I was born and raised in Harlingen on the border with Mexico on the southern tip of Texas, near the Gulf of Mexico. I was raised with old school values on a cotton farm. After high school I went to Texas A&M and was in the Corps of Cadets there. I quit in the middle of my senior year to join the Marines in the hope of going to Vietnam. I also served in the Peace Corps in The Philippines. I travelled around the world between these two events in my life and saw enough to need to relate it. I worked for eleven years in Switzerland, married there and raised two of my three children there. I now work for Texas A&M. And finally have time to reflect on my life and its meaning. And write about it.
You are a writer who narrates his own audiobooks. First, how did you get interested in writing fiction?
From a very young age I was interested in artistic expression. Very fascinated by expression. The first thing I ever wanted to be was an artist, painter type, but am the world’s worst at drawing. But I was always a good story teller and good in music. After settling down, I took expressing myself through writing more seriously. To talk about things finally I’ve lived, thought, experienced, and seen. I started learning the ropes and making contacts. I got my foot in the door by getting a short story published with my now publisher who talked me into expanding it into a novella. I’ve written four novels since and another novella. They are all based on true stories. First hand ones. I need to talk and chose to do it in story form. I love this medium so much. It’s really therapeutic. To release and also to communicate.
The need for expression in my life and to experience. To travel is the ultimate. It so opens you. You have to adjust to other ideas, cultures, and forms. Travel so tests you. You always have to answer to so many new things. Not all of them grand, but a lot of grand too. Anyway, you get out of the box, including emotional, and mental. I adore that. It made me not only want to write about places and experiences, but the growth angle too. To relate what you saw and share it.
Some of your books are inspired by your own life. Would you explain those?
I do have an imagination and very much use it, but I wanted more than fantasy to relate. There’s a real world out there. Life is so deep and real. Enthralling, both negative and positive. I so prefer it to fantasy, but imagination is part of it too so you can expand things. Or even to color and have fun with. But I want meat. I am of the sixties generation, but grew up on a farm in rural Texas. My parents survived the Dust Bowl and the war, My generation went a different direction on top of all of that. I got something out of all of it. It’s not one or the other to me. And it made me so want to understand things. I tried to go to Vietnam as a Marine with no regrets. I also backpacked it around the world with no regrets. I joined the Peace Corps with no regrets, I have a Master’s degree in economics, work in high tech, lived on a kibbutz, lived in almost every continent, and travelled in the others, except Antarctica, of course. I so need to relate all of these experiences. I need artistic expression anyway, but I so need to relate so much of my life. And even as a Marine and Texan, I’m very emotional. I love manliness, but I have so many thoughts and feelings that demand expression too. The artist in me has to form it in a relatable and enthralling way.
Some of your books deal with issues in the Middle East. What draws you to that region of the world?
I lived in Israel and greatly love Israel. But Israel is in the Middle East and almost the anti-thesis of the rest of it. I was in Israel when Sadat landed to make peace. It so inspired me. I have travelled other parts and have family in other countries in the Middle East as well as friends that lived in other countries. It is such a volatile place and so politicized, including our opinions and outlooks, that I wanted to know more about it. To relate more. I love Israel on the one hand and wrote a book with Hezbollah playing a major part in that story. I wanted more than black and white. I didn’t want to sugar coat or politically correct things, but to show things that disgust me that I abhor but also show a real human side also. How things happen. Not excuse, but understand, or at least better.
How do you organize your writing?
By now, in my life, a lot of writing, including organizing, is old hat to me. I still have to think and work, but it’s instilled by now. Mostly I go back and fine tune, and of course I need my editor. But in the beginning, like anything else, you have to structure, and follow forms and rules. It can seem inhibiting, and somewhat is. But it needs to work and to fit. Structure and flow is so important and some of the beginning is baby steps on up to that. Then it becomes natural and the real flow of art easily comes out, but not in chaos. See an idea through. Don’t bounce around, unless there is a method in that madness so to speak. And there is a method to that madness, that also is a type of form. It doesn’t need to be rigid, maybe as you’re learning there is a certain rigidity as you learn your craft and vehicle, but then the art is there and has a medium. There is art to throwing a football, or building a cheap, boring efficient house.
Everything is not flare. But depending on your need and platform, there is an art to flare or to commonality. In writing see a scene or thought through with one leading into the other. It doesn’t have to be so straight laced, different expressions and environments in one story, but with a link and meaning to each to form the whole.
You narrate your own books. Most authors get someone else to do that. What made you decide to do your own narration?
