Writers4Higher Features Glynn Marsh Alam

Welcome to Writers4Higher

The purpose of the Writers4Higher blog: to feature authors in a new light, a fresh look at the way writers use their talents and life energies to uplift humankind. Writers4Higher doesn’t promote religious or political views. Authors are asked to answer three simple questions: simple, yet complex.

This issue, Writers4Higher features

 Glynn Marsh Alam

Hi, Glynn. Welcome to the Writers4Higher family.

Tell me about yourself. Your book(s), your life, your inspiration.

I'm a native Floridian, born and raised outside Tallahassee in a Southern tradition. Living in the midst of so much flora and fauna that resembles a rain forest, I had a fascinating world to explore as a child. Of course, I was surrounded with racial segregation of the day, but living in the country where my grandfather owned a dairy farm, I became familiar with the folklore of the very culture from which I was separated. It didn't matter much out there as long as we didn't date or go to school together. That closeness paid off in my late teens when I took the side of civil rights. During those times, I heard whispers about murders and drownings. They intrigued me as I had already developed a love for the mystery part of literature. In school, I wrote kid stories and they mostly involved a whodunit. Later, when I began writing for publication, I headed right back to North Florida for my inspiration. Its swamps and intrigues gave me fodder for stories. Since I lived through all the social changes, I could include a modern Florida with the undertones of its past.




Where do you see your writing taking you in the future?


I have written and published nine books. I have been through the Hollywood option and some awards. It has always been a happy ride but never the end ride. The industry of publishing is in such flux now that it's hard to say where any of us will be in the future with our writing. My books are on Kindle but I have never published directly to an e-reader. That could change. At this point, I simply cannot say what will happen in the future. As for the actual writing, I will continue with series, but I also want to explore more of the Southern story telling as I did in one of my books. One of the most enjoyable things I do to research for my writing is explore the field in real time. I plan to do more of that as it has always taken me to places I thought I knew well, but they surprised me.




How do you use your talents/time to help others?


I do workshops all the time. I will admit that most of them are connected to promotional efforts, but I enjoy them. I was a teacher for many years, and using some of the same techniques lets me get points over to the students--who are often older than I am. I believe in the hands on type of workshop, where the participant can write a few lines and have them openly critiqued on the spot. Outside of writing, I find myself helping the elderly more and more through life happenstance. The area of the human brain is a place we know so little about now, especially as it ages. I would like to hope that we will always be able to enjoy a good book.


Would you like to find Glynn?
Stop by and check out this talented author!

Glynn's Website

Glynn on Amazon

Thank you, Glynn! Love the way you take your readers to the "Real Florida."

Be sure to visit the Writers4Higher Market! We have gear for the writer in you.

The Writers4Higher Market

Rhett DeVane

Fiction with a Southern Twist

Writers4Higher blog

Rhett's Website

Rhett's Blog

Writers4Higher Features Mary Lois Timbes

 

Welcome to Writers4Higher

The purpose of the Writers4Higher blog: to feature authors in a new light, a fresh look at the way writers use their talents and life energies to uplift humankind. Writers4Higher doesn’t promote religious or political views. Authors are asked to answer three simple questions: simple, yet complex.

 

This issue, Writers4Higher features

Mary Lois Timbes

Hi, Mary Lois. Welcome to the Writers4Higher family.

1. Tell me about yourself. Your book(s), your life, your inspiration.

I was raised in Fairhope, Alabama, a utopian community based on the economic theories of Henry George. Fairhope was a different world then, populated by eccentrics, intellectuals and gadflies. I accepted this as the norm but have wrestled with it all my life since Fairhope evolved into a tourist town and the rest of the world changed all around it.

I spent most of my adult life in New York City as a journalist and public relations professional.When I married my third husband, who had been named Director of Public Affairs and Advertising of Du Pont in Europe, I spent six ecstatic years in Geneva and returned to the States a different person. The years in Geneva I set up an amateur theatre company and I persuaded my husband to retire to Fairhope where I started another theatre—this one allied with Actors Equity Assn. and using professional actors among the amateurs.

Alcohol got my husband, but I joined Al-Anon and AA and changed my life in another way during this period. Fairhope, the theatre, and the 12-Step programs merged in my life to inspire me to write.

2. Where do you see your writing taking you in the future?

Where this will take me in the future depends on the success of my writing. I started off with non-fiction about Fairhope, which is comfortable territory for me. My first two books were conceived as Lake Wobegone Days revisited, but were seen by publishers as local books about a popular Alabama resort and limited in reach. After a while I needed to try my hand at fiction, and That Was Tomorrow was born, somehow still stuck in Fairhope—but this time in its heyday in the 1920s as a bohemian community. At this point I just write to write, and I can’t remember a time when I didn’t.

