Today we have author Mike Faricy in the hot seat! He writes crime fiction with a touch of humor, romance and lots of suspense. I checked him out and his books have lots of great reviews on Amazon. If you're a fan of Michael Connelly then give him a shot (no pun intended.)
He's also wanting to give you a chance at free books! Stay tuned to find out how to enter.
~Mia
Quick
Round questions for Mike Faricy:
Coffee, tea
or … what’s your vice? Where to
begin? Are we just talking beverages? I suppose depending on the time of day,
I’m a coffee guy, black and strong. If I’m working late at night, which is
often, I’ll have a chamomile tea. Yeah, I know, boring. If I’m taking it easy I
might have a bourbon or a whiskey, but that’s usually if I’m home and waxing
eloquent on a variety of subjects I know nothing about.
Favorite
movie: The Big
Lebowski
Favorite
Color: Red
Favorite
book/author: I can’t limit this to just one author; Michael Connelly,
Elmore Leonard, Robert B. Parker, Daniel Woodrell, Carl Hiaasen for crime
fiction. I read a lot of history and enjoy Shelby Foote, David McCullough, Jeff
Shaara and Stephen Ambrose.
How do you
feel about bacon? I like it
as an additive to just about any dish. As far as eating strips of bacon I can
do without it, largely because I hate the clean up. I like what we call
Canadian bacon or rashers in the UK
and Ireland.
Now for the REAL questions...
Tell us a little about yourself:
I was born
and raised in Minnesota
and I still live there part of the year. I am the oldest of five. My wife and I
have a long distance marriage, she lives in Dublin,
Ireland and I live in St. Paul, Minnesota.
We’re together more often than not, but from time to time we may go 6-8 weeks
without seeing one another. That said, we talk every day on Skype and I dare
say we may talk more than many couples living under the same roof. We are both
tied to our respective areas although we’re sort of looking for that warm
winter get-away. That knocks Minnesota out of
the running and Dublin
at 38F and rainy in the winter isn’t a heavy contender when it comes to
sunshine. Still with family and friends the get-away may only be for a couple
of weeks. Usually about the time my wife has had enough of my direction and if
my chores are finished I suddenly find myself dropped off at the Dublin airport with my
luggage.
You can find me at:
What’s
under your bed?
Absolutely
nothing, unless you count the occasional errant shoe that I’m usually looking
for when I’m running late. Oh and then a box with a manuscript of the first
book I ever wrote, that’s staying under the bed.
What comes
first, plot or characters?
Characters
come first. I usually have a couple of them bouncing around in my thick skull.
In my Dev Haskell Private Investigator series I already have the main
character, Dev. But all sorts of secondary folks keep popping up. I’m writing a
new series in 2014 along with another Dev Haskell novel and I’m working at
making the two series different enough so that there’s no sort of cross over or
confusion for me or more importantly, my readers.
Pantser,
plotter, or hybrid?
At the end
of any day no one is more surprised than me as to what has happened. I don’t
work off an outline, things just sort of pop into my head. Events may have been
up there percolating for a while but the story just sort of evolves and when I
go back and read it, surprisingly the thing seems to make sense. Of course I
sort of get too involved sometimes. We were out walking one day and my wife
said to me, “You’re awfully quiet.” “Quiet?” I said. “Are you kidding? I’ve got
a main character tied to an office chair hanging out of a three story window by
a phone cord and some guy is about to cut the cord!” She just picked up her
pace and left me in the dust.
Oddest
thing on your desk?
A German
cigar ashtray that my dad brought home as a 19 year old GI at the end of the
Second World War. Or, is it the bottle of distilled Witch Hazel from when I got
into it with a wasp nest last May?
What’s your
most interesting writing quirk?
You know I
was in the army so I just sort of hit it hard and keep banging my head against
it until I find myself up against the next wall. The one thing I do is I begin
each day reading out loud whatever I wrote the day before. I do some light
editing and that usually gets me in the swing of things before I start cranking
another days pages. At the end of any day writing is a solitary exercise and I
don’t like to be disturbed. The radio, TV and phone are usually off. I maybe
take a fifteen minute lunch break, and then I’m back to work.
What is the
hardest thing about being an author?
Wanting to
write every day, all day and not being able to. When I’m in the midst of a
project or an edit I can become very introverted. That’s why I need my wife to
grab me by the collar and say, “Enough!”
What’s the
easiest thing about being an author?
Well, first
and foremost I enjoy the endeavor, that in itself makes the job easy. I love
coming up with stories and plots that are entertaining.
What do you
wish someone had asked you for an interview question?
