Ian Graham is the third generation in his family to be born on the Fourth of July. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that he writes thrillers rooted in the historic intersections of politics and religion. And perhaps that also explains why his thrilling tales dramatize themes of patriotism, revolution, the struggle for liberty, and the clashing loyalties of violent partisans.
A self-employed entrepreneur in his mid-thirties, Ian has been writing since his teens. To date he has published two short-story collections—Signs of Violence and Patriots & Tyrants—and his first novel, Veil of Civility. Along with their first-rate literary qualities, what distinguishes Ian’s thrillers is their protagonist, Declan McIver: a former terrorist in the “Black Shuck” unit of the Irish Republican Army, now trying to make a new life in America. (Of course, things never stay that simple for thriller heroes.)
Ian had just published Veil of Civility in April 2013 when he was touched by one of the serendipities that occur frequently in the lives of authors. The tale was inspired by a real-life incident a decade earlier, when 25 Chechens were smuggled into the United States and disappeared, never to be found. In Ian’s telling, the 25 Chechens were terrorists smuggled here to wreak chaos. Declan McIver, hiding out in America to escape his own terrorist past in Ireland, is roused to action when the Chechens assassinate one of his friends.
Just two weeks after the book’s publication, Ian was parked by the side of the road near Roanoke, Virginia when news came over the radio that the Boston Marathon bombings were committed by two immigrants from Chechnya. “For several minutes I was speechless,” he told the Roanoke Star. “I knew it was possible . . . Still, it blows you away.”
Ian’s stories have appeared in Action Pulse Pounding Tales Volume 1 and Volume 2, alongside stories by best-selling thriller authors Matt Hilton, Stephen Leather, Adrian Magson, and Zoe Sharpe. He lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia with his wife and two daughters, where he is at work on Rules for Revenge, the second full-length novel in the Black Shuck / Declan McIver thriller series.
The Vigilante Author: Congratulations on your books, Ian. They’re getting stellar reviews from readers. Why don’t you tell us about them.
Ian Graham: First off, thank you for having me as a guest here at The Vigilante Author. It’s an honor to talk with you and the many fans of your thriller hero, Dylan Hunter.
In addition to my two short-story collections—Signs of Violence and Patriots & Tyrants—my first novel is titled Veil of Civility. It’s the debut novel in the “Black Shuck” thriller series, which follows a former Irish Republican Army volunteer named Declan McIver who has left his former life behind and moved to America to begin again. Events in the story kick off with a small group of Chechen Islamists crossing the US / Mexican border in September 2004—which isn’t fiction, it actually happened.
Earlier that same month, Chechen Islamists had taken a school full of children hostage in North Ossetia, a sub-region of Russia. Many in the American law enforcement and intelligence communities feared the covert nature of their entry meant they were here to perpetrate the same type of attack against Americans. Fortunately, that never came to pass, but the Chechens were never found either, so we really don’t know what they were up to. Veil of Civility explores the possible explanations, in the setting of a globetrotting political thriller.
As far as the reviews are concerned, to borrow a phrase from one of my British characters, I’m chuffed to bits. To have received so many positive comments from both readers and book bloggers is a high mark I hadn’t expected to experience on my first novel.
The Vigilante Author: Wow. You’ve covered quite a bit of ground there. You have the Irish Republican Army, Chechen Islamists, American law enforcement and intelligence . . .
Ian Graham: (laughs) Yeah. It probably sounds a little ambitious for one book, but the whole thing actually came together in a very organic way. As I researched the various backgrounds and situations around the world that gave birth to groups like the IRA and other terrorist organizations, I was struck by how, in a six-degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon kind of way, they all seemed interconnected.
Being non-professional civilian fighting forces, without the backing of legitimate governments, these organizations were always trying to stay one step ahead of the state authorities who were trying to stop them. That led them to reach out to many of history’s greatest villains—including the Nazis, the Soviets, and the early predecessors of today’s Islamic hordes, such as Yasser Arafat and Moammar Qaddafi—for funding, training, and weaponry.
So in a sense you had on one side this sort of unholy alliance between communist and fascist states and loose-knit terror organizations; and on the other side you had America, Great Britain, Israel, and their allies. The states played ball because the terror organizations had “boots on the ground” behind enemy lines, and the terror organizations desperately needed the support even though they didn’t always agree politically with their benefactors.
When you really step back and look at all the lines that can be drawn, the phrase “It’s a small world” takes on a whole new meaning.
