maddeningly complex geopolitical realities of our time on a canvass that is unapologetically vast but yet remains rooted in a character-driven drama about complex, imperfect people who are simply trying to weather forces that are towering apathetically above them. There are no easy solutions offered because they truly do not exist. There is no flag-waving, no black-and-white ideals to cling to. And when it’s all said and done, mere survival will be victory.

I wanted to write this kind of story because I think precious few exist in the genre. Active Measures, I hope, helps to fill in the gap.

Excerpt from Active Measures:

There is great power in letting go.

But no one had taught him that. No one had plunged down their hands to dig up the shards and piece him back together. No one had ever tried.

Not yet.

Jack Galloway weighed his surroundings with a wary intent: a few muted women, their bodies engulfed by the deep, black, obscuring fabric of a chador; the cliques of men, young, old and plenty lost somewhere in the gap between; and their voices—the usual voices, the normative patterns—at times exuberant toward the cricket match on the television suspended from the far wall, at times silenced by an assuaging drag on a water pipe, at times hushed in acquiescence of the CCTV camera suspended to the other; at no time content. Their faces were unfamiliar to him yet their patterns, their movements, their fleeting glances, their questioning eyes were not—all caught by his own, all measured, processed and stored lest his eyes ever fall upon them again. Then he would know. Then he would vanish. Familiar faces in unfamiliar places were deadly in the denied corners of the world.

Jack took his cuff and wiped down a ceramic cup. He hadn’t seen his potential minder since he ducked into the café, although that was likely by design. In Moscow, it was called “dolphin surveillance”—now you see me, now you don’t. The KGB would tail the subject with a sloppy team, making the surveillance obvious and then promptly pull the team off, replacing them with a much more skilled unit, of which the subject wouldn’t be granted the slightest hint. It was meant to deceive the subject into a false sense of security—the illusion of reality: an unreality—like the shadows dancing over the cave wall before the captivated prisoners, chained and ignorant of the raging fire at their backs. All mere projections; charades; lies in the dark.

Jack left the café, averting his face from the CCTV camera—the security services had unfettered access to the hard drives—and returned to the street under a gentle fall of rain.

It was just as his father had shown him in the front room of their embassy housing in Hampstead. His father would extend his arm and on cue, four coins would drop from his sleeve onto the table. He would count them and smile, “Are you with me?”

Jack continued down the street toward Tajrish Square, the hub of the affluent neighborhoods of northern Tehran. The streetlamps lit the way before him, and behind him. His minders hadn’t made themselves known, if they were even there. He hailed a passing cab. It pulled to the curb, splashing through the runoff that had gathered into shallow lakes of light. He directed the cab three blocks south, then promptly ordered it to stop, hopped out and doubled back five blocks north, where he arrived at Ammar Street, a quiet, leafy residential lane flanked by distinguished walled homes. Here, even the most capable surveillance unit would be pressed to find cover. Jack wasn’t keen to make it easy for his shadows. He kept on down the street.

His father would place the coins in a line on his right palm and count out each one, again, deliberately. Then, he folded his fingers on both hands, the right one touching the edge of the coins. He smiled again. “Are you with me?” Jack would nod. His father sharply flipped his hands, the backs turned to the ceiling. He smiled, turned over his right hand and opened it. Three coins. He turned over his left hand. One coin. “Did you see it jump?”

On the opposite side of the street, Jack saw a white, stone villa surrounded by a high wall and a manicured garden. The lights inside were doused and the curtains drawn—save for one. Suspended in a window on the upper floor was the soft orange flicker of a candle. Jack took note and walked on. He would wait for contact. That candle in the window was all he could concretely know, the only static light in a field of shifting shadows, flickers, projections and charades—lies in the dark; a solemn sign his father had shown him twenty-five years before.

That candle had been snuffed out. But no one had ever taught Jack why.

Not yet.

What exciting story are you working on next?

