~Travel, Crime, and Marketing~

What do you read beside romance? I happen to love crime fiction and thrillers. Today I am interviewing crime fiction writer Gary Guinn. As a romantic suspense writer who writes about criminals we have a lot in common. We also both love Greece and have even stayed on the same Greek island. If you like my novels, you will like Gary’s.

In his interview, Gary Guinn shares his backgound influences, his experiences marketing his first book, and his travels.

Take it away Gary…

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

I taught literature and writing in a small southern college for most of my professional career. But I started out as a college drop out who attended three schools before quitting and joining the military. After a stint as a medical corpsman, I decided to get serious about education and ended up with a PhD in 19^th-century British literature. Along the way, I got married and had two sons.

When I’m not writing, I love reading, traveling, sailing, walking the dogs, and brewing craft beer. And I’ve brewed some good beers—IPA’s, Stouts, Porters, Pale Ales, Red Ales, and more. The only problem with loving to brew craft beer and than drinking it is all those beautiful calories that just love to gather in my waistline. To fight that, I have to eat smart, work out, and walk three miles a day. Sailing is a new thing for my wife and I, but we both love it and would like to get a boat that we can live on part time.

What was the most interesting place you every visited?

It’s hard to choose between Greece and the French Alps. In 2005 I took a sabbatical from the college, and we spent three months traveling—Spain, Italy, and Greece. In Greece we spent a week in Athens and then a week touring literary/mythological sites around the mainland—Delphi, Mycenae, Tiryns, Sparta, Epidaurus, Corinth. Then we spent three weeks on three different islands. First Naxos, a large island with lots to do and see, where we rented a scooter and toured on our own. Every day a group of Germans and I would take an early morning dip in the still cold water. Then we went to Koufonisia, a much smaller island with a population of about 350 people and no paved roads. We walked around the coastline of the island one day, and attended a Greek Orthodox service another day. And finally Iraklia, a tiny island with a population of 110, a small harbor and village, and a bunch of small boarding houses for tourists. We were there just before the season started, so there were only a handful of non-Greeks around. I got up every morning and walked down the hill to the bay for a swim while my wife slept in. Then we would walk to a little café and have breakfast. Iraklia was a perfect place to end a dream trip.

But on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary in 2001 we went to the village of Chamonix at the base of Mont Blanc in the French Alps. Couldn’t have found a more romantic place to be. The funicular up to the high icy peaks, hiking along mountain trails, wildflowers everywhere, dinner and wine at a sidewalk café, the moon rising over the mountain outside the window of our room in the little hotel. It certainly gives Greece a strong challenge for best place ever.

Is there any particular author or book that influenced you in any way either growing up or as an adult?

As a child, Treasure Island. I got it as a present on my eleventh birthday and was overwhelmed by the powerful narrative and engaging characters. I still have that copy of the book, and I gave both my sons their own copy on their eleventh birthdays.

How do you market your work? What avenues have you found to work best for your genre?

Marketing has been the hardest thing I’ve had to learn to do for decades. I knew from the outset that I’d have to do most of the marketing of my novel, since small publishers simply can’t do that much. But when I dove into it, I thought I was going to drown. The possibilities are almost endless. I had a meager author platform already, mostly focused on my website/blog that didn’t see enough traffic, but I soon found myself spending hours each day trying to expand the platform, trying to get my book out there, trying to find the best opportunities that didn’t break the bank.

My two key social media outlets have been Facebook and Twitter. I’ve done a lot of reading on line, articles and podcasts by well-known marketers in the publishing industry, and I’ve tried to implement as much as I can of their advice. But if I had to name one resource that has offered the most for the time and money, I’d have to say it would be Sandra Beckwith’s online program Build BookBuzz. She offers so many inexpensive resources and great ideas for marketing, regardless what your genre might be.

How did you choose the genre you write in?

Before 2015 I had written only literary fiction and poetry, but I have always enjoyed reading crime fiction. So when I decided in the fall of 2015 to participate in NaNoWriMo, which many of your readers are probably familiar with (National Novel Writing Month—50,000 words in the month of November), I thought I’d give it a try. I had more fun writing Sacrificial Lam, an academic mystery/thriller, than I’ve had in a long time. I had always doubted that I would be able to create the kind of narrative that the genre requires, but as I began outlining and then developing the narrative itself, it began to feel like creating a puzzle that I had to constantly adjust.

Is anything in your book based on real life experiences or purely all imagination?

Fairly early in my career at the college, a disturbing incident occurred, which stuck with me through the years. Three of my colleagues at the university, who were all liberal, progressive professors like myself, received anonymous threats couched in violent terms. The university was a very conservative place, and liberal professors like ourselves were in the minority and sometimes found teaching there an uncomfortable fit. At the same time, we felt a sense of purpose in being the source of divergent, more open, views in the areas of politics, social issues, and religion. The threats created a tense environment, and though nothing could be proved, there was a pretty strong suspicion of who was responsible. As it happens, nothing further came of the threats, but that situation became the kernel for developing the series of mystery/thrillers featuring English professor Lam Corso, a liberal who teaches at a small, conservative southern college. I used the college campus as a model for the setting, and I even slipped in a few characters based on some of my colleagues. Sacrificial Lam is the first in the series.

What project are you working on now?

The second book in the series has the working title A Lam to Slaughter. It opens with the line, “In the dim lighting of the stairwell, the flashes of the police camera briefly illuminated the body, hanging inert and heavy from a nylon rope, casting grotesque shadows on the concrete walls, barely registered on the retina before they were gone.” So it jumps right into the crime scene at the college where Lam Corso teaches.

I’ve finished the first draft and worked it with my writers group, so it’s in the revision stage now. I’d like to have it finished and ready to shop by this fall. But I have also recently finished a revision of my second literary historical novel, a coming of age story set in the Depression-era Ozarks, and will begin shopping it soon. It’s titled Every Time I Breathe, and is a follow-up to a novel published in 2005 titled A Late Flooding Thaw. So I guess I’m staying very busy with the writing right now.

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Sacrificial Lam

by Gary Guinn

When English professor Lam Corso receives a death threat at work, he laughs it off.  A liberal activist at a small Southern conservative college, he’s used to stirring up controversy on campus.  It’s just part of the give and take of life.  Even when violently attacked, Lam is convinced it must be a mistake.  He can’t imagine anyone who would want to kill him for his beliefs.

When his home is broken into and his wife’s business vandalized, Lam is forced to face the truth. His wife—a passionate anti-gun crusader—is outraged when Lam brings a gun into the house for protection. The police can’t find a single lead. Left to their own devices, Lam and Susan are forced to examine their marriage, faith, and values in the face of a carefully targeted attack from an assailant spurred into action by his own set of beliefs.

What will it cost to survive?

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Buy Links

Amazon   |  Barnes & Noble  |  Kobo    |  The Wild Rose Press

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Learn more about Gary Guinn

Contact Links:

Website, https://garyguinn.com

Facebook Author Page, https://www.facebook.com/garyguinnwriter/

Amazon Author Page, https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B01N4GPT7P

Goodreads Author Page,  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/585203.Gary_Guinn

 

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Gary Guinn would love to hear from you. Post your questions and comments below.