Charles C. Brown

Most of my fondest memories are of visits to my maternal grandparent’s home on holidays with most of my aunts, uncles and cousins. There were eight children in my mother’s family, and that was back before The Pill, so there were lots of cousins.

I suppose my favorite teacher would have been Mr. Whitsel, one of my high school English teachers. Grade school is kind of fuzzy because I have slept too many times since then. Mr. Whitsel was stern but fair and treated us all with respect. I can’t say the same for many of my other teachers. As for when I first began to write, we were assigned essays in high school, but I didn’t decide I wanted to be a writer until I was twenty year old, in the United States Army and stationed in Germany.

Since wannabe writers usually collected dozens of rejection slips back when I was thinking of going in to the business and many, I suspect, never got published, I decided to get a degree in education and teach until I could get established as a writer. I got married, had three children in short order and discovered that teaching paid so little that I had to work second and third jobs to provide for my family. There was no time to write. I self-published my first novel after I retired from teaching and now have nine novels on the market. My father passed away before my first novel was published. My mother? I’m not sure how she feels about my writing. She reads my books but says little about them.

Writing is a way to share my thoughts and opinions with others and possibly influence their opinions without them even realizing it. Writing also produces something that entertains them and helps them keep their minds active (something television can not do) and helps them pass the time. As to your second question, I am quite fond of my arms and legs, so given such a choice, writing would have to stop.

I decided to publish my first book because I thought it was worth publishing and that readers would enjoy it. Since I self-publish, I have not had any experiences that I would call struggles. I simply email my manuscripts to a lady who formats them for me and uploads them to the internet. Getting sold is a problem because my name wasn’t out there, and few people know to look for my books on the internet. As of yet, I have not broke even, but I have retirement pay coming in, so life is good. Also, it helps greatly that my wife is a successful romance writer with ninety-plus books to her credit.

The idea behind this particular novel is that the guilty party doesn’t always get convicted and innocent people sometimes do. Too often in our justice system, we have elected officials who are more interested in winning than are in finding out the truth. My protagonist in this novel is a man who understands that the system is flawed and that, under the circumstances, he is the only one who can right the wrongs done by a man whose main concern is getting reelected to office. He is memorable because he gets the job done.

I usually have a title in mind before I begin to write a book. I think a good title is as important as a good cover. The first thing to catch a reader’s eye will be the cover, and the second thing will be the title. Both should spark his or her interest and make them want to turn the book over and read the blurb on the back.

This book was inspired in part by an acquaintance who hated her husband but stayed with him because of the security he provided. When I suggested that doing so was just a socially accepted kind of prostitution, she got irate and defensive immediately. The main character in this novel is a woman who has to become involved in “the world’s oldest profession” to keep from losing everything when her husband takes off and leaves her. Society tends to judge those who do what they have to do to survive.

I don’t know that there was one story in particular that was emotional for me. There are scenes in all of my books that maybe made my hands shake a little when I was typing them. Murder scenes tend to have that affect. Other scenes have made me smile or even laugh out loud when I wrote them. Others have made me feel anger for the injustice that was done.

When I write about the area where I grew up (southern Pennsylvania), I use one of my high school yearbooks to help me with names. I do draw inspiration from real life and from real people I have known. I think any good writer does or their characters are flat. The trick is to reshape the personality or the personal quirks of the individual who inspired your character just enough that they would not recognize themselves if they were to read your book.

My relationship with my wife has helped me to write about adult relationships in a realistic way. In our fifty-two years of marriage, we have experience about everything a couple can experience. Even though I write mystery novels, something like romance often has a part in them. When two adults meet and are attracted to one another, something “romantic” is likely to happen. Sometimes when deadlines pile up, I help Carolyn with the last two edits of her manuscripts. She works for two publishers, and both of them keep her busy. Mostly, I look for grammatical problems and typos.

Majoring in and teaching English for twenty-some years got me familiar with the work of great writers from the past. I discovered that you learn more about your subject when you teach it than you do just taking classes in it as a student. History hasn’t entered into my writing much because I haven’t written any historical novels—yet. I enjoyed teaching when I had students who were interested in learning, not so much toward the end of my career when I had to compete with videos and video games. The advent of those items marked the beginning of a downward slide in the quality of high school education. Of course, there was always the struggle against some extracurricular activities that were deemed by many to be more important that classroom work. I was happy to retire and do not do substitute work.

Writing is something to enjoy when I am not too busy with other things, and I believe it will keep my mind sharper than if I did nothing. Since Carolyn’s career has taken off the way it has, I do lots laundry, wash lots of dishes, mop floors, etc. There have been times when writing was tedious because a scene wasn’t wanting to materialize in my head. When I am writing, my question is always: What will likely and logically happen next? When that question is answered, I have a new scene to write and things go smoothly again.

I guess I would have to say “Best Served Cold.” It seems to me that it is a little less “dark” than “Catch and Release.” And the individuals who get their just desserts in the end are not like the innocent victims in “Catch and Release.” The little blonde-haired predator in that book, by the way, is patterned after someone I went to high school with. I don’t remember his name, but he carried a liked to carry a law book around and read passages from it that concerned rape and sexual assault—and he would giggle.

I believe I answered this in part previously but can add a lot more. I do laundry, wash dishes, clean the house, mow the grass, run errands—to the grocery store, the post office, etc.—take my granddaughter to the doctor to get her allergy shot. In short, I do whatever needs to be done. On a good day, Carolyn writes five thousand words, stopping only long enough to make lunch. If she is pushing for a deadline, I sometimes go to town and bring back lunch for the two of us. There is always something to do. I do not understand people who say they are bored.