FEATURED AUTHOR: KEVIN R. DOYLE

ABOUT THE BOOK


A disgraced ex-cop is hired by a convicted serial killer to dig up information not to absolve him of his crimes but to in fact prove that he committed more murders than the authorities know of. He is attempting to bargain for a reduced sentence by providing information of his previous killings, but in another state another man, who the original killer has never met, is taking credit for his crimes.


Book Details:

Title: And the Devil Walks Away

Author: Kevin R. Doyle

Genre: mystery


Series: The Group, book #3


Publisher: MuseItUp Publications (November 10, 2020)  


Print length: 483 pages



IFs ANDs OR WHATs INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN DOYLE

Ifs


If you could live in any time period which would it be?
Between 2,000 and 3,000 B.C. I know life was infinitely harder back then, but it was a fascinating time.

If you could step back into a moment or day in time, where would you go?
I'd go back to the week, when I was twenty-one, and I had to find a new home for my dog. I'd like to relive that period and make a different decision than I did. He did end up in a good home, but I never felt right about letting him go.

If you could be anything besides a writer, what would it be?
Anthropologist or archaeologist.

If you could meet any author for coffee, who would you like to meet and what would you talk about?
In terms of living authors, Lawrence Block. I'd love to dig into his work routine and hear about his earlier career.

If you could live anywhere in the world, where in the world would it be?
The Gulf Coast, preferably Alabama or Texas. That's actually where I'm planning to retire in a few years.




Ands

5 things you love about writing:  
•    first drafts, just making stuff up
•    gauging my students' reactions when I show them cover art
•    finally sending off final, final draft to publisher
•    escaping from workaday world
and
•    seeing the entire thing finally come together     

5 things you love about where you live:  
•    the scenery
•    tons of live music opportunities (at least, as soon as virus goes away)
•    centralized location in the middle of the state, so you can be anywhere in a few hours
•    large town, so it's just the right size
and
•    the colors in the fall    

5 things you never want to run out of:    
•    Dr Pepper
•    money (during retirement)
•    music
•    cheese
and
•    books    

5 favorite foods:   
•    pizza
•    General's chicken
•    BBQ, of any sort
•    BLT's
and
•    Lost Trail Sugar Cane Cola   

5 favorite places you’ve been:   
•    Palacios, Texas
•    Key Largo
•    Lake Superior
•    Arrow Rock Lyceum Theatre
and
•    a loft apartment I lived in several years ago. Hundred-year old building, downtown, wooden floors, vaulted ceiling and floor-to-ceiling windows    

5 favorite books:   
•    Eight Million Ways to Die
•    When the Sacred Ginmill Closes
•    A Boy's Life
•    The Poet
and
•    Boston Blitz

5 favorite authors:   
•    Arthur C. Clarke
•    Lawrence Block
•    Lester Dent
•    Don Pendleton
and
•    Ray Bradbury

5 things that drive you crazy:  
•    cell phones (don't own one)
•    someone not moving when light turns green, usually because they're on their phone
•    freshmen
•    tendonitis (suffering from it for the first time right now)
and
•    the satellite dish going out when there's just the barest spritz of rain    

Whats

What's your favorite movie?
Casino Royale. It's not the best movie ever, but I can watch it over and over with no boredom.

What’s your all-time favorite author?
Lester Dent. He was a pulp writer in the thirties and forties, primarily known for writing most of the Doc Savage novels.

What’s your all-time favorite library?
Why, the main library back in my hometown. We had several branches, but I always preferred going to the main one. Last time I returned home, they had a new main library in a different part of town, all upscale and modern, and I hated it. Wanted my old one back.

What’s the most beautiful sound you’ve heard?
An ice storm hitting my windows late at night, when I've already gotten the call and there's no school the next day so I don't have to get out.

What’s your favorite quote?
"Let them eat cake." I love it because it's so misunderstood. When Marie Antoinette supposedly said that, she was referring to the soot that cakes the inside of chimneys.

What’s your favorite candy bar?
It's a tie between 3 Musketeer and Cherry Mash.

What’s your favorite movie snack?
Junior Mints.

What's your favorite color?
Blue.

What book are you currently working on?
A standalone mystery called The Anchor and about to start working on the third Sam Quinton mystery.


