H. L. Wegley Interview

Q: How long have you been writing and what other careers or jobs have you had?  

A. I’ve been writing since elementary school, but not always fiction. My career as a meteorologist/research scientist required a lot of scientific writing: books, reports, journal articles. As a computer systems programmer for more than 20 years I wrote nearly a million lines of code—structured language, pure logic. After retiring, my burned out mind was ready for a change. In the spring of 2010 I wrote my first novel, rewrote it twice that year, and received a contract for it in 2011. I’m currently finishing my seventh novel.

Q: Do you write in only one genre and if so which one and why? If not, which ones and why?

A: High-action romantic suspense and thriller’s with a little romance are my favorite genres to write and read. I love high-stakes and a lot of action … as long as it’s fiction and not my reality. I’ve written one young boys’ adventure novel, but haven’t pursued publishing it—just gave it to my grandson. I also wrote and self-published my childhood adventure stories for my grandkids, Colby and Me: Growing Up in the 50s.

Q: How does your faith play into your writing? 

A.  About 15 years ago I took a 10-year excursion into the study of Christian Apologetics and the Christian Worldview. While I never wrote the book I intended to write on apologetics, God used that time in a way I would have never anticipated. He prepared me to write Christian fiction. Answers to questions about God and the human condition find their way into the dialogue in my stories, especially the redemption stories. So far there has been a redemption story embedded in the plot of each of my novels. The 4^th book in the Pure Genius Series, Triple Threat, pits my agnostic hero (IQ of 145) against my Christian heroine (IQ 180). Their disparate beliefs create a lot of conflict and, before this story ends, the reader will see short, succinct answers to nearly every major objection that has been raised against the Christian faith.

Q: How do you choose your settings for your books?

A. My wife and I love beautiful outdoor settings—the beaches of the Olympic National Park, Maui beaches, the mountains around Whistler, BC, to name a few. Even my techno-thrillers seem to end up in these kinds of settings. It’s much easier to write a story if you know the setting intimately. We have taken nearly 50 GB of digital images for the three locations I mentioned and I often write with a set of pictures laying beside my laptop or up on my netbook’s screen.

Q: Do you base your characters on people you know or are they totally made up?

A:  Many of my characters are composites of people I have known. However, some characters are so unusual that I know of no real-life models. For example, Jennifer Akihara, the heroine of the first 3 books of the Pure Genius Series, is a 5’2? 110-pound, stunning, Japanese-Hawaiian beauty who proves that dynamite really does come in small packages. With an IQ pushing 200 and a temper hovering near 212°, she can slice and dice you with her words or her laser look. She has been stalked several times, so she carries a .38 in her purse, a gun with one notch on it.

Q: Would you tell us about your current book release, On the Pineapple Express? 

A:  This story is a thriller with romance starring Jennifer Akihara, now an NSA research scientist. She intercepts a mysterious cell call and realizes that somewhere in the vast 3,600 square miles of the rugged Olympic Peninsula human traffickers are holding captured girls to sell to international clients. Jennifer is obsessed with finding the holding location. Lacking enough evidence to engage the FBI, she enlists the help of her fiancé, Lee Brandt, a meteorologist. With a deadly, 100-year storm and international criminals bearing down on them, while the clock ticks toward the sale of the captives, can Jennifer and Lee survive the bullets and the elements to find the girls? Will Jennifer survive to experience her wedding day or the antithesis the traffickers have planned for her?

Q: Where did you get your inspiration for this story?

A: My wife and I attended a local meeting raising awareness of the child sex-trafficking epidemic. What an ugly picture we saw! We live in one of the worst areas for child trafficking in the U.S. After that meeting, I took the MCs from my debut novel and put them in a situation where they had to make a choice between simply enjoying their planned life together or risking it all to rescue a group of girls from international human traffickers. That gave birth to the plot for On the Pineapple Express.

Q: What is the main thing you hope readers remember from this story?

A: If we trust God and are willing to follow Him, even in the face of fear and danger, He will provide the courage and power to accomplish His purposes through us. For readers who do not know our Savior, there is another message that is presented simply and without preaching, the message of redemption.

Q: Tell us what you like about the main characters of this book.

A:  Jennifer’s heart. Incredibly courageous, a ferocious protector of the helpless, a heart that never quits, no matter the odds. Lee Brandt is a resourceful observer. He can use a wind gust or an ocean wave to his advantage. But his devotion to Jennifer is his strongest trait and the one most likely to get him killed.

Q: Would you share with us what you are working on now?  

A. I’m currently finishing a story, The Janus Journals, that has drawn the interest of several agents. In this high-action, romantic suspense story, we find that the cold war never really ended and events set in motion years ago have endangered a beautiful, innocent, young woman. When Alisa (Allie) Petrenko’s father is murdered, he left her with a warning, an assassin on her trail, and his secret history contained in a set of journals. As Allie tries to elude the assassin and read her father’s journals, she learns that the man who raised her was not the man she remembers and the man she must now trust with her life is the one man Allie must never trust with her heart.

Q: If money were no object what vacation would you like to take and why?  

A. My wife and I would love to meet the young lady we have supported through World Vision since she was 4. She lives in Indonesia. Stopping off to see the Great Barrier Reef and the Australian Outback on the way would be wonderful too.

Q: What is the silliest thing you have ever done?  

A. When I was 16, my buddy and I found a case of discarded, wet, decomposing dynamite at an abandoned logging landing. Completely ignorant of the danger, we scooped all of the smoking, unstable stuff into a paper grocery bag and climbed on my motorcycle. With my buddy behind me and what was essentially a bag of nitro wedged between us we rode down the mountain. Fortunately we didn’t take a spill. But the silliness didn’t end there. We rode to a place in the woods where we had found an old, abandoned car. We packed most of the dynamite into a large milk carton, doubting it could still explode. My buddy stuck a blasting cap in the carton, set it on the engine of the old car, strung the fuse across the front fender, closed the hood, and lit the fuse. The explosion blew the hood so far away it took us two weeks to find it.

Q: What is the hardest thing you have ever done? 

A. In July of 1967, eleven months after my wife and I married, I entered the military at the height of the Vietnam conflict. Boarding a plane one night and flying away, not knowing when or if I would see her again, was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s impossible for Americans who have not experienced this to appreciate fully the sacrifices our young men, women, and their families make to defend us. Regardless, we must never trivialize those sacrifices.

Q: Where can readers find you on the internet? 

A.

Web site:                     HLWegley.com
Facebook Page:           https://www.facebook.com/HLWegley
Twitter:                       https://twitter.com/hlw154th
Blog:                           The Weather Scribe
Amazon:                      http://amzn.to/10hubj8

Goodreads:                 http://bit.ly/1klMwpz

Q: Anything else you’d like to tell or share with us?  

A. For anyone reading this blog post—if you think you would like to write, you’re never too old, or too young, to start. I started writing novels at 64. My only regret is that I didn’t start earlier—much earlier.