Featured Interview With Michael Walsten
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born and raised in Minneapolis and Excelsior, Minnesota. My wife and I moved to beautiful Bradenton, Florida in 2005. In between, I have lived in Park City, UT, Denver, CO and Linville, NC.
I enjoy golf, fishing, reading, and walking in our semi-tropical neighborhood.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
During my late teens and early twenties I read voraciously: Kurt Vonnegut, Henry Miller, Franz Kafka, Alan Watts … I guess those were my esoteric years. My current favorite novel is Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. A classic I am currently reading and thoroughly enjoying is Robinson Crusoe … Defoe wrote exceptional descriptions of isolation, loneliness and survival. Another great descriptive writer I’ve recently started reading is Zane Gray, especially The Mysterious Rider.
I always knew I wanted to write, but I kept putting it off.
In 1989 I wrote a non-fiction work, Help Wanted: How Winning Companies are Recruiting, Motivating and Retaining Quality Employees (Resource Direction). It sold quite well, in bulk, to service corporations such as McDonalds, Target, and Holiday Inns, who distributed it to their managers and franchisees.
I didn’t take the fiction-writing plunge until July, 2018 when I began Separated at the Border – a Novel (now available in trade paper and ebook).
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
In addition to those previously mentioned, some of the novels I’ve read and enjoyed over the past year include First Blood by David Morrell, Slaughterhouse Five (again) by Vonnegut, Looking for Rachel Wallace by Robert B. Parker, the Jack Reacher novels and Michael Connelly.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
In Separated at the Border, Diamond Herrera, a 24-year-old freelance journalist and Jason Taylor, an ex-Army Ranger and journalism professor team up with the ACLU and the Catholic Church to fight human trafficking and abuse at a privately-run immigrant youth detention facility in the Florida Everglades. Along the way, Di and Jason are forced to take on a Miami-based gang and a corrupt facility administrator while skirting the law and dodging a suspicious Broward County Sheriff’s detective.
The story is set in South Florida. I began writing it in July and finished it in December, 2018.
I love the characters and the story … and hope my readers will as well.
I don’t know if it’s an official genre, but I think of this book and my next, Green Water, as topical fiction … incorporating current events into the storyline.
I do my writing sitting on my lanai (the Florida name for a screened in patio) overlooking a golf course and a pond with a huge variety of shorebirds and waterfowl, as well as families of sandhill cranes. When I get stuck, I just stare out over this beautiful nature until the next scene comes to me.
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Michael Walsten Facebook Page
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