Active Measures: Part II, the epic continuation of the trilogy. If Part I is a six-hundred-page doorstopper, Part II will be a door-breaker! There are moments coming up in this story that I’ve anticipated for over a decade. If I’m lucky enough to write them well, I can die a happy man.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

That’s a difficult question to answer. There’s no triumphal arch to pass under, no embryotic cocoon to shed. If you’re fortunate someone might throw you a party? For me, I guess I just looked up from my laptop one day, frowned at the empty coffee cup, saw all the research and notebooks and crumpled manuscript pages and figured, “Well…this is happening.”

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

Sadly, I don’t. Getting to the point where I can write full-time is probably my greatest struggle right now. I once read somewhere that you have to be fanatical about claiming your writing time and defending it at all costs. It’s true! I’ve spent more gorgeous weekends locked inside my office and gone into my day job on only a couple hours of sleep much more than I care to admit. Hopefully that’ll change soon. I’m trying.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I don’t really do much outlining, which admittedly for a novel of this size and detail—with a few hundred named characters and multiple plotlines wrapped around the globe—can be pretty dangerous. It’s just never worked for me. I haven’t found a way to structure my thoughts in bullet points or flowcharts that accurately reflects the story on a sort of macro scale, I guess. It all stays in my head until I’ve gotten to that particular chapter or scene and then I’ll sketch it out on paper until I feel I’m ready to write. If you looked in my notebooks, the bottom half of the pages are all blank.

Also… Gym shorts. Gotta stay comfy. And it helps if my cat is snoozing nearby.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

An actor about as early as I can remember. I was perpetually in costume (went as George Washington for Halloween when I was seven… I was a weird kid, I know), always telling a story, annoying my older cousins at Thanksgiving. After that phase wore off, I probably first toyed with the idea of being a writer of some kind at around ten and was fixated on that for a while. When I was fourteen my guidance counselors convinced me to look at something a bit more practical, so I decided on intelligence analyst. In college I strayed perilously close to becoming a born-again political hack—then I had a quarter-life crisis and saw the light.

Links:

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Amazon | Goodreads

Thanks for being here today, Matt! All the best with your writing!

Interview with playwright and novelist Richard Slota

Playwright and novelist Richard Slota joins me today to talk about his debut piece of literary fiction, Stray Son.

Bio:

Richard Slota is a mother-son incest survivor. He writes poetry, plays, novels and non-fiction. He just published a non-fiction book, Captive Market: Commercial Kidnapping Stories from Nigeria. Stray Son is his first work of fiction.

His new plays, Babatunde in Hell and Mascularity, will have staged readings this October in San Francisco. His short play, We All Walk in Shoes Too Small was produced at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Dream Big and Famous Michael were staged by Solano Repertory Company in northern California.

He earned BA degrees in psychology and theatre arts and an MA in Creative Writing. He has 3 grown children.

He is a member of the Playwright’s Center of San Francisco and serves on the Mental Health Board of San Francisco.

Welcome, Richard. Please tell us about your current release.

The book description says: Stray Son is an adult novel telling the story of a haunted Vietnam vet in the year 2000, reduced to working for a Santa Barbara mortuary, picking up dead bodies. One day he picks up a live one—his elderly father’s young ghost, a WWII Marine who starts following him around town. Then son receives a phone call that his old father just died. At that moment the young Marine knocks on the son’s trailer door. The grieving, confused son can no longer keep this apparition from his wife and kids—and opens the door. The Marine finally declares why he is there: to straighten out his stray son—and bum a ride to see his dying mother in a 1942 Sioux City, Iowa hospital. The son needs to take his family to Sioux City in the year 2000 to attend his father’s funeral. So the young father and the old son take their battles back to World War II on a trip across a wartime America towards death and an elusive reconciliation.