The Vigilante Author: How would you describe or characterize your fiction, either by genre, by themes, and/or by subject matter?
Ian Graham: It’s hard to nail down one specific genre, but in a broad sense my stories can all be considered thrillers. The Black Shuck series contains elements that are popular in political fiction—John Le Carré or Frederick Forsyth; in military fiction—Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn; and in action-adventure fiction—Brad Thor or Clive Cussler. The pace speeds up and slows down throughout, and I love blending in history, both factual and speculative.
There are several themes in Veil of Civility that will run throughout the series: the exploration of the effect someone’s past has on their present and future; an exploration of the circumstances and attitudes in the various cultural and religious hot spots that give birth to or play an integral role in the larger picture of a world at war—which you could say we have been in since World War II; and the role of America and her allies in deterring and combating that epidemic while still providing their citizens with freedom and liberty.
Ultimately though, what I really hope people come away with is a feeling of having been entertained, first and foremost, and secondly, with a feeling of having learned something they didn’t know about the world and the people around them.
The Vigilante Author: As a thriller writer, I second those priorities. So, where did your hero, Declan McIver, come from? Real life? Totally from your imagination?
Ian Graham: The idea for Declan McIver came to me several years ago—’05 to ’06—while I was listening to a popular radio show host talk to a woman whose husband had moved to America from Eastern Europe. He had built his own business—something he was unable to do in his home country—and was now very prosperous. I didn’t have a name for Declan or any kind of a background yet, but I thought it would be really cool and unique to build a story around a man who had come to America from somewhere else; who appreciated everything born Americans tend to take for granted; and who chose to fight and defend the country, as well as himself, when confronted with a terrible problem. And that is in a nutshell what Declan does in Veil of Civility.
The Vigilante Author: What is unique about Declan that distinguishes him from other thriller heroes?
Ian Graham: I think what makes Declan unique is his backstory. These days most thriller heroes seem to be All-American former military or intelligence operatives of one variety or another who are motivated by a selfless dedication to the ideals of their country. Declan’s background is entirely different. He was born and raised in the early years of the conflict in Northern Ireland known as The Troubles. And like a lot of people growing up in that place and time he became caught up in the war between the IRA, their unionist paramilitary enemies, and the various Irish and British police and intelligence services deployed to contain and quell the fighting. He came from the other side of the tracks, so to speak. He was a part of a group remembered primarily as a terrorist organization, and he rubbed elbows with many people who would be considered the enemies of freedom and liberty.
Like many who were involved in The Troubles on one side or the other, Declan came to the realization that continued violence wasn’t getting Northern Ireland anywhere. All they were doing was going deeper and deeper into an unforgiving abyss. But even having come to that realization and having become disillusioned with the IRA and other paramilitaries, he recognized the vital role that civil disobedience, and even terrorism to a degree, played in winning Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority a seat at the government table. So he isn’t entirely apologetic about his involvement. This gives him a unique perspective and makes him a challenging and complex character both to read and to write.
The Vigilante Author: Your subject matter, centering with the IRA, is highly unusual for an American thriller author. Does your ancestry play a role in that interest, Ian? What specifically spawned your focus on this setting and these characters?
Ian Graham: My ancestry played a small role in my decision. My family name, Graham, descends from one of the largest Scottish clans, and Clan Graham did fight against the English crown on many occasions. That led to some of them being thrown off their lands and forcibly moved to Ireland, where they remained and became Irish Grahams in the proceeding decades. But no—my ancestry didn’t play a huge role in my decision about Declan’s background.
I’ve always had a deep interest in politics, religion, and history, and I find that so many of the conflicts raging around the globe are directly caused by one or more of those things. It’s very rare that people are simply good or simply bad. We all have motivations and we all believe that what we’re doing is the right thing—or that some external force, a government or religious sect perhaps, is causing us to have to do the wrong thing in order to accomplish a greater good.
It took me a long time to zero in on The Troubles as the background I wanted for my character. I looked in a lot of different directions before deciding, including the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Soviet-Afghan war, the Bosnian war, the first and second Chechen wars, and many others. In fact, many of those conflicts became the backstories for other characters in the Black Shuck universe.
