Globe-Trotting Thrillers: Interview with Barry Award-winning author Brett Battles

By Mark Young

Brett Battles

Readers: Keep your eyes focused on this rising indie author. Thriller novelist Brett Battles paid his dues struggling to survive in the legacy publishing arena for a number of years before deciding to throw his hat into the indie publishing arena a few years ago. Brett offers readers a variety of thriller novels filled with unique characters—a man who disposes of bodies as part of his espionage work; a feisty female bounty hunter who never gives up; and a former soldier reluctantly drawn into life-threatening situations to save others—to describe just a few. Always expect the unexpected.

A world traveler, Brett brings these experiences drawn from his global wanderings onto the pages of his novels. Engaging characters, exotic locations, and page-turning suspense all blend together to make these thrillers a must-read. I have found his novels to be very entertaining. Intrigued, I contacted Brett by email to see if he might share a little about himself and his writing here on Hook’em & Book’em.

Mark: Brett, I am amazed at what a prolific writer you

are. At this rate, you might surpass James Patterson. At last count, twenty-two published novels since your first thriller appeared in 2007. In the last four months, you’ve released Take Down (December 2013), Dream Sky (January 2014), and last month, The Discarded, a Jonathan Quinn thriller. How do you keep up this pace?

Brett: The threat of self-waterboarding. Works every time. That and, well, writing is my job. Like everyone else who works, I need to do it every day. So when I finish one book, I don’t wait months or years to start the next. I’m usually onto it within a few business days at most. Being self employed means I have a real taskmaster for a boss!

Mark: Tell us a little about your latest thriller, The Discarded.

Brett: I wanted to write a story about an operative who has retired but is still haunted by a job he did, and continues to look for answers. I decided to use Orlando’s (Jonathan Quinn’s partner and girlfriend) mentor as the old op, so, of course, Quinn and Orlando and gang get pulled into the mystery. It’s about regret and greed and doing the right thing.

Mark: Your main character—Jonathan Quinn— has a rather unique occupation. What insight can you share with us about him? 

Brett: Quinn’s what they refer to in the espionage business as a cleaner. Not the assassin type cleaner, though he is very skilled in that area if necessary, but the kind of cleaner you call when you have a body that needs to disappear permanently. 

Mark: Given Quinn’s occupation, one might question whether he has a moral compass in life? If so, what would it be?

Brett: In broad strokes, Quinn tries to work for clients he believes are good as opposed to evil, though he can’t always be 100% sure of that. Plus he is driven by a very strong need to do the right thing, which is why he often gets pulled into situations that go beyond his basic job description.

Mark: Beside the Quinn series, you have written the Project Eden Thrillers, the Logan Harper Thrillers and the Alexandra Poe novels—the last co-written by author Robert Gregory Browne—among other works. Tell us a little about each.

Brett: Sure. I’ve been fascinated with virus/end of humanity stories since I was a kid, and always wanted to write my own. Project Eden is the result…humanity is on the brink of extinction, and man is pulling the trigger. 

Logan Harper is a series about a man who is trying to simplify his life by moving back to his hometown after a bad divorce and years working for a defense contractor, to work as a mechanic in his 80 year old dad’s auto shop. The thing is Logan is very good at helping people in trouble, whether he likes to admit it or not. His father Harp, though, is more than willing to get his son involved in things Logan would rather not even know about.

And Alexandra Poe…love her. She’s a tough as nails

bounty hunter that has reluctantly taken on work at a defense organization specializing in retrieving wanted individuals no matter where in the world they might be. Her hope is, by doing so, she will learn information that might lead her to her father—a fugitive himself, who disappeared a decade earlier.

Mark: Which authors have most influenced your writing?

Brett: So many. Initially I would say the greats of sci-fi—Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, to name three. They were my gateway into becoming a lifelong reader, and taught me the power of wonder and adventure. Other influences over the years include, Graham Greene, Robert Ludlum (earlier stuff through around Bourne Identity or thereabouts), Stephen King (huge influence), and Dean Koontz.

Though probably the author who had the most influence was William Relling, Jr. Not for anything he wrote, though he did write some great stuff, but because he was first my teacher at a class I took through UCLA extension, and then leader of the writers’ group I was in when I wrote THE CLEANER, my first published novel. He, more than anyone, help me to understand how to write a good story. 

Mark: Your web site bio indicates that you have traveled extensively throughout Asia and Europe, locations that factor into your writing of the Jonathan Quinn series and other novels. Are you a rolling stone just wanting to expand your universe or did you purposely travel to these places to add depth and color to your writing?

