Doug: How long have you been writing speculative fiction?

Alex: For about eighteen years.

Doug: Do you write anything else?

Alex: I do, but we can’t discuss that.  My publisher wants me to stay on task regarding my current works.

Doug: Have you noticed any recurring themes in your stories?

Doug: How did you come up with the idea for your first Rogue Angel novel, Destiny?

Alex: I started poking around with the idea that history is really interesting when it’s a combination of history and mystery, and I found the story about the Beast of Jabbabat.  So I asked myself “What if?” about some of the religious orders that were very big back then.  And as I put the pieces together, along with some of the medical maladies—because some of things that happened in history have to do with medical maladies that we now understand—I cross-pollinated the misconception of the various medical problems with history and with secrets, and spiced it up by adding thriller aspects with real detective problems.

Doug: How about the idea for your forthcoming Rogue Angel novel, Solomon’s Jar?

Alex:  Again, you start with something, and you put two or three threads together.  It’s usually something I’ll read, in Archaeologist Today, or the archaeological web sites, or some of the weblogs that are maintained by archaeologists, and a lot of what I read here gets me to thinking on my own. 

Doug: What is your writing routine like?

Alex: I get up in the morning and fool around with the Internet for a while. I hit some of the

archaeological sites, because you never what’s going to spark an idea.  One of the things I really believe in is research every day.  Go and read, take in as much as you can, and let your subconscious work, because six months later this may give you a whole book of ideas that you didn’t know was there.  After that I’ll usually wrote for eight hours.

Doug: Why do you write speculative fiction?

Alex: People have an affinity toward fiction.  You can tell them a story and also educate them at the same time.  Or with Aesop’s Fables, a lot of the stories also have a moral lesson to them.  With the stuff I’m doing in Rogue Angel, I can train people a little better in history and expose them to more information, but without doing it in a dry textbook sort of way.  Like, when you take a class, generally you have an interest in that subject.  But in Rogue Angel, you may look at the cover and say, “Hey, she’s kind of hot.  Maybe I can read a story about the babe.”  Then you find out she has Joan of Arc’s sword, and think “Well, that’s kind of cool,” and as you go along maybe I can interest a person in a different facet of history, or some myth or legend they’re fascinated by.

Doug: What can we expect you from you in the future?  Anything good in the works?

Alex: Right now the focus is on the Rogue Angel series.  My editors are very excited, because we’ve gotten favorable reviews.  So it’s possible we can spin one or two other things out of this.  They’ve talked to me about doing other history-based projects, adventure or agent-spy novels, or something like that.  Here’s a factoid: archaeologists, for many years in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century were spies.  That’s why today so many archaeologists are frowned on, because they were once used to do spy work, to spy for different countries.

 Alex: The research is an absolute peach.  I get a chance to explore something and then try to find my own words for it.  The best teachers are the one who teach without making you feel like you’re being taught.  And that’s what I try to do in the book.  I’ll expose you to an idea, but I don’t want you to feel like you’re reading an encyclopedia.

The hardest part of writing is when you have to turn the book in.  When you see the book in print, you can’t change it, you can’t edit it, you can’t correct it.  So I guess one of the hardest parts is letting go of it.  Because looking back, you want to kick yourself, saying, “Oh, I could’ve edited this.  I could’ve changed this.  This didn’t come out exactly right.”

Another hard part is if you have a piece of the story in your head, but when you sit down to write it, you find it’s not as much fun, because maybe this section doesn’t introduce action or character.  You have to write through it.  So some parts of the book will be more fun to write than others.

Doug: Any advice for all the aspiring writers out there?

Alex: The one thing is to learn to finish what you start.  So many people start with a really good idea, but never figure out where it’s going to go.  If you don’t have an end in mind, you can’t really write to get to it.  Make sure you know how your story is going to end.  It’s important to write to the finish.  Writing is hard.  It’s the loneliest business in the world, except for maybe an outpost in Alaska somewhere (laughs).  You’re cutting yourself off from your family, your friends, and the other things you could be doing.  A writer two hundred years ago probably had it a little easier.  There weren’t as many distractions. They didn’t have as much entertainment as we do.  So that’s one of the hardest things, the self-discipline aspect.

Doug: Who are some of your favorite writers?

Alex: I really like Hemingway, because the stuff he writes is very clear, very concise, and very direct and on point.  At the same time, a lot of people don’t view Hemingway as a historian, because he was writing about contemporary times.  But, when we read Hemingway now he was a perfect historian.  He actually went to the bullfights . . .the running of the bulls . . .he did all those things.  He sailed.  He was a spy down in Havana during WWII, looking for Nazi ships down around Cuba.  He had one of those lives that was very adventurous.

Jack London was another excellent writer and historian, because he wrote about the human condition in times that were contemporary to him, like with the gold mine camps, which were part of his daily world, but are history to us.  In 1906 he was called out of bed to cover the big earthquake in California, and he was paid an exorbitant amount to file 1000 or 1500 words a day, and he did it by telegraph.  He did the reports for the newspaper.  At the time it was not history, but one hundred years, when that happened in 1906 . . .that was history in the making.  That is impressive.

Doug: So what are you reading these days?  Anything good?

Alex: I’ll read the same kind of popular cultural novels that a lot of people do.  I enjoy fiction in all aspects.  I’ll pick up the beach sizzlers to read.  I’ve read The Da Vinci Code.  I’ve read a lot of Lewis Perdue.  We have a lot people writing about this sort of history.  The Templar Knights are popular, and who knew the Roman Catholic Church had so many secrets?  I enjoy a lot of the potboilers out there.

Doug: How many Rogue Angel books do you envision yourself writing?