www.billfurney.com

https://www.facebook.com/WCFurneyAuthor

If I remember correctly, Bill Furney and his charming wife Jeanette met me during the first Authors’ Sunday Event at the end of November 2022. Bill was dressed as a pirate replete with a crimson sash around his waist and pirate’s sword guarding his books. Jeanette was dressed as a damsel in distress. I wrongly assumed that all his books would have a pirate theme, but that turns out not to be the case.

I bought a copy of Ivy Moon, thinking she was the damsel in distress. Well, Ivy may be in distress, and she may be a damsel, but don’t think she needs help. She’ll end up helping you.

Bill and Jeanette live just past Fairfield Harbour on Pastures Creek close to Blackbeard’s sailing club. They spend many mornings and evenings on their dock watching the abundant wildlife in their natural marsh habitat…sometimes with a complementary adult beverage. But that is not where they started out.

Where are you from originally? Were you a bookish child, or did you do wild and daring things to challenge your boyhood friends? Or a bit of both?

The short answer to the first part is Down East. I was born in what most people here call little Washington because my mother was kind enough to not have me on the side of the road. We moved to different parts of Eastern North Carolina every four or five years until the neighbors would band together and drive us out. But we remained in the region because we didn’t want to live any place that didn’t have ENC style barbecue. For the great unwashed out there, barbecue is a noun, not a verb, and it is made by roasting a whole hog over hickory coals. It’s a well-known fact that Sir Walter Raleigh funded the first colony in our state at Manteo because of our barbecue, aka manna from heaven. He loved it so much that he lost his head over it.

Bookish? I read a lot growing up, but no one ever called me bookish. Back then, boys were men. Calling a boy bookish wouldn’t fly well and would probably lead to a butt whuppin’. Anyone labeled bookish would have been teased mercilessly and relegated to the girls’ table at lunchtime.

I didn’t have friends growing up. My mother used to tie a pork chop around my neck so the dogs would play with me. That was kinda wild, now that I think about it.

Tell us about what you did before you retired to Fairfield Harbour and why you chose this lovely neighborhood that calls itself part of the enchanting town of New Bern. I believe you said you had been a journalist? Where? And what did you report about? And why did you switch writing gears?

To borrow from my on-line bio…Shortly after being born, I served in the U.S. Army as a tank commander where I learned how to blow junk up, eliminate bad guys with economy, and lead good men through chemical, biological, and radioactive environments.  Life was weird.

Whereas these skills prepared me for civilian life in metropolitan arcadias such as Chicago, L.A., and Philadelphia, I instead decided to go to a university of higher learning which I won’t name here for fear of sullying their good name. After arming myself with a BS degree in Journalism, I ventured out into the world as a reporter where I proceeded to hone my skills at pissing people off with the written word.

I actually did accomplish stuff along the way. I earned degrees in public relations and advertising; became one of the first five people in the country to become a Certified Communicator in Public Health; was a reporter and columnist with the Jacksonville Daily News; and became the director of communication for several government agencies. In 2001, I helped form and became communication director for the Office of the Public Health Preparedness and Response – the state agency created to respond biological attacks and pandemic outbreaks.

Upon retirement, Jeanette and I moved to New Bern mostly because nobody here knew who I was yet. Living on a creek is a big bonus because it allows us to escape by land OR sea. We’ve been here a little over six years, so we need to be prepared. (See “neighbors ban together” above.)

In regard to writing, I wouldn’t say that I changed gears. I knew that I wanted to write novels when I went to college. I’m also a realist. I didn’t want to starve to death waiting to become rich and famous. That’s why I majored in journalism with an emphasis on public relations. In terms of creative writing, the best thing about working for a newspaper for a couple of years was that it taught me discipline. There’s no waiting for “inspiration” when you have a daily deadline to meet. If I were giving writers one piece of advice, it would be this; write something every day. Even if it’s only a paragraph or two. Push through blocks by writing something. Anything. You can always go back and change it. But waiting for inspiration does nothing but give yourself an excuse to procrastinate. If you procrastinate you aren’t a writer because you are procrastinating. Which makes you a procrastinator. (Profound, right?)

