Today, I’m delighted to welcome Stephen Hazlett, a fellow ‘enoveler’ in my writers group, eNovel Authors at Work. Stephen is a kind and supportive friend and it’s a pleasure to introduce him to all of you today to talk, among other things, about likes and travels from his past as well as his mystery/suspense boxset, City Different Series that includes the truly intriguing, Finding Nina. Stick around to hear all about it!
A small-time burglar and a disgraced ex-cop share more than time inside Santa Fe’s county lockup. With little in common, they share one thing: an obsession with a beautiful woman named Nina Kelly. After the two men are released from jail, their obsession turns into a deadly rivalry. Nina is on the run from her old life. Finding her is the name of the game. But do both men stand to lose Nina?
Find it now on Amazon
All three volumes of The City Different Series offered in one boxed set:
– CITY DIFFERENT: Eddie Collins, the youthful head of a successful Internet company, finds a murdered man in a bedroom of his California home. His beautiful young wife has disappeared, and the police peg her as the logical suspect. This starts a brand new life for Eddie, as he sets out for the City Different of Santa Fe, NM to find her and prove her innocence.
– NINA’S TIME: It’s two years later, and now it’s Eddie Collins suspected of murdering an influential Santa Fe business woman. Nina Kelly, the woman’s niece and Eddie’s ex-wife, suspects otherwise. She begins a romance with Ray Sanchez, the Santa Fe detective in charge of the case, while she tries to find the truth behind the murder.
– FINDING NINA: A small-time crook shares more than time inside Santa Fe’s county lockup with Ray Sanchez, Nina’s ex-lover and now a disgraced ex-cop. Both men also share an obsession with Nina Kelly. Their obsession turns into a deadly rivalry that has Nina on the run from her old life.
Find it now on Amazon
Hello Stephen, and welcome to my blog!
Thank you Fros, I’m delighted to be in your brand new site!
Tell us a bit about Finding Nina and how did it become part of a series?
Finding Nina became the third volume of The City Different Series because I felt the continuing story wasn’t complete without it. Things were left hanging, at least in some reader’s minds, at the end of Nina’s Time, which is volume two. Nina’s story needed closure, I thought, so I wrote Finding Nina. At the same time, it goes in a completely different direction as the first two volumes, which were straight murder mysteries, told in the first person. For this book, I chose a third-person narrative, with the POV switching back and forth between Nina, and the two men who love and lust after her—Ray Sanchez, her former lover and now a disgraced ex-police detective; and Sammy Garza, a small time crook, who turns to big-time crime in the course of the story.
What was the first thing you ever wrote and how old were you then?
I wrote some short stories as a teenager, but my first attempt at anything big was a contemporary novel of a young man who tries to escape modern America by moving to a tiny village in the wilderness of Northern Canada. There he takes up the life of a hermit and writer of serious fiction. I was twenty-one when I wrote it, and it never saw the light of the publishing world, because it wasn’t very good. I never even came up with a decent title for it, but I learned a lot from the process of writing 100,000 words of one continuing tale.
What other writing have you done? Anything else published?
Apart from the three volumes of The City Different Series, which are mystery/suspense novels, I’ve written and published three other novels of contemporary fiction, titled A Private War, Family O’Shea, and The Buddhist, which is my best seller. I also published a collection of nine stories, titled The Irishman&Other Stories, and recently completed a memoir, called The Way I Saw It: Memories of a Scottish-Irish Son.
That’s a diverse selection of genres, well done! Any hobbies or interests that you enjoy in your spare time?
I love the outdoors and love hiking and biking. I’ve also owned a number of motorcycles over the years, and loved riding them, especially in the beautiful scenery of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. But sadly, I had to give that up. My no-longer-young body can’t take the rigors of it anymore, so it became a thing of my past. I still love it but don’t do it anymore. And of course, I love reading, as I have all of my life. What writer does not?
Indeed! And where would we be if we didn’t read? A little bird told me, you’re a bit of an avid traveler too! Any travels that stand out in memory?
Oh yes, plenty. I have fond memories from many of my travels such as my Italian holiday in Perugia, as well as many bike rides around the US I’ve done back in the old days.
Soaking up the Italian sunshine in Perugia, Italy
Relaxing at a friend’s cabin in Red Lodge, Montana after a long bike ride.
Tell me, do you see yourself in any of your characters, or do any of them have traits you wish you had?
The main characters of my three contemporary novels are all autobiographical, especially so in Family O’Shea, which is the story of a dying, elderly man, and his two estranged sons, who are twenty years apart in age. It centers around the old man’s dying wish of bringing his sons together and making the family whole. He wills the sons to journey to Scotland together to scatter his ashes in a place his Scottish mother always talked about. So the idea I had in writing Family O’Shea was to create three characters at odds with one another—the old man of seventy and his two sons who barely know each other—each an autobiographical portrait of me at various ages: the motorcycle-riding romantic of my twenties; the middle-class man of my mid-forties in a hopeless romance with a younger woman, and the seventy-year old dying patriarch. I had to imagine that last part, because I was many years short of that age when I wrote it. But I like to think I carried it off.
