Today I’m visiting with Whit Gentry, a retired Lt. Colonel in the Air Force, president of a paper company for eleven years, and now – an author.

JRC:  How did you get into writing & why?

Whit:  I had never written a word of fiction or had any thoughts or dreams of writing fiction until I had been retired three years.  The first three years of our retirement were filled with new adventures and lots of travel.  Our grandparent duties helped slow our travels and I caught myself one winter between books from my favorite authors.  Since television wasn’t an option, I started writing a story.  The more I wrote, the more entertained I was from my efforts.

Two things helped me most with my writing. Reading for over fifty years exposes one to lots of different styles.  Everyone has their favorite genre and their favorite authors within the genre.  The second thing which helped me was my engineering education.  I like the discipline of putting processes together to reach a goal.

JRC:  What kind of writing schedule do you have?

Whit:  Being an outdoor person, I have a writing schedule that I wouldn’t necessarily recommend.  I write between January and March, and then between July and early September.  These are hot and cold periods when I can’t be outside.  To be able to go long periods without writing, one must have a good system of keeping notes.  An advantage I have found with this schedule is the capability to create lots of options and directions for the story.

JRC:   Are you a plotter or a pantser?

Whit:  I’m a plotter and this to me is the most rewarding part of putting a story together.  The stories I like to read are stories of plots and twists and that is where my level of comfort is with being creativity.  My second obsession with developing a story is believability.  I firmly believe in research to get places and events properly represented.  If I’m going to have something happening to a character, I must have it justified for the reader.  I guess that’s why I don’t write fantasy.

JRC:   Is Revenge…No Statute of Limitations your first book, and what is it about?

Whit:  Revenge…No Statute of Limitations is my first story.  It is the first of a series of stories about a young man in Colorado who is looking for his life.  He searches for the relationship he saw between his father and mother.  The adventures this young man finds himself in will surprise the reader.  He kidnaps four women and the plot is set.  The reader will find a tense tale of self discovery, greed, and altruism.

JRC:   Why would anyone kidnap four women at one time?  Is the kidnapping the revenge?

Whit:  Several reviewers have said it better than me—Much More Than a Mystery—a psychological trip through the minds of the four kidnapped women, the kidnapper, the husbands, and the FBI Agents.  How can an author put the reader in a frame of mind to pull for the kidnapper?  That’s against our natural senses.

JRC:  You’re right about that.  Do you plan a sequel? What other books are in the wings?

Whit:  The second story has been written and is in the long process of being edited, cleaned up, and rewritten to improve the presentation for the reader.  Five characters from the first story are the key players.  This story, although psychological, is fast paced with action and situations which will pique the reader’s interest in figuring out how the characters will recover from dire circumstances or will they?

This is a story of Secrets.  Secrets which government agencies don’t share with each other, secrets we share with close friends, and secrets which are ours and ours alone.  The title of the story is Not Authorized and it takes place over a twenty-two day period and is about the sex slave market.

The third story includes six of the characters from the first and second stories and focuses on the efforts of the female FBI Special Agent to unravel the complex network of selling body parts.  The fourth story pulls the kidnapped women from the first story into a strange relationship with the six characters, one of which is their kidnapper.  Will he be recognized as their kidnapper and white knight?

JRC:   That’s quite a line-up.  Now I see what you do when you’re not writing.  You’re plotting. I noticed your book on Amazon and Barnes & Noble is not available for sale?

Whit:  I removed the book from sales back in February because it was so poorly edited by the publisher.  The editing has been completed, some reorganization and rewriting has been completed, and an epilogue, primarily about the four kidnapped women, has been added at the insistence of many readers.

The new story will be available on Amazon July 15 in paperback and e-book formats.

JRC:   There you have it, folks.  If that story line doesn’t interest you, you don’t like mysteries and suspense. How many of us would be willing to pull a book when we didn’t feel the publisher did a good job of editing?  In fact, leave a comment if you’ve ever done that.  And look for Whit Gentry’s book  Revenge…No Statute of Limitations back on Amazon by July 15.  And check out his website at: http://www.whitgentry.com.