Dan does a series on Maine icons. I’m not one, but I am absolutely thrilled to be lumped in with Maine legendary boxer Joey Gamache. I mean, is that cool or what? Check it out.

Bob covers the arts for the Portland newspapers. He’s a rock solid reporter and a good guy. Here’s his Q&A.

Abby covers Knox County, Maine. The whole thing. She’s a gamer. Talking with her encouraged me about the future of the newspaper biz.

But I’ve populated my fictional version with fictional characters, from Jack and Roxanne, to the prostitute who opens up shop on Main Street, to the backwoods Satanist who targets Roxanne, Jack, and their daughter Sophie. The reviewer liked the story but put in one of those smiley things at the notion of a Satanist living in our midst. Those writers and their imaginations!

Is there really a Satanist in the woods around Belfast, Maine. I don’t know. I do know that a white supremacist group was handing out literature just upriver in Bucksport just this week. Good story about it in the Bangor Daily News.

Maybe DAMAGED GOODS isn’t that far off.

But back to perception. Beth had some interesting thoughts on Jack and Roxanne in DAMAGED GOODS. But it was her take on their ex-Marine friend Clair that gave me pause.

“Clair’s background as a soldier in Vietnam becomes significant, not just for his ability to take up arms and his willingness to be at Jack’s back or front or whatever it takes, but also for his experience with the personal effects of violence, whether done to you or done by you. Sane and strong, Clair helps Jack maneuver and respond to the chaos around him, showing the best of what war can do to a person’s thought processes.”

What does war do to a person’s thought processes? We hear, justifiably so, about the emotional and physical trauma of combat. But what of the strengths that come from the experience? In Clair’s case, he has become wiser, more philosophical, but also more analytical. When things get tough, as they inevitably do when Jack and Clair get together, Clair becomes calmer, cooler, more collected. It’s a trait honed in the jungles and highlands of Vietnam, when, as a Force Recon Marine, those were essential survival skills. Now the same skills are brought to bear for Jack and Roxanne, their daughter Sophie. The best of what war can do …. Interesting.

A pleasant reporter at the paper there asked me a few questions and I answered the best I could, about DAMAGED GOODS, Jack McMorrow’s longevity (we’re both still kicking), an erroneous fact posted about me on Wikipedia. Does anybody check that stuff? Anyway, the resulting Current Publishing Q&A probably has more than you want to know. But I’ll let you be the judge of that.

If you’re in the area, stop in. The library is pretty cool, with a great history. It’s website says, “Robert McArthur (the founder),  was an Irish immigrant who had started working in a Rhode Island mill as a bobbin boy at the age of eight.”

Irish. Rhode Island. A mill town. It doesn’t get any better than that. Hope to see you there.

More than in the Jack McMorrow novels, I have come in early in this protagonist’s life. Brandon is just 21, shaped by an unusual upbringing. But he’s very much a work in progress. Mia is his first love; the collision with Fuller and Kelvin is his first experience with serious bad guys. Interesting to watch him be shaped, seasoned, and scarred by these experiences as well.

With McMorrow I felt I knew him pretty well the first time I typed his name on a page (and I do mean typed, as in on a typewriter).  With Brandon, it’s more like I’ve made his acquaintance, understand him as he is today, but will watch like the rest of you as he grows right before our eyes.I think back to when I was 21, ready to take on the world but having little idea of where to begin. Blake’s got me beat in some ways; he’s had to make his way alone for much of his life. I had a sizable support team. But there are some things he’s going to have to learn the hard way.

PORT CITY UNDERGROUND, Brandon Blake’s next story, is in the reseach stage. I expect to begin writing in a couple of months. I’m looking forward to seeing him again. I expect he’ll be a little more mature, that he’ll be figuring out his relationship with Mia–and wrestling in new ways with old demons and some serious new villains.

Here’s the interview.