WELCOME JAC WRIGHT
JAC WRIGHT
Jac Wright is a poet published in literary magazines, a published author, and an electronics engineer educated at Stanford, University College London, and Cambridge who lives and works in England. Jac studied English literature from the early age of three, developing an intense love for poetry, drama, and writing in Trinity College Speech & Drama classes taken afternoons and Saturdays for fourteen years, and in subsequent creative writing classes taken during the university years. A published poet, Jac’s first passion was for literary fiction and poetry writing as well as for the dramatic arts. You will find these influences in the poetic imagery and prose, the dramatic scene setting, and the deep character creation.
These passions – for poetry, drama, literary fiction, and electronic engineering – have all been lovingly combined to create the first book in the literary suspense series, The Reckless Engineer. There are millions of professionals in high tech corporate environments who work in thousands of cities in the US, the UK, and the world such as engineers, technicians, technical managers, investment bankers, and corporate lawyers. High drama, power struggles, and human interest stories play out in the arena every day. Yet there are hardly any books that tell their stories; there are not many books that they can identify with. Jac feels compelled to tell their stories in The Reckless Engineer series.
Jac also writes the literary short fiction series, Summerset Tales, in which he explores characters struggling against their passions and social circumstances in the semi-fictional region of contemporary England called Summerset, partly the region that Thomas Hardy called Wessex. Some of the tales have an added element of suspense similar to Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected. The collection is published as individual tales in the tradition of Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers and Thomas Hardy’s Wessex Tales. The first tale, The Closet, accompanies the author’s first full-length literary suspense title, The Reckless Engineer.
Connect with Jac at these sites:
Q&A with Jac Wright
-Do you draw from personal experiences and/or current events?
Quite a bit of my experiences make their way into my writing, but not in a direct way. Bits of different experiences are mixed together with a lot of imaginary and fictitious characters and events. A character might have the looks of a stranger I might have spotted on the train, certain mannerisms of a friend, and a completely imaginary personality. It is so mixed together that the end result is fictitious.
I have not used events in the news for my books published so far. However, I use parts of the Northern Bank Robbery which happened in Belfast in December 2004 as an event to fictitiously model some action in my next book, “Buy, Sell, Murder”. I also use the Barclays Libor fixing scandal somewhat carefully in it.
-Do you start with the conclusion and plot in reverse or start from the beginning and
see where the story line brings you?
Oh, no. I start with a core idea central to the plot that would have come to me in a moment of inspiration, almost like a dream or a segment of a movie. The main characters are inextricably interwoven into this segment. I then build the other characters around this, give each character a psychology, and let the characters drive the story forward by keeping each one true to his or her psychology.
For example, I woke up late on a warm summer day this June with an image of a fugitive escaping and running away from an overturned van transporting him to court from prison that had met with an accident. Prisoners wear normal clothing in England, not orange jumpsuits, and they are not in chains. He runs into the crowds and a bus parked behind a mall to hide among the people only to find that it is a film set. The actor playing a main character of the movie and the director are having a fight. The actor suddenly punches the director in the face who falls backward. My protagonist fugitive hiding among the supporting film crew catches him and breaks the fall. The director gets up, wipes the blood off his nose, fires the main actor loudly, and asks him to get out of his movie set. He turns to my protagonist and asks: ‘You there, what’s your name?’ ‘Art Miller,’ he gives a fake name. ‘Art, you are playing Michael Fallon. His trailer is yours now. Go with my crew and get dressed.’ And there I have the plot, the main characters, and the first chapter of my standalone book, In Plain Sight.
-Your routine when writing? Any idiosyncrasies?
My only routine is I have none. I write when time allows me and inspiration hits me. I usually prefer to write at my desk on my big-screen server I do my engineering work on, but sometimes I might move to a different spot or go outside with my laptop. To make it easy I keep my writing on a USB drive and back up onto my 3 computers about once a week.
-Is writing your full time job? If not, may I ask what you do by day?
I am an electronics and software engineer by day. However, I have recently left full-time nine-to-five work to start an engineering firm with a friend and I take on engineering subcontracts that allow me more flexibility to write when I want and do the engineering work when I want.
-Who are some of your favorite authors?
I love most of the classics. Out of the authors in my genre I really like Patricia Highsmith, Roald Dahl, Ian Rankin, and Benjamin Black.
-What are you reading now?
I am re-reading Wuthering Heights. I grew up reading a lot of mystery and suspense fiction and writing in the suspense genre comes easily to me. However, I need to hone my skills in writing the romances that run as sub-plots in my work, and what other way is there to do that than read the greatest romances ever written? I read Wuthering Heights in my mid-twenties, but I have forgotten the details; and this time I am really absorbing the work.
I am also reading this time’s Mann Booker prize winner, The Luminaries.
-Are you working on your next novel? Can you tell us a little about it?
One of them is In Plain Sight that I described above. The second in The Reckless engineer series – Buy, Sell, Murder – and Summerset Tales #2 – The Bank Job– are also half written. I hope to publish two of these in 2014.
-Your novel will be a movie. Who would you cast?
Daniel Craig would be good to play the series lead, Jeremy Aiden Stone, though he would have to look a decade younger.
A great alternative would be Scott Eastwood (Clint Eastwood Junior) if his acting abilities are anything like his dad’s, but they would have to age him a decade which I not hard.
Richard Armitage would be absolutely perfect to play Harry Stavers, the defence counsel.
Desmond Harrington (from Dexter) could play the mess that is Jack Connor really well.
