THE BLAZING KEYBOARD
OF BILL CRAIG
Bill Craig taught himself to read by age four. By age six, he had started writing his own stories. He published his first novel at age forty, claiming, it only took me 34 years to become an overnight success. Eighteen years later, including anthologies in which he has participated, he has over eighty novels published and counting. According to Bill, his ultimate goal is to break the record held by pulp author and creator of The Shadow, Walter B. Gibson, for most written works in a year. Clearly, he is taking the challenge seriously.
Like the pulp writers of old, Bill is constantly putting words on paper—every day without fail. However, from his home in New Castle, Indiana, I managed to get him to slow down for a quick visit to the bright lights of my virtual interrogation room...
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If the FBI had you on their Ten Most Wanted list, what
details about you would they include when issuing their All-Points Bulletin?
57 year old father of nine, with eleven grandkids, tattoo on
left shoulder, walks with a cane and moves slow! Armed and can be dangerous.
What were your earliest reading and writing influences?
Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew were early favorites. Then I
got into Doc Savage, The Shadow, and The Phantom. I followed these a couple of years later with The Executioner and The Destroyer. I like adventure and mysteries from the get go, and
these books combined them to a large degree. I tried writing my own Doc styled
character on a toy typewriter while in fourth grade.
What motivated you to write your first novel and how many
false starts did you have?
Oh, I had a number of false starts over the years. It was
only after I met Jerry Ahern and corresponded with Don Pendleton, who both encouraged
me to keep at writing, that I sold my first short story to Gold Eagle Books/aka
Harlequin and editor Mark Howell. It appeared at the end of the Phoenix Force novel Viper’s Game. It took me another 8 years before I finally published
the first Jack Riley adventure, Valley of
Death. I was 40 years old at the time. I had written approximately six
Riley novels. In the final one, The
Mummy’s Tomb, I introduced a much older Michael Hardluck Hannigan. I liked him so much I went back and began chronicling
his early adventures. But what I really wanted to write was a mystery novel. So,
somewhere around the 6th or 7th Hannigan book, I
introduced the world to former DEA agent turned private eye Sam Decker. The mysteries
kind of took off from there.
What motivates you to keep writing?
For me, writing is something of an addiction. I can’t not
write. Believe me, I have tried to take a day off when I was so sick I could
barely get out of bed or get too far from the bathroom. I couldn’t do it. I would
sit and scribble a paragraph and then I could rest. I write because the people
in my head still have stories to tell—plus writing keeps a roof over my head
and food on the table.
You’ve had a number of personal responsibilities from caring
for your elderly father to currently raising your twelve year old son, Jack, as
a single parent. How hard is it to keep putting words on paper when these
things consume large chucks of attention, emotion, and time?
The writing actually allowed me to escape from the
responsibilities of the real world for a couple of hours every night. Writing
allowed me to decompress and get away to a calming mental place. I normally
write after I get my son put to bed of a night. While taking care of my Dad
before he passed, I would get him settled and work until he needed something,
get it for him, and then back to work until my writing time was done for the
night.
What can you tell us about some of your more popular series
characters, and how are they different?
Rick Marlow is probably the youngest, being somewhere in his
mid-thirties. He’s a former NYPD patrol officer who was shot by his partner
while standing over the body of a dead Undercover narcotics officer. He’s been
through a lot, and sometimes PTSD colors his view of the world.
Sam Decker is in his mid forties, former DEA who got tired
of the corruption and walked away to start his own business on the island of
Scorpion Cay.
Mitch Cooper is an ex-Seal and former Naval Intelligence
officer who set up shop in San Diego after mustering out of the navy. He’s a
little more tech-savvy than the others and he often buts heads with an NCIS
agent with whom he has history.
Rebekah McCabe is one of my favorites, because it was fun
getting into the female mind. After 3 ex-wives, it’s not entirely uncharted
territory! She’s nearing thirty and works in Tampa. She’s a Texas gal who moved
to Florida for College and fell in love with it. She hails from a long line of
Texas Rangers, and it shows in her attitude. Her first case, Night Shadows, has her tracking down an
unseen killer who murdered her client and nearly got her at the same time.
What factors need to be aligned in your thought process
before starting a new novel?
Usually, I have to have some idea where I want the character
to go. How can I make them change or grow while working this particular case? I
usually get an idea of what the case will be from watching the news. I am
considering basing the next Marlow title on an actual murder that took place in
Indiana this past March, but I’ll transplanted it to Key West.
You are very prolific. Do you work on more than one book at a
time? How long after you finish one book before you start another?
Well, I have always said it helps to be ADHD when you are a
writer. I literally have notes everywhere with snippets of plot or dialog
scribbled on them I thought of at a time when I couldn’t necessarily get to my
computer. At any given time, I am probably working on six different novels at
once. When the boy is in school, I can sometimes get some writing done during
the day on the other projects. I am one of those writers who as soon as I write
the last word of one novel, I immediately start on the next.
What factors did you consider before deciding to self-publish
and/or work with small boutique publishers?
The big factor is how can I get this in front of the biggest
reading audience. With some of the smaller presses, they tend to publish in a
certain niche—such as adventure or weird westerns. My main publisher in Key
West, which publishes, Marlow, Chandler, Joe Collins, and Mitch Cooper aim at
the e-book audience mostly. I self-published the Hannigan Books and most of the
Riley books and all of the Decker books. Rebekah McCabe and the Moseby and
French book Speaking for the Dead are
also self-published titles.
How important do you consider your book covers, and what goes
into the process of completing them?
