Last Page: Jay LaBarge, 63
By Mary Beth Roach
Syracuse resident only started writing a few years ago, but already has self-published his third novel on Amazon and is working on his fourth.
Q: You recently published “Black Tides,” which is the third in a series featuring the aspiring archeologist Nick LaBounty. What got you started on this trilogy?
A: I’ll back up a little bit. In retirement, I was looking for a creative way of spending my time. And lo and behold, just about the time I retired, the pandemic hit and the accompanying isolation. I decided that I had an itch to write a book — something I had always wanted to do, but never had the time to do because of chasing careers.
Q: How much of you is in Nick LaBounty?
A: I wish I could be Nick LaBounty. I have a love of history and archaeology and I wanted to create a character that was not so unapproachable and so perfect. I wanted somebody who was kind of an everyman, who stumbles into things and despite his own frailties and limitations, is able to overcome and solve some deep-rooted historical mysteries. I wanted somebody that people could relate to as opposed to the superheroes and these perfect characters you see on television.
Q: How did you get started in writing?
A: Over the years I had started and stopped, bits of ideas and books. Nothing that ever manifested itself in an actual publication. So when the pandemic hit and I had time on my hands, I thought that this is an opportunity to touch on some of our travels and adventures and my love of unsolved historical mysteries and weave together a tale, and that’s really the genesis of it.
Q: Your books, in large part, seem to take place in ancient times. What appeals to you about those time periods?
A: My wife, Sandra, and I have, over the years, traveled to a variety of different countries. God bless her. She has put up with my love of history and I’ve taken her down some paths of things that are pretty obscure and probably not as interesting to her, but some places are just awe-inspiring. We’ve been to ancient Greece. We’ve seen the pyramids created by the Maya in Mexico. We’ve traveled in Europe. If you just write a book all about an ancient time, you reach one audience. I do an ancient mystery, but I alternate the initial chapters to try to keep the interests of the reader in something that’s in contemporary times. My protagonist, through his own incompetence, stumbles across one of these mysteries and becomes enmeshed in it. I will continue the narrative and the ancient timeline to a point, and then leave that mystery hanging. Nick takes it from there and tries to solve it in current times.
Q: You touched on self-publishing on Amazon. How does it work?
A: This is a fun and interesting discovery process for me and if I had muddled through it by myself, I think I would still be writing the first book instead of working on my fourth one. I enlisted the help of a professional editor who as very well-versed in navigating the labyrinth that is Amazon. He guided me through my writing process and how to physically produce something that Amazon could sell. The publishing industry has evolved tremendously. If someone orders my book today and they want a physical copy, Amazon will print them a single book and ship it to them. It’s literally print-on-demand, although the vast majority of the books that are consumed, at least in America, are electronic. People subscribe to Amazon and they can read all the books they want for a monthly fee.
Q: What’s next for Nick and for you?
A: My wife has joined me in retirement. We base our travels on finding the next area that I want to investigate a mystery and we make a trip out of it. We both enjoy meeting the people, the architecture, the food, learning the local history and it’s an opportunity for us to travel and experience those other cultures. But then I have the research and in the gray of Syracuse winters, bang out a novel. Last October we were over in Scotland, researching the book I’m currently writing. There was a Roman legion that got lost in the Northlands of Scotland. Nobody really knows what happened to it, although there’s a lot of speculation and mystery.