Writers4Higher features author Darlyn Finch Kuhn

Hi Darlyn. Welcome to Writers4Higher!

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

My seven-year-old brother taught me to read when I was three, and I remember writing anthropomorphic stories shortly after that. “Arthur the Antelope” was the first one, and, since my father was a visual artist, I remember sketching Arthur frolicking among some flowers as an illustration. I’m not sure how many letters of the alphabet I made it through before abandoning that project, but I’m sure I could count them on one hand.

Old Yeller was the first book that inspired me to write a novel, though that goal was not accomplished until I was in my mid-fifties. I remember thinking the people in that book sounded like the ones who surrounded me in my daily life growing up in Jacksonville, Florida, and being excited that people who talked “real,” like my family and friends did, could exist in a novel.

I wrote plays as a child (and saw them produced, both at school and at the Daughters of the American Revolution), moved into a passion for poetry, and wanted, with all my heart, to write for a newspaper, like Lois Lane. I got an AA in Journalism from Florida Junior College and sold a few freelance stories to the Florida Times Union/Jacksonville Journal before getting married and settling into a “real job” at a bank. Other jobs followed, some writing-related, some not, including a stint in the Sports department at the Orlando Sentinel.

I raised a wonderful daughter, finished my bachelor’s degree at Rollins College, got divorced, and then was selected as a writer-in-residence at the Jack Kerouac House Project of Orlando. Those three months of putting my writing first literally changed my entire life.

Shady Lane Press, affiliated with the Kerouac Project, published my first short story and poetry collection, Red Wax Rose. I met a man from the project’s board of directors in the dining room of the house at a party, and married him five years later on its front porch. We published (through our label, Scribbles) a collection of our love poems, called Three Houses.

I went to Spalding University for an MFA in creative nonfiction and poetry, and then workshopped my first novel, Sewing Holes, with Connie May Fowler’s Remembering Blue retreat group. Joan Leggitt of Twisted Road Publications made my dreams come true by publishing the novel in 2015. We came full circle by holding the launch party at the Kerouac House.

               

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

My husband and I have a PR content firm called Brad Kuhn and Associates, where we keep the lights on by writing corporate pieces and making beautiful video book trailers. On the literary side, I am currently writing the screenplay for Sewing Holes, because I think it would make an excellent and inspiring movie, and I would also like to take it to the stage at some point.

What I want most for the future is for the book, movie, and play to encourage others with its message of love and resilience.

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

I write a blog called Scribbles that serves to encourage writers and booklovers to gather together in support of one another around literary events. It has been called The Heartbeat of the Central Florida Writing Lifestyle. I believe it contributes to a sense of community for writers, in what can be a tremendously solitary pursuit.

Where to find out more about Darlyn: 

Links:

Scribbles: http://darlynfinchkuhn.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/darlyn.finch

Twitter: @FinchKuhn

Sewing Holes: https://twistedroadpublications.com/sewing-holes/

Three Houses: http://darlynfinchkuhn.com/three-houses/

Thank you for visiting the Writers4Higher blog.

Please do, come again!

Rhett DeVane

Southern fiction author and blogmaster

www.rhettdevane.com

Writers4Higher features author Taj Shotwell

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

Author and Educator Taj Shotwell

Hi, Taj. Welcome to the Writers4Higher family!

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

Born as Theresa Ann James, I use the acronym, “TAJ”, as my pseudo. I’m the middle child of eleven children, raised by a strict career-military father and a God-fearing-homemaker mother.  Reading fictional stories allowed me to escape from the realities of my then dysfunctional environment.  I learned strong morals and hard work ethics, early on. Parental guidance was stressed on behavior, cleanliness, and leaving home by age 18. Yet, special family gathering included my mother’s angelic singing, dancing, and poetry. This later inspired me to write songs & stories, and choreograph dance. I enjoy family drama films, plays, and TV shows, including action, suspense, and mysteries.

Asking anyone for anything, including help, has always been difficult. Having to ask, caused me to feel weak and powerless.  Even today, I feel I must earn my way and is reluctant to accept gifts. I’ve always had to have a “Plan”-- backed up with “Plan-B”, and believe in going above and beyond.

