AN INTERVIEW WITH RICH HOSEK
- Your Name and about yourself
My name is Rich Hosek. Most of my writing career was spent working in television where I wrote for shows like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Star Trek: Voyager, and The New Addams Family with my writing partner, Arnold Rudnick. Currently, I’m writing novels and short stories, the first of which was based on an unproduced television project Arnold and I had created with parapsychologist Loyd Auerbach. In addition to the Raney/Daye Investigation series, I have published my own novels with Nifni Press. In addition to my writing, I also enjoy creating web applications, reading, movies and Legos.
- Are you happy about being an Author? (( Feel free to pour your heart out here 🙂 ))
Writing is one of the most satisfying things I’ve done in my life (I have a son, so nothing beats the pride I have in seeing him grow and learn). Working in television was a tremendous experience, primarily because of the quick turnaround. Arnold and I wrote dozens of episode of the The New Addams Family. For that show, we would write a script, see it go into production a week later and then on the air shortly thereafter. Writing novels is a different process. First of all, it takes longer, and you are solely responsible creating a rich narrative and believable dialog for your readers. In television, you write the dialog and action, but actors and directors and everyone behind the scenes collaborate to bring it to life. But getting back to the original question, yes, I’m very happy about being an author and knowing that I am leaving behind a part of myself, a printed and electronic legacy that will endure.
For me, the motivation is getting the stories that come to me out of my head and onto the page so I can hopefully entertain others with my writing. I’ve learned that my creativity comes in waves. And the biggest lesson I’ve learned is that as an author, I’m not necessarily telling the story, my characters are. As they come to life on the page, they drive the narrative, I just write it down.
- As an author , what do you think are the positive things about your writing/stories/publications?
It’s different for each one. Some works provide readers with strong, positive role models. Others provide escape from the day-to-day stress of life.
My first novel was a collaboration with Arnold Rudnick and Loyd Auerbach. It’s based on a screenplay we wrote a while back about a parapsychologist and police detective (who’s a die-hard skeptic) who team up to solve mysteries. In the first book, Near Death, Dr. Jennifer Daye and Detective Nate Raney meet after Nate recovers from being clinically dead after he’s shot during a robbery. Jennifer pushes to get him to open up to the possibility that the strange things happening around him are the result of having a near-death experience and they team up to unravel a decades old cold case and form a partnership. The book portrays the paranormal is a realistic way, it’s not Ghostbusters or Poltergeist. We draw on the experience of Loyd Auerbach who is a working Parapsychologist. Near Death is the first book of a series of Raney/Daye Investigations, the next installment, After Life is due out early summer 2021.
I’ve also written a novel called The Dead Kids Club which is a different type of story in the genre I think of as everyman thrillers, ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. The Dead Kids Club is told by a father whose young son is killed by a drunk driver. When the justice system fails him and his ex-wife, they decide to extract their own revenge. But killing the son of one of the city’s most notorious mobsters puts them on the radar of not only a mob hitman, but the police, an inquisitive reporter and the member of their support group. They quickly discover that when they put aside their better angels to let loose their inner demons, there’s no turning back.
- What’s your advice for budding authors?
Read. Write. Write some more. Writing is like any other skill, you need to practice. When you are getting to the final draft, read it out loud, or even record it. You’ll find it’s a great way to catch typos, repeated words, awkward phrases and solidify the voices of your characters.
- Do you believe in “Writer’s Block”?
For me, it’s not a lack of ideas of things to write about, but sometimes I get frozen when I come to a point where I need to make a choice about what direction to take a scene or a story. It’s like driving from one place to another. You know where you started and where you want to get to, but get lost along the way, of find a bridge washed out or hit a dead end. Fortunately, I always have a lot of stories stacked up, so I can take up another project while my subconscious works out which fork in the road to take.
- What are the problems that you have faced in your Author journey?
Juggling my writing with my personal life. I wish I could devote more time to writing, and hope that will be possible in the near future.
- What Genre of Books do you create and Why you chose it ?
I like mysteries and thrillers. I have some science fiction on the list of books I’m going to write in the future, but those stories will be thrillers as well, just set in the future. I like to write them, because that’s the type of books l most like to read. I especially like writing stories about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances, and hopefully my readers can more easily identify with my characters.
- If you could tell something to your younger writing self , what would it be ?
I don’t have anything to tell him. He did a great job of committing to his craft, learning the tools (typing, grammar) and consistently writing and moving forward despite the chain of rejections that preceded his first sale
- Do you try more to be original or to deliver to readers what they want ?
I don’t see a distinction. I’m a reader, too, so what I’m writing is something I would want to read and hopefully a story that is told in an original way
- Where can people contact you ?
My website at http://richhosek.com, my Author Page on Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/Rich-Hosek/e/B08KG71LMV, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/writtenbyrichhosek and https://www.facebook.com/raneyanddaye and on Twitter at @RichHosek