What’s your latest recommendation for:
Food:  just started using Freshly, so far pretty satisfied.
Music: while it's been interrupted by the virus, last I knew Elton John's still in the midst of his farewell tour. It's an amazing show.
TV: currently between seasons, but love Better Call Saul. Possibly even better than Breaking Bad.  
Netflix/Amazon Prime: Bosch, but start with season 2

OTHER BOOKS BY KEVIN DOYLE

The Group

When You Have to Go There

The Litter 

Squatter’s Rights






ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A high-school teacher, former college instructor and fiction writer, Kevin R. Doyle is the author of two crime novels, The Group and When You Have to Go There, published by MuseItUp Publications, and one horror novel, The Litter, published by Night to Dawn Magazine and Books. This year also saw the release of the first book in his Sam Quinton mystery series, Squatter’s Rights, by Camel Press. He has had numerous short horror stories published in small press magazines. Doyle teaches high-school English in Missouri and is currently planning his retirement to the Gulf Coast.



Connect with Kevin:
Website  |  Facebook  |  Goodreads

Buy the book:
Amazon

 
Check out Kevin's interview from May 15, 2020 here. 

Check out Kevin's guest post from July 2, 2020 here.

GUEST POST BY KEVIN DOYLE

ABOUT THE BOOK


When private detective Sam Quinton sets out to solve the murders of a stripper and small-time gambler, he ends up in the middle of an organized crime war, testing Quinton’s loyalty to an old friend and making him the killers’ next target. While working to stay one step ahead of the killers, Quinton also has to safeguard the life of an elderly couple, who unwittingly hold the key to solving the murders and ending the war.

Book Details:


Title: Squatter’s Rights

Author: Kevin R. Doyle

Genre: mystery

Series: Sam Quinton

Publisher and date: Camel Press, March 2020

Print Length: 213 pages

GUEST POST WITH KEVIN DOYLE



A Day in the Life 


Describing a typical day in my life is a bit complicated, mainly because I have two distinct phases to the year. As a high-school teacher, for nine months I follow one pattern (though said pattern got a tad disrupted this spring), and for the other three months (eleven weeks usually) there’s a completely different pattern. And while a lot of people may look at those three summer months and imagine them to be nothing but playtime, that’s only how it used to be. Not so much anymore.
I work like the dickens all through the school year. I teach English, so by the time you factor in lesson prep and grading papers, you’re easily talking a total of fifty-five to sixty hours, on average, per week. I remember when I was younger thinking that teachers had such a cool job because they were done by three in the afternoon.

Uhm, no.

Not that way at all. 

On top of that, totally through my own choice, I have about a forty-minute commute to and from work. I’m usually up about 6:30 in order to get out the door by 7:00 and be to school by 8:00 (classes start at 8:30 each morning). 

The day usually goes non-stop until a little after three, and most days I’m on the road home by 3:45 or so. During the morning, I don’t mind the commute, as it’s a straight shot on the highway, mostly against traffic, and allows time to sort things out and plan the day in my head.

Driving the same distance back home is another matter. When the day’s over, I want it to be over and done. I just want to be home. So that commute home can be a bear some days.

Nighttime work usually begins right after dinner, and continues, off and on, till around ten or so. If this sounds excessive, you should have seen my first year. Nothing, but nothing that anyone said could have prepared me for that first year of teaching. I went about seven months straight rarely getting to bed before 1:30, if not later, including weekends. Things didn’t ease off until somewhere around the end of April.

(Several folks told me to just hang in there, that the second year would be easier. Which it was, though what shocked me was just how much easier it was. I’m talking something around the order of a third as much work the second year as the first.)

To put this in total context, for most of the time I’ve been writing it’s been mainly short stories. For years and years I pounded away at short stories, considering myself fortunate to have one or two see print during a given year. With that consideration, the teaching load didn’t impact my writing a whole lot because I wasn’t doing anything that took long, intense concentration.

However, as time went on my fiction began stretching longer and longer, resulting in now, where most of my work is in the 80,000 word range. This is when balancing the writing with the day job has become a bit of an effort. 