It sounded like fun to begin with, plus yet another art form of expression that appealed to me. But also on the practical level, I know the story, the names and places. I don’t have to explain to myself even if I have to think about it some. And also on the practical side, my publisher offered to make one of my novels into an audiobook, yet two months later I still hadn’t heard anything. I asked my publisher and they said it was often hard to find a narrator that fit and was also available and willing. So, I asked if I could do it myself, which I wanted to do anyway. My publisher readily agreed, saying they even preferred authors doing their own stories, for reasons as I explained above. But I had to audition for it. I only wrote the story, it was now theirs and they wanted someone up to it. I was glad I had to audition. I wanted to have to be up to it. It worked out great.
Did you do your own editing as well as narrating?
Yes I did and for the same reasons as above in many ways. I know the story, and there is some fine tuning that has to be done and I wanted to do that. But. Ha. It’s a chore and my publisher warned me about it. For expediency and efficiency, they also wanted the author and narrator to do their own, but also, you have to be up to it and it is a chore. Three times or more time and effort are spent on editing as the narrating itself. And you have to know the software etc. So, I was given links on YouTube to take tutorials. I spent hours just doing that and learning the ropes. Even then you make some little nitpicking errors along the way, some of which you can’t just totally smooth out. You can totally redo, which sometimes you must, a segment or the whole thing, but then make another mistake hard to fully correct, So there are spots where you settle for almost perfect, or kind of good. Even that better be a very small little glitch.
Tell us about your process of researching for your book. What kinds of things do you do research on, and how do you go about performing it?
Since my stories are based mostly on things I’ve lived and done, I mostly relate. But there is always a place, even then, for research. Things you forgot or things you didn’t pick up in a country or setting that you better have your facts straight. So, I read. Especially these days on the Internet. The story is the key and it’s all about that, but even if you lived in a country or place, you may have forgotten some of the data details about it, or never known something important about it in detail that is important to the story. So, I ask someone from India, if my setting is there, because they have the feel, not just the data, the insight. But also check their work and memory too. So, between what you already know, what others do, you still better google the time and place on some of this stuff and read to make sure you have the dry fact down.
You spent time in the Peace Corps, and that figures into your books. Tell us about your time there.
I was a sixties guy. Old fashioned, God, mom, and apple pie, joined the Marines instead of protest marched or burn any flag, But there was so much to life to answer to, no matter what your views or experiences were. John F Kennedy was elected President when I was in junior high, He had to stand up to the Communist threat, including one hundred ninety miles from our shores, He had to lead the free world economically and militarily. He was a war hero, and a well educated New England Harvard guy into history and also the business world. He felt there was more to being a power than having the strongest military. That too, but he saw a need for a holistic approach and derived the idea of the Peace Corps. Also special forces in the military. Green Beret, and Navy Seals etc. But also, the Peace Corps to get island America out into the arena of life. Overseas. To experience other cultures and economies and social stages. To let them experience an American, and for that American to bring those experiences and concepts back and relate them as best as possible to those at home here.
I just absolutely adored that concept as did much of my generation. Often the military guys looked down on the goody goody Peace Corps Volunteer, and the PCV looked down on the goon soldier. I adored both. I grew and learned from both. I am so proud to have been in the Marines and also the Peace Corps. To be thrown out into the thick of it in the Peace Corps. Not just to another country, but into the middle of the most demanding situations. Not especially dangerous ones, necessarily, but that happened sometimes too even as you tried to be safe. But to work among the poor, in dire poverty situations. There is no way you can turn things around, but you try. Even the futility of some of it is such a depressingly glorious experience. New cultures and languages and situations. JFK was right on. The Peace Corps is the most underrated agency in American policy. But it’s what you make of it. Some are overwhelmed or indifferent. The Peace Corps tries to make it easy to go home. Not at a whim, but they don’t want you there causing problems. If you’re not into it or not up to it, you’re not helping anyone. I so loved the Peace Corps. I don’t understand why everyone doesn’t do it.
What authors influenced your own writing career?
For just plain writing styles and stories, my favorite author is John Steinbeck. He wrote with a socialist mindset, as did another favorite of mine, Jack London. I loved his style and stories too. I’m not at all a socialist, but I don’t care who you are, sort of, or your view, if you are out there in life looking at life and for answers and relating and trying to understand, I don’t really care how you see life when I’m reading your works. I want meat, Good style, They had great styles, the soul searching, and the life substance stories, with strong characters. Believable characters, interacting with life and people. I loved parts of that about Hemingway also, but I like their stories better and their styles better. I don’t imitate them, you have to find your own voice, but I’m so inspired by them.
Links of interest:
https://www.larryfarmerwrites.com
Amazon page
Texas Association of Authors
Thanks for the interview, Vicki