Journey into A Reading Adventure

As we move into the cooler days, what could be better than a cozy chair beside a fire and a good book? It's always fun to find authors with different backgrounds and unusual experiences that give us some wonderfully unique stories. Today we visit with author Larry Farmer. Did you always want to be a writer?

Most always. The first thing I ever wanted to be, pre-school, was an artist, painter. I was horrible and it confused me why I wanted it so much, the way I did. But then I was successful quickly in music and in writing and thought, that also is art, so that must be it. Loved Arabian Knights growing up, Greek myths, and Beattrix Potter at a very young age. Then books like All Quiet On The Western Front and Dr. Zhivago at later ages. I knew I wanted to do something like that.

 

Where do you get story ideas?

Almost all of my stories that I’ve published so far are accounts of my life. I’ve been in the Marines, Peace Corps, lived abroad, and want to write about things I experienced and have seen.

 

Tell us about your writing process. Do you plot carefully or wing it?

I wing it more than anything. Since I’ve pretty much lived what I write about, I try to get out my experiences and feelings, then include love stories too in the process. I take poetic license a lot, but mostly have the foundation of life experiences that I try to get out, then go back and make cohesive and interesting.

 

How do you normally come up with characters?

Almost all of my characters are based strongly on real life characters, either myself, or those I’ve come across. I may use poetic license, but it is all based on real people and situations in my life.

 

Tell us about your latest book,  and what made you want to write it?

My latest is based on people and events I came across in what is happening now in the Middle East. I’ve lived and travelled in the Middle East, have friends that have also lived or travelled there, and then low and behold there is so much going on there now that I wanted to give a more in depth background, past and present, about it. I have links to people living through all this now going on with ISIS and Hezbollah in the Middle East. I felt obliged to talk about it through real experiences of people in fictionalized accounts.

 

How did you come up with your characters for this book?

All are based on true stories, with poetic license included in the presentation.

 

What do you like best about your current hero?

There are two heroes, the main one a girl from Texas, white Christian girl, caught smack dab in the horrors over there, seeing it first hand and just hoping to survive, while witnessing the horrors going on all around. These are based on true accounts. This girl finds ways to survive in the day to day cruelty and suspense. The other hero is a fictionalized account of her husband that she followed over there after he felt unwelcomed because of his Arab background in America after 911. He also is based on true accounts and not only must take up for his American, Christian wife, but being a Shiite Muslim, must also survive horrors from radical Sunni Muslims. In the process they watch the emergence of radical jihadists that take advantage of legitimate desire to overthrow brutal dictatorships. It is almost a different phase of the old Cold War scenarios between the US and Soviets, except, the jihadists take advantage of aid to rebels, to emerge over the dictators and also the rebels while aid is flowing that they can manipulate into their own causes, with tortures and beheadings as a side trade as they do so. The two main heroes living amongst such genocide revolution, have to survive and keep their sanity and perspective too.

 

What about your heroine?

The heroine grew up in traditional rural Texas. With a rugged an independent nature. She needed all of her cultural DNA along with her Christian upbringing to survive mentally and spiritually in the horrors going on now in the Middle East.

 

How about a blurb?

After 911 everything changed. Not just in America, but everywhere. Not only did Max find being an Arab-American difficult in Texas, but his new Christian and Texan bride Olivia found life even more difficult when they moved to the Middle East. Hello Arab Spring. But it got worse. Hello ISIS. Was this the end of times?

 

How can readers reach you or find you online?

larryfarmerwrites.com is my webpage. It has my bio, my contact information, and links on how to buy my books.

Thanks, Larry, for being my guest.  Any comments or questions for Larry?