The Rowan Gant Investigations Saga,
Interview with M.R. Sellars, Author - By Christopher Blackwell

I can't say enough about how important the suggestions of who to interview are coming from friends and readers are, because there is so much that I miss myself.

This time the suggestion led me to Murv Sellars, the author of the Rowan Gant Investigations series. What makes this series on murder investigations curious is that to protagonist is a Witch who has developed this odd curse of hearing the dead. This gets him mixed into a world of rather nasty murders endangering himself and his family. Mr. Sellars was kind enough to give me this interview…

Christopher: How would you describe yourself?

Murv: A short, middle-aged, fat man with a rapidly graying beard, a receding hairline, and brimming over with enough sarcasm to start a world war. Other than that I'm just your average guy with a wife, kid, two cats (not in the yard) and a not so average job.

By that, I mean I write fiction books for a living, which just means I get paid to make up stuff about people who don't really exist. It's more or less like being a big kid who has carte blanche to lie, as long as the lies are constrained to the page.

In all honesty, it's not a particularly glamorous life (really, I'm not kidding) but I can't complain too much. I chose it, and there's also the fact that I get to do something I dearly love, which is to entertain people with stories.

Christopher: I was noticing in one of your posts online a tribute to your journalism teacher. How long had you been interested in writing and did you ever go into journalism?

Murv: My interest in writing started when I would sit on my father's lap while he would read the newspaper. I was absolutely fascinated by all those little symbols and the fact that they could convey information. So by the age of 4, I was reading for myself, and shortly thereafter I was writing. I pretty much haven't stopped since. It's sort of like an addiction.

As to going into journalism, I majored in it, then did some freelance writing, but never made it a profession. Unfortunately, by the time I was bursting onto the scene with all of my idealism, the days of true old-school journalism were already winding down and being replaced by sound bytes, out of context misquotes, and talking heads. I was a dinosaur before I even came out of the gates.

So being disenchanted with the lack of journalistic integrity I was finding, I ventured a different direction and became an electronics field service engineer. That didn't stop me from writing, but it caused a deviation in my career plans for a while.

Christopher: How long had you been thinking about writing a book before you finally took the plunge?

Murv: Hard to say. I've written more books than I can remember; I just didn't succeed in having any of them published until 1999. So, I guess if we extrapolate that to when I decided I wanted to write for a living, I'd have to say roughly 35 minutes. But seriously, as soon as I was able to put words on the page, I was writing stories.

If I remember correctly, I graduated from short fiction to cranking out my first book-length manuscript when I was 16. It was horrible and terrible, not because I couldn't write, but because I didn't yet have the necessary life experience to properly convey the story I was attempting to tell.

But I wouldn't give up that experience for anything. I learned more from it than you can imagine. At any rate, the writing has continued ever since. I killed quite a few trees before obtaining my first computer, and I still have some manuscripts lying around here on 5¼ inch floppy disks I do believe.

Christopher: How hard was it to get the first book published?

Murv: Very. It was not easy at all. I could go on for days about landing a deal with a publisher, only to have it yanked because of an unscrupulous agent who was having some major mental issues. But I'll leave that story for a tell-all memoir someday.

The reality is, becoming published is extremely hard. But, if you want it bad enough and you persevere, with a little luck you might make it.

Christopher: I have heard new authors advised to write what they know about. So how long have you been a Witch and how did you become one?

Murv: The write what you know thing is often misinterpreted. What it is really saying is that you need to write from your gut. Use your personal experiences to color those of your characters. That is the only way to really and truly bring them to life on the page.

Everything else you can research. I mean, after all, I write about murder investigations but I'm not a cop. I don't even play one on TV. However, I have several good friends in law enforcement, from local all the way to federal. If I need to know how something should be done, or procedures that I haven't already researched, or anything like that, I call them and get the info that way.

On the whole Witch thing - I was raised in a very socially liberal household and was encouraged to choose my own spiritual path. I tried many of them on for size before settling upon a non-specific neo-pagan path for myself at around age 13. I'm now on a gear down, VFR approach to 50. So, I guess we'd be talking roughly 35 years.

These days, however, I actually self-identify as a secular humanist/free thinker. I certainly don't eschew the tenants of paganism, and I still believe in - and practice - magic/k (pick your preferred spelling). But I don't necessarily walk a definable pagan spiritual path - therefore, if a label is necessary, Secular Humanist/Free-Thinker is the best fit.

Christopher: That is a fair number of years. What kind of changes do you go through in your practice over that period of time?

Murv: I pretty much started out as the typical newbie, fluff-puffy bunny with white light shooting out of my ass type of pagan and progressed from there into studying various trads of Wicca and some BTW. I went from there to studying a vast array of non-Judeo Christian religions, to the point where I am today - sort of a non-denominational solitary secular pagan humanist. (Yeah, I know, it's a real mouthful…)

Christopher: So where does Rowan Gant come from? Is there any of yourself in him? How does he change over time?

Murv: Hoboken. The lower east side. Okay, not really. He's from right here in Saint Louis… But in a character development sense, Rowan is a construct that is born of me and several people I have known throughout the years. So he is NOT entirely based upon me. However, any author who tells you that s/he does NOT include himself or herself in a character is a big, fat, lying "doody head".

