Chuck Morgan Crime Fiction Author

Author Interview...Crime Interrupted

Chuck Morgan - Thrilling Fictional Crime Series

Posted on 20th of June, 2023 by Naomi Bolton

Chuck Morgan attended Seton Hall University and Regis College and spent thirty-five years as a construction project manager. He is an avid outdoorsman, an Eagle Scout, and a licensed private pilot. He enjoys camping, hiking, mountain biking, and fly-fishing. He is the author of the Crime series, featuring Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Buck Taylor. The series includes Crime Interrupted, Crime Delayed, Crime Unsolved, Crime Exposed, Crime Denied, Crime Conspiracy, Crime Unknown, Crime Exploded, and Crime Spree. As our Author of the Day, he tells us all about Crime Interrupted.

Please give us a short introduction to what Crime Interrupted is about.

Crime Interrupted is about a Mexican drug cartel that is trying to set up a major drug distribution network out of a small trucking company in Durango Colorado. Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent Buck Taylor is sent to make sure that doesn’t happen. Pulling together a team of local, state and federal cops, Buck and his team must prevent the drug network from being set up and in the process save several dozen young Mexican men and women who have been kidnapped at brought to the trucking company to work as slave labor in the packaging and distribution of the drugs.

What inspired you to write this story? Was there anything in particular that made you want to tackle this?

I have a friend and I wanted to include her in a novel and one of the things she always wanted to do was work as an attorney and represent immigrants seeking asylum. Her character was perfect to aid Buck in his protection of the young people.

Tell us more about Buck Taylor. What makes him so special?

Buck Taylor is 60 years old and has been in law enforcement for over 30 years, first as a deputy with the Gunnison County Sheriff and then with CBI. I was looking for a quiet hero when I met Buck. Just coming off the death of his wife from a long battle with breast cancer, I was looking for the anti-hero. Too many mysteries and police novels center around the cop with an attitude, the ex-navy seal, not afraid to break the law to accomplish his mission. Buck is just an average who just investigates crime, but he has an uncanny knack of assembling the best people to help him.

Why did you pick a small mountain community as the backdrop for your story?

I wanted my novels to take place in the mountains of Colorado. I chose Durango for my first novel because It’s one of the mountain communities I have always enjoyed visiting. It’s a great place with great people and it is a crossroads in the southwestern part of Colorado. The perfect place for a drug cartel to set up shop.

Have you always wanted to be an author? Tell us more about your journey to becoming one.

I always wanted to be an author and from a very early age, I can remember entertaining classmates with stories. I always told my kids while we were traveling someplace on vacation, that someone should write down the stories I was making up as we traveled. Six years ago, my wife of 34 years passed away after a nine year battle with breast cancer and I decided to write a memoir to honor our lives together. The self-publishing process proved so easy that I decided it was time to put some of my story ideas down on paper. That decision has led to 10 novels in my CRIME series.

Why did you use a Mexican drug cartel as a catalyst for your story?

Durango is a crossroads in the southwest section of Colorado and has access to many larger cities around the western United States. It was the perfect area for a drug cartel to attempt to set up a major distribution network.

What was your greatest challenge when writing this story?

Understanding the writing process and self-publishing process. I learned it all basically by the seat of my pants. I never took any writing classes because I wanted the writing to be mine, not a copy of someone else.

Readers say your characters are vivid and realistic. How did you pull this off? Are they based on any people you know?

A lot of my characters are based on real people in my life and a lot of them are made up completely. I try to make my characters real people in the sense that the reader can relate to them as someone they might know in their own lives. Most of us don’t know ex-navy seals with bad attitudes, but we do know the cop around the corner who lost his wife to cancer.

This book forms part of the Buck Taylor series. How do the other books in the series tie in with this one?

Each book is a stand-alone novel and I incorporate enough information about past investigations and descriptions of the characters that you can read them in any order and still understand what is going on. Of Course, if you read them in order you get more out of them.

Interesting cover. Tell us more about it.

The cover was the only cover I had professionally designed. I wanted the cover to represent the long road through the mountains that the truckers delivering the drugs would have to make and also the loneliness of Buck’s journey since the death of his wife.

When starting on a new book, what is the first thing you do?

The first thing I do before writing a new novel is to lay it out in my head. By the time I’m ready to actually start writing, I have run the novel through my mind almost like a movie. This can take some time, but when I’m finished I can see most of everything that is going to happen, but every now and then I get surprised by where the characters take me. I like to tell people that I am not a writer, but I am more like a narrator, I put the characters into a situation and then just record what happens to them. It is the weirdest thing when I finish writing a chapter and sit back and think. “ I had no idea they were going to do that.”

Do you have any interesting writing habits? What is an average writing day like for you?

I guess what I described in the answer above is my most interesting writing habit. I usually get on the phone with my oldest daughter and run my thoughts past her and we chat about where the story is going. Oddly enough the story very rarely looks like the conversations we have during the writing. I don’t stick to a specific writing schedule. Since I was still working a regular job when I first began writing I had to write whenever the opportunity presented itself. That might be at 9 in the morning, 5 in the evening or at 3 am. I also write in a linear fashion; I write all the chapters in order. I don’t jump around.

What are you working on right now?

I just published book 10 in the CRIME series in which Buck and his team investigate the death of a state brand inspector who is found surrounded by dozens of dead cattle. That story involves murder, kidnapping, baby farming and a secret government lab studying bio-toxins. I am currently working on book 11 which has Buck investigating a horrific mass shooting at a Drag club.

Where can our readers discover more of your work or interact with you?

My books are available on Amazon, Books 2 Read, Smashwords, Google Play (Ebooks and audiobooks) and Payhip as well as numerous outlets from Draft 2 Digital and Ingram Spark. They are also available on my website at www.payhip.com/chuckmorganauthor.