Because America and American ideals are centrally featured in my books, the real deciding factor was that out of all the conflicts I looked at, The Troubles involved predominantly “Western” people. The battle between the IRA and Great Britain is the only post-WWII conflict on the books where parallels could be drawn between what happened and what a future conflict on “Western” soil might look like. Both you and I are fairly politically active in that we pay attention to and often analyze political events; so I know you’ve heard calls from some of the more passionate, but fringe bodies—both left and right—for a “new American Revolution.” While I believe most of these people are well-intentioned, I don’t think they have any idea what that would look like. In fact, I question whether or not they know what the original American Revolution looked like from an on-the-ground perspective. The Troubles in Northern Ireland would be a sobering study for them, in terms of the kind of forces and tactics that would be deployed against such an uprising, and, as a result, the degree of sacrifice that would be borne by all Americans. It’s not a pretty picture.
The Vigilante Author: Do your stories present a clear political or philosophical point of view?
Ian Graham: Well, I am generally a politically conservative person, in that I believe very much in economic freedom, limited government, and individual liberty; but I strive very hard to make sure that my characters aren’t just varying degrees of me. I really try to delve into what would motivate men and women from their backgrounds, and I try to make them as true a representation of that as I can while still telling an entertaining story. So I guess the answer is no, in terms of politics.
Philosophy is a bit different. I would say one of the core themes in my work is individual liberty, and with it, individual responsibility. We all have free will and the freedom to make our own choices, but we also have to bear out the consequences of those choices, good or bad. In a broad sense, Declan McIver’s life is the embodiment of that.
In Veil of Civility, Declan finds himself in the unenviable position of having to fend off the attacks of a very powerful conspiracy that values power over anything else. So, in a sense, the events are allegorical to the fight that Americans—and politically active people around the globe, really—wage every day. Government is always growing and encroaching on the citizenry, and with every new regulation and every new law, it means less and less freedom for the individual.
The Vigilante Author: Let’s turn to you. Readers are always interested in what prompted someone to become an author. To begin with, where were you born and raised, Ian? Describe your upbringing and early life for us a bit. And how you arrived where you are now.
Ian Graham: I was born and raised in New Hampshire for the first six years of my life. After that, we lived all over, including Massachusetts, New Jersey—where both my mom and dad were born and raised—a brief stint in London, Georgia, and where I currently live in Virginia.
My father—he’s retired now—was a politically active Army veteran and an entrepreneur. While I was growing up he was always looking for the area that was experiencing or was about to experience an economic boom. That accounts for most of my moving around as a youngster, and it taught me from an early age that the world is so much bigger than what’s in front of you right now.
My upbringing was very typical of a child growing up in 1980s America. I remember soaring speeches from Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher about the evils of Communism, and I remember doing safety drills at school and being told it was in case the USSR bombed us.
I think mine is probably the last generation that really remembers things like playing in the streets from dawn until dusk, riding bikes without helmets, having to go in the house to call your friends, and having an entire neighborhood full of parents that were always keeping a watchful eye on all of the kids, not just their own. It was a good time, and in a lot of ways I’m sad that my children won’t experience it. I’m not sure if it’s the thousand-fold increase in information and technology or what, but people today have become so much more weary and withdrawn. It’s a real task nowadays just to get a few families together for a playdate or a barbecue.
The Vigilante Author: It was a different world then, for sure. What early personal influences do you think drew you into becoming a writer, and to do the specific kind of writing you do? Were there any decisive people or events in your life that caused you to take the plunge?
Ian Graham: I have loved stories pretty much since birth. It didn’t matter whether it was playing GI Joe or Batman outside with my friends; playing with the dozens, possibly hundreds, of action figures I owned in my room; a book, a TV show, a movie, or some other format. If it had fantastic characters moving around in almost unbelievable ways, I was there with bells on. I’ve always had a very active imagination. If daydreaming was a subject in school I would have been a certified prodigy.
The Vigilante Author: Boy, can I relate!
Ian Graham: I never thought of myself as a writer or dreamed of being one growing up, but one thing I have done since I was old enough to read and write is scribble daydreams into notebooks. I would write pages upon pages, always with some fantastic version of myself in the center of the action. I’m really not sure why I did it. I never had any plans to develop anything out of it, it was just an outlet and it’s a behavior that continued into adulthood.
I’ve never found traditional employment to be very fulfilling, so I became an entrepreneur. I’ve owned and operated several small businesses and have managed to make a living at it, but never really found the one thing that just made me excited to go to work in the morning. I always felt like I was still searching for something.
The Vigilante Author: Wow! It’s as if I’m listening to myself. Please go on.
Ian Graham: In my late twenties, I found myself in the middle of a major industry-wide shake-up that caused dramatic changes in the way my business operated. Coupled with the economic downturn of 2008, and this being the third or fourth thing I’d begun and sort of failed at—more emotionally than financially—I was really starting to question myself. Several people in my life noticed this and recommended I seek out a life coach or someone who could help me put things back in focus.