Even with my work load, I generally look for time to write during the school year. How much I do depends on what stage of work I’m involved with. If I’m doing the first draft of a book, where I have to spend a lot of time thinking things out, I generally shoot for about fifteen pages (more or less 3,600 words) a week. If I’m doing heavy revision, maybe twenty pages a week, and if I’m just doing edits I shoot for twenty-five pages a week.

Keep in mind, those are aspirations. Some weeks, especially when the grading is really intense (hello, senior research papers), I find it difficult to crank out even five pages. Most of the writing is done during the week, in the few hours between dinner and hitting the sack, with the weekends reserved mainly for grading and lesson prep.

It probably goes without saying that my schedule during the summertime is a bit more relaxed. Even so, more and more, I find myself longing back to the days when summer vacation meant actual vacation. Back when I was only writing short stories, I’d manage to churn out four or five during the summer, but it never felt like work. If an idea came to me, I’d sit down and hammer away at it until I finished, but there was never any rush or pressure. These days, with two series started up for two different publishers, things are quite a bit different.

My usual day during the summer involves getting up around six, a little earlier than I do during the school year, and if the weather’s good I pull off a couple of miles walking along the trails in town coupled with half an hour or so in the swimming pool. Then it’s time to sit down and get to work.

I’m usually writing off and on during the day, ending up somewhere around 9:00 at night. Obviously, I’m not writing this entire time. I take breaks, run errands, watch a little TV, and hit the pool every chance I get. I also manage a fair amount of traveling, usually doing two or three long trips during the summer break. 
 But the work is fairly scheduled. For instance, this summer I’m working on edits for the second Sam Quinton book, waiting to begin edits on a book for my Canadian publisher and trying to complete the third (final?) draft for a new standalone novel.

All fine and good, and it’s kind of gratifying to have this much opportunity presented to me. Sometimes, however, despite best laid plans and with no job to keep me on a tight schedule, I find myself drifting away, especially as the weather heats up and the pool beckons just a few feet away.

That’s why I keep an old-fashioned wall calendar next to my work space. To remind me that the time until the next school year begins (it is hoped) is ticking away, and I have to get to work.

OTHER BOOKS BY KEVIN DOYLE

The Group

When You Have to Go There

The Litter 

Coming in November 2020:
And the Devil Walks Away

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A high-school teacher, former college instructor and fiction writer, Kevin R. Doyle is the author of two crime novels, The Group and When You Have to Go There, published by MuseItUp Publications, and one horror novel, The Litter, published by Night to Dawn Magazine and Books. This year also saw the release of the first book in his Sam Quinton mystery series, Squatter’s Rights, by Camel Press. He has had numerous short horror stories published in small press magazines. Doyle teaches high-school English in Missouri and is currently planning his retirement to the Gulf Coast.

Connect with Kevin:
Website  |  Facebook  |  Goodreads

Buy the book:
Amazon  |  Barnes and Noble

Check out Kevin's interview from May 15, 2020 here.

FEATURED AUTHOR: KEVIN DOYLE

ABOUT THE BOOK

When private detective Sam Quinton sets out to solve the murders of a stripper and small-time gambler, he ends up in the middle of an organized crime war, testing Quinton’s loyalty to an old friend and making him the killers’ next target. While working to stay one step ahead of the killers, Quinton also has to safeguard the life of an elderly couple, who unwittingly hold the key to solving the murders and ending the war.



Book Details:


Title: Squatter’s Rights


Author: Kevin R. Doyle


Genre: mystery


Series: Sam Quinton


Publisher: Camel Press (March 2020)


Print length: 213 pages

LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT WITH KEVIN R. DOYLE

A few of your favorite things: a few of my favorite things are ice-cold Dr Pepper, 1970’s music and summer vacation.
Things you need to throw out: somehow, over the years I’ve collected dozens and dozens of wire hangars. Every now and then, I grab a handful to throw out, but the total amount never seems to diminish.


Things you need in order to write: solitude, not really a problem as I’m a confirmed bachelor with no kids or grandkids.
Things that hamper your writing: grading student work, though it’s rather unavoidable.


