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A Conversation with Frank Foster

 WILL BOCA MOON BE A MOVIE?
Well, the book is just now coming out. But will it be a movie? I'd sure love it. We plan to give it a shot. Maybe Lucy Liu starring as Lynn Woo? What do you think?

WHY ARE YOUR CHAPTERS SO SHORT?
Think about it. Say you've got a big day tomorrow, you've just gotten in your bed, picked up a novel and read a chapter. You glance at the clock then back at the book. You thumb forward and learn that the next chapter is twenty or thirty pages. You look back at the clock. Just not going to happen. Book gets closed, lights go out. But with my short-chaptered books you might have read another chapter, maybe two or three. As busy as we all are and with that machine-gun called television, and the allure of the internet, it's amazing anything gets read at all. I'm trying to help matters with fast-paced stories which work well with relatively short chapters. Mine are not as short as James Patterson's, however. I think I read one of his books which had a half-page long chapter.

WHEN IS YOUR NEXT BOOK COMING OUT?
Not sure. It's almost finished and it's the second in the Lynn Woo series set in Boca Grande. It's about two fictitious, competing island weekly newspapers and some local controversy. Of course, crimes get committed and Lynn is in the thick of it all. Although I'm pretty new at this, I would say look for at least one book a year from me.

WHEN AND HOW DO YOU WRITE? DO YOU OUTLINE?
Many writers just sit down and let it rip, but I outline with gusto. I even do character biographies. But I'm a structured sort of a person, probably bordering on having OCD. I prefer to figure everything out in a thirty page, single-spaced outline. After that, writing the book becomes just a big party for me as I discover for myself the details of how the story unfolds. But the complete story usually turns out to be, in some ways, completely different from the outline.

I've read interviews with other writers who say, "Oh, yes, I'm at that keyboard from this time of day to that, or I don't do anything else until I've produced my X number of pages for that day. Well…not me bub. This is where I'm not structured. I've got so many other things going on in my life that I could not be that disciplined. I tend to write in long, burning streaks and then get away from it for periods. But I can still do my one a year that way.

WHAT DO YOU WHEN YOU'RE NOT WRITING?
I'm blessed with a full life even though (other than my new career as a novelist) I don't have a fulltime job anymore. I have investments in income real estate like warehouses, shopping centers and office buildings to keep up with, and I occasionally invest in a small company. Also, I'm on the board of a publicly traded holding company which owns a bank I helped start. And I pursue my passion of fly fishing which always means a trip somewhere on an airplane (I live in Central Florida and not on the water). I used to be on several community boards but let the younger guys handle that now. I'm careful to spend time with my dear, long-time friends, and my golf buddies (I'm not very good, going back and forth between a 10 and 12 handicap). All of that is not to mention my three precious grandchildren (yes, I'm that old).

HOW HARD WAS IT TO GET PUBLISHED?
Like giving birth to an elephant. I wrote my first book some years ago (I won't even tell you how many) and was lucky enough to get my friend Winston Groom (Forest Gump) to read it. One day he called and said, "Well, I read your book." Certain I had penned the perfect masterpiece, I said excitedly, "Well?" He said, "Maybe you'd better come over here for a beer." He patiently took two hours to explain how dreadful my book was and said I needed to take a year, maybe two, and learn the craft of fiction writing. Impatient as I was, I read more books, studied other writer's work for a few months, then re-wrote and tried to get an agent. Nothing but rejections.

It was then I had the good fortune to meet Stuart Kaminsky and his wife (and personal editor) Enid Perll. Stuart has published over 50 novels, written screenplays, and in 2006 won the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master Award (Agatha Christie won the first one and Stephen King won in 2007). Stuart and Enid worked with me as I wrote a new book. By the time they finished throwing pages back at me with instructions for improving them, Winston's two years had turned into three. Finally Stuart and Enid thought I was ready and they got me a New York literary agent. After only seven rejections (James Patterson got 26 rejections on the book which eventually won the Edgar Award. As he says, go figure) I signed a publishing contract with Hilliard & Harris and now here I am answering these questions

HOW DID YOU THINK OF LYNN WOO? IS SHE BASED ON ANYONE REAL?
She's very real to me (and I hope to you). And I'm having so much fun getting to know her better as I complete the second book in her series. How did I think of her? Damned if I know, she just came to me. The other question writers get asked is how they think of their plots. I've heard lots of answers, but when it comes right down to it, if you're going to write fiction, you simply have to have a good imagination. That said, for Boca Moon, I read an article about a new kind of high-tech gun which shoots an uncountable number of rounds per second. It became the kernel for my plot. For the next book, I was already familiar with an island controversy which was prominent in the island papers. But I don't want to say too much about that right now.