I’m the epitome of a guy who wants to make his own way and really didn’t think it would work, but halfheartedly I selected someone who didn’t seem too intimidating and went to one session of his group. The title of the roughly twenty-minute talk he gave was “How to find your life’s work.” And the overall point of the presentation was that if you wanted to find your niche, you needed to look back over the recurring themes in your life. I never went back to the group, but I spent a lot of time pondering that idea. The one recurring theme I kept coming back to was the stack of notebooks full of ideas and my love of stories. It wasn’t just a recurring theme, it was the only recurring theme.
It was a complete departure from anything else I’ve ever done. But shortly after the birth of my first daughter in 2010—which was another very emotional experience for me—I said a half-trusting “okay” to that still small voice in my head and went to work. It took me about a year to figure out what story I wanted to write and then another two years to get it written. The end result of those efforts, after a lot of editing, was Veil of Civility.
The Vigilante Author: What other writers have been seminal influences upon you? And what have you learned from them? Would you care either to compare or to contrast your work with that of other writers that our readers might know about?
Ian Graham: Since beginning this journey I have met so many incredible people, including yourself, who have liberally given of themselves and their experience. I can’t begin to thank them enough or even measure the amount of influence each has had on me. They’re all important in one way or another.
The one thing I encountered early into my journey was a lot of self-doubt about whether or not I had the kind of life experiences it took to write a novel, especially something like a political thriller tied to real-world events. I loved reading novels by authors like Tom Clancy and Vince Flynn, and I was absolutely certain these men most likely had backgrounds in intelligence, government, or the military in order to produce such books.
In an effort to either talk myself out of what I was doing or prove myself wrong—I’m really not sure which it was—I started doing some in-depth research into who these men were. I was gobsmacked to learn that in both cases, Clancy and Flynn, their backgrounds were nearly identical to mine. Clancy was an insurance salesman; Flynn was a Grape-Nuts salesman, as he once put it; and I was a self-employed auto glass mechanic. Neither of them were FBI agents, CIA agents, senators, or anything like that. They were men who had an interest and pursued it. That knowledge was very empowering to me.
Content-wise, my work would compare to a number of writers including Tom Clancy, Vince Flynn, Brad Thor, Daniel Silva, Clive Cussler, Mark Greaney, and many others; but style-wise, we’re all independent and have our own voices. So I think content is where the comparisons end.
The Vigilante Author: I love all of those writers and they’ve been inspiring to me, too. So let me ask you: What motivates you to write? Do you have some kind of aim, goal, or even mission in your work? Some running theme?
Ian Graham: (laughing) Authors need motivation to write? I need motivation to do anything but write. Honestly, it’s a mad dash to my laptop at every writing session. The idea of playing on the page and seeing what my characters will get themselves into is an absolutely energizing thought. Sure, there are frustrations at times when you can’t get a specific bit of story to work the way you think it should, but I love every minute of it.
As far as an aim or a goal, I would say it’s always to finish the book I’m working on, so that I can get to the other book ideas that are bursting at the seams. I can never seem to finish fast enough, and at times it’s a real task to stay on one story and not jump over to another for a while.
The Vigilante Author: The writing life is tough and lonely. I’ll ask you what I ask almost all the writers I interview: What kind of obstacles have you faced along the way, and what have you done about them?
Ian Graham: Being alone has never bothered me. I’m not the kind of person that needs a lot of other people around. I live very much in my head, sometimes to the point of it being annoying to others. That being said, other than a few awkward years as a teenager, I’ve never had a problem making friends. I’m an affable and outgoing guy when a situation requires it and can usually find something in common with just about everyone.
As far as obstacles in the writing life, there’s really nothing I haven’t experienced before as a small business owner. There’s always a bit of uncertainty, and unlike a traditional job, things seem to ebb and flow a lot more. I think the biggest change for me has been shifting from a local customer base to a global customer base. The marketing strategies are entirely different when 95 percent of your customers are complete strangers, and I’ve struggled quite a bit with figuring out what is effective and what isn’t.
The Vigilante Author: We all do. The book market is changing constantly.
So, tell us something about where you live now—family, lifestyle, pets, kids—
Ian Graham: Outside of my writing, I’m the typical guy next door, with a wife, two daughters, and a wiener dog. I live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and love the outdoors. Hiking, kayaking, canoeing—it’s all good. I hope to travel the world a lot more in the future. In fact, I’m currently putting together a backpacking trip that will take me from Zurich, Switzerland, to Dublin, Ireland, in celebration of my 35th birthday. It’s something I have wanted to do for a long time, and I decided that next spring/summer is the “someday” I’ve been waiting for. No more excuses.
