Interview with James T. Hogg

1-When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?  [I remember the moment.  My mother had told me no TV on weeknights.  This was a terrible injustice.  After railing – whining actually —about it for an hour or so, I embarked on an ambitious project of writing a novel.  And to my surprise I finished it.  It was 200 pages on a ‘typewriter’ and I was so proud of it.  I looked at it again a few years ago and it was good for a 17 year old I guess, but hardly a professional work.  After that I found creative writing fun.  Then I got a day job for about 40 years and didn’t really start writing again until a few years ago.  I was rusty at first but then it started to come back to me.]

2-How do you schedule your life when you’re writing?  [I find I can only really write at my beach house in Cape May, NJ. I like to go down there alone. I love my wife like crazy, but most productive if I am alone. I get up about 6:00 AM – I turn on super loud blasting music – and write like a banshee till my arms are ready to fall off. That is about four in the afternoon. Then it is time for a workout – then a scotch (or two) and maybe even a cigar – then a nice dinner – a TV show – to bed and do it again the next day. It is super fun for about a week and a half and then I run out of steam]

3-What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?  [I don’t know if there is what I would call a quirk.  I just spent some time thinking on this and I don’t see a quirk.  Once I have characters and a plot in mind, I just blast away at the words.  Sometimes they just flow and sometimes they don’t]

4-How did you get your book published?  [I was introduced to David Wilk at Easton Publishing.  He is a guru’s guru in the publishing world.  He was my guide into a world I knew nothing about.  He started by doing marketing and advising for me.  Then, when it was time to publish it was an easy decision to go with Easton.  Full disclosure – I was so enamored of David and his skills that I made an investment in Easton and now David and I are partners!]

5-Where did you get your information or idea for your book?  [Being too honest – I was ranting to my wife about how bad another ‘bestseller’ was and she rolled her eyes, asking me if I could write a bestseller? I said, ‘watch!’ And then – strange as strange – this story just rolled out of me in the next five minutes. For the life of me I cannot explain it. It just was there.  It was almost 20 years later that I started writing it.  That was when I learned I knew virtually nothing about Colonial times and had to do a ton of research to make the plot fit within actual history]

6-What do you like to do when you’re not writing?  [I do a lot of things….I love my day job as a real estate lawyer.  And I try to say yes to everything else that I haven’t done yet.  I am almost 65 at this point.  So I am doing:  Stand-Up comedy – singing lessons – piano lessons – trying to get ‘Ripped at 65’ – philosophy writing – and a bunch of other things]

7-What was one of the most surprising things you learned in creating your book?  [That once you have truly created characters, how easy it is to write dialog.  You almost don’t have to do any work as the characters are kind of speaking in your mind and you are just taking dictation.  This sounds weird and surreal, but it was what happened to me]

8-Is there anything you would like to confess about as an author?  [My heart and soul is in this book.  It means a lot to me]

9-As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?  [Ha – I wanted to be a pro basketball player.  But a five foot nine inch kid from Scarsdale was hardly going to be NBA material.  So that fizzled out.  But I gave it my all, playing basketball about 50 hours a week, while schoolwork mattered little]

10-How do you process and deal with negative book reviews?  [I haven’t gotten one yet, but things are just starting out.  This is a great question and I wonder.  One bad review here and there will not really hit me that much if most reviews are positive.  But if there is a pile of negative reviews, I guess I will feel like I have failed.  I have dealt with failure before.  I tend to get – very – sad for a short period of time, and then it passes]

11- Who inspired Faythe Emily Wentworth?  [Strangely – no one at all.  She was a metaphor till I started writing about her.  Note the strange way the plot came to me

12 —  As a man, did you find it challenging to write a female point of view?  [This didn’t feel like a problem, although it is a great questiont.  The book is written from the points of view of all sorts of characters who theoretically existed long ago.  So I get to fill in the blanks.  I did have quite a few women read the book and if I kind of blew it, they set me straight]

13 — You mention that this is a story that you often told to your children, who are now adults. Has the story changed much since that time?  [Dramatically!  I started writing the book and was almost half done when I realized that the plot just didn’t fit into historical fiction at all. And the plot had gaping holes in it.  This was a defeating moment, but then I went back and did what I should have done at the beginning, which was to do significant research into the time period.  After that, I rewrote it to work.  Lesson learned here!]

14 — Since this is historical fiction, how much research did you have to do to mirror the time period?  [A lot but I got lucky with my editor – Cindy Marsh – who was an expert in the time period.  She saved the day for me]

15 — What other characters in this series did you enjoy writing about?  [Mertens – the swashbuckling warrior in his sixties who wants to make amends for his terrible life.  And Nununyi, the American Indian woman who could put an eye through a squirrel at fifty paces with her bow and arrow.  Probably these are my favorite characters even more than Faythe.  If there are sequels they will figure prominently]

16 — What authors inspire you?  [That is easy.  Ken Follett.  He is a master and I find my style similar to his so I emulate him]

17 — You also mention that you go to your summer home getaway to write. As a prominent Real Estate attorney, is that the only time you spend writing?  [Yes – otherwise my day job is just too encompassing]

18 — Is Book Five the end of Girl with a Knife? If so, are you working on another book and will it be historical fiction?  [If the series does well, I have a sequel in mind already]