HOW DO I GET A PERSONALIZED, AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF BOCA MOON?
Keep watching my website. I plan to work out an arrangement with a bookseller near me who will take your order for a book and get it to me to personalize before sending it to you.

I HAVE A GREAT IDEA FOR A NOVEL. WILL YOU LOOK AT IT?
Please don't take this the wrong way, but if you send me something like that I simply can't look at it and can't even return it. For one thing, if I began doing that, I'd go from writing one book a year to one every ten, and besides, my lawyer would have a heart attack. You're better off writing it yourself and there is a ton of stuff on the internet about what to do and where to go to learn the craft. Janet Evanovich has a great book out on writing and a novelist named J. A. Konrath has a volume of useful data on his website.

WHY DO SOME OF YOUR CHARACTERS USE PROFANITY?
Although I believe the profanity in Boca Moon is minimal for the genre, that's a great question. The answer is that many people use profanity and I strive for dialogue that rings true to the ear. Remember that mystery thrillers have scenes which deal with extreme life events for its characters, and stress and trauma provide the most likely atmosphere in all our lives for blue language to pop out. I had a dear friend raise this very question with me and ask if I would want my granddaughter to read my book. I said no, I wouldn't. My friend said then why don't you just take all the profanity out. I explained that some of my characters did a lot worse things than use profanity. Like murder? Anyway, my granddaughter should be finishing the Nancy Drew series then moving on to the classics, right?

WHAT DO YOU READ?
Well, you know I like my own genre. My favorites are Stuart Kaminsky, Carl Hiaasen, Randy Wayne White, Ace Atkins, Robert Parker, Jonathon King, Linda Fairstein, Barbara Parker, and Lawrence Light. Of course, I love my friend Winston Groom's work and if you want to venture into science fiction I recommend a brilliant new writer named Josh Conviser. Literary fiction? What's that? No, seriously, I'm currently spending time with The Book Thief and The Alchemist, and recently finished Bel Canto and The Kite Runner.

DO YOU LIKE TO LISTEN TO MUSIC WHILE YOU WRITE? IF SO, WHAT KIND?
I love almost all kinds of music, but not while I write. Prefer it with a glass of wine. Favorites? Classical, jazz, and standard ballads the way Billie Holliday and her crowd did them. My wife hates jazz, likes country and polka. Me too (except for polka).

ARE THE RESTAURANTS AND MARINAS IN BOCA MOON REAL?
Of course not. They're purely fictional. A pigment (or figment, or something like that) of my imagination. Any similarity between... well, you know the drill. If you know or visit Boca Grande and read the book you can decide whether you think anything on the island inspired me in any way.

WHAT DOES YOUR WIFE DO?
Other than take care of me? (I say that not because I deserve being taken care of, I just need it. Ask anybody who knows us and they'll chuckle). Fact is, she's busy as hell. Besides going on fly fishing and other trips with me, she's an award winning artist, working mainly in oils, and an exceptional gardener - you should see what she's done at our mountain house. Over the years she's been an impact player as a volunteer both locally and at the state level, mainly in the arts. She's one hell of a woman, and I happen to be very much in love with her. (Besides, she can cast seventy feet of fly line.)

WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE KIND OF FLY FISHING AND WHERE DO YOU DO IT?
That's easy. I'm stark, raving, nuts over bonefishing. It's pure sight fishing. You don't even cast unless you see a fish, and boy do you see them. A tailing bonefish makes my heart stand still. You know, if I were a writer, I could maybe really describe what it's like, right? Where do I do it? Love doing it in the Bahamas. Lots of fish, and, if you know where to go, they're big.