Interested in Writers and Writing? Here I am on the Radio!

Jonathan Stratman Radio Interview

How the Magic Happens

This week I taped a radio interview 

I was interviewed for radio this week by Sheila Bender, poet, author and accomplished writing instructor. It's a real treat for a writer to be interview by a writer. 

The questions were different from those often asked. She wanted to know HOW I do what I do. Process questions. I had to actually think about the answers. 

With my eighth novel, "Raft," in final edit, my ninth, "Without a Prayer," in the final pages, I spend most of my time writing and thinking about storylines and character arcs. In other words, DOING rather than thinking about how I do. That's what she wanted her listeners to hear. 

For example, my first paid, published work was short stories in CRICKET Magazine, way back in the '70s. In a world that didn't pay much for writing, I got twenty-five cents a word—a fabulous sum— and presentation with fabulous illustrators. It was heaven. 

It was a CRICKET editor who said of one of my stories, "This should be a book." 

"Great!" I thought. But for twenty years, that's as far as it went. I had no idea now to make that leap.

I started out writing short

I wrote songs in high school, and my first college-published work was poetry. So, I could tell the whole story in sixteen or twenty lines. A short story, to me, was an opus.

Sheila asked me, how did I get from the short story to writing a whole book. I heard myself saying, I wrote one line and then the next. Which is absolutely true. 

She also pointed out to me the number of times I mentioned walking as part of my process. Walking, with my brain in neutral, often results in me coming home say to my wife ... "I just figured out ... " whatever it is. 

It happens to me driving, too, on longer trips. Out of the blue ... I mean really, I didn't even know I was thinking about it, I say to Billie, "Oh, I get it!" Because suddenly I do. 

Writer's block? 

We interviewed Jane Yolen years ago. Said she never had writer's block because she always had multiple projects going. If one stuck, she went on to the next. 

Judy Jance told us she took a shower when she got hung up. That works! Something about negative ions from falling water and its effect on the brain. 

The thing that works for me, is simply remembering that the main magic in writing is the seat in the chair. As an ad writer for thirty years, I faced an empty page every day and got paid for filling it with real ideas. I built up that muscle. 

According to Billie, here's when it changed

Billie has known me since high school, though with a twenty year break. She's seen me work from early. It was she that pointed out I made the leap from short story to novel when I began getting up at six, nearly every morning of the year, to do nothing but write. 

Yes, as writer MacKinlay Kantor observed years ago, I ... "put my butt in the chair." I know, it doesn't sound very magical. But if you've wanted to write or something similar, I'm here to tell you. 

It's how the magic happens.  

What the heck is a middle-grade book and who reads 'em?

Available in print, audio, or e-book

The Answers might surprise you. 

The odd middle child in youth books is the middle-grade book. In my head, I'm writing for a reader between the ages of 10 and fourteen.  And yes, I'm writing for myself at that age.

But most of us know a younger child, maybe age seven or eight, who reads "up." Because reading is easy for them and fun, they are soon ready for more ... more adventure, more mystery, more complex stories about youth relationships. 

Also, many middle-grade books are read by adults. With my highly-rated "Cheechako" series, for example, readers from as low as age seven to certifiable grandparents tell me they enjoy the stories. 

They like a clean, uncomplicated read where the focus remains on plot, character and adventure without the whole raft of other things they end up wading through in so-called adult books. 

"Who am I and where do I fit?"

Author Alison Cherry sees it this way. “MG is often more internally focused—about figuring out who you are and how you relate to your family and friends.

In "Cheechako," a lonely boy from 'out east,' Boston, finds life difficult in a small Alaska river town. His life changes when he steps out of his self-isolation to take a chance and ends up making a friend. 

It's a coming of age story in the best sense. A youth builds skills, courage, bonds of friendship and responsibility to the point where he can be tested and can survive. 

And we all grow and survive with him. It's what the best books do: thrust us into the middle of another person's world and haul us along for the ride. 

There are three books in the "Cheechako" series. Someone you know is ready for an Alaskan adventure ... and maybe you are too!

The Cheechako Series on Amazon

Two years of searching to find this photo

Photo courtesy of: © Hipfel/Starck and http://www.vildmark.se/

I love this photo

To me it says, adventure on the water, the promise of islands, the companionship of friends. Does it get any better for a kid with an urge to explore?

Where book covers come from

I spend a lot more time than I used to, thinking about where book covers come from. My next book is titled Raft and I've been hunting for a cover image almost since I began writing the book. Honestly, I found nothing until I found this ... better than I ever imagined.

