My daily schedule depends a lot on the seasons—or more correctly, the temperature. Last Thursday broke an eighteen day heat wave of temperatures over ninety degrees. I hate the heat. So, in the summer months, when I have outdoor obligations, I begin my day outside.
I tend the vegetable garden, water the fig trees, pick blueberries and blackberries, and try to get finished before 10 a.m.
My wife shares my dislike of hot weather. That’s one of the reasons we moved from Long Island to the mountains of east Tennessee. With every 1,000 feet of altitude, you’re four degrees cooler than the flatlands.
I always get up early. 6 a.m. works best for me. After breakfast, I get right into the schedule I plan. Ever since my first full-length novel, A NEW PROSPECT, was published in January 2011, I’ve inherited the obligation of post-publication marketing. I spend more time on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and several other computer sites promoting my books than I ever envisioned. I’ll always say, “Writing is fun. This marketing business is too much like work.”
I haven’t been otherwise gainfully employed since I retired from the Suffolk County Police Department in New York, years ago. I collect a couple pensions, so, writing is more of an avocation than something I need to pay our overhead. Once my daily chores are finished, I find a quiet spot and write (or rewrite) whatever story came to mind last.
I’ll never understand the triggers that remind me of some story-worthy thing or inspires me to write a mystery. They just happen and I go with the fresh thoughts until I have several yellow, lined pads filled. Once I have my basic thoughts on paper, I type them into a Word document, proof-read and revise th3m, and then workshop them on-line. If they’re the eight to eleven thousand word novelettes I’ve done in the past, I submit them to my publisher. Anything longer, takes a spot in the queue to be flogged to . . . someone, someday.
Occasionally, I get involved with another creative outlet—custom leather work. It’s the only other money-making job I currently engage in, and that’s only because I enjoy the work. I make authentic holsters and gun belts for old west reenactors and cowboy action shooters. All my current business comes from word-of-mouth referrals. I charge ridiculous amounts of money to recreate pre-1900 gun leather or make Hollywood’s concept of what our celluloid heroes wore in the “B” western movies of the 1930s and ‘40s to the television shows and spaghetti westerns of the ‘50s and ‘60s. People will take out home equity loans to get a reproduction of the Lone Ranger’s gun rig.
Somewhere around 4:30 I start thinking about dinner. Like my characters, Sam and Kate Jenkins, my wife, Barbara and I share the cooking responsibilities. I’m great with Italian food. I also dabble with Indian curries. Barbara is a real pro with most any recipe and makes better salads than most restaurants.
Television doesn’t occupy a big place in our lives. We own a small twenty-one inch TV set that occupies a spot in a built-in bookcase. I doubt we watch more than a half-dozen network shows a week. Without Netflix, the TV would collect cobwebs.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Wayne Zurl grew up on Long Island and retired after working for twenty years with the Suffolk County Police Department, one of the largest municipal law enforcement agencies in New York and the nation. For thirteen of those years he served as a section commander supervising investigators.
Prior to his police career, Zurl served on active duty in the US Army during the Vietnam War and later in the reserves.
In 2006 he began writing crime fiction. Seven of his Sam Jenkins mysteries have been produced as audio books and simultaneously published as eBooks. His first full-length novel, A New Prospect, traditionally published by Black Rose Writing, debuted in January 2011.
Zurl left New York to live in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee with his wife, Barbara.
- For more information about Zurl or his writing, visit www.waynezurlbooks.net. Follow his book signing tour.
- Connect with Wayne at Twitter or Facebook.
Sam Jenkins never thought about being a fish out of water during the twenty years he spent solving crimes in New York. But things change, and after retiring to Tennessee, he gets that feeling. Jenkins becomes a cop again and is thrown headlong into a murder investigation and a steaming kettle of fish, down-home style.
The victim, Cecil Lovejoy, couldn’t have deserved it more. His death was the inexorable result of years misspent and appears to be no great loss, except the prime suspect is Sam’s personal friend.
Jenkins’ abilities are attacked when Lovejoy’s influential widow urges politicians to reassign the case to state investigators.
Feeling like “a pork chop at a bar mitzvah” in his new workplace, Sam suspects something isn’t kosher when the family tries to force him out of the picture.
In true Jenkins style, Sam turns common police practice on its ear to insure an innocent man doesn’t falls prey to an imperfect system and the guilty party receives appropriate justice.
A NEW PROSPECT takes the reader through a New South resolutely clinging to its past and traditional way of keeping family business strictly within the family.
A NEW PROSPECT is available from all the usual storefront book shops (Borders, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, etc.), independant book stores, Amazon and other dot-com sellers, and directly from the publisher, Black Rose Writing, at www.blackrosewritingbooks.com.
- Paperback: 276 pages
- Publisher: Black Rose Writing (January 20, 2011)
- Language: English
- ISBN-13: 978-1935605720
A NEW PROSPECT is now available as an eBook: Kindle from Amazon | Other formats from Smashwords
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