#WriterWednesday Interview with Bill McCormick
/
I’d like to welcome author Bill McCormick to the blog today for #WriterWednesday!
Hardest thing about being a writer: Writing; Selling.
Easiest thing about being a writer: Coming up with story ideas. If you open your eyes, see the world and have imagination, they are limitless.
Things you need for your writing sessions: To leave my house and go to another location whether that’s a café’, library, office, beach or park. If my bed is anywhere nearby or if I’ve a computer with access to the internet, I’ll never get anything done.
Things that hamper your writing: I’ve lived so long in foreign countries that hearing English spoken, even in the background, pulls my attention. I cannot write a word if there are English speakers about! I’m certain that rival writers send tourists to Riga to derail my career!
Something you’re really good at: Storytelling; Research.
Something you’re really bad at: Everything else!
Favorite music or song: The Beatles are by far my favorite artists, but I’ve done most of my writing to Alice Cooper, The White Stripes or 50’s era Miles Davis. Lately, I’ve been writing to Latvian industrial band Tesa. Good stuff.
Music that drives you crazy: Lawerence Welk-era champagne music; modern techno; pop country; any American folk that isn’t Bob Dylan.
Things you’d walk a mile for: A classic noir film showing; Kraft Mac & Cheese (you can’t get it in Europe); or just to see who or what is over that hill a mile away.
Things that make you want to run screaming from the room: Parents who bring infants to move theaters; people who believe the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen; writing a synopsis.
Things you always put in your books: Hitchcockian humor
Things you never put in your books: My first-person narrative of a mime somehow never has enough words…
Things to say to an author: “Sure, I’ll leave a great review on Amazon or Goodreads.”
Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: “How come you can’t write as fast as Stephen King?”
Favorite places you’ve been: Riga, Latvia; Odesa, Ukraine; Krakow, Poland. Isle of Skye, Scotland; Mexico City, Mexico. The bohemian Uzipus neighborhood of Vilnius, Lithuania; Iceland’s endless tundra; jagged Alpine mountains; the healing sands of the Mojave Desert.
Places you never want to go to again: Moscow, Russia
Favorite books: Moby-Dick; Of Mice and Men; Ghost Stories of an Antiquary; The Maltese Falcon; The Iliad (Robert Fagles translation); Adventures of Sherlock Holmes; Atonement; Silence of the Grave; The Shadow District; And Then There Were None; The Black Dahlia; LA Confidential; The Big Nowhere; White Jazz; The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich; The Hound of the Baskervilles; The Shadow Over Innsmouth; The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt; Billy Budd; Hitler and Stalin Parallel Lives; A Brief History of Time; In the Name of the Rose; Republican Party Reptile; The Quiet American; The Third Man; Livy’s War with Hannibal; Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque; Winning Through Intimidation; Where the Red Fern Grows; Dracula; The Turn of the Screw; Jaws; Camilla.
Books you wouldn’t buy: A cookbook. One of those Gone-With-the-Wind knockoffs with a cover where a muscular, shirtless man embraces a woman falling out of her dress in front of a castle, plantation or sea cliff; Anything having to do with Twilight or Dan Brown.
Favorite things to do: Explore the world; watch a classic film; listen to old time horror and mystery radio programs; go to a concert or sporting event; hike in the desert. mountains or seaside; try a new restaurant; learn something; laugh; listen to an audiobook.
Things you’d run through a fire or eat bugs to get out of doing: Did I mention writing a synopsis?
Most daring thing you’ve ever done: Quit my job and moved to Europe to become a writer.
Something you chickened out from doing: Spelunking caves in Nevada and Carpathia. At 6’4” undulating on my belly through 18-inch crevices in the Earth’s crust isn’t really for me.
The coolest person you’ve ever met: Reggie Jackson.
The celebrity who didn’t look like he/she did in pictures/video: I saw a surprisingly scrawny Mr. T in a Vegas casino once.
The nicest thing a reader said to you: A tearful reader of LENIN’S HAREM once thanked me for telling the English-speaking world about what happened to her family and so many other Baltic people deported by the Soviet regime. I don’t think any experience in my writing career has ever touched me as much. I think of that woman and her family often.
The craziest thing a reader said to you: “The Holodmor didn’t happen.”
Some real-life story that made it to one of your books: Stalin’s purge of his military is a key plot element in my novel LENIN’s HAREM. The Parex bank scandal, while heavily fictionalized, is the inspiration behind KGB BANKER.
Something in your story that readers think is about you, but it’s not: The CIA operative in KGB BANKER is not me! (Really people I’m not CIA!)
About William:
William Burton McCormick is an Edgar and Dagger awards-nominated writer of thriller and historical short fiction. His work regularly appears in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post and elsewhere. Twenty-four of his best stories were recently collected in the book DEEDS OF DARKNESS (Level Best Books), presently a finalist for a Silver Falchion Award for Best Collection released in 2024. He also is the author of three award-winning novels including KGB BANKER (with whistleblower John Christmas), A STRANGE FROM THE STORM, and LENIN'S HAREM, the last of which became the first work of fiction included in the permanent library at the Latvian War Museum in Riga. A native of Nevada, William has lived the last twenty years in Ukraine, Latvia, Russia, Estonia and the United Kingdom for writing purposes. Learn more about his work at williamburtonmccormick.com.
Let’s Be Social:
http://williamburtonmccormick.com
https://www.facebook.com/bill.mccormick.73345/
https://www.facebook.com/William-Burton-McCormick-365316520150776/
https://twitter.com/WBMCAuthor