However, I don't believe anything I can say about my book in a synopsis really captures the quality or deep humor of the writing. Yes, it's a dark subject, with dark scenes, but interspersed and mixed in are highly comic scenes--like life. A big part of this story describes driving across America in 1942. The painstakingly researched descriptions are full of extremely accurate detail. I even calculated the speed of the '37 Packard Super 8 Fleetwood, the distances traveled, and the length of all the family's rest stops. The next town appears on the horizon at the correct time and the sun sets at the correct time. The weather in Western Iowa really occurred on that day in 1942. Thank you, Sioux City Library. Why'd I do that? It helped me, the writer, believe my own fantasy. 

What inspired you to write this book?

The death of my father. My parents and siblings had kicked my out of my family 10 years before he died. But I put my family in the car and took us all to his funeral anyway. This novel is in part a fictionalization of that event and an attempt to deal with my dead father with whom I could no longer fight. I hated him when I started writing and loved him when I finished.

Excerpt from Stray Son:

I’M TRYING TO HOLD off an eviction notice and pay my shrink’s bill by picking up dead bodies at night for Mission Memorial Cemetery and Crematory in Santa Barbara. One night, I’m waiting on a suicide at a hospital morgue, killing time reading an article called “Reasons To Kill Yourself” in the local weekly entertainment rag. Reason number thirty-four is, “You pick up bodies for a cemetery.” Needless to say, the article put a damper on the rest of the night.

TWO NIGHTS LATER, the cordless phone ringing rouses me. I reach over and grab it from the floor beside the bed, not wanting to wake my dutiful wife, after routine sex that failed to burn down our seedy, aluminum-sided doublewide at the Santa Barbara Arms Mobile Home Park.

I press a button and say, “Hello.”

“Patrick Jaworsky,” mispronounces the familiar voice of our cemetery answering service’s female dispatcher.

“It’s Ya-woor’-skee. If you’re gonna wake me up at whatever the hell time it is, at least get my name right.”

“Okay Patrick,” she answers, her voice both dismissive and unapologetic. “Anyway, I have a death call at a private residence. Can you take the assignment?”

 “What time is it?”

“Two oh six.”

I feel an achy resentment.. I just wanna go back to sleep. I’m tempted to use the ol’ “I-have-diarrhea” excuse, but I’ve used it before with this woman and a removal’s worth a hundred dollars cash under the table. Our landlord just sent a thirty-day eviction notice. Since I got run out of the sewage treatment plant job six months ago, we can’t pay all our bills with just my unemployment and my wife’s paycheck. Now, after three months of body-snatching, we’re only a month behind on rent. And last night our six- and sixteen-year olds were asking for new clothes and their own computers.

I finally convince myself: “I’ll do it.”

She asserts she’ll put me through to voicemail.

“Hold it one ever-loving minute,” I protest as I walk out to the kitchen, naked, turn on the light, find the cemetery clipboard and a pen, drop into a chair at the kitchen table.

“Okay, now.”

After a click, the recording starts; male voice soaked with alcohol says his partner just died of AIDS. I listen to the answering-service woman ask the standard questions and scribble the information on my form: Was the coroner called? Yes. Was the death expected? Yes. Then, name: Mr. Clark; next of kin: Mr. Geis; address: a condominium on West Cabrillo Boulevard; date of birth: 3/30/1964; date of death: 6/1/2000; the details of pre-need arrangements; the phone number.

I call the phone number. The same male voice on the recording answers, and I say, “I’m Patrick Yaworsky from Mission Memorial Cemetery. I understand your partner has died at home.” I confirm the directions to the residence, and tell him that two of us will be there in twenty to thirty minutes.

I consult the June-on-call list. I’m paired with Gino and I call him. After a minute a very groggy Gino says, “No problem, let’s roll.”

DEATH IS FUNNY TO THINK ABOUT because, although my job is all about death, it’s not my “issue.” I try to empathize and I try to comfort, but I feel disconnected. I’m not the age, on average, that people die, and right now me and my wife and kids are doing well.

Then, last week I got a scare when my boss called me into the office. He invited me to sit down.

I stayed standing and said, “What’s this all about?”

“Patrick, you need to improve your ‘customer satisfaction scores’ with the bereaved.”