I put a lot of thought into the covers. I usually give my
cover-lady, Judy Bullard a rough idea of what I want. Then she puts things
together, and we go back and forth until we have something we both like. She’s
also been a patient teacher and has been showing me how to do my own covers. The
covers are what makes somebody want to stop and see what the book is about, so
they have to catch the eye!
What can you tell us about your publishing and
self-publishing experiences?
I have been writing since I was six years old. I worked on
polishing my writing for 34 years, and I still continue polishing it to this
day. However, I did publish my first novel, Valley
of Death, in 2000. Print On Demand publishing was still in its infancy back
then. The original edition of Valley of
Death was published by a company called xlibris. I still have that on my
book shelf. It was the first book to star my action adventure character Jack
Riley.
Once it was off to the publisher, I started writing Mayan Gold, though I started writing
that book under the working title of Mexican
Stand-off. It was the second book to feature Jack Riley and his partner Ken
Alston. It was published first through iUniverse and I was so blown away by
their cover that I moved Valley of Death
over to them.
Now at the time, xlibris and iUniverse were considered
vanity presses because the author paid a fee. Sure you could buy them on
BarnesandNoble.com and Amazon.com, but they wouldn’t carry them in the stores.
The third book in the series was published through a POD
company actually run through Amazon with a lower price. I don’t remember the
name. I jumped ship and published the next two books through Publish America.
It didn’t take long for me to realize PA really was a vanity press because they
would publish without charging, but then wanted the author to pay extensive
fees to get copies, buy marketing packages, and a number of other things
designed to drain the author dry.
Then while looking through a copy of The Writer, I discovered two new publishers. Lulu.com and
Createspace.com. I was trying to expand out of action adventure at the time and
had written the first Decker P.I. book, Scorpion
Cay. I bought a cover from a cheap service and published it originally
through Lulu.com/
About that time, along with Sean Ellis and a few others who
belonged to my now defunct Yahoo writers group, we discussed creating a whole
new pulp universe of characters and Age
of Adventure magazine was born. I really didn’t make much from those, but
it was through the effort Hardluck Hannigan came into being. Emerald Death and The Sky Masters were originally produced as e-books through Lost
Continent Library and publisher Walter Bosley. My character, Paul Sabre, came
to life in Lost Continent Library E-Zine.
By this time, I was going through a really nasty divorce and
wrote the first of my mysteries featuring Police Detective Joe Collins titled The Butterfly Tattoo, followed by Paradise Lost. The Butterfly Tattoo began to sell well on Amazon as both a Kindle
e-book and as a POD title through CreateSpace. My Decker P.I. books had also
started selling well. I was making money doing something I loved, but still had
to work a day job. I was also taking care of an aging and ailing father and
raising an energetic young son of whom I taken sole custody of after the
divorce.
The Decker books were looking good with fantastic covers by
Colorado artist Laura Givens. The covers were eye-catching and made people give
the title a look. The same with the covers she was doing for the Hardluck
Hannigan books. Did I mention I write a lot?
Anyway, I reconnected with an old friend named Mark Howell
who was formerly a managing editor at Gold Eagle Books. He was then working for
the Key West Citizen. Mark introduced
my writing to Shirrel Rhoades, the publisher of Absolutely Amazing E-Books in
Key West. Shirrel took over publication of the first two Joe Collins books.
About that time, my father’s health took a turn for the worse and he went into
the nursing home for the first time.
In the month that followed, I wrote Marlow: Indigo Tide, the first of my Key West mysteries featuring
Rick Marlow, a former NYPD cop shot in the line of duty by his partner right
after finding the dead body of an undercover Narcotics officer. Here was a
character I could really sink my teeth into. He had flaws. He smoked too much,
drank too much, was fighting post-traumatic stress syndrome and had lost half a
lung from the wounds he had suffered. Indigo
Tide went on to become my first Amazon.com best seller, breaking into the
top 100 in the hard-boiled mystery category.
I was starting to move away from the pulp adventure genre
and devoting more time to my mystery writing. As I got older, mysteries had
more of an appeal to me. I’ve always enjoyed puzzles, plus I could say I killed
people for a living when people ask what I do. I usually make it clear I only
do it in fiction.
As I look back at the past seventeen years, I realize how
much how much I’ve changed as a person and how much my writing has changed
along with me. I like to think I have grown as a writer as well as a human
being. The first seven of my Marlow Key West mysteries have gone into the top
100 on Amazon along with two Decker P.I. titles. Since Dad passed away two
years ago, I write full time and continue as an active full time parent.
Two years ago, I set a goal for myself to publish a novel a
month. This included a visit to Key West for the inaugural Key West Mystery
Writers Weekend. I was working on my fifth Key West mystery before I ever set
foot on the island. I not only met my goal, but surpassed it, churning out twenty-one
titles in twelve months.
When people ask me how I do it, my only answer is I write. I
write every day. I make enough money to live on without having to hold down an
outside job, but I am always trying to put out new content and give readers
something to enjoy.
My two mentors over the years taught me a lot. Don Pendleton
taught me to not be afraid to break the rules and to let the characters tell
the story. Jerry Ahern taught me to show what’s happening and to have the
manuscripts as camera-ready (an obsolete term in this digital age) before it
goes to press.
However, I measure my success by the fact readers keep
buying my books.
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My thanks to Bill for taking the time to chat as I know his
fingers are itching to get back to the keyboard and tap out yet another chapter
in one of his fast moving mysteries...
FOR MORE ON BILL
CRAIG AND HIS BOOKS CLICK HERE
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