Have you always been attracted to watery areas? No desert sands for you?

Nothing against the desert, but I was born on the coast and grew up around the sounds and ocean. Mountains are great too. I loved living in Colorado. It would have been a perfect state, if it had an ocean. Also, when I was a child, I would listen to my parents’ album with American folk songs. There was one song titled, The Keeper of the Eddystone Light that I played over and over. It went…

 My father was the keeper of the Eddystone Light

And he slept with a mermaid one fine night

From this union there came three

A porpoise and a porgy and the other was me

One night while I was a-trimmin’ of the glim

A-singin’ a verse from the evening hymn

A voice from the starboard shouted, “Ahoy!”

And there was my mother a-sittin’ on a buoy

“Oh, what has become of my children three?”

My mothеr then she asked of mе

“One was exhibited as a talking fish

And the other was served in a chafing dish”

I mean, that’s pure genius. Who wouldn’t want to live on the coast and be a writer after subjecting one’s self to a Clockwork Orange behavioral conditioning treatment like that?

As pretty much every writer/author is asked at some point on his or her literary journey, where do your ideas come from? Tell us the story of how you came upon Ivy’s story. She’s a very strong character, but also gentle and helpful. I’d like to be her friend.

The ideas come from anywhere and everywhere, usually when you least expect it and usually followed by a “what if?”  The inspiration for Ivy Moon started after Hurricane Florence deposited a 36-foot Catalina on our back steps. One of my friends said, “I hope you checked inside for bodies.” And I thought, wow! What a great idea for a story. As you know, Ivy Moon starts with the sailboat being swept into a back yard here in the Harbour, but instead of a body, it’s a young teen (age unknown) with amnesia who is in the boat. But it was that little quip that started me thinking, “What if?”   

Tell us about your swashbuckling characters, and how your lovely wife came to personify one of them.

Hahahahaha… The truth is, Jeanette isn’t personifying either of them. She’s sort of portraying the character Sweets Nightingale, a lady of the evening who plies her wares in Charles Town (now known as Charleston). I personify Bloody Bill Scarlette, one of Blackbeard’s (fictional) former lieutenants who is retried and living at Ocracoke. We started wearing period clothes after my first book signing at the Beaufort Pirate Invasion. All the other authors were in period garb and looked at me like I was a weirdo because I was in contemporary clothing. When in Rome…

The swashbuckling ladies you referenced are, of course, Anne Bonny and Mary Read, two real infamous female pirates. I could talk about them for hours but suffice it to say that I was forced to write their story at cutlass point. The truth is, I kept seeing all these historical pieces about pirates that went into great detail about male buccaneers and then ended with…”and the two female pirates, Anne Bonny and Mary Read.” The writer in me kept asking, so who the hell were they and why aren’t their stories included in the retrospectives? The answers to those questions are in my historical fiction, Black Hearts White Bones. I invite readers to pick up a copy and find out.

What do you do when you’re not writing and selling your books. I believe you said you have a dog? Or did I just make that up?

You know, the usual stuff, fishing, boating, plundering, insulting people on the Internet. But yes, we have a West Highland White Terrier named Finlay. We are very proud of him because he has become a famous international model who appears on the cover of Ivy Moon Last Girl on Earth. Being the Fabio of the K9 world is heady stuff, but we’ve worked hard to make sure fame doesn’t go to his head.

Do you have family you try to keep toeing the line? Or do they make you toe the line? And what line is that?

Sadly, no one in my family has toes.

I look forward seeing the pair of you on October 29^th, which is just around the corner. Sarah

While I won’t be able to make this authors event, I wish everyone attending the best and hope to see you soon.

Note: All of my books are on Audible.com and are performed by wonderful voiceover actresses. For those who don’t listen to audio books I invite you to go to my website where you can listen to the five-minute samples of my books just for the fun of it.

In addition to Amazon and Kindle purchase options, my books can also be found at the Next Chapter Books and Arts downtown New Bern.

BUY LOCAL!

Sadly, Bill and Jeanette seem to have more adventuresome plans for October 29th, but I’m sure you will see them out and about.