Tell us a little something about yourself.
I’m a full-time writer. I live in New York City with my wife of forty plus years. Almost all of my pre-writing work life was spent in various aspects of information technology including heading up my own small consulting firm and then for ten years working as a management consultant to major New York City banks. I’ve published two NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli mysteries. A Matter of Blood was a 2019 Lambda Literary Award finalist. The Blood Runs Cold was a 2020 Lambda Literary Award finalist and a 2020 Golden Crown Literary Society Goldie finalist. And, the third, A Message in Blood is coming January 2021. I’ve also published four full-length romances: Taking a Chance on Love, Ready for Love, No One But You and Matters of the Heart. The Disappearance of Lindy James, scheduled for publication in 2021, is general fiction. It features the characters in Taking a Chance on Love. My short stories have appeared in various mystery and romance anthologies. Other than writing, some of my favorite things are cooking, reading, and crossword puzzles. I also love traveling in Italy, particularly southern Italy which is not as touristy as the north. Until the pandemic is under control, I’m traveling via the internet and cooking and eating lots of Italian food.
- What inspires you to write?
Everything inspires me. I started writing fiction to challenge myself, to see if I could write a novel. I had no intention of publishing. But somewhere along the way, writing became a necessity, an inexplicable deep need. For example, I worked really hard to meet my August 1 deadline to send the manuscript for the third NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli mystery to my publisher. My fantasy was that I would spend a couple of months reading, doing crosswords and relaxing before starting another book. That lasted about two days. I did read and do crosswords (as I do even when writing) but my mind kept going back to a partially written mystery (with different characters) and a partially written romance and I suddenly found myself writing at the computer again. I can’t not write.
- What is your writing process like? How do you map out and develop your work?
I don’t map, plan or outline. I let my imagination lead the way. My process is iterative and messy. Something gets my brain working and I sit at the computer and write as much as I know about it at that time. Then I sit back and look at what I’ve written. Generally, my subconscious has laid down clues, mostly in the character I’ve created or sometimes in the story, that point me in a direction. Using these clues, I come up with a short list of ideas for scenes. As I write those scenes, ideas for other scenes pop up. If I get stuck, I repeat the analysis of what I’ve written and list as many scenes as I can see at that time. Some famous writer described this approach as comparable to driving a car on a dark night, on a dark road, and only being able to see as far ahead as the light of the headlights allows.
- How have you grown as a writer from your first book to now?
Though I still battle these tendencies, I no longer write paragraph-long sentences and repeat the same thought three times in the same sentence or paragraph. After I completed the first draft of A Matter of Blood, my first book, I joined Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America, two professional mystery writing organizations, and made friends with published and unpublished writers. I attended meetings and workshops and took classes to learn as much as I could about police work and the craft of writing. In my opinion, the best way to learn to write is to learn craft from good writers, read widely, and write, write, write. I’ve done and continue to do all three. I hope I never stop growing.
- Which of your books took you the most time to write? Why?
I had never written a word of fiction when I decided to write a novel. In fact, I had absolutely no idea of how to go about it. So before I typed one word, I spent nine months reading every book I could find about writing. Once I started, it took about six months to complete the full one hundred thousand word manuscript for the mystery I’d decided to write. That manuscript contained the story I wanted to tell about NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli but it was far from a finished product. I spent the next thirteen years learning to be a better writer and applying what I learned to the manuscript. I rewrote and rewrote that book until I felt it was done. It was published in 2018 as A Matter of Blood. In the meantime, I wrote the second Corelli book, a number of mystery short stories and quite by accident, a romance short story that led me to write a full-length romance, Matters of the Heart, which was published in 2016.
- What is it that gets a project started for you: a character, a situation, or…?
I start with an image, a character, a snippet of overheard conversation, a character talking in my head, a newspaper article, or, to be honest, just about anything that triggers my imagination. These things pop up all the time and to preserve them and the inspiration I create a word document and write down as much as I know about it. Some of these documents are just sketchy notes, a line or two, and others a couple of chapters or up to twenty thousand words.