 3. How do you use your talents/time to help others?

I’m afraid I don’t do much to help others, except perhaps by example. I can’t tell you how many times throughout my life I’ve been told “You changed my life,” and that always thrills me, but I can’t say exactly what it means. Apparently some of the things I say or write stick with people and they see me totally change my own life, and they do so themselves in some small way.

In creating two theatre companies I changed my own life and influenced many others—some in the amateur theatre in Geneva had never been in a play before and many were totally unfamiliar with the wealth of insight, humor and inspiration in American plays. We concentrated on feel-good plays and the sense of community created elevated us all, including our audiences. Later I was able to use that experience to produce plays on a professional level in South Alabama and to a degree the same thing happened. The theatre has a unique way of touching the human spirit. I am proud of the contribution I’ve made in sharing that with wonderful people around the world.

Would you like to find Mary Lois?
Visit this talented author's website and blogs.
Here are links:

 Mary Lois Timbes' Website

Finding myself in Hoboken blog

Finding Fair Hope blog

Finding Fair Food blog

 

Mary Lois on Facebook

 

Mary Lois Timbes' Books:

The Fair Hope of Heaven

The Fair Hope of Heaven on Amazon

That was Tomorrow

That Was Tomorrow on Amazon



Thank you, Mary Lois. You certainly make me want to visit Fairhope!

Be sure to visit the Writers4Higher Market! Gear for the writer in you!

The Writers4Higher Market

Rhett DeVane

Writers4Higher

Fiction with a Southern Twist

Rhett's author website

Rhett's blog





                        

Writers4Higher features Doug Alderson

Welcome to Writers4Higher

The purpose of the Writers4Higher blog: to feature authors in a new light, a fresh look at the way writers use their talents and life energies to uplift humankind. Writers4Higher doesn’t promote religious or political views. Authors are asked to answer three simple questions: simple, yet complex.

This issue, Writers4Higher features


Doug Alderson

Hi, Doug. Welcome to the Writers4Higher family!

1. Tell me about yourself. Your book(s), your life, your inspiration.

My life has had many adventures, and these are reflected in my writing. As a young child, I had an affinity for the outdoors and Native American culture, and this affinity only grew. Soon after I graduated from high school, I hiked the Appalachian Trail from Maine to Georgia. The five-month journey was my vision quest that helped me to focus my life. Within a few years, I became involved in the ecology movement, was adopted as a nephew by an Oklahoma Muscogee medicine person, and organized a walk across the United States and another across Europe and the southeastern United States. I started to raise a family in 1986 and began to focus more on the Florida experience, especially from a canoe and kayak.

Being in my mid-fifties now, I feel as though I am in the spring of my life in terms of my writing. I write about kayaking, history, ecology, Native American and southern culture, and even ghost stories and mysteries. I have nine published books—five of which are with established publishers and four I did on my own—and a couple of hundred magazine articles in print. I also write an outdoors and nature blog for Visit Tallahassee and an occasional outdoors column for the Tallahassee Democrat. 

2. Where do you see your writing taking you in the future?

I just finished the first draft of a new book for Pineapple Press, a guidebook to Seminole Indian historic and cultural sites that I’m calling The Great Florida Seminole Trail. It should be out next year. I’m also working on a rather humorous novel with a paranormal and ecology theme, and I’m working on another nonfiction book that covers a wider geographic area. I started both projects a few years ago and they are coming into clearer focus. People say to write what you know, but I like to write about what I want to know and start diving in.

I do have a good day job and this pays most of my bills, but my dream is to devote more time to writing, outdoor adventures, and speaking engagements. My wife and I live a simple life with no debts, so when our daughter graduates from college, a change may be in order. At the moment, I have to sneak in an hour for writing here or there and a bit more on weekends, so it is a challenge. Plus, there is marketing to focus on. When I am focusing heavily on marketing when a new book comes out, my writing time and focus usually suffers, so it’s a tough balancing act. My writing rewards come in many forms, however. First, the creative process simply makes me feel good. Second, I try to entertain, educate and inspire at the same time, and most of the feedback from readers is positive, so this makes me feel that my writing has a broader purpose. Part of writing is to celebrate life, so let’s do more celebrating!

3. How do you use your talents/time to help others?


The written word has power, and I witness this when I receive warm feedback from individuals. I wrote a book about my walk across the United States and my experiences with my adopted Native American uncle, Bear Heart (The Vision Keepers: Walking for Native Americans and the Earth), and some of the feedback surprised me. Even though I didn’t explore the loss of loved ones or life after death, many said that the book helped them recover from losing a loved one. The hopeful, spiritual nature of the book came through to them. That made me feel good about the many years I put into the book. I hope that my writing has helped to raise awareness about our environment as well, and to inspire people to venture outside with a sense of wonder.

Throughout my writing journey, many people have provided invaluable assistance, and I try to give back whenever I can. I enjoy speaking to college writing classes every semester, and even though I’ve never sold a book to any of the students (only the teacher!), I feel that I’ve offered some good advice. I’ve taught writing classes at FSU’s Lifelong Learning Institute and have given workshops at writing conferences. I enjoy reviewing books and articles, especially when they touch upon my areas of expertise, and I’ve served as a judge for a couple of writing contests. There is some great talent out there, and sometimes a bit of encouragement and helpful advice can go a long ways.

Would you like to find Doug?

 

Stop by and say hello and check out this talented author's work.

Here are links:

Doug's website

Doug on Facebook

Doug's blog


Find Doug Alderson's books:

Doug's Amazon author page

Thank you, Doug, for your thoughtful answers! You make me want to get outside and have some more adventures!

Be sure to visit the Writers4Higher market. All kinds of gear for the writer in you!
The Writers4Higher Market

Rhett DeVane

Writers4Higher

Rhett's author website
Rhett's blog

Fiction with a Southern Twist



News, news, news!

The official Writers4Higher Market is open!

Visit the link below to check out all the really cool stuff.

Show the world you are a Writer4Higher.

The Writers4Higher Market



Rhett DeVane
www.rhettdevane.com
www.southernhat-titude.blogspot.com

Writers4Higher features Adrian Fogelin

Welcome to Writers4Higher

The purpose of the Writers4Higher blog: to feature authors in a new light, a fresh look at the way writers use their talents and life energies to uplift humankind. Writers4Higher doesn’t promote religious or political views. Authors are asked to answer three simple questions: simple, yet complex.

This issue, Writers4Higher features

Adrian Fogelin

Hi Adrian. Welcome to the Writers4higher family.

Tell me about yourself. Your book(s), your life, your inspiration.

I grew up in a gnat-cloud of stories—my mother was a novelist and a constant storyteller. I learned from her that, through story, we get a second shot at life, an activity that is by its very nature, always first draft. Finding significance and meaning beyond, “…and then this happened, and then that happened,” is the writer’s job.

Like my mother, I can’t exhale without starting a story. As I write this I am working on my fourteenth novel. Some, including the epic first novel which took twelve years to write, rest quietly in drawers. The eight that have been published are middle-grade and young adult fiction. In my writing I try to give a voice to young people rarely featured in books. My characters are almost always the children of the working poor. My stories explore the real-life struggle of growing up in constrained circumstances. But although my characters have empty pockets they lead rich lives, and the stories are always about a truth larger than the individual lives portrayed. Featured themes include race prejudice, finding home, courage, and self-esteem.

Where do you see your writing taking you in the future?


That’s hard to say. I call my method of writing “blurting.” I often begin with a sliver of an idea. My latest novel, “Summer on the Moon,” was inspired by a story heard on a school visit about a cardboard box a kid used as “his place.” That cardboard box was all I needed and I was off and running on a story that, in the end didn’t contain a box at all, but which thoroughly explored a kid’s need for territory. I rarely have more than a vague sense of my destination, often discovering the meaning of a story in the process of writing it. My future writing will depend on some chance remark—so please tell me something interesting.

I also write songs. They often depict the lives and experiences of people who are a bit older. What is it like to fall in love later in life? How do you face the knowledge this is as good as it gets? Songwriting and performing as half of the musical duo, Hot Tamale, will continue to get lots of my time.

I also post essays to my weekly blog, Slow Dance Journal. I enjoy writing essays, a more up-front form for expressing an opinion.

For years I have critiqued the writing of others at workshops and conferences. I am now editing novels as part of my writing day. As I “teach” the writers I work with I learn from them as well and get as excited about their stories as I do about my own (I realized this was true when they began waking me up at night, demanding attention).

How do you use your talents/time to help others?


I see myself first as a writer, but coming in a very close second is my role as a teacher. I teach creative writing to aspiring fiction writers of all ages. But perhaps my most important teaching assignment takes place every Sunday at The Front Porch Library, the library my neighbors and I started for the kids in Seminole Manor Neighborhood in what used to be my father’s house—not wanting to sell his place I had to come up with a good excuse to keep the house across the street from my own.

The Front Porch Library has nearly two thousand books and weekly programs on just about anything you can think of: simple machines, human anatomy, local wildlife, quilting, China, cooking from scratch. With the help of volunteers and neighbors I am able to give something to the kids who so often inspire my novels—and learn a thing or two about simple machines myself.


Would you like to find Adrian?
Here are links:
 Adrian's website
Adrian's blog

Adrian's books
The Front Porch Library

Hot Tamale Band

Thank you, Adrian, for giving us a such a wonderful glimpse into your life!

Rhett DeVane
Fiction with a Southern twist
Rhett's website
Rhett's blog