The Vigilante Author: That’s it? You’re just the guy next door? No embarrassing secrets or stories you want to share with folks?
Ian Graham: Er . . . well . . . Okay . . . I never learned to drive a manual transmission, and I sort of like Nickelback.
The Vigilante Author: I’m completely disillusioned.
What about your writing methods, Ian? Are you a meticulous outliner, or do you do just jump in and write by the “seat of the pants”? Or some combination?
Ian Graham: I’m a hybrid between an outliner and a “panster.” I start out with a very broad story skeleton and then develop a slightly more detailed outline. Then I dive in and see where it goes. Very few things are set in stone and completely clear to me during the outlining process. It’s not uncommon for me to make big changes to the outline and even the story skeleton as I write my way through the story. It’s that “something new and fascinating could be right around the corner” feeling that makes writing so exciting. I hope that energy transfers to the reader as they are reading the completed story.
The Vigilante Author: Well, your customer reviewers affirm that it does. What would an eavesdropper see if he watched you while you are writing?
Ian Graham: An eavesdropper would be totally bored most of the time. Other than frequent bursts of typing, it all happens in my head. He’d have to hang around for a long time to see anything remotely cool. I’ve done some training in the martial arts and firearms, so occasionally if I’m working on a fight scene I’ll stand up and work through the motions in order to more accurately describe what I’m seeing in my mind.
The Vigilante Author: Do you write in a special place? On a particular schedule?
Graham at his “Command Center” (click for a larger view)
Ian Graham: As far as special places go, I used to do all of my writing in a public library, at a very specific seat where I could see the works of both Tom Clancy and Vince Flynn. This was especially important to me while I was still working on my first novel, because I needed to remind myself that they weren’t all that different from me when they first started. Nowadays, I do my writing in a “cabin in the woods” that I call my Command Center. It’s a little one-room office that was made from a storage shed and sits about fifty yards from the back door of my house. I spent much of the spring converting it and couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.
The Vigilante Author: That sounds so cool.
Ian Graham: Yeah, I’m totally psyched about it. There was a thing going around social media a while back where writers were posting pictures of their workspaces. I was like a proud papa showing off his baby.
The Vigilante Author: What do your wife and kids think of Husband/Daddy hiding in his shack and imitating Bruce Lee?
Ian Graham: (laughs) My wife is used to my antics in all the forms they’ve taken over the years. I guess she’s just accepted it because she hasn’t tried to slip any kind of medication into my drinks—that I know of.
My oldest daughter is hopelessly embarrassed and stopped having her friends over, but I consider that a win. What parent doesn’t love embarrassing their teenage children? I think it’s some kind of rite of passage.
My youngest daughter doesn’t think anything of it and often dances around the living room in costumes imitating the same characters I loved when I was a kid. She’s the one I lovingly refer to as BATGIRL, and who you’ve probably seen photos of on Facebook. I think she and I are kindred spirits.
The Vigilante Author: Do you use things like Scrivener or other writing programs?
Ian Graham: I don’t have any fancy writing tools. I’ve tried many of them and just haven’t been able to find my equilibrium with them. So it’s just a laptop, several notepads, two dry erase boards, and an old antique desk. I write primarily in Open Office and save all of my work to Dropbox religiously. I’m completely OCD about that. If I think I’ve forgotten, I go back out to the Command Center and do it again.
The Vigilante Author: You can’t be too careful with your babies. What’s the hardest thing for you about writing? And the easiest? What gives you the greatest pleasure or reward?
Ian Graham: I don’t think there really is a hardest or easiest thing about it. Any particular part can be a challenge at any time, and you just have to work through it. It can get frustrating, but it’s worth it when that piece finally snaps into place. That’s the biggest reward. That, and when something just happens on the page completely out of the blue that you never planned on. It’s not always a big or important thing, either. Sometimes it’s just a bit of setting or emotion or something that you know the reader is just going to be like, “uh-huh . . . been there,” and feel that much more connected to the character experiencing it.
The Vigilante Author: Like me, you decided to self-publish. Why was that? Did you try the traditional publishing route first?