I don’t
know maybe something like, Which one of
your incredible best sellers is your favorite? or Since all your books have been made into Academy Award winning movies…
Tell us
about your latest release:
My Latest
release is the sixth book in my Dev Haskell – Private Investigator series. The
book is entitled Last Shot: Case 6. I write the series so the books can
be read in any order, but a lot of my readers want to begin with the first book,
so we came up with the case number designation for each release. I also had
book covers that were great covers, but they didn’t communicate a sense of
series so we’ve retired those original covers and have gone for a slightly
sexier version featuring the same model on each cover. The new covers have been
working very well thus far.
Last Shot is available on Amazon
Let me preface the excerpt from Last
Shot: Case 6 by saying that I write books of no redeeming social
value. It’s crime fiction theoretically with a sense of humor and even some
romance. If you’re looking for a read where someone saves the world from
terrorists, international banking conspiracies or government coups, my books
won’t help. My characters inhabit that social ooze just below polite society.
We all know people like this and we wisely prefer to keep them at a distance.
The situations they find themselves in are due to their own bad decisions, but
then bad decisions can make for interesting stories. I’ve written these books
to be entertaining page turners. Hopefully you’ll find that to be the case.
Many thanks and I hope you enjoy the read.
Excerpt from Last
Shot: Case 6 by Mike
Faricy
Last Shot: Case 6
Chapter
One
Annie was a petite
blonde with large brown eyes, who stood barely an inch over five feet. We’d
casually linked up from time to time over the past couple of months. Up until
now, all of our meetings had been spur of the moment, meaning she called and I
suggested maybe she could come right over to ‘chat’.
Tonight’s ‘chat’ was different. For the first time she
invited me over to her place. We feasted on undercooked spaghetti with little cut
up bits of hot dog floundering in a runny ketchup sauce. Apparently, the
kitchen wasn’t her strong suit, so the bottles of wine I showed up with helped
us survive her lack of gourmet skills.
It was drizzling softly outside when we finally took a break.
Annie was lying next to me with one of her gorgeous shapely legs draped over
mine. She was tracing four letter words and triple-X suggestions across my
chest with her fingertip, giggling. We’d been frolicking up in her candlelit
bedroom for a couple of hours, a room I’d never been in before. During our
break I was beginning to check the place out.
The walls were painted a dinged-up off-white. A large oak
double-chest of drawers with a matching mirror that covered most of the wall
was wedged in next to the door. About four dozen Mardi Gras-style beaded
necklaces hung from either side of the mirror.
A smaller dresser, once painted olive drab now chipped and
scratched, stood at the end of the queen size bed. A flat screen TV sat on top
of the dresser and half covered one of the two bedroom windows. It all made for
tight quarters and I had to turn sideways just to squeeze around the end of her
bed.
Six-foot mirrors on the bi-fold closet doors reflected our
images as we lay in bed. Next to the closet, the clear imprint of a
heavy-treaded boot, about ten sizes larger than Annie’s demure little feet, was
stamped on the wall.
“Did you play a lot of sports in school?” I asked.
“No, not at all, I was a pretty geeky kid. About the only
thing I played was the clarinet in the school band and I didn’t do that very
well.”
“Then where’d you get all the trophies? Must be a couple
dozen up here. Looks like you’re into ballet or dance or something. What about
all those medals and ribbons in the two cases on the wall? Are they from your
school band?”
“All that junk
belongs to Lydell.”
“Lydell?”
“He was my
boyfriend. Well, until I broke up with him.”
“And he left all
this stuff here?”
“Well, I only sent
him the text last night.”
“The text?” I asked
and rolled over to face her.
“Yeah, telling him we were through. I really didn’t feel like
talking with him. He gets so dramatic and he’s kinda got a temper.”
“You didn’t tell him in person?” I was getting a warning sign
flashing inside my thick skull.
“How could I, Dev? He’s out of town,” she said, suddenly
sitting up and looking down on me.
“Out of town? You mean just across the river in Minneapolis or like way
far away out of town?” I sat up to face her.
“Relax, he’s in Chicago,” she said,
bouncing her surgically enhanced chest from side to side.
I completely forgot
what I was going to ask next.
“He’s such a big
baby.”
“Chicago?”
“Yeah, that stupid
UFC.”
“UFC…is that where he
goes to school?”
“No, dopey,” she said, and then pushed me down. She straddled
me and began to lightly run her nails down my stomach, smiling in a leering
way. “It’s his crazy obsession, baby, that idiotic Ultimate Fight Club. God,
I’m so sick of it. He trains all day long lifting his big, dumb weights and
drinking all those smelly old protein drinks. Five days a week he spends at
least an hour in a cage sparring with some other obsessed animal.”
“Sparring in a cage?”
“Yeah, he…” Her iPhone rang at that moment and she reached
over to grab it off the top of the double chest of drawers. “Oh, God, can you
believe it? Go figure!”
“What is it?” I asked.
“Hello, Lydell?”
I attempted to sit up, but she pushed me down again.
“Shhh-hhh,” she said, signaling with her index finger to be quiet.
“So, you got my text
message?”