Sounds like a very interesting read, I must say. What are you working on at the moment? Tell us a little about your current project(s).
Right now, I have another novel of contemporary life I’m working on, but it’s too much up in the air to go into specifics.
Which are your favorite authors, and what do you love about them?
Most of my favorites are from my past: Hemingway, for his unique style, economy of words and profound story telling; John Updike, for his absolute precision with words and his slant on the contemporary America he saw in the five decades of his writing life; Philip Roth, for his great intelligence, wit, and distinct narrative style; Elmore Leonard, for his singular take on crime fiction, like no one else I’ve ever read. There are too many others to mention, though I would like to single out Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections, written over ten years ago. I loved that book, though his other novels didn’t measure up, in my mind. To me he might be a one-hit wonder, though what a hit it was!
What genres do you read mostly, and what are you reading now?
I’ve always liked mysteries and crime thrillers, also action adventures like Lee Child writes, and Tom Clancy wrote in his early days. And I love the so-called serious fiction that I grew up with, like Hemingway and Updike and many others wrote, though it seems it’s becoming less of a factor in today’s publishing world. A book like Franzen’s The Corrections was an exception, in my mind.
I was recently given a copy of Gone Girl, which I read and surprisingly enjoyed. I didn’t think, going in, that I would like it. Gillian Flynn can flat write. And currently, I’m re-reading a book of John Grisham’s which I remembered from years ago: A Time to Kill.
Do you have any advice for other indie authors?
Just keep writing, if it’s what you love. Why else would you do it, if you didn’t love it? Beyond that, if you’re just starting out, learn your craft: attend university courses on writing, something I never did but wish I had; find a mentor, if you can, who is an established writer; join a critique group that you feel comfortable with. And if you’re lucky and good enough, find an online group like eNovel Authors at Work, as I did, a group whose members pay it forward by promoting each other’s books. And learn the skills of social media, like Facebook, Twitter and all the others. And then relentlessly market yourself and your writing. It ain’t easy, but it can be done.
Excellent advice, Stephen and I personally can’t emphasize enough the need to network with other authors, savvy and success-minded ones in particular. Also, I’d like to add for the benefit of any emerging indies out there that although relentless marketing is advisable as you say, great care should be taken to do it very subtly across the social media, especially on Twitter. Banging on about your book all day, and especially spamming, is swiftly punishable on Twitter by the dreaded unfollow and block buttons so be warned, folks! On to the next question:
Choose a male and a female character from your book and tell us which actor/actress you’d wish to play them in a film adaptation.
Nina is a bit of a femme fatale, though she didn’t start out that like that in volume one of the series. Seemingly all on her own, she went that way in volume two, and more so in volume three: Finding Nina. So the actress who comes to mind is Hedy Lamarr of a bygone era of movies. She was dark-haired and beautiful, like Nina, and was said to be one smart lady, so much so that her intelligence could intimidate men. Sounds like Nina. For an actress of today, though, I’d pick Angelina Jolie, also dark-haired and beautiful, and sultry at times. And, though he’s a bit too old now, I can see a younger Jimmy Smits as Ray Sanchez, the Santa Fe police detective, who becomes her live-in lover in volume two and is her ex-lover by the start of Finding Nina.
Do you listen to music while you write and if so, what kind?
Sometimes I do. When I’m in the mood, I dial up Pandora radio on my desktop computer and listen to classical music—Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Saint Saens, Chopin, and a lot of others. Any other musical genre would, to me, intrude too much on the writing.
How would you like to be remembered?
I’d like to be remembered as someone who wrote good books.
Great answer, Stephen. Thank you so much for being here with us today.
Thank you Fros, I am very thankful for the invitation.
BIO
I was born and came of age on the mean city streets of New Jersey. As a young man, I served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, which included a year in Vietnam. After that, I began a career as a computer professional in California’s Silicon Valley.
Since quitting the workaday world to pursue my passion for writing, I’ve authored six novels, a collection of stories, and a memoir. I’ve written other books too, that never saw the light of the published world, when I was young and still learning the craft.
My novels include the three volume City Different mystery series, set in Santa Fe, NM, available individually on Amazon, but also as a complete Boxed Set, titled The City Different Series. Finding Nina is volume three of that series. I’ve also published three other novels of contemporary life, a collection of stories, and a memoir.
Currently, I divide my time between New Mexico’s Land of Enchantment and Orange County, California, pursuing the craft of a writer of contemporary fiction, mystery/suspense and crime/thrillers.
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