Ian Graham: I never tried traditional publishing. As someone with several years of business experience, once I decided to do this I immediately started reading and learning about the business side of being a writer. I knew very little about the publishing industry, and a lot of what I learned was eye-opening, when taken in comparison to the celebrity authors you see in the media. At that time, the self-publishing thing was really just getting going and I wasn’t sure where it would lead, so I just kept working. I figured I didn’t need to make any concrete decisions until I had a completed manuscript.
Once Veil of Civility was complete, I really sat down and thought about how I wanted to release it to the world. I’ve always had a hard time with the “traditional” route to anything, and the idea of spending years trying to find an agent, spending huge amounts of money on trade shows just to get close to an agent, and then potentially waiting years again for the agent to find a publisher, just didn’t seem to make sense. By that time, many people had begun to experience some decent success with Amazon and self-publishing, and I thought it looked much more like starting a small business as an author. That was an idea I could get my mind around, so I really began paying attention to that route.
The Vigilante Author: Once more, Ian, I can definitely relate. Except that when I finished HUNTER at age 62, I didn’t have the luxury of waiting around for agents and publishers.
Ian Graham: I hear that and I can relate. One of the primary factors in my decision to self-publish was that I felt like Veil of Civility, as a political thriller tied to real-world events, had a certain shelf life that could mean big changes for the manuscript if it were to sit around waiting on the traditional route. So I hired a cover artist and an editor and hit “publish” on April 3rd, 2013 with Amazon’s KDP [Kindle Direct Publishing] program.
As I mentioned earlier, Chechen terrorism is a big part of Veil of Civility; and on April 19th of that year, a mere few weeks after publication, we learned that the Boston Marathon Bombing had been committed by two Islamist brothers hailing from Chechnya.
No one wants to take a victory lap because of a terrorist attack, but the release of the book couldn’t have been timelier. If I’d waited, several names and situations in the book would have seemed like they were copied directly from the headlines.
The Vigilante Author: How has the self-publishing experience been for you?
Ian Graham: Like any kind of publishing, the indie route is fraught with challenges. Any kind of small business or self-employment is, and people have to be ready for that reality. I mentioned that my biggest challenge has been shifting from a local to a global perspective, and I’ve really struggled with that and would reiterate that, in terms of “how indie publishing has been for me.” I don’t think traditional publishing would have been any different, though.
The Vigilante Author: What qualities do you think are most important for any would-be writer? And what advice, if any, would offer them?
Ian Graham: Tenacity. Getting to “The End” on your first manuscript is a monumental challenge.
The first thing I would advise any would-be writers to do—other than start writing, of course—would be to reach out to as many authors as you can. We’re a kind and giving lot and will normally help you any way we can. That being said, no one wants to help someone who clearly hasn’t bothered to do their homework on the industry and expects someone to hand them a magic bullet. So make sure you’re not that person before reaching out. That might sound harsh, but it’s true.
When it comes time to publish your manuscript, my recommendation for new writers would be to really do your homework, rid yourself of the media’s presentation of authors’ glamorous lifestyles, and ultimately take whichever route you’re the most comfortable with. I don’t think there is a one-size-fits-all answer to “How do I publish?” It’s a lot of hard work however you do it.
The Vigilante Author: So, what can readers expect from Ian Graham in the future?
Ian Graham: (evil laugh) Books! Lots and lots of books! Seriously though, I’m working on Declan McIver’s second adventure, tentatively titled Rules for Revenge, and have been for a while now. It takes time to construct a good conspiracy thriller, and I’m 100 percent dedicated to turning out the best one possible, as well as continuing to learn the craft of writing fiction and figuring out ways to make my writing ever better.
The Vigilante Author: That news will make a lot of thriller fans happy. Where can people buy your books? And how can readers contact you or learn more about you and your books?
Ian Graham: Veil of Civility is available on Amazon, and so are my two short-story collections—Patriots & Tyrants, and Signs of Violence—which feature three to four stories each. The short stories all take place in the past and fill in key pieces of backstory that have led the characters to where they are in the novels, which will all take place in the present.
I love meeting new people and am over the moon when a reader takes the time to contact me. Anyone who wants to has an open invitation to email me at IanGrahamAuthor@gmail.com or to “friend” me on Facebook. I’m fairly active there and love posting and talking to people. If they’re not the sociable type and just want updates on my books, they can sign up for my author newsletter, which I send out periodically throughout the year.
The Vigilante Author: And let’s not forget your website.
Ian, it’s been an absolute delight getting to know you better. And I hope this interview brings you a lot of new fans. Thanks so much for your time
~~~
Photo (c) by Debbie Scott
