Interview with Declan Finn
Jimbo’s Awesome Science Fiction and Fantasy Reviews (JASSFR): Welcome, once again, to Interviews with Jimbo, where I get to interview authors of Science Fiction, Fantasy or assorted other versions of Spec-fic who are goofy enough to allow me to do so. Our latest victim is fellow Irishman Declan Finn, author of The St. Tommy NYPD series, the Love at First Bite series and its follow on series Honeymoon From Hell, the White Ops series, The A Pius Man series, a couple of standalone books, and numerous shorts in so many anthologies that I absolutely refuse to list them all. He’s known as the author of one of the three books that made Jimbo cry. We’ll get to that later. But for right now, let’s get after him right out of the gate with one of the hard hitting, feet to the fire type first questions that we’re known for here at Jimbo’s. We’re really going to get him with this one. I hope you’re ready. Here we go. AHEM! Welcome to Jimbo’s, Declan. How are you today? Say hi to the fans out there.
Declan Finn (DF): Hi, fans out there.
I’m as well as can be expected. No legionaires disease this year. Texas board of health is still confused how I got it last year.
JASFFR: Glad to hear it. So, tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from? Where are you now? Married? Kids? Pets? Hobbies? Were you actually abducted by aliens at the age of ten? Inquiring minds want to know.
DF: As penance for my sins, I was born and raised in New York City. Believe it or not, the good part—where I was literally two blocks from the border of Queens and Nassau County. If you read Saint Tommy, NYPD, that was basically my neighborhood. I even referenced my old home in some of the books. Yes, I’m married. No kids yet, but getting there is half the fun. No pets—too many allergies in the household. My hobbies are reading, reading, long walks through my neighborhood, range days, video games on the rare occasion I’m allowed, and recently, weightlifting.
I was never abducted by aliens when I was ten. But I’m told I killed a mouse when I was three. There was a toaster involved … we needed a new one after that. The less said about the terrorist incident, the better.
JASFFR: Sounds like fun. Hopefully your last range trip went well. Recoil therapy is good for the soul. Before we get started on your stuff, let’s talk about your influences. Who did you read a lot of growing up and how do they affect what you write now?
DF: Growing up? There is a book called Vertical Run, by the late Joseph Garber. I recommend it. It was nonstop, breakneck action, and I’ve been trying to duplicate it ever since. Throw in some Clive Cussler and Robert Ludlum with that, you get the idea. I will recommend looking up the Modesty Blaise novels by Peter O’Donnell
JASFFR: Cool beans. Before we get started on your fiction, let’s talk a bit about your Substacks and social media. First tell me a bit about your Stack here, Upstream Reviews. Tell everybody about your mission and what you review. Then let us know where we can find you online. Post links, please. I’m feeling lazy tonight.
DF: My mission—and I not only chose to accept it, I wrote the mission statement—is to promote good fiction, and only discuss good fiction. Because I am sick and tired of these muthafucking grifters in my muthafucking social media feed going on and on about “the culture” but refuse to promote anyone who’s actually trying to add to said culture.
Oh yeah, and unlike the whining, mewling, puking rageaholics who want to will trash anything purely for better algorithm engagements, Upstream will only review what we like. It was suggested once that we try a negative review a month, and I retaliated with “Fine, read Morning Glory Milking Farm.” Funny enough, no one has suggested reviewing a bad book since then. Can’t imagine why, can you?
I’m easy enough to find online. Look for Declan Finn, author, you’ll find me pretty quick. On X, substack, Blogger, Fascistbook. Pick a social media, I’ll turn up fast enough.
You’re not the only one who can be lazy.
JASFFR: Fair enough. Now let’s get into the good stuff. I’ve read the story, but most of my fans haven’t. Tell us about the first novel you wrote. No, not the first one you got published. The first one you ever wrote. How’d that go for you?
DF: The first one I wrote has gone pretty good. It was technically Babylon 5 fan fiction—a term I had not known at the time, because I never hung out in those parts of the internet in the 90s. It turned into a four thousand page monstrosity that looked nothing like the original material by the end. After two decades of rewriting, prying it away from the universe, adding its own history and backstory on every character, and turning novellas into whole novel, the tome it turned into a series called White Ops. I’m currently on book six—editing, not drafting.
Love at First Bite is sort of similar. Though good luck drawling those parallels.
JASFFR: I love that story. Before we get into your back catalog, work with me a bit. I’m going to ask the question that every author (or at least the good ones) gets sick of hearing. Brother, the last book I remember you releasing was Fae’d to Black. I know you’ve had some health stuff, but dude… When is the next novel coming?
DF: You seem to have short term memory loss. The last novel you read that I published was On Tiber’s Edge, Land & Sea #10. You even reviewed it, Jim.
Right now, it’s a race between my publisher, Richard Paolinelli, and Blaine Lee Pardoe, to see if my next book is White Ops #6, or Land & Sea #14 … ish, depending on Blaine’s release schedule.
After that, the next thing I work on will be dictated by sales, and certain other authors. But that’s inside baseball.
JASFFR: Oops. You’re right. I did. My bad. I hear you’re about to reissue some of your books. Tell me a bit about that.