Jessica Biel had the right looks for Caitlin McAllen-Connor, Jack Connor’s wife, with a shorter haircut; and she would have to play the character a stronger personality than she is used to.
Jeremy Irons for Douglas McAllen, Caitlin’s father.
I know Otter looks like Lenny Kravitz. So they will have to cast a new actor in the role.
-Manuscript/Notes: hand written or keyboard?
Keyboard. It is too hard to do re-writes and corrections with handwritten. Having said that, I admit that I wrote chapters 28 through 44 (to the end) with a black ballpoint pen, doing correction with a blue ballpoint pen first and typed it up later.
-Favorite leisure activity/hobby?
Writing. LOL. Other than that I love kittens and puppies.
-Favorite meal?
Authentic Spanish enchiladas with a shredded beef filling; with a Margarita to sip.
Thank you for stopping by CMash Reads and spending time with us.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Can you forgive betrayal?
The aftershocks of an affair reverberate out to those in the lives of the lovers, who will NOT take it lying down.
Jack Connor lives an idyllic life by the Portsmouth seaside married to Caitlin McAllen, a stunning billionaire heiress, and working at his two jobs as the Head of Radar Engineering of Marine Electronics and as the Director of Engineering of McAllen BlackGold, his powerful father-in-law’s extreme engineering company in oil & gas. He loves his two sons from his first marriage and is amicably divorced from his beautiful first wife, Marianne Connor. Their delicately balanced lives are shattered when the alluring Michelle Williams, with whom Jack is having a secret affair, is found dead and Jack is arrested on suspicion for the murder.
Jeremy Stone brings in a top London defence attorney, Harry Stavers, to handle his best friend’s defence.
Who is the bald man with the tattoo of a skull seen entering the victim’s house? Who is the “KC” that Caitlin makes secret calls to from a disposable mobile? Has the powerful Douglas McAllen already killed his daughter’s first partner, and is he capable of killing again? Is Caitlin’s brother’s power struggle with Jack for the control of McAllen Industries so intense that he is prepared to kill and frame him? Is the divorce from his first wife as amicable on her part as they believe it to be? Are his sons prepared to kill for their vast inheritance? Who are the ghosts from Caitlin’s past haunting the marriage? What is the involvement of Jack’s manager at Marine Electronics?
While Jack is charged and his murder trial proceeds in the Crown Court under barrister Harry Stavers’ expert care, Jeremy runs a race against time to find the real killer and save his friend’s life, if he is in fact innocent, in a tense tale of love, friendship, power, and ambition.
Read an excerpt
Despite the comfort and luxury all around him Jeremy was woken from a night of disturbed sleep by the sound of the dogs barking. It was 8:20 Saturday morning. There were voices downstairs in anxious chatter. His room (huh, he thought of this as his room now, did he?) was a first-floor en-suite with a bath. Actually it had a shared bathroom separating two twin rooms, but the second one had never been occupied whenever he had been here.
Jeremy washed his face quickly and hurried to the cupboard. Caitlin had laid out some clean clothes. He set his oversized laptop case, in which he carried a sleek laptop he had enhanced to pack in massive processing and memory power, so compact it hardly took any space, on the bed. Into the remaining space he generally packed various gadgets and electronics equipment he needed at client sites, including some “emergency” underwear and socks.
He pulled on a pair of black slacks and a blue Polo T-shirt from the cupboard. They must be Ronnie’s. Being slightly over 6 feet tall and having a wider frame, he did not fit so well into Jack’s clothes. He stepped out of his room and followed the voices downstairs.
One of the boys who worked in the stables and on the land, a brown lad in muddy Wellington boots, was talking animatedly to Caitlin, who was still in her dressing gown, in the kitchen.
‘There is police again at the front gate, sénora,’ he said with a heavy Spanish accent. ‘I put Molly and Max in the stables, ha?’
Caitlin and Jeremy hurried to the front reception with little Bubbles the puppy Lab running circles around them. There were two police cars at the gates.
‘If you could open the gates, Caitlin, I shall handle this,’ he said, thinking how lovely and vulnerable she looked with no makeup on and with tousled dark brown hair some length between short and medium. Something about a damsel-in-distress in silks stirred a man’s loins.
Jeremy went back to his room, splashed his face with icy cold water, and put on his shoes. He stepped out as the police cars pulled up outside the front door.
BOOK DETAILS:
Genre: Mystery, Legal Thriller, Suspense
Print Length: 340 pages
Publisher: Soul Mate Publishing
Publication Date: November 3, 2013
ISBN-10: 1619353210
ISBN-13: 978-1619353213
ASIN: B00GH67LVCPURCHASE LINKS:
THANKS TO AUTHOR, JAC WRIGHT,
I HAVE ONE (1) DIGITAL COPY OF THE CLOSET
(short fiction) TO GIVE AWAY.
EBOOK~~OPEN TO ALL
FILL OUT RAFFLECOPTER ENTRY FORM BELOW
GIVEAWAY ENDS DECEMBER 31st AT 6PM EST
VIA EMAIL AND WILL HAVE 48 HOURS TO RESPOND
OR ANOTHER NAME WILL BE CHOSEN
YOUR JAVA SCRIPT MAY NEED TO BE UPDATED
IF YOU AR EXPERIENCING DIFFICULTY
USING THE RAFFLECOPTER ENTRY FORM
Thanks so much for hosting me, Cheryl. What an amazing site!
My book link has changed slightly to this one:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HB6G654/?tag=jacwri0d-20
Wish everybody a great holiday season and many happy hours of reading.
– Jac