We are delighted to welcome author Shawn Rohrbach to Omnimystery News today.
Shawn begins a new series featuring PI Grady Marcs with Rogue Scion (Black Opal Books; December 2015 trade paperback and ebook formats) and we recently had the opportunity to spend some time with him talking about it.
— ♦ —
Omnimystery News: Introduce us to your new PI, Grady Marcs.
Photo provided courtesy of
Shawn Rohrbach
Shawn Rohrbach: Grady Marcs is the main character and is a retired Army Ranger captain who completed five tours mostly in Afghanistan ahead of the original invasion after 9-11. His job was to set up command and control rather than destroy them which is usually what the Rangers are known for. This of course is going to be a cloud over his head throughout the series as conspiracy theorists suggest we were planning to go to war and fabricated 9-11 to justify it. He and his wife Sandy started and sold a small software company and now he has the means to consult to various entities on cyber crime.
OMN: Tell us something about Rogue Scion that isn't mentioned in the publisher's synopsis.
SR: Part of the story focuses on the lifestyles of what we refer to now as the 1% and the family in Germany who loses two of their heirs to the murderous Peter is modeled after the Krup family who were the great industrialists in German during the second world war, and who, after the war was lost in Germany, changed their name but continued as the industrialists who were instrumental in re-building Germany.
OMN: Describe your writing process for us.
SR: I am constantly writing, and by that I do not mean I am at my computer all the time. I jot down desired plot points, scenery, tone of dialogue, POVs, and the objective of each chapter prior to writing. I then tend to think about all of this before sitting down to the computer. I exercise, work in the garden, light a fire in the outdoor chimnea, drink a margarita in the hot tub and just process these bits of information and then sit down. I have never had what can be called writer's block because I am always thinking about it and then plan specific times to write.
OMN: How did you go about researching the plot points of the story?
SR: In the case of Grady Marcs and then some of the FBI agents, I take the time to talk to people who have been in the Rangers or people who are active FBI or retired police agents. I have had very good opportunities to listen to ranger stories from active and retired rangers and absorbed so much from these conversations I was able to develop a very complex character. Grady is not a right wing conspiracy theorist, nor is he a leftist agitator. He is a very down to earth patriot who served his country and now desires to just do the right thing and I was able to fashion this character by knowing so many good active and former rangers.
OMN: How true are you to the settings of the book?
SR: I am setting a good portion of this series in Mexico; probably more than a third of all scenes will be in real places throughout Mexico. In this first, Rogue Scion, I placed a Catholic priest (who is really hired muscle for the German family noted above) in Mulege on the Baja Peninsula, a small town I have visited. Of note is the church that has been very nicely modernized by the donations of American snow birds who winter there. I set the book in the hot and very humid summer time when only the local Catholics (mostly older women) go to church. It is very hot and humid there in the summer which supports the tension and crimes committed there in my novel.
OMN: What is the best advice you've received as an author?
SR: The best advice came from Keith Abbott one of my professors at Naropa, who has published several books. It came in various ways but was always consistent; be patient and grow in your self confidence as a writer.
OMN: What's next for you?
SR: The next in the series will be out sometime later in 2016 and it is titled Double Cross. Think a cyber crimes expert trying to unravel crimes committed in the heat of the culture wars brewing in the Catholic Church.
— ♦ —
Shawn Rohrbach completed his BA in Medieval Philosophy in a Catholic seminary in Canada, then his MBA at City University and finally his MFA in Writing at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. He is the author of eight books and has one produced film credit after adapting one of his published short stories to a short script, which was then produced by Malcolm Shaw. Shawn lives and writes in San Diego and travels frequently throughout Mexico to inform and inspire his writing.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at ShawnRohrbach.com and his author page on Goodreads.
— ♦ —
Rogue Scion by Shawn Rohrbach
A Grady Marcs Mystery
Publisher: Black Opal Books
Imagine dilettantes of Occupy Wall Street meeting and going head to head with the masters of the New World Order. One such rebel, Peter, turns on his rich banking family and takes up with a MIT computer-science drop out, Melissa. They plot to destroy the computer systems supporting the New York Stock Exchange.
However, Peter's family takes a dim view of their activities and moves to intervene. Even if Peter and Melissa can outsmart the law — and cybercrimes private investigator Grady Marcs — they'll have a hard time escaping the wealthy globalists who will stop at nothing to keep their money safe and their dark secrets hidden.
— Rogue Scion by Shawn Rohrbach. Click here to take a Look Inside the book.
0 comments:
Post a Comment