Raft won't be one of my series books. It's the story of a lonely, awkward island boy, about grade 9, who has developed an elaborate scheme based on help from his best friend, to hide the fact that he can't read at all. 

When something happens to his friend—his only friend—he is cast utterly adrift. When summer comes, building a raft and the adventures that ensue ... help him forge a new friendship and new life.

One of my pre-readers put it this way: 

"... a gripping but also very tender story line, a rich cast of believable characters I grew to love, and a coastline setting that felt fully tangible. I simply loved this book." Holly Kruse, Cabot VT

Check this out: River rafting in Sweden

The photo hails from Sweden, from a company that features rafting adventures on the Klarälven River. First you build your own raft, with their guidance, then you drift. You remember what it feels like to walk away from your devices and give yourself to the pace of the river. Wouldn't that be an adventure with kids or grandkids! Here's the link: http://www.vildmark.se/

Australian reader amazed by guns in Father Hardy Mysteries

A letter from an Australian reader.

Today I received both a very nice review and a note from an Australian reader. With a surprising comment. 

First a bit of information. My Father Hardy Alaska Mystery Series takes place in the Territory of Alaska, circa 1955. For the most part, it's what I remember from growing up then in the tiny river town of Nenana. 

The reader said ... "(for me) the most exotic thing about the book isn't the setting or the weather (even though it was +95F here when I read it). It's the guns. Huge numbers of them. Armories in every home. I've heard of places in arctic Norway where it is illegal to go outside without a gun because of the polar bears, but Alaska..."

Raise your hand if you grew up with guns!

Here's what I told him. I'll bet this is also true for many of you. 

"As to the guns .. it probably seems strange from there, but when I was a kid … the 1950s in Alaska … every home had a gun rack, and most pickup trucks. 

My father … a priest like Father Hardy, owned a .22 pump, 12 gauge J.C. Higgins (Sears in the day) shotgun, and a WWI surplus Springfield .30-06. So yes, lots of guns. They didn’t lock them up like they do today. 

The .22 was mostly to teach us to shoot, the .12 gauge was for birds, and the .30-06 was a moose gun. I think he usually had a pistol, too, for berry picking and such. We were too far south for polar bears but it was a rare year someone didn’t get mauled or killed by a grizzly. 

I do remember that if we didn’t get a moose, we had a lean year, though in the village, many shared." 

Comment if you, also, were raised with gun. 

I told my reader it was a fairly normal Alaska experience, then and probably now. Comments? I'd love to hear 'em. And I'll pass them along. 

But ... why don't you write something real?

Father Hardy, Book 4

For years, I didn't tell people I made my living as a writer. It seemed pretentious. Also, there is a real disconnect between 'writing for hire,' and the heady world of the starving novelist.

When meeting for the first time, people always ask what you ... what I ... do. It's the frame we apply to how we intend to feel about new people, whether they are interesting enough to know. Worthy to know. I don't think it's something to get worked up about. It's just how we adjust to strangers.

So now, I tell people ... not that I am a writer ... but that I am the author of two book series about Alaska, one an adult mystery series, and the other an adventure series for the middle grades. I'm more comfortable with that. Yes, I know. Not a lot of difference.

So then, the person asks if I've been published. Back when I just wrote for money, this would often be the point where their eyes glazed over and they began to drift. Never mind that I wrote for "A" list companies like McDonald's, Starbucks, and Holland America Lines.

Seven books in.

Skip to now. I've just published my seventh novel, have a one-off novel with an agent in New York, and am writing books nine and ten. 

What hangs people up now is that I'm only writing mysteries. Not writing something real, which would be the meaningful novel. Maybe the fabled Great American Novel.

I think I am. I'm writing about new love, enduring love, and death. I'm writing about different tribes and races co-existing, or not. About concepts of belief and religion. 

People sometimes exclaim that I'm using a priest for a "detective." Who better to sort out the difference between right and wrong. Who better to explain how the rubber of our humanity reaches the road. And yes, wrapped in entertainment. 

Did you know there are more than three hundred-sixty clerical or near-clerical "detectives?" Quotes, because they're not all religious bishops, fathers, brothers or sisters. Don't believe me? Here's the list: CLERICAL DETECTIVES: http://detecs.org 

Read me.

Here's an invitation, or a challenge. You can read quite a few pages of all four of my mystery novels on Amazon ... FREE. Here's the link: https:  Father Hardy Alaska Mystery Series

Am I writing something real? You decide.