“There’s been no complaints from the dead,” I said.

“Don’t be so sure.”

“So, I’m cold with stiffs.”

“Cold with the living, too.” He pointed at a chair, “Sit down.”

I turned and walked out.

He called after me. “It won’t work. You’re not fired.”

I grinned and kept walking. It must be hard to find employees in this line of work.

My shrink told me last session I’m not “in touch” with a whole range of things I’m afraid of. My family life has gone so well for me since I was kicked out of my original family back in Iowa ten years ago. Fact is, I have no way of knowing if my parents are living or dead, unless I get a call from one of them. Fat chance, which is fine with me. Saves the trouble of acting like I care.

What exciting story are you working on next?

I have a staged reading in October of my new play, MASCULARITY: a play about Men, Gravity and Gender, set in the world of power lifting in a grimy, rundown gym. It stars the world’s second strongest man and his motley crew of hangers-on and wanna-bes’.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

When I was trying to woo my high school girlfriend by writing her poems.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

I write full time. I write in the mornings, which can spill into the afternoons. I am retired and do unpaid work as a appointed member of the Mental Health Board of San Francisco. I also am an Adjudicator for Theater Bay Area, an arts organization. I see 50 to 60 plays a year and grade all aspects of these plays, for an annual theatre awards program.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

Coffee is my fuel. Going to the gym 5 days a week is my way to stop writing.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A Catholic priest.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

I am working on a book about the multi-billion dollar business of evangelical religion in West Africa as a sequel to my book about the commercial kidnapping trade in Nigeria.

Links:

Kindle | LinkedIn 

Thanks for being here today, Richard!

Interview with YA author Rocky Gregory

Author Rocky Gregory is here today and we’re chatting about his young adult adventure novel, One Groovy Summer.

Bio:

Rocky was born and raised in SE Virginia. He was fourteen when he heard the Beatles for the first time. He became a big fan of the British Rock Invasion. He loved all the songs and groups like the Stones, Animals, Kinks, The Who, Zombies, Dave Clark Five, etc.

Then the sixties took off. Somehow he managed to thrive and grow through it all. He had a real blast in the seventies. Being a single guy, he would disco the nights away.

Now he is a respectable married man living on the coast of Southern California with his sweet wife and lovely daughter and two cats. 

Welcome, Rocky. Please tell us a little bit about this novel.

This is a story about two boys who just graduated from high school in 1968. They know they could be drafted into the Vietnam War at any time. So their goal for the summer is to have as much fun and adventure as they possibly can, because who knows what’s going to happen next!

The summer of 1968 was a very eventful time – a time of great changes. There was women’s lib, civil rights, and anti-war movements going on. We had the pill and “Make Love Not War”, and Hippies all happening at the same time. It was a great time to be a teenager. There was the cool cars and fantastic music. It’s all in the novel, plus many funny and romantic moments. It’s one groovy experience.

What inspired you to write this book?

A lot of the book is based on my own personal experiences. I would tell these stories to my friends and family. And they would urge me to write a book about it, and I finally did.

What exciting story are you working on next?

I’m doing a story about a sixteen-year-old boy who is sent to a military academy far away from his home and friends. It’s a coming of age story with drama, comedy, and some mystery solving.

When did you first consider yourself a writer?

When I was class paper editor in college, I started writing magazine articles. After I had two of them go to print, I knew I had real skill as a storyteller.

Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?

I write part time at night mostly

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

I hand write it all down in a notebook first. Then when I am typing the novel, I edit and things to it.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

I wanted to be an airplane pilot.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

I love to play tennis and go to the beach. I live on the southern coast of California, so I can go to the beach every day. I love meeting and corresponding with my fans.

Links:

Website | Facebook

Thanks for visiting today, Rocky!

Interview with poet Peter Jacob Streitz

The man helping me kick off a new week is Peter Jacob Streitz. We’re talking about poetry today. Peter has two books of poems, Hellfires Shake the Blues, and No Words . . . Just News.

