NEXT CHAPTER AUTHOR

Aaron M. Fleming

Aaron M. Fleming has wanted to be a novelist since his childhood hero, Snoopy from the Peanuts comic strip, pounded out “It was a dark and stormy night…” on his doghouse-top typewriter. A product of a patchwork education, including home, public, and private school, he’s been enthralled by the complementary fields of fantasy and history ever since he figured out his mom would let him neglect math homework to read about knights and castles.

On one hand a quintessential Midwesterner, Aaron is meticulously nice and polite, loves prairie landscapes and pork-rib-on-a-stick, and is an enthusiastic fan of the Iowa Hawkeye football team. On the other hand, childhood experiences in France and Congo and later travels in Central America have given him a cosmopolitan outlook and a love for exotic food and fiery habanero sauce.

A college dropout, Aaron has worked a long series of jobs ranging from waiting tables to filling vending machines; finishing woodwork to driving a furniture delivery truck; working as an orderly on the crisis unit of a mental health facility to coaching middle school track and field; and finally finding his calling as the pastor of a small rural church where he hones his story-telling craft in weekly sermons and meets with parishoners to brew beer and talk about life and spirituality.

Aaron met Melissa, his wife, on their high school cross country team. It was love at (almost) first sight for Melissa, but Aaron can be dense when it comes to love, so it took him awhile longer. They became friends, then best friends, and married young. Twenty-three years and four kids later they’re still best friends; they live in Wellman, Iowa, with two school-age daughters; an older son and daughter are in college. Aaron has surrendered to popular family demand and conceded to the adoption of not one but two stray cats, with whom he lives in an uneasy state of feigned apathy masking mutual suspicion.

IN THE AUTHOR’S WORDS

Author interview

Interview submitted 29 July 2022.

What inspired you to start writing?

As a kid, I loved the Peanuts comic strip, and Snoopy was my favorite character. When he played tennis, I wanted to be a tennis champion. When he was a World War I flying ace, I wanted to be a fighter pilot. When he read War and Peace, I read War and Peace too.

And when Snoopy started working on his novel, A Dark and Stormy Night...I wanted to write a novel too.

My first attempt at a novel was around age 8, not long after I saw the animated version of The Hobbit. I had an idea for a hobbit named Milo who decided to go on an adventure. He wore a cooking pot for a helmet and rode on a pig. I got about a page and a half of hand-written manuscript and gave up. Writing was hard work!

In sixth grade I had a fantastic creative writing teacher. "Mr. G.", as we called him, had published several short stories. He was an inspiration to me, and his encouragement and feedback went a long way toward helping me believe I could be a writer. It was 30+ years before I published my first novel, but it was a proud moment to put a copy in Mr. G's hands!

Who are some of your favorite authors and books?

I've always wanted to write in the fantasy genre, and of course I've read many of the classics: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Lloyd Alexander for starters. Naomi Novick is one of my favorite contemporary fantasy authors, and I enjoy some science fiction too, especially John Scalzi.

I was introduced to the spy/detective/thriller genres by my dad, who learned to love that genre when his father let him stay up late to watch The Untouchables together. Frederick Forsyth's "The Dogs of War" blew my mind, and I still enjoy espionage or detective tales.

I've also got a fondness for Westerns. I inhaled Louis L'Amour's whole catalogue when I was in middle school, and Zane Grey's "Majesty's Rancho" was another favorite. The Western is also one of my favorite movie genres.

I also read a great deal of history, especially about the American Civil War. "Woe to Live On" by Daniel Woodrell is a favorite novel set in that era, and was adapted into one of my favorite movies, "Ride With the Devil". Non-fiction titles like Ron Chernow's biography of Ulysses Grant and "The Last Full Measure: The Life and Death of the First Minnesota Volunteers", by Richard Moe, stuff my bookshelf.

I've been a life-long Bible reader, too. Besides the spiritual inspiration, it's hard to beat the drama and pathos of some of my favorite stories. I tend to be drawn toward some of the overlooked or tragic characters: Judah has been in his little brother Joseph's shadow for two thousand years; Saul's failure as a king is far more interesting to me than David's success; and then of course there's Shamgar who looms mythically large, his broad shoulders bursting the boundaries of the one little verse he gets.

What would you like to tell readers who have just discovered your books, but haven't read one yet?

Get ready to have fun!

I wouldn't say my books are silly, but if they're not fun...well, what's the point of that?

Who is the favorite character you created, and how did they come into being?

I really enjoy both of my series' title characters, Hunter and Chekwe.

I'm a confirmed "pantser" - I write by the seat of my pants - so they just sort of happened. I wonder sometimes if they are a bit autobiographical.

Hunter is, in a lot of ways, like me: a sappy romantic, yet burdened by an excessive sense of responsibility for the world around him. Chekwe is sort of the opposite: hard-bitten and cynical, but with a devil-may-care attitude that gets him through life...maybe he's the person I'd be if I had no filter!

My readers tend to enjoy Chekwe a lot. I think most of us spend our lives trying to be good and respectable and sober. Chekwe just doesn't care, and maybe we all wish - at least a tiny bit - that we could be that way too.

What are your future plans as a writer?

I have not one but two other careers already, so don't look to me to be as prolific as Brandon Sanderson!

I plan or writing a book a year for as long as the stories flow...and for me, the stories have been flowing my whole life, so there should be plenty of novels to come!