Brett: It’s a little bit of both. I LOVE to travel, so writing interesting locations into my stories was automatic. Not sure I even thought about it as a “thing.” I will now sometimes purposefully go somewhere I want to include in a book, while sometimes I go somewhere and decide, hey, this would make a great setting. That I can marry my love for writing and travel together makes me very happy. 

Mark: If you could only pick a couple of locations to re-visit, where would you go?

Brett: There are few places I’ve visited that I wouldn’t want to go again! But to narrow it down…hmmm…Vietnam, definitely. I was there about fifteen years ago, and know a lot has changed, so I’d love to see the difference. And how about Finland? I was there in the winter and would like to go when there isn’t ten feet of snow piled everywhere.

Mark: Tell us a little about your writing journey. As I understand it, you first began with legacy publishers and at some point began to pursue the indie publishing route. What prompted you to switch from traditional publishing to indie publishing? 

Brett: As most know, the publishing industry has gone through a lot of changes in the last several years, and will probably continue doing so for the foreseeable future. I did five books for Bantam Dell/Random House. When I was working on books four and five, the two people who were my biggest supporters at the imprint (my editor and the head of Bantam Dell) each left within four months of each other leaving me with a new team that was not invested in my work. When it came time for a new contract, they decided to pass, which is just part of business. It was also fine as I would have probably passed on any offer they may have made. It was time to move on. The question was where. I had at first thought about shopping around for another publisher, but was also intrigued by the growing indie publishing movement. Several friends—J.A. Konrath and Blake Crouch to name a couple—had been having success in this new area, so I decided to give it a try. It was a bit touch and go in the first few months, but since then I haven’t looked back. Love the indie life.

Mark: As mentioned above, your writing life must take up a lot of your waking hours. When not writing, how do you like to spend your leisure hours if you have any?

Brett: I do have a little. If I didn’t, I think I’d go completely crazy. I spend it many ways…spending time with my kids, catching up on TV shows I like, hiking, playing with my dog, movies, hanging out with friends, travel, the occasional video game…things like that.

Mark: Your education and work experience prior to full time writing seems to revolve around the television and the movie industry. How do your educational background and past jobs influence your writing?

Brett: I think the way working any job would, life experience, meeting different types of people, being exposed to situations that could be extrapolated into situations that can be used in stories…things like that.

Mark: Where do you see the publishing industry headed? What roles will writers, publishers, editors, agents, and others have in this new world?

Brett: I believe the rise of the independent author is a change that’s here to stay. Will traditional publishers still be around? I think they probably will. But I also think authors will continue to gain more power, and have more choices. Publishing will continue to evolve, and it will be interesting to see where it is in five years. The thing I do know is that the two most important things in the publishing world are readers and writers. And since readers need stories to read, authors will always have work to do.

Mark: What advice would you give new writers trying to get their first novel published?

Brett: Make sure it’s the best it can be. Decide which avenue to being published you want to pursue, and go for it. And, most importantly, start writing the next book.

Mark: What can fans of your work look forward to seeing published in the near future? What projects are you working on?

Brett: Several things are stirring around. A new Project Eden novel before the end of the year. Perhaps a new Quinn, also. And, if all goes according to plan, a standalone in the near future. 

Mark: Brett, thanks for joining us. We look forward to re-acquainting ourselves with Jonathan Quinn and all your other characters in the coming year.

*********

Brett Battles is a Barry Award-winning author of over twenty-two novels, including the Jonathan Quinn series, the Logan Harper series, and the Project Eden series. He’s also the coauthor, with Robert Gregory Browne, of the Alexandra Poe series. You can learn more at his website: brettbattles.com

Narco-Traffickers, Murders & Mexican Cartels: All in a day's work for cop-turned-writer C.L. Swinney

By Mark Young

Author Chris Swinney—writing as C.L. Sweeney—pens stories drawn from his own experiences. His day job is catching bad guys and whenever he can grab a few extra moments—he writes about them. Chris’ non-writing job is as a detective with a sheriff’s office in California. He has been loaned out to work on a Department of Justice task force focusing on drug trafficking and violent crimes. As an author, he writes crime thrillers, his debut novel Gray Ghost released a few weeks ago and his  second novel Collectors coming out later this year. It is always refreshing to read fiction written by someone who has lived the life—you know the cop-stuff is dead on. Chris is one of those writers.

Mark: Chris, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to join us here on Hook’em & Book’em. Tell us a little bit about your day job as a detective with the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office in California.

Chris: First, thanks for having me on Hook’em & Book’em. Now, a little bit about my job. I’m assigned to a DOJ Task Force as a representative of the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office. We basically do everything, from street level dealers and crimes against people to large scale narcotics and homicide investigations. This basically means we try to plan our days, but normally something else pops up that needs to be handled.

Mark:  As a crime fiction writer, I am highly interested in your expertise in cell phone forensics. On television and in the movies, viewers have grown accustomed to having law enforcement use cell phone technology to track down and catch bad guys. Everything from retrieving cell phone conversations to backtracking a person’s movement based upon tower pings and other contrivances. Tell us where reality leaves off and fantasy begins with cell phone forensics. What does law enforcement hope to gain from cell phone forensic? 

Chris: Without giving up too much information, I’d say cell phone forensics has gotten better and has led to solving crimes. Some of the stuff you see on TV is a little exaggerated, but I can tell someone with a cell phone forensic background has schooled them on what to do and say. Law enforcement is always behind in this technology, however, and we struggle with knowing others (NSA and secret squirrels) have the ability to assist local law enforcement, but they choose not to share the technology.  

Mark:  You are a narcotics detective assigned to work a task force operation with the Department of Justice. Tell us about these duties. Who do you team up with? Who are your general targets—street level traffickers, organized crime groups, Mexican cartels?

Chris: We team up with anyone who asks us for help or we work together as one large team. Some days we can’t get to our own work because major issues spring up, but, it’s satisfying when we’re successful. Among the other interesting things we do, I get to process clandestine labs, which helps keep the community safer. We also work organized crime groups, cartels, and essentially anyone doing bad things from San Francisco down to Monterey.

Mark:  What do you see as major drug trafficking trends? Years ago, cocaine exploded on the scene and flooded the market. A short time later, meth became a serious problem within our communities, later morphing into crystal meth. And heroin, which has plagued us forever, is always lurking out there looking for more victims—i.e., tragic death of Hunger Games star Phillip Seymour Hoffman last month. What are you seeing now as an emerging threat to our communities?

Chris:  I hate to say this, but ALL the drugs are on the streets in an alarming amount. In the San Francisco Bay Area, crystal methamphetamine is probably the most used and seen, but recently I found two kilos of cocaine on a guy, so you can’t dismiss cocaine. We have young people using heroin because it’s cheaper than OxyContin. And, we know heroin is being used, but we tend to focus on the crystal methamphetamine. As far as a trend, I’d say we’re not getting the support we need from the community or the people with the money these days. Having said that, we don’t give up and we continue to try to make the surrounding communities safer. Not really an “emerging” threat, but one that needs to be discussed, is the rampant abuse of pharmaceutical pills. 

Mark: As part of drug trafficking investigations, you are sometimes required to use wire taps to gather evidence. Explain to our readers the reality of this investigative technique, its limitations, and how it differs from what we see on television or in the movies.

Chris: The wire taps I’ve worked have been wild, from complex narco trafficking to murder for hire. However, they are very difficult to obtain and we tend to keep the entire process a secret. As far as the TV shows or movies I’ve seen featuring wire taps, they’ve been a little off. We don’t “flip a switch” or snap a finger and start hearing phone calls. It takes months to develop these types of cases.

Mark: Let’s switch subjects and talk about your writing life. Last

year, you came out with your debut novel, Gray Ghost, a crime thriller that takes place in the Bahamas where your main characters discover their fishing guides died in a mysterious explosion. Give our readers a little taste of what to expect?

Chris: I’ve always had a passion for the outdoors and law enforcement, so I took personal experiences and what I see every day and wrote a novel. I wrote inverted, that is, the reader knows fairly early on who the bad guy is, but I leave enough doubt and concern to provide a climatic ending.

Mark: How did you come up with the idea for this plot?

Chris: While flying into Andros, Bahamas, I noticed several downed planes on the tiny runway. I asked the locals about the planes and quickly learned about the narcotic trafficking occurring on the island headed to Miami. I interviewed and spoke to law enforcement, coast guard, and locals. Then, I just mulled the idea for years while life sort of took over. Fast forward eight years and I get into law enforcement-eventually working narcotics. It took four years for the novel to get published.

Mark: I would imagine your day job takes a big bite out of your time. What kind of writing schedule do you follow?

Chris: My writing schedule is as chaotic as my job. I write any time I can. Sometimes I speak out loud in my car into my cell phone recorder when I’m sitting on surveillance. When I get home, I help with the kids and try to write after that. When I have something that needs to be completed or an upcoming deadline, I buckle down and get it done.

Mark: What is your next writing project? Where are you in this process?

Chris: The next novel in the Bill Dix series is called Collectors. It’s written and I’m editing it now. I was able to feature a mentor of mine in the novel, Koti Fakava, who passed away unexpectedly leaving his wife and five kids. I’m donating the proceeds from Collectors to Koti’s family. I can’t describe how excited I am about this project. I’ve been able to get some great support, and the book is contracted. It should be out sometime in August.

Mark: Since you have one novel under your belt, what have you learned about the publishing and marketing business? Are there some things you might change or do differently this next time out?

Chris: I’ve learned quite a bit about the industry in the last five years. Publishing and marketing is a very difficult business. There are publishers out there that will prey on people who desperately want to see their work in print. I think if you continue to write and write well, you will get published. I think if you stick to your work and find an audience for it, you will become successful. I think it’s amazing to get published, but the real work comes with promoting. There are over ten million books on Amazon; somehow you must find a way to compete with all of them. As far as what I might try differently, I did that when I found a new publisher. I’m hopeful that I can be successful and keep my sanity while continuing to entertain readers.

Mark: Where can readers find you in the social media world? How can they reach you if they have any further questions?

Chris: I’m a big social media guy. I’m on Twitter, Facebook, Linked-In, Instagram (clswinney), Google+, and Goodreads. If you can’t reach me on these sites, you can reach my via email at swinster11@yahoo.com Thanks again for this wonderful opportunity!

********

About the Author: Chris Swinney (C. L. Swinney), is currently assigned to a Department of Justice Task Force that investigates a myriad of cases ranging from street level drug dealers and bank robbers to homicides and complex Mexican Cartel cases. When criminals run, Chris is called to find them. He puts his unbelievable experiences and everyday life as a Detective into his writing.

Chris officially began his writing career when his feature article was published in Fly Fisherman Magazine. After this, his work continued to appear in PointsBeyond.com, Alaskan Peninsula Newspaper, California Game & Fish, and again in Fly Fisherman Magazine. He's now a contributor to PoliceOne.com, the nation's premier law enforcement online magazine.

Catching Burglars: Ex-Cop-turned-Author Writes From Her Passion

By Kathy Bennett

[Editor's Note: Author Kathy Bennett writes from her own police experience. She served 29 years with Los Angeles Police Department. And if that was not enough experience, she married a cop. Find out more about Kathy at her own web site here]

Everyone who has a job knows that there are some aspects to the job that you like better than others. If you’re a baker maybe you don’t like baking the cake but you enjoy applying the icing. Perhaps you work as an auto mechanic. You aren’t fond of replacing brakes, but tearing apart a car's engine and putting back together again provides you a great sense of accomplishment.

Police officers are no different. Some officers love to write tickets. Others like working with the community to solve ongoing problems. For some officers, spotting people driving stolen cars or detaining suspects holding narcotics gets their hearts racing.

The suspects I liked to target were burglars. It didn’t matter if they were burglars who invaded a person’s home or if the suspects broke into cars. For me, the attraction was the fact they worked 24/7. Even more incentive was that burglars are hard to catch. What can I say? I like a challenge.

One of the more memorable arrests I made I was working with another female officer whose name also happened to be Kathy. She was my favorite partner ever. We’d just started working together and were assigned to the ‘morning watch,’ which many other departments and professions call the graveyard shift. Most officers working the morning watch enjoyed patrolling in the dead of night and the ones who worked it year after year were a tight-knit group. We were newcomers, and had to prove ourselves.

There was an industrial complex where businesses were getting hit several times a week, and had been for months. Kathy and I decided our first shift together that at some point we’d go over to the industrial complex and park in the shadows and see if anything developed.

I was driving our black and white patrol car, and we slowly cruised past the many closed businesses in search of a good ‘hiding spot.’ We passed by a building that had a chain-link fence enclosure attached. The fencing had privacy slats, but that didn’t prevent Kathy and me from spotting a guy prowling around.

After detaining him, we determined there was a business in the complex that had been burglarized, and that the suspect was in possession of two large key rings containing about a hundred of regular door keys along with dozens of vending machine keys. The suspect was a transient and had no explanation for the many keys he had with him. Along with the keys, we had evidence from the business that had been burglarized to book him, so we hauled him to jail. That was the first of a number of good arrests we made on morning watch. During our first month we were readily accepted into the fold and were well respected by our co-workers. Kathy and I worked morning watch together for the better part of seven years.

Another time, there was an area where the division had a high incidence of burglaries of items from motor vehicles.  Somewhere around three o’clock one morning, Kathy and I were driving through the 'hot' area with our lights off and, lo and behold, we saw a car parked in the middle of a dark street. We nabbed three young men who all went to a religious school together. They were in the process of breaking into a car, and once we’d taken them into custody, we got them to show us the fourteen other cars they’d broken into. The boys were arrested and booked. Needless to say, when we called the kids' parents to come pick up their felon sons, the parents weren’t happy at all.

In my latest book, A Deadly Justice, my personal itch for capturing burglars led me to create a team of

sophisticated burglars as adversaries for my main character, LAPD Detective Maddie Divine to uncover. But in order to keep my story authentic, Maddie and her partner, Jade, get involved with other investigations as well…just like it happens in real life. What Maddie doesn’t know is that investigating the burglars may reveal a secret in her own life she’s tried desperately to bury.

*******

Kathy Bennett is no stranger to murder and mayhem. She served twenty-nine years with the Los Angeles Police Department - eight as a civilian employee and twenty-one years as a sworn police officer. While most of her career was spent in a patrol car, she’s also been a Firearms Instructor at the LAPD Academy, a crime analyst in the “War Room”, a Field Training Officer, a Senior Lead Officer, and worked undercover in various assignments. Kathy was honored to be named Officer of the Year in 1997.

Kathy's debut novel, A Dozen Deadly Roses, and her second book, A Deadly Blessing became bestselling ebooks at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. A Deadly Blessing, is the first book in a series featuring LAPD Detective Maddie Divine and was named a Best Nook Book Original for 2012. Law enforcement personnel laud Kathy's authentic stories of crime and suspense for 'getting it right.'

Kathy's third book, A Deadly Justice, was released in September of 2013. She's currently working on her fourth novel, A Deadly Denial.

SWEET DREAMS: A Thriller by Bestselling Author Aaron Patterson

[Editor's Note: SWEET DREAMS is currently on sale for .99-cents through Bookbub as an eBook. Here is the link to Amazon: SWEET DREAMS ]

Mark Appleton is living the American Dream. Beautiful wife, loving daughter, and a high paying job in New York City. But when his family are killed in a accident he must reinvent himself. A year later in the midst of putting his life back together, Mark finds out that his family was killed and it was...No accident. Mark will stop at nothing to hunt down the men responsible for the death of his family and what he finds will change his life forever.

Kirk Weston is a Detroit detective. He hates his job, his ex-wife, and his life. He is hand selected to help the FBI on a high profile case and just when he thinks things could not get any worse...

They do.

* * * Book 1 in the WJA series is, SWEET DREAMS, Book 2, DREAM ON, and Book 3, IN YOUR DREAMS are also available! * * *

REVIEWS:

"I loved this book. It kept me turning one page after the other at a fast pace. Aaron Patterson is one of my favorite authors. I have read many on his books. Hoping to read all of them in my lifetime."--Amazon Reviewer

"Sweet Dreams was a book I read in 2 days. I truly enjoyed the read. It kept me wanting to know more. I'm looking forward to Part 2 of the WJA Trilogy!"
--Sharon Adams, Novi, MI

"Suspense, thriller with a perfect ending, leaving me wanting more. An on the edge of your seat, all night read. I most certainly will be reading "Dream On."
--Sheri Wilkinson, Sandwich, IL

"New authors come and go every day. Very few come on the scene with the ability to weave a tale that will make you sad to reach the end, longing for more. At a time when the world needs a real hero, Patterson delivers big with the WJA's Mark Appleton--an unlikely hero for the 21st century."
--The Joe Show

"Aaron Patterson spins a good tale and does it well."
--W.P.

"SWEET DREAMS is packed with action, suspense, romance, betrayal, death, and mystery."
--Drew Maples, author of "28 Yards from Safety"

* * *

SWEET DREAMS is an intense hard-boiled thriller of approximately 95,000 words / 395 pages. This book also contains the following bonus material: Excerpt from DREAM ON, by Aaron Patterson.