Things you love about writing: the thing I love most about writing is doing a first draft. I basically go seat-of-the-pants, so sitting down, idly typing and having a story roll out, often without knowing where it will end up, is kind of cool.
Things you hate about writing: conversely, one of the things I hate most is when edits start coming in from publishers. While I understand how necessary it is, by the time edits are done,  I’m often sick to death of what I once thought was a cool book. When The Litter came out, after a year and a half writing process, we did content edits, line edits, proof edits, and galleys within six months. By the time the book actually was released, I couldn’t even stand to think about it. At least for a while.

Easiest thing about being a writer: so far, knock on wood, coming up with ideas. Not that all of them work out.

Hardest thing about being a writer: not having time. As with the majority of folks who  pursue this, writing fiction does not count as my primary income, or even my secondary. Actually, last year I made more from short story reprints than from book sales. Even so, a few years back I looked around and saw I had a couple of books out, one or two more in the pipeline at various presses, and publishers willing to take a chance on me. At the time, I told several people, “I’d be enjoying the hell out of this if I didn’t still have to work.” Because I teach high-school English (lots and lots of grading), the majority of the year I can get very little sustained writing done. 


Things you love about where you live: my town is what’s known as an urban forest. There are sizable chunks of woodland patchworked within the city. Although I technically live in an urban area, I can often look outside my balcony and see deer walking along the tree line.
Things that make you want to move: the one thing above all that would make me move, and with retirement only a few years off I’m planning now, would be no beaches. When I travel, it’s usually down south as close to the coast as I can get.


Words that describe you: nerdy, bookish, frugal.
Words that describe you but you wish they didn’t: inflexible, stubborn.

Favorite foods: pizza, omelettes, chocolate.
Things that make you want to throw up: pickles, sauerkraut. Really anything with vinegar. 

Favorite song: it’s a tie between “I Honestly Love You,” by Olivia Newton John, and “Someone Saved My Life Tonight” by Elton John.
Music that make your ears bleed: rap, I just can’t understand it. I can make out maybe one word in ten.

Favorite beverage: it’s actually a tie. On one end is chocolate milk. On the other is Lost Trail Sugar Cane Cola from Louisburg Cider Mill in Louisburg, Kansas.

Something that gives you a pickle face: well, pickles.

Something you’re really good at: Star Trek trivia. (The good shows/movies, not the crappy new shows/movies.)
Something you’re really bad at: any kind of math beyond basic arithmetic.

Something you wish you could do: I’d like to learn to scuba dive, mainly because I want to spend a night or two in Jules Undersea Lodge in Key Largo, Florida.

Something you wish you’d never learned to do: I don’t mind it now, but when I was a kid I wished for a while that I’d never learned how to snap my fingers. The day I finally figured it out, I ended up with blisters on my finger pads because I was snapping them so much.

Something you like to do: no-destination road trips. Grab a suitcase and some spending  money, then hit the road with no destination in mind. Come back home when the money runs out. 

Something you wish you’d never done: little league baseball. Hated it but was forced to endure for two seasons.


Last best thing you ate: black peppered porkchops in mushroom gravy.

Last thing you regret eating: they go by several names, but years ago one of my speech students showed us how to make what she called frogs’ eyes:  a pickle slice slathered in creme cheese and wrapped in lunch meat. Blecchh.

Things you’d walk a mile for: seeing either Elton John or The Eagles in concert. Been lucky enough to see both acts twice.
Things that make you want to run screaming from the room: the idea of seeing Cher in concert. Love her early music (1970’s again), but went to one show and almost walked out.

Things you always put in your books: there’s always at least one death, even if of natural causes.

Things you never put in your books: gratuitous violence, though in the case of The Litter some might disagree.

Things to say to an author: where can I buy a copy of your book? (And actually mean it.)

Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: where do you get your ideas? (Where the heck does anyone get ideas for anything?)

Favorite places you’ve been: I won’t give the name because I don’t want to ruin it, but years ago I stumbled upon a little town of, oh I don’t know, around three thousand people or so on the coast of Texas. It has an old, almost antique hotel on the shore. Not a tourist area, but one heck of a place to completely get away from it all.

Places you never want to go to again: my twenties—a horrible period of time for me.

Things that make you happy: summer vacation (I work as a teacher). 

Things that drive you crazy: freshmen.

Proudest moment: has to be getting the first acceptance letter for a short story. Even though a few months later the editor changed his mind, I still remember what it felt like to read that letter.

