The Long and Winding Road, J. M. Unrue

As I said, I take notes. I write things down and try to be as specific as possible, then go back to the project-at-hand. 

I do not do a detailed outline. I do a scenario, what I guess you could call Draft Zero. I write as much as I know without any embellishments from beginning to end. Not a lot of dialogue unless it's something specific I know I want to include. Then I start hammering away on a scene-by-scene basis. 

The last book I read was over a year ago. It's called The Five, and it's an historical book about the five women murdered by Jack the Ripper. It really fleshes them out and gives a lot of context to who they were before they fell on hard times. I love to read well-researched pieces. I just hate doing them. It's a great book. 

I don't write genre fiction. I really love to write social satire. We are a bizarre species and I like people who are aware of their own foibles. Our current environment is rife with people who are not, so I try to give them a good skewering. I'm well aware of my own deficiencies. I don't think there's anything noble about that, but I like that about myself and have a problem with people who use ignorance as a weapon--especially in politics and spiritual matters. I can spot a phony a mile away, and we are overwhelmed by them these days. I really don't enjoy research so I try to avoid historical context as much as I can. 

Some. I delve deepest into my emotional and spiritual evolution. There are many states-of-mind I can relate to. Being neurotic really helps. 

I identify with everyone I write about. All of them share aspects of my personality. I write a lot about people who are in over their heads in some situation and how they extricate themselves from them. This is as true of a quarrel between partners as it is in some fantasy setting. 

That feelings for lack of a better word, are more important than static facts. I write characters with layered personalities and I hope readers would recognize that and find it edifying...and entertaining. 

I am a spree writer. I may write for ten, twelve hours straight for five or six days then do review for a few days. I also take notes whenever I get an idea and try to get a running start on my next writing session. 

I've had several, but it's always when someone dies. Someone dies in all my books. I'm not morbid. A reader actually pointed this out to me. I think I had six books out at the time and she noticed that someone died in all of them. I hadn't really noticed. Sharing life with a character who becomes full-fledged and then dies is hard on me. Exploring the aftermath is a healing process, but it's never easy. Sometimes I'll mope around for days. 

When I first started out--a million years ago--I did. They way I avoid it is by taking notes, so I know where I'm headed before I start. Narrative embellishments are the most difficult part of writing fiction, and that's where I need my focus to be--not on the framework details. 

I don't read. People ask me what I like to read all the time. Unless I know I'm not going to write for an extended period, I don't read. I stream a lot of British crime shows. The way they do television is unique. Their season  might be four ninety-minute episodes. I watch college sports. No matter the sport or the school, they all play to the max. I keep up with the news, such as it is. I live in the upper Midwest so the summers are special. I spend a lot of time outside. Winters can be harsh. 

Well, there's always research, but I haven't had to do much serious research since The Festival of Sin, my sci-fi/fantasy book. Most of my books deal more with character development rather than time-and-place, so I have a lot of internal information to sort through. I don't write much historical fiction, so I just need to harness the emotional construct of the characters in a particular setting. 

I design my own covers. I use photos from Istock--most of them are twelve bucks--then have a designer I use on fiverr to do the text and graphics. It's books-on-a-budget for me. 

I just finished my eighth book. It should be out in March, 2024. I have a couple more stories that I'm developing, but there will be a gap...maybe a couple of years. 

When I was a kid I wanted to be an actor. I worked part-time at a tiny TV station in a small market when I was in college and enjoyed that. I could tape a high school basketball game by myself with two stationary cameras and one mobile. It was all very primitive, but I had a blast. I didn't pursue that as a career. I've had a lot of regrets about that. Writing has been a chicken-and-egg thing for me. You need solitude to write and I became more solitary as I got older.

My latest book, God on a Budget, took a little over a year, but I had extensive notes I'd accumulated over five years or so. It's a story collection, so I kept a notebook on every story as I was working on other things. 

I write on a reclining sofa in my basement. I need the quiet and it's private. 

Not when I write. Most of the music I listen to is forty years old or older. I love Prog Rock from the late sixties and seventies. I'm an old fart, anyway, so what can I tell you? I like quiet when I write, need it, in fact. 

A lot. Parts of all my characters share traits with people I have known. I have a good memory for those types of things. I can't tell you what I had for lunch yesterday, but I can tell you the moment I knew my best friend in junior high was hurting. Articulating the gamut of emotions is the most challenging part of character-driven fiction and I'm lucky there. Doesn't mean I'm particularly good at it. Just that I understand it all. 

Always. And deeply. Sometimes I have to force myself to take a long dose of reality. Get away from my head.