Walt Shiel – Writer

I hope you’re been enjoying these interviews as much as I have. Our clients are fascinating writers and engaging personalities. Today, I’d like to introduce Rich Hill, a skillful writer of enjoyable, often humorous, slices of his life gathered into two memoirs — Lake Effect: A Deckhand’s Journey on the Great Lakes Freighters and Hitchhiking After Dark: Offbeat Stories from a Small Town.

So, let’s see what Rich has to say today.

WALT: Tell us a bit about who Rich Hill is, what he’s done, and where he’s been.

RICH: As near as I can remember, I have wanted to become a writer ever since I was about eighteen. There was a need that I slowly became aware of to express myself in some way. Over the years, I’ve found outlets through music and woodworking. I have played the drums in a number of different rock and country bands and still jam regularly with friends and other local musicians. With a degree in Art & Design, and a concentration in furniture design, I started building one-of-a-kind designs, then entering a number of art fairs around Michigan, only to discover that this was a hell of a way to make a living — feast or famine. My wife and I eventually segued into a retail business custom finishing wood furniture. We live near the eastern end of Lake Superior just outside of Sault Ste. Marie.

WALT: When did you start writing and what inspired you to start?

RICH: When I was fresh out of high school, I found a job as a deckhand aboard the lake freighters. Running across so many colorful characters and situations, I began keeping a journal and continued for many years. Journaling has helped me to record how I felt at particular times in my life as well as some of the key moments and events as they happen. Looking back and rereading these journals has helped me tremendously in writing some of my stories.

WALT: Can you identify any books or authors that influenced your own writing?

RICH: I’ve always been a big fan of Thoreau’s Walden. For me, that book crystallized the power and importance of the individual and showed me the value of being a nonconformist, challenging society’s accepted ways. It was a breath of fresh air that has never left me. Also, I would have to say I have been greatly influenced by the writings of Garrison Keillor, the affable host of Prairie Home Companion every Saturday evening on public radio.

WALT: How did you arrive at the decision to self-publish your books?

RICH: After eight months of making very little progress in lining up a traditional publisher, I joined UPPAA and discovered a fine group of people who had similar concerns. UPPAA prevented me from making many rookie mistakes that could have cost me dearly and also gave me confidence to self-market my books. Writing and marketing are very solitary pursuits, so it’s helpful and encouraging to be surrounded by kindred spirits.

WALT: Do you have any lessons-learned you can pass along to other writers considering the self-publishing route?

RICH: Self-publishing should be your first resort. Although it can be a lot of work at times, it’s a great feeling knowing you have complete control of the process. And what a time to self-publish! The internet has opened so many doors so quickly, it’s mind boggling. There are so many tools and resources available to writers and self-publishers that it’s difficult to keep up with them all. Look for recommendations for good resources from other writers and publishers. That alone can save you valuable time.

WALT: What avenues have you pursued to market your books and which have been the most successful for you?

RICH: I have knocked on the doors of many bookstores all over the U.P. as well as northern Michigan, and that has been fairly successful if not costly in terms of driving time and expenses. I have found it very helpful to enter book award competitions and occasionally win something. That makes marketing a bit easier. And getting your book reviewed and posted online seems to always help out. What has not worked very well for me is gathering long lists of bookstores and doing a blind mailing. Unfortunately, that was a total flop. I speak at various gatherings during the year and usually do well with the back of the room sales afterwards.

After lowering the prices significantly, as a trial, my eBook sales on Kindle and Barnes and Noble have picked up quickly. I have also had very good luck selling my books through Lightning Source. After setting things up with them, the work is virtually effortless. And they are a very professionally run company to deal with.

WALT: What’s next on your writing horizon?

RICH: I have been flip-flopping on various ideas so much lately, I’m starting to feel like a politician. I am considering a humorous look at building my log home, all the fits and starts and unbelievable missteps that came my way. The other book I want to pursue is long series of interviews with people all over the Great Lakes Region who have worked in some capacity in the shipping industry; I would gather together their best stories over the years from working on the lakes. Meanwhile I continue to write in my journal whenever something striking comes along.

WALT: Your books are both, at heart, memoirs, a genre that has caused a lot of debate over the past few years. What’s your opinion on the issue of how much fabrication is acceptable when writing a memoir?

RICH: To be credible with your reading audience, a memoir has to stick fairly close to the truth, the basic gist of the real story. But I feel that a writer has to take poetic license occasionally to “round out” a story and make it more interesting. As long as the story doesn’t wander too far off track, I find it acceptable to embellish slightly. I don’t quite mean what Mark Twain suggested: “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story.” I lean more towards Davis Sedaris’ viewpoint: “My stories are realish.”

WALT: Now for the kind of question that most writers hate to answer: Can you provide a two-sentence “elevator pitch” for each of your two books?