In 1979, when I lived in San Francisco and a single mom, I earned a MBA. That summer, I wrote my first play called “Black Snow”, but had no idea what to do with it-  so, I filed it away.  Years later, I decided to return to college to earn a doctorate degree in education.   I wrote my dissertation on the outcomes of the performing arts on students’ learning.  Immediately after graduating, I wrote a concept report for a performing arts boarding school (7^th-12^th grades) with a unique curriculum and program, and imagined someday its actual existence.

In 1993, I moved to Tallahassee to accept a position as a full-time university professor. During my down-time, I wrote a family drama play called “Maggie: Never Bitter”, inspired by my mother, Maggie. Years later, in 2006, the play was presented in a public reading at the university-- under the direction of the university’s Theater department. I received helpful critiques and made adjustments accordingly. However, shortly after that event, my mother became seriously ill.  I set the play aside—delaying a full stage production--- and for several years dedicated any extra time I had commuting 10-hours to Memphis from Tallahassee to care for my mother.   After my mother’s death and my retirement from the university, I worked full-time on the play and the boarding school plans. Hoping the play landed on “Broadway”, my vision expanded to film, therefore, I converted it to a screenplay and submitted to agents and producers.  An emotional incident occurred with a relative that triggered me to start writing fictional drama novels (based on my life, from the mid-1950s): "Middle Child: Build a Fence All Around Me" was launched in December 2014, and "Middle Child 2: Better Than Good," was launched in June 2015.  

International traveling and a healthy life-style play an essential part of my being.  My feet have touched the soils of many continents. Yet, I plan to compete the bucket-list.  To maintain fitness, I eat healthy foods-- and have volunteered as a certified aerobic dance instructor at various centers and schools, since 2004- domestically and internationally; including Costa Rica, India, China, and cruising down the Rhine River in Europe.

One of my greatest fears is to become a burden to anyone. Maybe it’s because of the possible act or expression of disappointment and inconveniences that I’ve witnessed some caregivers develop, especially a family member.  I believe that the best gift we can give our children is our independence and to make less importance on leaving behind financial rewards.

Divorced for many years, I have a well-educated and liberated daughter, and two young adult grandchildren (a male and female).   All of whom are good people and I love dearly, yet I definitely believe they are from another planet.

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

My vision/purpose is to share my work with the public and entertainment world, and perhaps, leave behind a small contribution or legacy for future artists, educators and readers.  Writing novels, stage and screen plays, and educational resources have been truly fulfilling.  Each day, I awake thinking about my work; rationalizing the joy, entertainment and knowledge that I will bring to others; envisioning my work on the stage or film; and about the prospects the work will bring to skilled artists. Furthermore, my educational resources will be used in many classrooms for student’s professional development.

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

I’m an educator first and I cherish my accomplishments.  However, I’m in the position to give back to a profession (performing arts), that I admire and one that helped me throughout my life endeavors. I’m the founder of “The Business of Arts Academy, Inc.” (BAA), a 501c3 year round boarding and day school – (in development).  BAA will provide a comprehensive college-preparatory academic in arts and business for co-ed students in grades 7^th through 12^th.   The academy will be located in the Tallahassee, Florida, area -- serving local, national, and international students.  All proceeds from my literary work are contributed to the development of the school and I volunteer my efforts.

  

Would you like to find Taj?

Check out the links to this talented author:

Website:    www.tajshotwell.com

Amazon:    Taj Shotwell author page on Amazon

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/ta.shotwell

Twitter:      https://twitter.com/tajshotwell1

Goodreads:  Taj Shotwell on Goodreads

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 funny Southern Blog

Writers4Higher features Smoky Zeidel

Hi Smoky. Welcome to Writers4Higher

Tell me about yourself.

I grew up on the flat plains of Illinois, and lived there the first fifty years of my life. As a child, my father took my family on grand explores every summer to places of exquisite beauty: Great Smoky Mountains, Mammoth Cave, and Shenandoah National Parks to the east, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon, Mesa Verde, and the other great National Parks to the west. Those grand adventures instilled in me a deep appreciation for our natural world and fed my bohemian spirit.

When I was fifty, I sold my house and most of my belongings, packed up my eighteen-year-old daughter, my dog, two cats, and guinea pig, and moved to Southern California. Most people just buy a sports car when they have a midlife crisis. I moved to a place I’d never been without so much as an apartment rented. But it worked out okay. I met my husband Scott a few months after relocating, and with him, I am able to continue the grand explore of our beautiful land my father started with me all those years ago.

I authored eight books before discovering my previous publisher was stealing most of my royalties. While I quickly got my rights back, that experience sent me into a deep depression. I couldn’t even think about writing for almost two years afterward. But I used that time to explore other art forms; I painted, did fiber art, messed around with clay. Eventually, the need to express myself with my words conquered my malaise, and I signed a contract with the fledgling and very fine indie publisher, Thomas-Jacob Publishing, LLC. They recently re-released my third novel, The Storyteller’s Bracelet, and my first poetry collection, Sometimes I Think I Am Like Water.

I taught writing and creativity workshops at various junior colleges and other venues across the Midwest before my move to California, and have twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  

Personal trivia includes the fact I must be part cat, because I’ve already survived a bullet missing me by mere inches when I was a toddler in the crib, my house flooding, another house catching fire, a tornado, and the biggest one of all, being struck by lightning. (At the time I was the most severely injured person to survive a direct lightning strike, anywhere in the world.) That’s five lives, I figure, so I have four to go!

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

I have several projects in the works right now. First on the docket is completing my fourth novel, The Madam of Bodie. It’s set in the California gold rush town of Bodie, in the Eastern Sierra, once considered “the biggest, baddest town in the West.” While the title character runs one of the town’s brothels—they were common in the West—it also deals with the hardships of mining, and the racism, especially toward the Chinese, that ran rampant through the West.

I have written a trio of short stories, collectively called Sun Song Stories, available only on Kindle, which serve as an introduction to the characters in The Storyteller’s Bracelet, Otter and Sun Song. I’ve had such positive feedback on these I am planning on doing an entire short story collection.

Sun Song and Otter are such a part of me, I can’t help but think they are going to be the characters that finally get me to write a sequel to one of my novels. While my earlier novels are open-ended enough to leave room for sequels, I have never had any desire to write one. But with The Storyteller’s Bracelet, I feel Sun Song and Otter have much more to say. I intend to listen, once I’ve finished the Bodie book.

And then there’s my passion for poetry. I am so proud of Sometimes I Think I Am Like Water, and I have gotten such good feedback on it. There probably will be more poetry in my future. It doesn’t sell well, but a writer is compelled to write what a writer is compelled to write.

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

I give in concrete and tangible ways. My daughter works for a wonderful organization called End Malaria Now, and I donate money to their cause, and help her research and come up with fundraising opportunities. I donate to crisis relief funds, like those set up after the recent Nepal Earthquakes. One of my now out-of-print books from my previous publisher was a book on writing. I recently donated the last of my stash of these to a women’s prison project in the hopes it would inspire incarcerated women to write their stories.

But it’s the less tangible ways of giving that mean the most to me. My publisher only publishes books that deal with issues that are troubling about humankind, books that make you think. I jokingly tell them the company tag line should be “Books That Make You Squirm.” That’s important to me, as a writer. I want my words to make people stop and think. For example, The Storyteller’s Bracelet deals with a dark time in American history, when children of the First Peoples were forced to attend Indian Schools. They were ripped from their homes, their tribes, and forced to give up their native language and customs and adopt those of the European Americans, people I call the Others in the novel. It was a shameful thing our nation did, and something that is glossed over in history books, if it is mentioned at all. My book is meant to educate people about the injustices done to the First Peoples, and hopefully instill some compassion for them and what they have lost.

I like to refer to my poetry as being “accessible poetry.” It amazes me how many people are downright afraid of poems! They think all poetry is ambiguous, big-worded nonsense—and, admittedly, some of it is. But there is a big world of poets who write poems that are easy to read, easy to absorb, and beautiful, like music, in their sentiments. My hope, with Sometimes I Think I Am Like Water, is to show people poetry is as enjoyable to read as prose, and to teach them something about nature at the same time. We tend to want to protect that which we know and love. If I can encourage even a single person to get outdoors and explore our beautiful world because of my writing, I will feel very successful indeed.