Most embarrassing moment: probably one night when I realized, five minutes before class, that I’d totally forgotten to do the assigned project for that night. It was a required graduate course, and the professor was the chair of the department. That was an incredibly awkward conversation.

Most daring thing you’ve ever done: in Louisville, Kentucky, you can go zip lining in an underground cavern. In some places, the cave floor is a couple of thousand feet down. Absolutely terrifying.

Something you chickened out from doing: attending college graduation, both times.

The last thing you did for the first time: eat conch fritters. 

Something you’ll never do again: eat conch fritters. Uggh.

OTHER BOOKS BY KEVIN DOYLE

The Group

When You Have to Go There

The Litter 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

A high-school teacher, former college instructor and fiction writer, Kevin R. Doyle is the author of two crime novels, The Group and When You Have to Go There, published by MuseItUp Publications, and one horror novel, The Litter, published by Night to Dawn Magazine and Books. This year also saw the release of the first book in his Sam Quinton mystery series, Squatter’s Rights, by Camel Press. He has had numerous short horror stories published in small press magazines. Doyle teaches high-school English in Missouri and is currently enmeshed in the editing stage of the second novel featuring Sam Quinton.


Connect with Kevin:

Website  |  Facebook  |  Goodreads  |  Amazon

Buy the book:

Amazon  |  Barnes & Noble  

Featured Author: Kevin Doyle

ABOUT THE BOOK

They kept to the shadows so no one would know they existed, and preyed on the nameless who no one would miss. Where did they come from, and who was protecting them? In a city that had seen every kind of savagery, they were something new, something more than murderous. And one woman, who had thought she had lost everything there was to lose in life, would soon find that nothing could possibly prepare her for what would come when she entered their world.

INTERVIEW WITH KEVIN DOYLE

Kevin, what’s the story behind the title The Litter?
It kind of seemed obvious. Once I had the main plot premise, along with the age of some of the participants, the word “Litter” just kind of popped into my head.

Where’s home for you?
I’m a lifelong Midwesterner. Born and lived most of my life in Wichita, Kansas. But for over a decade Columbia, Missouri, has been home.

What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned?
That nobody owes anyone anything. It all has to be earned.

What do you love about where you live?

Columbia is a city of about 100,000 people, and it has a vibrant, engaged citizenry. There’s a ton of little hole-in-the-wall eateries, theatres and music venues. But at the same time, a short drive in any direction presents all sorts of outdoors opportunities.  It’s equidistant between Kansas City, St. Louis and the Ozarks, so you never lack for stuff to do.


What is the most daring thing you've done?

Considering that I’m terrified of heights, zip lining ranks right up there.

Do you have another job outside of writing?
Not even sure you could call writing a job, seeing as how it brings in very little money, especially when compared to the amount of work. My main career is as a high school teacher, English and public speaking.

What choices in life would you like to have a redo on?
If I had some way known that I would end up teaching (it was totally unplanned on my part), I probably would have gone into either social studies or foreign language. Fewer papers to grade.

What’s one of your favorite quotes?
I’m not sure who originally said it, but I saw it reprinted in Small Town, by Lawrence Block: "Witing is an occupation at which you can earn a fortune, but you can’t earn a living." 

If you could live anywhere in the world, where in the world would it be?
The Gulf Coast, probably Mississippi or Alabama. Already making plans to head down that way when I retire in about nine years.

My dad lives down there — in Alabama — and loves it. How did you create the plot for this book?
It sounds like a cliche, but I woke up one morning with a scene imprinted on my mind. It’s actually the final scene in part II of the book. Once I had that scene jotted down, I just had to go backward and forward to finish it up. I wrote about the first three or four chapters, then I flashed ahead and wrote the final chapter. Then I wrote the fifth, then the next to last, and went back and forth like that until I had it basically in shape.

Are any of your characters inspired by real people?
To the best of my knowledge, no. Though one of my students claims I owe him royalties because I used his last name for the name of a street in the book.

Who are your favorite authors?
Lawrence Block and Robert B. Parker are among my most recent favorites. Although Parker really began phoning it in around the halfway point. I’ve recently experienced a lot of Robert Crais and have just started reading Michael Connelly. I also have a huge soft spot for Arthur C. Clarke.