RICH: Lake Effect: A Deckhand’s Journey on the Great Lakes Freighters — A deckhand’s coming of age story of sailing the Great lakes steamboats during the social and political turbulence of the early 1970s, Lake Effect is a vivid and memorable account, told in an entertaining style, of life aboard the giant ore boats. Come aboard for the Journey!

Hitchhiking After Dark: Offbeat Stories from a Small Town — A wry and irreverent collection of stories, Hitchhiking After Dark offers a comical and sometimes ludicrous look at growing up and working in small towns, mostly in northern Michigan. This memoir is eccentric, often outrageous, but always engaging.

WALT: Finally, is there something you wished I’d ask but didn’t?

RICH: “If you didn’t earn a dime from your writing, would you continue to write?”

Of course, most of us would prefer to be paid adequately for the work that we do. On the other hand, writers will always have a need for self-expression, a condition without a price tag. We write to entertain, to inform, to share experiences…and always will.

Thank you, Rich!

If you’re looking for some well-told stories about growing up in small towns or coming of age on an unusual job, check out Rich’s books on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or ask for them at your local bookstore!

Welcome to my Wednesday Author Interview, this week with Janelle Meraz Hooper. I’ve known Janelle for almost three years and have converted six of her books to eBook formats — A Three-Turtle Summer, As Brown As I Want: The Indianhead Diaries, Custer and His Naked Ladies, Bears in the Hibiscus, Boogie, Boots & Cherry Pie, and Free Pecan Pie and Other Chick Stories. Her writing is enjoyable, her stories captivating, and her personality makes her a pleasure to work with.

Now, let’s let Janelle tell us about herself and her writing.

WALT: So, tell me, who is Janelle Hooper — where she’s been, what she’s done, etc.

JANELLE: Flannery O’Conner, the great American fiction writer said, “Anybody who manages to survive childhood has enough material to write fiction for a lifetime.” In my case it is doubly true because I was born into a Hispanic/Anglo household that fell apart when I was in the second grade. After that, I bounced back and forth between my mother’s gentle, fun-loving family and my father’s redneck, Texan relatives for most of my childhood. How lucky was that for a future writer?! But wait. It gets better: We were in Oklahoma, land of cowboys and Indians! All my life I’ve heard military people describe Oklahoma as a soldier’s curse, but it was the perfect place for me to grow up. I was never bored. My father was stationed at nearby Fort Sill which gave me the advantage of knowing all kinds of different people. At my mother’s, we had Indian friends who invited us to powwows that sometimes went on for days. What kid wouldn’t want to sleep in a teepee? Both backyards were full of spiders, scorpions, horned toads, and even the occasional turtle. I’ve always liked bugs and critters!

When I was in high school, my stepfather was transferred to Fort Lewis so my mother and I moved to Washington State where I dabbled in radio, television, and stage. Later, on my way to college, I married my high school sweetheart and began my next adventure. We will celebrate our fiftieth anniversary next year. While a mother and wife I pursued homemaking crafts with a passion. I was an organic gardener, knitter, crocheter, seamstress, and avid PTA-er. What a life. I loved it all.

WALT: What started you down the path of writing for publication?

JANELLE: I started writing when I developed auto-immune issues. All of a sudden I found myself sitting a lot with a body that was creeping along at 32 MPH while my brain was racing at speeds around 55-MPH. In hospital beds and wheelchairs I had a lot of time to think about the people I’d met and the places I’d been. With severely deformed hands, I began to write down the stories in my head using an old typewriter and the erasers on the ends of two pencils. I became quite good at it but I now have artificial joints in eight of my fingers so keyboarding is a lot easier.

Because of my disability, my doctors asked me to take tests to determine how I might support myself for the rest of my life. Their final recommendations were that I either work for the state department (!) or write for magazines. I chose magazine writing because there was no embassy in my little farming town. Unfortunately, the magazine ran into financial problems and I was downsized. Failing to find new, suitable employment, I began writing novels at home. It was a lot easier on my body—no long commute—and the coffee was a lot better.

WALT: Describe the kind of books you write and their genre(s).

JANELLE: Mostly, I write literary fiction, women’s fiction, romances, and short stories. The novels, my Turtle Trilogy (A Three-Turtle Summer, As Brown As I Want: The Indianhead Diaries, and Custer and His Naked Ladies), are about my life in Oklahoma. Even though my novels deal with a lot of tough subjects, they are also full of humor. I also have a literary novella I haven’t published titled The Welfare Resort that speaks to the crisis of our older generation, some of whom are one step from being homeless. This story, too, has its humor even though it’s a tough story.

WALT: Some of your books have won awards; which ones?

JANELLE: A Three-Turtle Summer won 1st place in fiction in the 2002 Bold Media Book Awards, and As Brown As I Want: The Indianhead Diaries won 1st place in fiction at the 1999 Surrey Writers’ Conference in Canada (at the time, the largest international writers’ conference in the world) and placed as a finalist in fiction in the 2004 Oklahoma Book Awards

WALT: Of the six books you’re written, what is your favorite and why?