Bio:

Peter Jacob Streitz was born an iconoclastic hick in upstate New York. Raised by a single mom after his dad flew the coop instead of flying The Hump, over the Burma Road in World War Two, where he won the Distinguish Flying Cross by losing both the Japs and his mind. His inevitable departure didn’t affect Peter—as he morphed into an All-American boy and athlete who was awarded a four year, full-boat scholarship to Alfred University (which he rejected) before counter-culturing his way towards the only degree ever given by Boston University in Alternative Education.

This, of course, primed him for his personal low as a Repo Man to his meteoric rise to corporate management in the now defunct computer giants of Compugrahic and Wang, plus the largest chemical company in the world, BASF. Soon after getting his dream job of a Multi-International Customer Service Manager (with worldwide influence and an actual business card) he, same as his father, lost his marbles and bailed from reality, before moving from Beantown to the Left Coast and set up shop as a househusband—sans any kids—for his corporate executive wife, and thereby, bravely embarked on the delusional life of being a novelist-slash-poet while incorporating the business plan of Divine Intervention to ensure his inevitable success.

Welcome, Peter. What do you enjoy most about writing poems?

Their appearance joyously announces the end of my writer’s block. All my poems begin as an anger, confusion, frustration, and\or my search for clear and concise answers to questions that either don’t exist or are just too simple to be true. That’s when the beavers go to work. All my thoughts begin to circulate in a boggy jumble and the beavers methodically, and forcefully, begin to build their dam against my poetic flow, either up or downstream, ruthlessly jamming me between the shores. This creates, if not a torment, then an adrenaline-junkie’s kind of excitement in my mind as the pressure continuously builds and the reservoir fills to bursting. Then all hell erupts as the logs give way and a solid stream of poetry begins to dictate itself—as I type as quickly as I can in the hopes of not being swept away or drowned in my own confluence of madness merging with the lifeline of verse.  

Can you give us a little insight into a few of your poems – perhaps a couple of your favorites?

My poems are spiritual news. Which has absolutely nothing to do with religion—quite the opposite. My poems are the “found pieces” that litter the mind. You know, the discarded bits and pieces that don’t fit the privatized propaganda that’s eventually verbalized as one’s personal truth, thought, or intended deception. Most of these remnants (these discards of immorality and\or sanctimony) are found in the usual places; meaning, the gutters, back alleys or the grand boudoirs of the brain. And as they’re merely leftover from a whole—and normally completely out of context—I make no moral judgement on their meaning or intent I simply give them air to breath and a platform from which to have their say. Favorites are WINGED RATS or A DYING MOTHER. 

What form are you inspired to write in the most? Why?

My form, and not content (as I’m so often reminded) seems to take the shape of wine being manically dispensed—by Charles Bukowski—into an hourglass decanter. Why? It palliates the Sisyphean hangover.

What type of project are you working on next?

I’d like to answer this, but as I have no say in the matter I can’t.

When did you first consider yourself a writer / poet?

In the sixth grade, when I snagged first prize in a writing contest. They took a bunch of us juvenile delinquents to this stink-hole of a fish hatchery for some learnin’ about how fish mate by squeezing a load of sperm and eggs into a big ol’ mixing vat . . .and I wrote of my experience from the fish’s point of view . . . winning a Martin fish reel, the Mohawk model.

How do you research markets for your work, perhaps as some advice for not-yet-published poets?

Research for my work is akin to a molting leper trying to shake hands at a Malibu beach party . . . there aren’t many takers . . . and judging by the sight and sound of my verse no one is nominating them for any category—much less an Oscar.  As for advice, never use the word soul.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?

Every day, before I write a word . . . I read as much celebrity-crap news as I can stand . . . deadening the outside world . . . and leaving me with only my own thoughts as entertainment.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

A priest with a harem.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?

Writing truthfully from the heart is not only vital, but it’s also lifesaving for those living both within and without.

Thanks for being here today, Peter.