Featured Interview With C.M. Halstead
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
When people ask me where I was raised, I reply, “Everywhere!”. I was raised on Air Force bases, not one, multiple. The US Military likes to move their personnel around, that or my parents liked short term stays in various parts of the world and the government allowed them to move around at will. Not.
Who remembers Andy Griffith show and the town they lived in? I tell people that growing up on base was like Mayberry with war. SAC bases during the 1970’s and 80’s were all about paying attention to what USSR was doing and where their military was staging and being prepared for nuclear attack. Everyone knew that if it came to nuclear war both the United States of America and the United Soviet Socialist Republic could make the planet earth inhabitable for humans. The cold war was the epitome of “if you want peace, prepare for war.” It may have taken the movie “War Games” for common culture to realize what military personnel and governments already knew, yet the professional’s knew that all out nuclear war would end the human population. at the dinner table one night when the conversation came up (did nuclear war come up during your dinner table conversations?) that I should not worry, if nuclear war happens, living on SAC base like we do, we will not feel a thing. That is not to say we would survive, or be in a fallout shelter (yes, the base had those, and most base housing had basements), it meant that the nuclear bomb that was aimed at the base would destroy it and everything within 50 miles or so in every direction.
Now, with that knowledge, the threat of life ending war, and the “commies” attempting to infiltrate the base fears you still go about your day to day lives. The base schools were well funded, each base had movies theaters, fast food, commissary for food and other desired goods. Children were free to roam the unrestricted areas of the bases, playgrounds and ball fields were interspersed within the housing areas. Many bases were located near forests, rivers, and other areas to explore. We played with GI Joe action figures, pick up baseball, war with bb guns, and jumped bmx bikes off of wooden ramps and dirt mounds. We played with innocent abandon and the knowledge that we could die in an instant.
Where I live now is one of the few remaining frontiers of the lower 48, or the closest thing we have to it in 2021. It is a high desert area located on the fringes of the largest continuous stand of Ponderosa Pines the United States has. An area created by the push-up of tetonic plates forming a plateau of about 240,000 square miles. Although I live off-grid on acreage containing mostly moenkopi rock and juniper trees, within a couple hours drive I can be playing on mountains, sand dunes, millions of acres of national forests, national parks, blm land, and other unkept spaces. I can see sporting events in big cities and experience the culture of tourist areas and then drive home to the quietest place I’ve lived or worked. As an author I work from home, so home office is standard, not pandemic induced. When I wrote in town, I had to wear sound deadening headphones at all times! I found it hard to create other worlds and work the protagonist’s hero’s journeys whilst the garbage truck going by reminded me it is Tuesday, or all the dogs barking (I had to edit out of my writing, “and the dog barks” way to often.) or….. you get the drift. I know live out in the middle of “nowhere” so I can write and focus without the distracts of town and the humans contained therein. Out here I find uninterrupted thought common, human drama is kept at a distance, and the nights are quiet with only the sounds of our conversation, movie, or football game, not those of our 20 neighbors within a quarter mile. Plus when you maintain a minimalist lifestyle in 2020’s America, it is easy to keep the visitors at a minimum. Quiet and drama free are our visitation requirements. Keep the drama addictions elsewhere.
Pets you ask? Strange enough, even though my life has been highly mobile, pets were common. Every base had a newspaper where ads for “free to a good home” were common. Anything from dogs, cats, lizards, snakes, fish, you name it, could be obtained from a family moving overseas or anywhere that was inconvenient to takes pets with them. Besides, you knew you could get new pets at the new location anyway. Pets, even in stationary life, are one of life’s great lessons on the cycle of life, loyalty, adaptation, responsibility, and reciprocation. We currently have outdoor cats and a giant pound hound mutt of the loyalist kind who’s self imposed job it is to keep all visitors, two legged or four, off the property. Even though I enjoy seeing deer and the like, I am grateful he keeps most of the foxes, coyotes, and other predators at bay. It is one of the reasons he gets the best pet food and the occasional steak.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
I’ve always had a fascination with books. As a child it was nursery rhymes and golden books, at some point it morphed to Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew, throughout I also got my hands on my dad’s Longarm books and other western themed stories. Then in 8th grade I discovered Stephen King, I mostly read him and repeat reads of the 100 or so Hardy Boys books I had in my possession. Honestly high school mostly found me reading the required readings of school, the classics all the way back to the Greek’s and the newer lessons of Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, and Huckleberry Finn. The list goes on and is surely more or less the same today. Common cultures (the masses) change slow and the lessons of stories stand the tests of time.
I wrote a few poems, that sort of thing in my teen years, one poem I wrote in my 20’s, between then and my early 40’s all writing was of the business kind. Either writing proposals, refusals, systems and procedures, or emails. I did not allow myself to do what I wanted to do since high school and that was to be a creative writer. Stephen King inspired me to write my stories, to write what I think, to write what comes, not what the judgers and critics of the world say we “should” write.
The biggest catalyst in getting me to start producing as an author was part of my goodnight ritual I had with my son. When he was younger and I tucked him into bed and turned out the lights, I would say, “I love you. You are awesome. You can be anything.” After years of saying this it became hard to deny I was not walking my talk here. I knew I wanted to write and would not allow myself to be the ONE thing I wanted to be. And my life is a history of being anything I wanted to be, and to honest, at times to do things that others thought that I couldn’t do to prove I could. It was time to put up or shut-up, time to walk my talk, time to learn how to be a writer and learn how to write the stories I needed to tell. I put in my notice at work and after a short unsuccessful attempt at the same job in another location, I focused on writing hero’s journeys. It is now seven years later and I am getting warmed up and comfortable in writing my style.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I tend to prefer storytellers or world builders. I do enjoy enough world building to take me out of mine and into what the writer wants me to know. The parts that move the story forwards. Post-apocalyptic sets a tone of “starting over”, being “on your own”, “no civilization”. Time travel sets the tone of lessons of the past or future to learn. Why are we going back in time? to save the world or myself…. Like myself, I enjoy other writers that write adventures, coming of age stories, and situational stories. Stories that put people out of their element to succeed or fail. To test their boundaries and belief systems. To go from walking dead to conscious human. I enjoy stories about the things the politically correct culture refuses to acknowledge. Our shadows, the parts of ourselves that we hide, repress, deny.
i do not have a favorite genre or genres, I enjoy the storytellers in their genre. I find genre searches a hard way to find authors that are story tellers vs world builders. I rely on other readers and their reviews to help me differentiate. Goodreads is becoming my favorite source of new reads. The library the best source. I still prefer print books over digital. Perhaps it is because I write on the computer and have always read on paper.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest book is a culmination of three November NaNoWriMo’s. I appreciate the support structure of their process, the desire to teach authors to crank out words, and the acknowledgement that flow is what writes novels, not conscious thought. HBD (Here Be Dragons) is a story about the fringes of the map, the areas of culture most deny. The things that many utilize but are unaware of the costs. HBD is a story of internal espionage, serial killers, and hero’s. A story for grown-ups, not just those that got bigger. A story for those that want to get lost in a world that could or could not be real. Male and female hero’s adorn the pages, same goes for the crazier side of things as well. Life is not black and white in the world of spy’s and serial killers, and betrayal is eminent. Who will thrive and who will endure?
Marty Roberts has an opportunity to save the world, not from itself, but from the humans that dominate it. He sits, thinking. Determined to find a solution, no idea how lost he is.
Agent Joanne Clay urgently moves forward in her career, hell-bent on making her reputation and moving on from her family’s. She, a new generation of FBI agent.
Enter a clandestine agency, a psycho or three and the race for power gets violent. A whodunit, full of power and personal struggles. Who will prevail, the young, FBI-backed agent or Marty Roberts, alone and on mission?
From an author perspective, this book is a release from my personal constraints and boundaries, all the protagonists in this book live outside of normal societal constraints. normal is a relative term and the characters here all thrive in their version of normal. the serial killer, the spy, the assassin, the FBI agent, all live by different rules and boundaries. Each believe theirs are the correct ones. Each living by their own ethos and confident in their knowledge that their way is the right way. No matter how much it clashes with another.
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