JANELLE: I think I have to pick Bears in the Hibiscus, my first romance, because I proved to myself that I could write a book that was entirely fictional…and because it brought my family so much joy. For once, I wasn’t writing about them!

WALT: Tell us a bit about the play you recently wrote, Friending Geronimo, and how that came about.

JANELLE: On Christmas Eve, 2000, I got an email from Rudy Ramos, a cousin/actor in Hollywood, asking me to write a one-man show for him on Geronimo in his senior years. What a Christmas present! I rolled my wheelchair into the living room and handed a copy of the email to my husband. “I want to do this,” I said. “I want to write something weightier than romances for a while.”

He’s a good man. He agreed even though I’m sure he had trepidations. Living with a writer-wife is a lot easier if her sales are up and this project could take two years out of my income stream!

Once I began my research, it quickly became clear to me that I couldn’t torture an audience for seventy minutes by sticking to the facts. I had to add some humor. Preferably a lot of humor. That was how I came upon the idea of injecting fantasy into the story. In Friending Geronimo, Geronimo steals a laptop from Lieutenant Scott so he can tell his side of the Chirichuhua story. He says, “The white men will never tell the whole story. They control everything that’s said about us in newspapers and books. Even the maps are slanted toward the whites. Look and you’ll see they’re dotted with each place we fought the white soldiers. Look closely. You’ll see that if the soldiers won, it was a battle. If we won, it was a massacre…”

It has been a fun project—one that required a lot of research—and I’ve been in heaven. It is now making the theatre rounds in Los Angeles. Hopefully, it’ll find a home.

Note: Rudy Ramos was a star in the television series High Chaparral, Hunter, Ironside, and many others. His movie credits include: Helter Skelter, The Enforcer, Colors, and Quicksilver. He’s very much in demand in both screen and television now.

WALT: What’s next on your writing agenda?

JANELLE: A prestigious artist friend is illustrating some children’s stories I’ve written that I’ll put on Kindle, tentatively titled: Mr. Hop’s Garden. I also plan to offer it to WorldReader, an experimental Kindle project that is beginning in Africa and hoping to expand. Each student gets his own Kindle loaded with textbooks and a reading list so he can choose his own extra-curricular reading. Two of my books have already been accepted into this program: As Brown As I Want: The Indianhead Diaries and Free Pecan Pie and Other Chick Stories. Having my books accepted into this volunteer program has been a true joy. I love to lie in bed and think about some child in Africa reading about powwows and Indians in Oklahoma! Or one of my short stories like: “Elvis Has Left the Building—And Is Living In My Computer!”

WALT: What led you to follow the challenging path to self-publishing and what do you see as the biggest challenge to self-publishing success?

JANELLE: It was the best route for me to take given my health and age. I am not well enough to go the route of a writer with a traditional publisher. I do really well in my little office with no stress. This is where Walt at Five Rainbows comes in. Although most of my books are available in paperback, my focus is almost entirely on digital production now. I finish a book, email it to Walt, and rest easy—until I start another one! Thankfully, because of the Internet and Amazon, my books are available all over the world.

WALT: Do you use any of the online social media platforms for marketing? What has proven most effective for you, online or off?

JANELLE: Yes! I’ve had the most marketing luck on Facebook. Not only do my Facebook friends buy my books on Amazon but they come to my book events. I’m also on Twitter, LinkedIn, The National Society of Hispanic Professional, Stage 32, and more. Admittedly, I’m not as active as I’d like to be in any of them. These avenues are very time-consuming. However, I’ve just purchased a lightweight computer so I can visit with my friends more in the evenings. I figure I can get a lot done during commercials. And then, too, baseball season is coming up. I’m sure I’ll get a lot of networking done then, especially if the Mariners are losing! There’s another advantage of networking: writing is a lonely life and I don’t get out much. The social networks keep me connected; I’ve met some spectacular people from all over the world on my social networks!

WALT: Do you have anything else you’d really like to say to your readers and potential readers?

JANELLE: One of my happiest networks has been my association with local writers. We have a loosely-formed association to advise and support each other. To help friends I’ve edited their books and stories, promoted their books on my blog, and set up a website for (mostly) independent writers. A lot of their books are memoirs and are a passion of mine. I encourage senior writers to get their stories down on paper because they will be lost forever someday if they’re not written down. I know the site isn’t a work of art—I am not a graphic artist—but it gets the job done and some of these writers don’t have their own webpage.

Thank you, Walt, for this opportunity to talk about my books.

And thank you, Janelle, for spending some time to tell us more about you and your books.

You can visit Janelle at her Janelle Meraz Hooper website and her blog The Squeaky Wheels. And be sure to try some of her books. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed!