Gold Eagle Author Questionnaire

Author Michael Newton has written over 240 books under his name and various pseudonyms. He has contributed over one hundred books to Gold Eagle within both the Executioner and Mack Bolan series, and he is still going strong! We recently asked Mike  a few questions and he was kind enough to indulge us!

      Has the action/adventure/science fiction genre always been a passion for you?

I got my start as a published professional in action/adventure, thanks to Don Pendleton,  and was an avid fan for some years prior. 

What are your literary influences? What are your pop culture influences? 

I’m an omnivorous reader, in both fiction and nonfiction, with no particular genre limits. 

What are you reading/watching/listening to now? 

I just finished Stephen King’s Under the Dome and am starting Michael Slade’s Red Snow. In nonfiction, I’m midway through The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert and Five Families by Selwyn Raab.

           Where do you find inspiration for your books? How much do world events affect the stories you decide to tell?

 We try to keep the Bolan novels current, so I do my idea-shopping in the headlines. For my Westerns, I lean toward classic themes and try to incorporate real-life historical events and characters whenever possible. My nonfiction tends toward true-crime, where dead felons are the safest topics: they can’t sue! 

Of the GE books you’ve written, which one would you like to see be made into a movie? Who would make up your dream cast? 

Nearly all have been Bolan novels, but an “origins” episode would require a radical makeover of Don’s original War Against the Mafia to keep it current. For Bolan, Don used to say that he pictured Clint Eastwood’s face on Clint Walker’s body, but now that one Clint is in his eighties and the other is deceased, you’d need to shop around for a viable action star: no teen heart-throb, clearly, but not over the hill, either. Frankly, I’m drawing a blank. My personal favorite stories are The Trial and Eternal Triangle, but neither could be filmed without at least one other movie establishing background.

      Is there a way for your fans to contact you or keep up with your latest news?

I’m not on Twitter, but my various projects are updated on my website at www.michaelnewton.homestead.com. My email address is also there, but for some reason AT&T obstructs my efforts to answer incoming messages. Weird and inexplicable...at least, to me.

Michael Newton's latest work Enemy Agents, Executioner # 391, is in stores now!