- What most challenges you when you are writing?
Writing fast enough. I started late and I have many, many stories in my head and in my files that I am desperate to share. I believe my process slows me down, that people who plan and outline write faster. I’ve tried and I just can’t do it.
- Do you find that the original idea changes as you work with it? Does the idea you started with ever become something entirely different than when you started?
Yes. Because I write without a plan and because I let the characters lead me to and through the story, I often find myself on a path I hadn’t even considered. I usually welcome the changes because they make it interesting for me. But sometimes the characters take me places I don’t want to go. For example, in a recent romance, Ready for Love, I had an image of a very minor character from my first romance watching the main characters from that book dance at their wedding. Pretty much all I knew about her was she feeling sad and her first name was Renee. So I start writing about why she was sad, then a little later in the book Renee is asked about herself and she says something like: “My mother is an African-American, my father is a white Frenchman and I grew up in France.” I was stunned. She presented as white, not mixed race. It took my breath away. As a white writer, I felt writing a mixed race character came with a ton of issues I was unprepared to deal with. So I tried to change her but I couldn’t. I bit the bullet, did lots of research, had a sensitivity reader and put it out into the world.
- What topic/subject/character/place/time period draws you to write about it again and again?
New York City. With the exception of my latest romance, the mysteries and the romances, long and short, all take place there.
- How much research do you do for your books?
It depends on the story I’m telling. For the mysteries I do a lot of checking to make sure I get the facts right plus I use my police contacts to clarify points of procedure. I’ve also used the internet and books to research serial killers, sex trafficking, the United Nations, locations in New York City and West Virginia. But for my romances and the general fiction book coming in 2021, I’ve done considerable research on a specific issues including heart disease, premature births, being multiracial, and Post Partum Psychosis. Generally, I use a combination of the internet and books and, where possible, talking to knowledgeable people.
- What is special about the mystery genre for you?
I’ve always loved mysteries. My parents gave me the Nancy Drew mysteries when I was in elementary school and I devoured them. Nancy was brave and smart, a good role model. I often imagined myself as Nancy riding along in my roadster to solve a crime. I read mysteries for the challenge. If you follow the clues you catch the killer. And I write them for the challenge. Laying down the clues to allow the reader to join the investigation but not making them so obvious that the reader immediately guesses who did it.
Tell us about your newest book.
My latest book is a romance, not very interesting to mystery readers, I’m sure, so I’m going to talk about my three NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli mysteries–A Matter of Blood, The Blood Runs Cold, and, A Message in Blood. Kick-ass crime solver NYPD Detective Chiara Corelli is the heart and soul of the series. Her supporting cast includes her reluctant partner Detective P.J. Parker, her loving Italian-American family, reporter Darla North and a few faithful detectives. In A Matter of Blood Corelli and Parker investigate the murder of a Wall Street businesswoman who is so hated that the number of potential suspects seems unlimited. Amazon review: “…I truly enjoyed this mystery. It features a fascinating female cop–strong and competent, with a spiky personality and warm heart underneath, non-stop action, and a deep knowledge of New York City’s many neighborhoods and worlds, from a tight-knit Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, to Wall Street and Sutton Place–from police precincts, immigrants working for office cleaning services to super-rich stock brokers. The characters, including that of the victim and her family, are complex and interesting, as is the solution to the mystery.” The murder of the son of Italy’s ambassador to the UN in The Blood Runs Cold is politically sensitive. Then as the bodies mount up Corelli finds a photograph that seems to be the killer’s source book and the murders become personal. Amazon Review: “Now this is what I call a mystery! I went aroundand around with Chiara and P.J Parker as they worked tirelessly to find the killer who has been targeting an affluent group of friends. ….I am a huge fan of this author’s writing because I just couldn’t put this book down no matter how hard I tried!” A middle-of-the-night call, in A Message in Blood, summons Corelli and Parker to the scene of the politically sensitive murder of three prominent men. All naked. And if that isn’t sensitive enough, what they find hidden in a closet could be a career killer for them. Coming January 2021.
