Interview with mystery author W.F. Ranew

Today’s special guest is mystery author W.F. Ranew and we’re chatting about his new novel, Blood Mug.

During his virtual book tour, W.F. will be awarding a $15 Amazon or Barnes and Noble (winner’s choice) gift card to a lucky randomly drawn winner. To be entered for a chance to win, use the form below. To increase your chances of winning, feel free to visit his other tour stops and enter there, too!

Bio:
W.F. Ranew is the author of the Red Farlow Mysteries series of ebooks from Tirgearr Publishing. Blood Mug (#4) released on Feb. 24, 2021. Other Red Farlow stories are Rich and Gone (#1), Blue Magnolia (#2), and East Beach (#3).

W.F. is a former newspaper reporter, editor and communication executive. He started his journalism career covering sports, police, and city council meetings at his hometown newspaper, The Quitman Free Press. He also worked as a reporter and editor for The Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle, The Florida Times-Union and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has written speeches for President Jimmy Carter and leaders of public companies, including Bank of America, CitiGroup, Equifax, NCR, The Coca-Cola Company, and ING.

Early in his career, he worked as part-time radio dispatcher for a small-town police department.

W.F. has self-published two previous novels: Schoolhouse Man and Candyman’s Sorrow.

He lives in Atlanta and St. Simons Island, Ga.

Welcome, W.F. Please tell us about your current release.
Blood Mug is Red Farlow Mysteries book four and revolves around murders at an art center’s pottery studio.

Red Farlow goes to the center to meet with board chair Kevin Densmore. The PI finds the man slumped over his pottery wheel. He’s dead.

A young potter was found two weeks before. With each victim, a pottery tool, equipment, or glaze solution contributes to death. The killer also plunged a medieval dagger into each body.

Red has to figure out the motive. At first, the police think more than one killer committed the crimes. That doesn’t make sense to Red, since the daggers make a statement and form a connection with the deaths. The PI delves into find what the weapon’s significance.

Two possible motives emerge: revenge and a real estate development.

Red tracks down several persons of interest. A couple of them keep moving around, which raises his suspicions. Finally, he discovers the daggers’ significance and leaners Densmore was behind a real estate scheme that would doom Wickham and its art center.

What inspired you to write this book?
My time throwing pots got me thinking about the opportunities for murder in an old mansion in the dark of night. Then I discovered an old dagger. The rest fell into place fairly easily.

Excerpt from Blood Mug:
Chapter One

Death preceded me.

Chapter One

That notion drifted into my mind like a ghost when I encountered the unknown, especially in the dark. Perhaps it was my spook, a lurking memory of all the bodies I’d seen.

Or maybe the heat of the August night—barely cooler than the day—had fried my brain like bacon grease crackling in a hot skillet.

Something conjured this foreboding as I walked toward the clay studio of the Wickham Art Center.

I went over to meet Kevin Densmore, businessman and Wickham board chair, to discuss a recent murder at the center. After two weeks, the police had turned up little in leads or suspects. Wickham’s leaders became worried about staff and student safety and the venerable institution’s reputation.

Densmore wanted to hire me, or so I’d been told by a friend on the center’s board. I’m Red Farlow, a private detective.

Down an alley through the darkness, the mansion’s back door light glowed. There, signs indicated the way to the pottery studio. I walked into a dimly lit chamber and looked back to the wheel room. I later learned potters had created mugs, bowls, and jugs on a wheel for thousands of years.

The whole place was a mess, with everything covered in a patina of gray clay. The dust layers reminded me of exploring a dry riverbed in my youth. The clay crumbled under my bare feet, leaving an imprint on the ground and a thin crusty layer on my skin.

I breathed the clay’s essence and looked around the room.

In the main studio, huge containers of glaze solutions had splashed over the floor. A hot plate overheated paraffin, which bubbled onto the table before someone unplugged the appliance. The paraffin pool hardened and suggested an icy pond on a winter’s morning. Bags of clay neatly stacked four feet high lined one wall, and a dozen or so mud-smeared aprons hung on pegs.
I found Densmore bent over his electric pottery wheel. He neither spoke nor looked up.
I thought the man had given up throwing a rather large mug spinning on the wheel. Beside the wheel on a small table was a snake of clay, likely the mug’s handle. Densmore appeared to be staring down at the unfinished piece, perhaps considering improvements to the clay form.

Then reality kicked in. We would not talk that evening or at any other time. Densmore sat there, quite dead.

What exciting story are you working on next?
I have three Farlow other manuscripts in the works.

In Cracker Town (book 5), Red goes back decades to revisit a family’s cold-case murder. He investigated the deaths as a young law enforcement agent in 1973. The central character is Cleet Wrightman, a mentally retarded man wrongly accused in the murder of a young woman in the mid-fifties. He spent the next 18 years in a Georgia mental hospital. By uncanny coincidence, when Cleet gets out of the hospital in seventy-three, the family is murdered. Cleet disappears two weeks later. The time span of the murders hinders the investigation. But Red finds two elderly witness who might provide some answers. And, he hunts for Cleet, a man sure to have answers about the crimes.

Catawba Falls (Book 6) opens with the bodies of two camp counselors found on a remote mountain trail in North Carolina. Red has personal connections with Camp Ridgemont and agrees to investigate the crimes. As is usually true for Red, other killings ensue. Mysterious caves, Red’s kidnapping, and North Carolina mountain lore lead to a serial killer.

The story of Blues for Mary Lou (book 7) combines the murder of an Atlanta executive, a troupe of carnival workers, and a blues guitarist who has a drinking problem. As Red begins his probe of the dead exec, someone calls him to an estranged relative’s hometown in rural Georgia where a body is found in the county courthouse’s clock tower. No one can identify the young woman, but she worked at a carnival. Can a retired tattoo lady help Red find the killer? And what happens to Mary Lou?

When did you first consider yourself a writer?
My father was the country editor of a weekly newspaper. I covered sports and local politics in college, and struck out on a career with daily newspapers upon graduation. Years later, I worked as a speechwriter and communication counselor.

I started writing short stories thirty years ago and eventually finished two novels. My third novel was Rich and Gone, the first released by Tirgearr Publishing. Today there are three other Red Farlow Mysteries—Blue Magnolia, East Beach, and Blood Mug.

Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your work day like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I write full time and my weeks are divided into writing three to four days and promoting my Tirgearr ebooks. I’m developing a newly created private investigator—Rory Blaine—in the mold of noir crime characters.

What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
Spinning the strange names and personalities of unusual characters. Those include Halbert “Sho’nuff” Dixon in Rich and Gone; Bugger Nelms and Swansy Elliott in Blue Magnolia; and Ruddy Mercer in Blood Mug.

As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A doctor, but goal that fell by the wayside in my first science course in junior high.

Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
I hope my readers enjoy my books and generally I’ve gotten very positive feedback and reviews. But I’d love to hear more, always, and especially comments about Blood Mug.

Thank you for being here today, W.F.

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