Seriously. All of us base our characters on ourselves, as well as our friends, acquaintances, and even the person next to us in line at the deli on some lazy Wednesday afternoon. That is how we make the characters real.

There's an old saying in the writing game: Everything is book material. That is absolutely, 100% true. And, by the same token, EVERYONE is book material too.

As to the question of how Rowan has changed, he has grown much the way anyone who takes the time to learn from life experiences does. He has seen his beliefs shaken to the core, experienced crises of faith, and even questioned his own existence from time to time.

Christopher: You have gone with him through six books so far. Do you plan more of the series?

Murv: Ten books, actually. And a one-off Rowan Gant novelette (You're gonna think I'm nuts…), which was included in a horror anthology, titled, Courting Morpheus.

The first nine books and the novelette are already in bookstores. The tenth RGI book (Miranda: A Rowan Gant Investigation) will be released 7/1/10, and I am already well into the next installments of the saga. I suppose I will keep writing about Rowan and his crew until such time as there is no longer a demand, or I run out of ideas. Hopefully neither of those will arrive anytime soon.

Christopher: Do you have anything else you hope to write about? Any new project either underway or about to be published?

Murv: Well, as mentioned before, Miranda: A Rowan Gant Investigation hits stores 7/1/10. And, the 11th in the series will come out in the summer of 2011.

Other than that, I have tons of projects I would love to write. I currently indulge my sarcastic, observational satire via my blog, Brainpan Leakage (brainpanleakage.com), but I would really love to write a humor book at some point.

I also have notes and such for a cookbook (I love to cook), and I suppose that like any author I wouldn't mind penning a magnum opus about my childhood and the lessons I learned from my parents and grandparents - maybe a Garrison Keillor-esque sort of thing. I also have some ideas for some other mystery books.

Christopher: Book promotion tours look like quite a grind, where do you find the necessary time for family, the Pagan community, all the other things in a life?

Murv: They are. They can be fun, especially when I get to hang with other authors, or hit the road with my buddy Dorothy Morrison. We tend to wreak havoc across the country whenever possible. It's even worse when we get Christopher Penczak, Kristin Madden, and Tish Owen along with us. Then we become a force majeure and can't be stopped LOL!

However, tours are a definite workout. A tour will generally last 10 to 14 days, although Morrison and I have pulled a couple that were 3 weeks long or better.

Typically, you wake up at 3 AM, grab a shower, re-pack your suitcase, load the car, grab a stale donut and bad coffee at the all night diner next to the fleabag motel, drive 6 hours and then do a book signing and meet 'n greet for a couple of hours at a store halfway between where you left and where you are going.

Then you get back into the car and drive another 5 hours, check into another fleabag motel in another city, clean up and go to the store in that town where you are appearing that evening. Sign books, present a workshop or two, sign more books, chat with folks, and then finally climb back into the car and beat feet for the motel.

You get back to your room at 11:30 or midnight and realize you haven't eaten since you had that stale donut twenty hours ago. You grab a greasy burger at another all night diner next to your new fleabag motel, scarf it down because you need to at least get a couple of hours sleep. Then, fall into a lumpy bed, fight indigestion, and then wake up 2 or three hours later and repeat the process all over again on a daily basis for at least the next 10.

If you are lucky, somewhere in there you have a festival booked and you get to stay in the same place for 3 days, but the work hours are still pretty much the same. You just happen to see the same faces and sleep in the same bed for a bit longer.

Time for family comes in the form of a lot of phone calls and text messages. My daughter actually learned to ride a bike while I was gone on tour several years ago. That sucked in my way of thinking. Not the fact that she learned to ride the bike, of course, but that I wasn't there when it happened. So, for the past couple of years I've scaled back my touring a bit. I still go out on the road, but I am trying to stay home with my girls more.

As to the community, better than 60% of my touring involves pagan stores and festivals, so they get to see me more than my family does. So I think they are pretty much covered as far as a slice of my time goes. (LOL!)

Christopher: Anything else that you would like to tell our readers?

Murv: Watch less TV, and read more books, even if they aren't mine. However, if you are interested in the books I've written, you can find sample chapters on my website. You can also find me, and my general silliness on the web at the following locations:

www.mrsellars.com Official Website

www.brainpanleakage.com Official Blog

www.facebook.com/mrsellars FB Profile Page www.facebook.com/SellarsMR FB "Fan" Page www.myspace.com/mrsellars

…And all sorts of other places where people network socially and virtually.

Official Bio:

M. R. Sellars is an active member of the HWA (Horror Writers Association) and author of the best selling paranormal thrillers subtitled The Rowan Gant Investigations. The series currently stands at 1 novelette and 9 novels, with the 10th to be released July 2010. He can be found at www.mrsellars.com as well as popular social networking venues on the world wide web.

All of the current novels in Sellars' continuing Rowan Gant Investigations saga have spent several consecutive weeks on numerous bookstore bestseller lists as well as a consistent showing on the Amazon.com Horror/Occult top 100.