Muse: First of all, Whispers of the Muse welcomes you to the site. Tell us a little about yourself. What part of the world do you live in? Tell us about your background?
Mr. Hays:  I live in Fort Worth, Texas, and I’ve been a professional in the oil and gas and real estate title insurance industries for about 30 years.  I’m a native Texan, and have lived in the Southwest all my life.  I work out three days a week, was a long distance runner for a while, but not so much any more, and read voraciously!  I haven’t had a cat for a while, but I can feel myself about ready to be owned by a feline again!

Muse: Who are your favorite authors?
Mr. Hays: Boy, is that hard to pin down.  I read a lot of mysteries, and I enjoy Robert Crais, John D MacDonald, and Robert B Parker.  But I will range widely depending on my mood.  I might go through a John Grisham phase, a Tom Clancy phase, or return to Mark Twain. I had read all of Arthur Conan Doyle by the time I was 14, and I revisit those occasionally.  Janet Evanovich - prime time!

Muse: Why did you write a Memoir? And what other genres do you write?
Mr. Hays:  First person gave me the immediacy I needed to express what I was going through at the time.  I went to a writer’s conference and discovered there’s now a label for the way I write – creative nonfiction.  I work well within scene structure, and am good with dialogue, so my memoir feels like written fiction – only it’s a true story.  I’ve also written a novel, which I will publish soon.  In that, I was exploring what might have happened to my Dad when he disappeared for a while, and third person gave me the emotional distance I needed from the story.

Muse: What is your writing regimen? How often do you work on a book? Do you set daily time or word goals? What keeps you meeting your deadlines?
Mr. Hays: No, I’m not a daily writer.  I worried about that after a creative writing teacher said she kept to a strict daily regimen.  Then I read a book where C. S. Forester described how he wrote the Hornblower books, and it gave me great relief, because he worked like I do.  He would let things percolate and reveal themselves over a period of time, and then at a certain point the thoughts coalesced and revealed themselves as a fully realized vision.  It’s that way for me.  I may think about what I need to write next, then go about my daily life for a week;  then I will sit down and the next chapter will fall out.  But for the bigger picture, I have a business plan for myself as a writer, which I update regularly with goals and accomplishments.  It keeps me focused long term, and aware that this is a business venture - at least I have to think of it that way.

Muse: Does the way you personally look at life reflect in your writing style?
Mr. Hays:  The first word that came to mind was - hopeful.  My desire at writing years ago was “to write novels of hope for a struggling America.”  I think we’re bombarded with negativity, and I wanted to share hopeful themes and messages.  That’s the way I live my life, and the way I want to write.  Now - I don’t want to portray Leave It To Beaver world - my books are usually pretty intense and I’ve had struggles.  But in the getting through and coming out on the other side is where the hope lies.

Muse: What are the creative jumping off points for you? Are you inspired by dreams? Music? Nature? The occasional black nightmare? What triggers your imagination?
Mr. Hays:  I came home from Thanksgiving one year, and suddenly had a fully realized vision for a series of loosely connected books fall out onto paper in a 24 hour period.  That is my writing direction for the next several years.  It happened so fast I was amazed.  Yes, I’ve had dreams illuminate my writing, and oh yes, the occasional black nightmare - I’ll share that in my favorite scene question below.

Muse: Tell us about Freedom’s Just Another Word. What was your inspiration?
Mr. Hays: I had known for about 15 years that I would eventually write this book.  The inspiration was a tremendous crossroads in my life that occurred around the time my Dad died.  It was an emotionally charged four month period that I had to write about.  But I had to let some time pass to be ready to write about things like delivering the eulogy at my Dad’s funeral.

Muse: What is your favorite scene from the book and why?
Mr. Hays:  I had remembered a violent incident with my Dad from my teenage years.  Then several weeks later I had a dream where I invited a friend into a new house I had just bought.  She gasped when she saw that there was a tiger inside.  I assured her it was tame, and then it came up and lightly grasped my arm.  I knew it was not tame, and eventually it would destroy me.  And I knew that the tiger was my rage!  Powerful imagery - and a real dream.  It also was a turning point in my healing process - I had to deal with the tiger!

Muse: Have you written other books?
Mr. Hays: I wrote a novel entitled “Nothing Left To Lose.”  It will be sort of the bookend for the series I intend to write.  It was about what I imagined might have happened to my Dad when he disappeared for a while, and rumor had it he went and worked on the wheat harvest.  He had a spiritual experience, and came back a changed man.  He died before I could ask him what happened - so this is my take on it.

Muse: Tell us about your other books?
Mr. Hays: I’m working on a book right now that is about the origin of my writer’s block.   I had publishers interested in two books I wrote, and walked away from those possibilities.  It’s going to be a deep and complex memoir, and I’m really excited about it, because it is an astonishing story of why my writing would get so “locked up.”  Then the other books in the series will illuminate how I could come to write a book about my Dad from a loving perspective, given the violence that he had directed toward me.

Muse: How do you feel about the current publishing marketplace?
Mr. Hays: When I first looked at submitting a book to a publisher in 1985, you went directly to the publishers.  That has since been replaced by the agency system, in which the publishers have essentially outsourced their culling function - using agents to sift through submissions.  So now the primary relationship is between author and agent, rather than author and publisher or editor.  I’m not a fan.  If I’m going to sell a house, I use a licensed real estate agent.  But in publishing, there is no accreditation function, and that concerns me – because the agents are now between me and the publishers.  I’ve met with 5 different agents, and from a business perspective, wasn’t blown away.  Also, traditional publishing is providing less in the way of support, such as publicity, for authors these days.  With the onset of print on demand publishing, the advantages of traditional publishing are thinning.  There are still advantages, but I think the agents and publishers are very risk averse and that tends to make them look for “what worked before,” and want to categorize.  In all - I think the current publishing marketplace is in a huge transition - maybe even more than it is aware of.