Ritterfiles

I recently read “Clearwater Journals” by author Al Rennie. Having recently made my books available on Smashwords.com, I searched around the site and read brief summaries of countless books by independent authors before stumbling upon “Clearwater Journals.” I downloaded the book and read it within a couple of days. It was one of those books that you just seem to have a hard time putting down once you start reading it.

Al Rennie does a great job developing the main character, Joe Holiday, and creating a bond between the character and the reader, something familiar that the reader can identify with. He did just as splendid a job with the character Mia, a young woman with a troubled past and not so clean a resume, shall we say. The story is fast paced and exciting and will keep you turning the pages.

Rennie is also the author of:

I’d like to thank Al Rennie for providing a quick Q&A about his work and about “Clearwater Journals,” the first book made available online.

Rennie: I believe that I have had the bug to write since I was a teenager. I wrote poetry – mostly not that great – throughout high school and university. When I started working as a teacher and raising our family with my wife, writing fell by the wayside and other interests developed – although my appetite for reading took off. It wasn’t until I had a major motor cycle accident, that I started to write with the intention of getting published in the traditional sense – agent, editor and publish. I came close with a few forgettable adventures along the way. If you are a writer, you cannot explain it – you just have to do it – even when you want to quit.

Rennie: I have been to Clearwater a number of times – the first visit when I was eight and went with my parents – and I still try to get there every year. My first four novels included the thinly disguised Lakefield and Peterborough part of Ontario. I couldn’t attract a publisher with them, and I wanted to break away from the Al and Norm story to try something else just for a new challenge. I knew Clearwater, so it seemed a natural choice. Writing in the form of a diary or journal imposed a chronology and then the characters took over to tell the story.

Rennie: My wife says that Joe is me – and gets jealous of Mia because of it. In fact, Joe just happened. He is my personal composite of all the protagonists I have enjoyed in my reading. Telling a story in the first person allows the writer to be a bit more intimate and for that reason maybe more believable. You can identify more easily with him. There is a vulnerabilty about Doc that appeals, but his disdain for authority and traditional behaviour is attractive to everyone who has a bit of the rebel in him or her.

Rennie: Clearwater Ambush should be available on Smashwords in about two or three weeks. The novel will then get to Kobo, Kindle, I-readers, Sony etc in ten days to two weeks after that. I have fifty or sixty pages of a manuscript currently entitled – The Crazy Little Girl that I may go on with, but Doc keeps telling me that he is not over yet. I guess we’ll see!

Rennie: I have a number of authors I really enjoy, but my favorite is Elmore Leonard – even though I regularly break his nine rules of writing. I have a warm spot for the books written by Robert Crais, Michael Connelly and Carl Hiiasen.

Rennie: I have a Website that I try to maintain. The books are all released through Smashwords to the various reading devices – or from Smashwords directly. Just yesterday, I was contacted by a publisher in Turkey who wants the rights to print Clearwater Journals. If you can read Turkish, you can buy a print copy of Journals in about a year and a half – or so he has told me. There may also be an English print copy available through a subsiduary of the Turkish publisher called DreamBooks.

You can get more information about Al Rennie at http://www.alrennie.com/.