I could feel my heart
beginning to pound, but then again he was in Chicago.
“No, we’ve talked
about all this before. No, I don’t care. This time I really mean it.”
I wasn’t sure she
should be sitting on top of me during this conversation.
“What?” she said.
“You did? When?”
Whatever it was,
Lydell had her attention. I was guessing a tattoo with ‘Annie’ emblazoned
across his heart.
“No, Lydell, this time
I’m not kidding,” she said, sounding like she really wasn’t.
I was thinking maybe
some of the passion and romance in the air from just a moment ago was beginning
to dissipate.
“Fine, go ahead! So
what? Oh, really? Is that supposed to be a threat, Lydell?”
Oh-oh.
“I don’t care if you
are parked out front. Besides, this just isn’t a very good time for me.”
Out front?
“Well, you should
have called me first.”
Not what I wanted to
hear.
“Don’t you talk to me like that and it’s really none of your
business.”
Alarm bells were sounding in my head.
“Well, just go ahead and try. See if I care. Anyway, I had
the locks changed.”
Not good.
“Don’t you dare! You kick that door in and you’re going to
pay for it. I’m warning you, Mister.”
I took that last line as my walking papers. I rolled out from
underneath her just as a loud boom sounded downstairs.
“God, I just hate it when he goes crazy like this. He gets so
worked up he’s liable to do anything. You probably should leave, Dev,” she
said, then slid off the bed and tossed her phone onto the pillow.
I heard wood splintering in the door frame downstairs.
“Oh-oh, might be better if you just went out the window.” She
made it sound like it wasn’t the first time someone had fled by that route
“Annie, damn it,” a voice roared from downstairs.
“Better hurry,” she half whispered, then sort of motioned me
away with her hands before she peeked into the hallway.
I raised the window and stared into the wet night. God, it
was at least a story and a half drop. There was some sort of large bush
spreading out right below the window. A light flashed on in the house next door
and I could see a little high school girl filling a glass of water at the
kitchen sink.
“Annie, where the hell are you?” Lydell roared. It sounded
like he was stomping through the dining room, making his way into the kitchen.
“You gonna be okay?” I asked.
“Don’t worry, he does this every once-in-a-while. Soon as he
sees me with my clothes off he’ll calm down and get all apologetic, but you
better go,” she whispered and nodded toward the open window.
“Annie,” he screamed as he stomped back into the dining room.
I figured a 911 call wouldn’t get the police here fast
enough. What the hell, just a story and a half. I was out the window, hanging
from the sill, dropping. Ouch! Snap, crackle and pop! I sort of landed on my
feet and tried to do the crouch, tuck and roll just like I’d learned in the
Army, but I’d never done it naked before and then there was that damn bush. I
heard something break as I tumbled into the mud. Fortunately it was a branch on
the bush. I didn’t care to contemplate a misplaced limb.
I’d barely landed when my jeans and T-shirt flew out the
window. One of my shoes sailed out next. Then the other, hastily tossed, landed
on the back-porch-roof of the house next door.
The high-school girl at the kitchen sink stared at me wide
eyed as I picked up my T-shirt. She looked up toward the ceiling when my shoe
thumped across her roof, but I really couldn’t worry about that just now. I was
more concerned about that Ultimate Fight Cluber, Lydell, flying out the window
after me. I couldn’t find my boxers and didn’t have the luxury of time to
search. I pulled my T-shirt on over the mud and scratches, then quickly stepped
into my jeans, zipping them up on the run.
I only had one shoe. Fortunately my wallet and car keys were
still in my jeans. I limped across the backyard and out to the alley so I could
circle the block. The high school girl had moved from the kitchen window to her
backdoor and watched me as I faded from view under the alley light.
Luckily, I had parked across the street and down a couple of
doors. A bright red pick-up truck had skidded to a stop after barreling fifteen
feet through the hedge into Annie’s front yard. The thing had dual rear wheels
and an Ultimate Fight Club bumper sticker that said ‘Go Ahead - Take Your Best
Shot’. The driver’s door was still open with some country chorus blaring ‘Death
before Dishonor’. Pretty safe guess the
vehicle belonged to recently returned Lydell.
As I drove past, I could see the back of a broad-shouldered
muscular guy with a shaved head standing in Annie’s front entry. His head
looked like a shiny globe and appeared to be hanging in abject surrender on his
muscle bound body. He was nodding slightly and it looked like he had already
been reduced to the apologetic mode. I could just see Annie from the knees down
standing halfway up the stairs. Hopefully she’d make him sleep on the floor
against her ruined front door.
I drove home scratched, muddied, but still alive.
~*~
Giveaway details!
Mike Faricy is giving away 2 e-copies of Last Chance: Case 6. Leave a comment and your email to be eligible.
~*~
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"When I told him to go to hell, I didn't realize it would be a trip for two."
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