DF: Where to start? Three Ravens Press kicked me to the curb because I’m not part of their original IP, so I had to republish my Love at First Bite series. I’m working on omnibus editions for those.
Richard is making omnibus editions for the 12 Saint Tommy novels and all the short stories. Because Omnibus editions count as releases to the great gods of the algorithm over at Amazon.
JASFFR: Okay. Something anyone who has read more than one Declan Finn novel knows is that they all feature your Catholic faith. I love that about them. Talk about that for a second. Why is it so important to you to showcase your faith in that way?
DF: My faith is a large part of who I am. I even watch films on the liturgical calendar. I don’t even plan to discuss it in most of my books, it will almost always show up. If there has been a book that didn’t have that influence in there, I can’t think of it.
But it always ends up in the books somehow. The Pius books took place at the Vatican. In It was Only on Stun!, there was a mass in the middle of a science fiction convention. Tommy Nolan is praying as he gets shot at. Vampires use blessed communion wafers as suicide pills. It’s always something. It just happens.
JASFFR: Okay, so the dirty little not-so-secret of these interviews is that the authors actually come here to promote their work. So let’s start with your Love and First Bite and Honeymoon from Hell series. Talk a bit about your lead characters and about how a Catholic vampire works.
DF: With difficulty. I got into vampires because I hated how they were being secularized. I lost count about how many were no longer effected by crosses and holy water, because they were just being made into any other monster of the week. I will take Christopher Lee in Hammer films over Underworld. And yes, some of those Hammer films were terrible. But at least they were in color, which is more than I can say for the Matrix ripoff with vampires. I don’t want nods to see my damn film.
My vampires were designed with metaphysics in mind. Some of it was Thomas Aquinas on a post-resurrection body, with a dash of RPG good and evil alignment filters.
My main characters in that one were a vampire who went to confession, and someone who found that he liked killing. Or as the tagline goes, he’s a homicidal, bloodthirsty monster, and she’s just a vampire. Yes, I recycled a lawyer joke. But Marco and Amanda were just fun to write. And they really hate being outlined.
JASFFR: Those two are awesome. Ya know, when I did my list of Ten Most Badass Women in all of Science Fiction and Fantasy, Amanda was one of the last two women cut. The other one was Delenn from Babylon 5. But on to the next question: You have written a few different series, but two of them have totally separate main characters with basically the same name. Talk a little bit about Sean Ryan, Sean AP Ryan, their individual series and tell us how you ended up using basically the same name for both.
DF: Sean Ryan of White Ops came first. After years of working with that character in the above mentioned fan fiction, my next project was the obligatory Murder Mystery at a SciFi convention—It Was Only on Stun!. But the novel just didn’t click until I gave him a similar name … and cut a foot off his height. He turned into an ancestor. Then it turned into the lore.
As for my women … I grew up in an age of Xena, Emma Peel, Buffy, and yes, Babylon 5. As a vampire, Amanda wasn’t going to be a shrinking violet. And she had history. And a certain set of skills
JASFFR: My favorite Declan Finn series is, and probably always will be (although I TRIPLE DOG DARE you to prove me wrong) the Saint Tommy NYPD series. It’s twelve books long and I’ve reviewed all of them and loved every second of doing it. One of the things that really draws me into a story is a main character that I can respect and, as weird as this might sound coming from a Protestant, Tommy Nolan is the kind of Christian that I always wished I could be. Tell us a little about him and the series he stars in.
DF: I don’t know how I can prove that you’re wrong about your favorite series of mine. I’ll take what I can get.
Back in the sands of time, I took a course on Christian spirituality and mysticism. One class focused on certain miracles associated with saints. When I heard levitation, I thought “give them a cape and we have a superhero novel.” When I heard about smelling evil, I thought that would be good for a cop … which lead to the idea of a cop with the powers of a saint, tracking down a possessed serial killer.
That was 2001. It took a while for that story to come to fruition in book one, Hell Spawn. And it may have been the fastest dozen books I’ve ever written. Frankly, after that, it just spiraled. The first three books turned into a trilogy, even though I hadn’t really planned it when I started. Then the next three books also turned into a trilogy, with a villain that linked all six books. I had only six books planned, but the series kept selling. Books 7-9 turned into another trilogy, and it just went a little off the rails until #9.
Then there was the last trilogy, where I consulted with my publisher, and we agreed that 12 books was enough.
JASFFR: Thanks! I need to re-read those. It’s time for the traditional last question here at Jimbo’s: What do you wish I had asked you that I didn’t, and how would you answer it?
DF: I don’t know. “How do you stay sane?” Hot take: I don’t. It would be self defeating.
JASFFR: Thanks Declan! Tell Vanessa I said “Hi, and thank you for letting me borrow your husband for a bit. You can have him back now. I didn’t even break him.” I appreciate you taking the time for myself and my readers. And Declan, know that you are always welcome at Jimbo’s!
Some books by Declan Finn are available at the following links. If you click the links and buy literally anything from Amazon I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.
Hell Spawn: A Catholic Action Horror Novel (St. Tommy N.Y.P.D. Book 1)
Honor at Stake (Love at First Bite Book 1)