I have Author Mike Faricy with me today and I’ve picked his brain about writing along with a few other things. He’s going to tell us about his books, including his latest one. So pull up a chair, grab your beverage of choice and let’s see what he has to say.

   Mike, tell me, what inspired you to choose your genre (genres)?

I write in the crime fiction genre primarily because I enjoy reading crime fiction as well as true crime. As much as I read and enjoy the genre it always puzzled me that there were so many works that dealt with the ex-special forces sort of guy who just wanted to be left alone, but someone pushed him too far and now he’s coming back with a vengeance. Or, the sort of tale where the protagonist just happened to grow up across the street from the head of the CIA, and now he has a special source for intelligence. My tales aren’t like that. They’re really about the sort of individuals we all know. We may wisely keep these individuals at a distance, but you know them none the less, and we’re curious. Maybe that sort of different guy in your high school class or that kind of crazy girl that bad luck always seems to find and she lives on the next block. They inhabit the strata of life just below the surface of polite society. They are not going to be saving the world from terrorists, stopping government coups or uncovering an international bank conspiracy. The situations they find themselves in are due to their own bad decisions, but then bad decisions make for interesting tales.

     That sounds like an interesting genre to me. Now, next question, we all have issues with balancing our time between writing, editing, promoting, along with other obligations and personal time. What works best for you?

Well, what would work best was if I didn’t have to sleep, but that’s not happening. I really have to schedule my time and stick to it. By the way, this makes me just about the dullest guy in town. I try and deal with most of my promotional work before 9:00 in the morning. I break for breakfast then read and lightly edit what I wrote the previous day which maybe takes about two hours. Then I’m sort of in the swing of things and I try and write ten pages. Some days it’s eight and occasionally it’s twelve pages. I knock off around 5:00. I have a brief lunch in there somewhere. I usually have my phone off, no music or anything. I don’t work off an outline so at the end of the day no one is more surprised than me as to what has happened. I break for dinner then run errands or do social and promotional things in the evening. I don’t really watch TV that would represent three to five hours a night that I can be working ‘book stuff’. Having described my day it’s obvious my children are now out on their own. I no longer have the responsibilities that a young family require. Oh yeah, and I can’t have a glass of wine or a beer with dinner because I’ll drift off around eight o’clock. See, I told you I was dull.

      Wow, what a busy day. I still work a day job but would love to be able to spend my day working solely on “book stuff” like you do. I want you to tell us about your characters next. What type of hero do you normally choose? What type of heroine?

My heroes usually have one foot on either side of the law. They deal with the day to day headaches we might all face. Hopefully assault, murder and kidnapping are not part of your daily routine, but they’re not involved in some huge international event. My characters deal in the messy side of life. They have a wise guy sense of humor, probably drink too much on a regular occasion. Possibly end up in a ‘relationship’ with the wrong sort of individual. Or, if they end up with the right sort of woman she usually throws her hands up and decides that the guy is just a little too much work and by the way her biological clock is ticking and well, thanks, but goodbye. Of course I never noticed this until it was pointed out to me, but it’s usually a woman who sort of saves the day for my guys, pulls their feet away from the fire. Then she tells them to never, ever call her again, maybe blocks their number, deletes them from her Facebook friends, files a restraining order, you know the usual…

      Oh my gosh! Do they ever end up together? Being a romance author I’m partial to the happy ending you know. Who are some of your favorite authors? Did they inspire you to write?

Let me answer that in reverse. Yes, they did inspire me to write. I really got hooked on Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, and Clive Cussler. Then, Robert B. Parker, Michael Connelly, Elmore Leonard, William Kent Krueger, Carl Hiaasen and on and on. I have a tendency to latch on to a new author and read everything they have written. I love the idea of ordinary people getting into screwball situations. I have a friend who did about six months of social work as part of a masters program. One of her cases was two brothers who get in a fight with one another. One guy stabs his brother. The brother who is stabbed gets behind the wheel of his car and runs his brother down, then drags him into the car and drives the two of them to the hospital. I mean you can’t make it up, and that was just their stupid act for that week. They did some equally outrageous thing the week before and the week after. I like writing about those sorts of characters. If nothing else at the end of my book you’ve been entertained. And you know what? Come to think of it none of us really seem all that bad based on the characters in my books.

      Now for the tough question. What has been the most difficult aspect of your writing career?

I think the most difficult aspect of my writing career is just getting the word out to people that I even exist. It’s working now, or beginning to work. I have fans in the UK, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand. I was ranked number fifteen in crime fiction on Amazon in Germany for a while. I look back and it seems like a logical, structured plan when in fact it’s a series of grasping at straws and trying a million different things. Some of which work. Many of which don’t work, or take an incredible amount of time and effort. I’m never at a loss for stories and ideas, of course I’ve always been a good liar so that may have something to do with it. But in the end getting the word out and building that fan base has been a lot of work. It’s worth it, glad I did it, but it didn’t just happen.

    I think all authors can relate to the problem of “getting the word out there.” Fun stuff now. Give us a little dirt about yourself. What’s your favorite guilty indulgence?

Like I said earlier I’m the dullest guy in town so there really isn’t a lot of dirt on me. Or, if there is the statue of limitations hasn’t quite expired so it’s best not to mention anything. I do play the bagpipes in a band. The Brian Boru Irish Pipe Band, here in St. Paul, Minnesota. I’ve been doing that for about a hundred years. It’s a lot of fun and you get to wear a skirt, oh sorry, wear a kilt around town. Of course that leads to a whole lot of stories that we shouldn’t go into here.

      Okay…we won’t go there. So, Mike, tell us about your newest book.

My newest book is my thirteenth and has just been released. It is number six in my Dev Haskell series, entitled Last Shot. Dev Haskell is a private investigator with an eye for the ladies and a knack for making some wrong assumptions. Let me just say he finds himself in some unique situations. I had a lot of fun writing Last Shot and I have to say it’s an excellent tale. Dev turns down an investigation thinking he’s doing someone a favor and well, things don’t quite go as planned, but then they never do.

Once I finish a book I’m chomping at the bit to begin work on my next project. I don’t do a lot of signings, but I did two this past year and it bowled me over how many people wanted to know if I had a series. Then, they wanted to know what was the order in the series. My usual response was they’re all stand alone books and can be read in any order. That didn’t seem to make a difference, people wanted to read the books in order. Based on that experience I’ve come out with all new covers on the Dev Haskell stories that definitely indicate the books are a series and then after the title it lists a case number to indicate the order they were written. So, the official title of my most recent book is Last Shot: Case 6 in the Dev Haskell series. I’m currently working on a completely new series, I’d like to have two works completed in that by June 2014. The new series is going to be a little darker and more sinister than the Dev Haskell books, and I think just as entertaining. I’m also packaging three of my stand alone works, Chow For Now, Merlot and End of the Line as a trilogy and that package will be available in e-format hopefully by February 2014.

Hey, thanks for taking the time to get this far in the interview. Please check out all my books on Amazon. Please feel free to drop me a line, my email address is Mikefaricyauthor@gmail.com or you can find me on Facebook;https://www.facebook.com/mikefaricyauthor

Many thanks and enjoy the rest of your week.

Thank you so much for joining me here in Anna’s World today, Mike. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to know a little more about you. I, too, will have thirteen books out by the end of the year. I also have a series, so I can relate to the interest sparked by a series. Readers love them! Stop back by anytime!