What book are you currently reading and in what format?
I do almost all my reading in paperback and hardcover. A few months back, I lucked out. Walking through one of our local used bookstores, I came across several copies of the Doc Savage Omnibus volumes. Doc Savage reprints were my absolute favorite reading as a kid, and right there were six volumes containing around thirty stories that I’d heard of but never read. I snatched them all up and for the last few months have been reliving my youth. Once I’m finished, I plan on re-reading Block’s When the Sacred Ginmill Closes. Then probably get back to Connelly.

Do you have a routine for writing?
No real routine. During the school year, I work it in when and where I can, usually trying to do at least a couple of pages a night.

What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received about your writing?
A review that showed up on Goodreads for The Litter. Paraphrased a bit, the reviewer said “This book scared the hell out of me.” Also, several people who read The Litter have commented that they had trouble sleeping for a while afterwards. The average seems to be two nights.

Yikes! Now that's scary. If you could be a ghostwriter for any famous author, whom would you pick?
Block, hands down. I would say Parker, but I doubt I could even come close to the job that Ace Atkins has done.

What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to write?
A short story of mine called “The Old Dogs.” It’s another one that came to me from a snippet of a dream. I woke up in a literal cold sweat (honestly) with my heart racing. I jotted down this one image I managed to retain, and the next afternoon started playing around with it. But the basic plot line was so disturbing that I could only write about half a page a day, and this was during the summer break, because I couldn’t stand any more than that. I managed to sell it right off the bat, but when it came out in magazine form it took me two or three attempts to sit down and read it because I knew where it was going and didn’t want to get there. It’s since been reprinted by another ‘zine, so it must have been halfway decent.

What’s the worst thing someone has said about your writing? How did you deal with it?
An editor of a local lifestyle magazine, back when I was twenty and first trying my hand at all this, looked over an article I’d written and told me he couldn’t use it because “You’re not a very good writer.” In retrospect, it doesn’t sound that harsh, but at the time it sucker punched me. After a couple of days, I shook myself off and decided to learn the craft as well as I could.

How did you find your publisher and how long did your query process take?
This is probably going to tick some people off, but I really don’t get the whole self-publishing thing. I know things are changing, but to me it doesn’t really feel legitimate. Besides the fact of how expensive it could get. So for me, and I’m not one to dictate to others, traditional publishing was the only way to go.

That being said, so far I’ve dealt exclusively with small presses, just as I do with small magazines. As for finding them, I basically use Duotrope, which, for me, is well worth the yearly fee. 

One nice thing about the small presses is that there usually isn’t that long of a wait to hear back. When I sent One Helluva Gig to Vagabondage Press, it took them only a few months to send me an acceptance.

Once Gig came out, I was putting the finishing touches on The Group and felt a lot more confident that maybe something would happen. What I wasn’t prepared for, though, was that three weeks after I began submitting it, I received an offer from Barbarian Books. My first full-length mystery novel, and three weeks after sending it out I had an offer in hand.

My newest work, The Litter, took a bit longer, but not all that much. I finished it at the end of June of last year and began sending it out in July. It racked up several rejections before Night to Dawn made an offer a couple of days after Labor Day.

Bottom line, when it comes to sending books out and having them accepted, I’ve been very, very lucky.

I'll say. But I would respectfully disagree with you on self-publishing. My book is doing much better now, as a self-published author, than when a small press published it. I think there's room in the market for both. What are you working on now?
Currently, I’m working on a sequel to The Group. It focuses on the cops who were secondary characters in the first book, and doesn’t really include the original protagonist at all.  I had hoped to have a first draft finished before school broke for the year, but that didn’t happen, so right now I’m way behind.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A high school teacher and fiction writer living in central Missouri, Kevin R. Doyle’s  short stories of horror and suspense have appeared in over twenty-five small press magazines. In 2012 his first e-book, a mainstream novelette titled One Helluva Gig, was released by Vagabondage Press. In January of 2014, Barbarian Books released his first full-length mystery novel, The Group, and in February of 2015, Night to Dawn Magazine and Books released his horror novel, The Litter.

Connect with Kevin:
Website  |  Facebook  |  Goodreads