******

Aaron Patterson is the author of the best-selling WJA series, as well as the Breaking Steele series. He was

home-schooled and grew up in the west. Aaron loved to read as a small child and would often be found behind a book, reading one to three a day on average. This love drove him to want to write, but he never thought he had the talent. He wrote Sweet Dreams, the first book in the WJA series, in 2008. He lives in Boise, Idaho with his family, Soleil, Kale and Klayton. Aaron is an educator for Indie publishing and is the Co-Founder of StoneHouse University and speaks all over the country on subjects like eBooks, Amazon and the Future of publishing.

Visit Aaron's blog at TheWorstBookEver.blogspot.com
Follow Aaron on twitter at twitter.com/Mstersmith
Join Aaron on Facebook too!

Aaron Patterson CEO
StoneHouse Ink/StoneGate Ink
www.stonehouseink.net
www.stonegateink.com

Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur.

Mark Mynheir

Author Interview: Mark Mynheir

A search for mystery novelists takes us to the sunny Florida coast today. Police detective and novelist Mark Mynheir visits us from Palm Bay Police Department (PBPD), an agency located midway on Florida’s east coast. Mark is a man of many talents, currently assigned as a homicide investigator with PBPD’s Criminal Investigations Unit while also serving as a member of the department’s SWAT unit. He has prior experience as a narcotics agent and a patrol officer.

Today, Mark shares with us another passion—writing.

Mark has four published novels with a common thread—cops as protagonists. Take the time to check out his web site at www.MarkMynheir.com for more information about his writing: Rolling Thunder, From the Belly of the Dragon, The Void, and his latest, The Night Watchman.

Q: Mark, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to share with us your writing life. First, tell us about your latest novel, The Night Watchman.

Mynheir:  Thanks for having me, Mark.  In The Night Watchman, the protagonist, Ray Quinn, is an Orlando homicide detective who is severely wounded in an ambush and forced to medically retire from the force.

Ray battles the haunting guilt for his partner’s death and the nagging physical injuries from the attack. Numbing the pain with alcohol and attitude, he takes a job as a night watchman at a swanky Orlando condo.

But when a pastor and an exotic dancer are found dead in one of the condos in an apparent murder-suicide, Ray can no longer linger in the shadows. The pastor’s sister is convinced her brother was framed and begs Ray to take on an impossible case–to challenge the evidence and clear her brother’s name.

Crawling from the wreckage of his former life, Ray struggles to find healing and purpose again.  But when the case of a lifetime is thrust upon him, Ray must decide whether he’ll succumb to his depression and pain or use the God-given gifts he still has inside him to catch a madman. 

Q:  Interesting story. Mystery readers are often interested how the author came upon the idea for the story. So … how did you come up with this idea?

Mynheir:  I saw an interview with a severely wounded police officer who was trying to rebuild his life after a violent assault that crippled him.  I wondered what would happen if I, like him, lost everything in an instant—my health, my strength, and my job, as well as the love of my life.  That idea blossomed into The Night Watchman.    

Q:  Your main character, Ray Quinn in The Night Watchman, is a very troubled soul. How did he come to exist in your mind?

Mynheir:  I imagined a police officer experiencing all the terrible things that Ray Quinn had but without the framework of faith to work from.  He’s trying to do it all on his own (like I used to do), and it’s not working out so well for him. 

   

Q:  Holding down two careers must be tough. In your forthcoming interview  on March 22^nd,  you will talk about how you became a police officer. Now, tell us a little about how you become a writer? Many writers struggle to cross that threshold into the publishing world. Your web site explains the struggles you endured to become a writer and to acquire an education. Would you mind sharing a part of that story here?

Mynheir:  When I was growing up, writing was the worst thing imaginable to me. I loathed putting words to paper.  I’m Dyslexic and the very reason (I believe) that God invented spell check.  But soon after I became a Christian, I felt the Lord leading me to write.  It didn’t make much sense to me and seemed impossible.  I shared with my wife what I thought God was doing, and she encouraged me to go to school and learn the skills I needed to write.  

So, it took about ten years of classes, writing, and more classes.  I met my agent at a writer’s conference.  He shopped my first novel, which got some good reviews but didn’t sell.  I wrote the proposal for Rolling Thunder, my first published novel.  He sent it out.  I expected it to take six months or so before I heard anything.  But about a week later, I got an e-mail from Multnomah, asking if I would be interested in writing a series.   I had to wake my wife up to read the e-mail, just to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind. 

To say the least, I got kind of weepy when I held my first book.  But don’t tell anyone.