Where to find Smoky:

Smoky's Website

Friend Smoky on Facebook 

Visit Smoky's Fan Page on Facebook

Thank you, Smoky!

Rhett DeVane

Fiction author and blogmaster

www.rhettdevane.com

Writers4Higher features Jack Pittman

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

Jack Pittman

Hi, Jack. Welcome to the Writers4Higher family!

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

I have a science background — a BS degree in Chemistry from Loyola University in Baltimore and a MS degree in Technology Management from American University in DC. When I attended Loyola University, everyone was required to minor in philosophy. We science majors groused about this requirement. Give us more physics, not metaphysics, we demanded. But our professors would shake their heads. “As you grow older, you will find the lessons you learned from philosophy will be more useful in day-to-day living than the science courses you took.” I sincerely doubted that bit of passed-on wisdom at the time, but it has, indeed, turned out to be true.

I served twenty-two years in the US Army which included a tour in Vietnam with the First Infantry Division and graduation form Command and General Staff College. My Army experiences taught me discipline, loyalty, self-assurance, and the value of friendship.

I retired from the Florida Department of Health after thirteen years. This experience taught me the value of community service.

In 2014, my wife Jackie and I will be married fifty years. This experience taught me the values of acceptance and love.

All of these life experiences have inspired and colored my writings. The first book I published on Amazon was Spirit Walk through the Universe. I began writing this non-fiction book in 1999 but didn’t publish it until 2013. It is a collection of my personal essays on cosmology and the nature of God — pretty esoteric stuff, but it brought together the disciplines of science and philosophy in my mind and on paper. I did some research, as I wrote the book, and tried to make sure the science was up-to-date, but I had been a technical writer all of my life and writing non-fiction seemed relatively easy.

Although I had no education or experience in writing fiction, I wanted to write a novel. My first attempt was a children’s book titled The Land of Lost Socks. I floated it around to a few friends as a trial balloon. It got mixed, but mostly negative comments. The plot involved a five-year old Jeremiah (named after my grandson) who crawled into a dryer in search of a lost sock. The drum started turning and the dryer took him to another dimension. After meeting strange, yet familiar characters, the dryer took him back home. His mother tried to convince him that he was knocked unconscious in the spinning drum and dreamed his inter-dimensional experiences. But he knew what he experienced was real and vowed to find a way back.

The plot didn’t work well for me either. I decided to write an adult science fiction novel, Loose Strings, based on Jeremiah as a twenty-five year old genius quantum physicist whose research is leading him to find a way to open dimensional portals using string theory. In the first two chapters, Jeremiah is undergoing psychoanalyses to uncover the basis for his recurring dreams about inter-dimensional travel. The dimensional journey includes side excursions into quantum theory, dream theory, betrayals and conspiracies, mental augmentation, military operations, the code of the warrior, ghosts, dementia, a smattering of adult content, life after death, and the irrelevance of time — something to pique nearly everyone's interest. More information about the Loose Strings premise, plot, and characters is found at the web site; http://www.loosestrings-scifi.com/. The cover art is String Theory 2, a painting by Robert Hollingworth of Melbourne, Australia, used with permission.

Because I had no experience as a novelist, I had to learn about plot consistency, setting scenes, building characters, and writing dialogue. I attended a creative writing course presented by Adrian Fogelin in the spring and retained her as a creative writing coach. I’m still learning, but she gave me the inspiration, confidence, and courage to publish Loose Strings on Amazon.

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

I definitely want to keep writing. I am currently writing another science fiction book called Moon Shadows. It’s about the exploration and exploitation of our own moon and the moons of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. I haven’t quite decided on the format, it may be a collection of short stories strung together by a common theme — kind of like Ray Bradbury did in the Martian Chronicles. I may do a re-write of Spirit Walk through the Universe. And I left room for a sequel to Loose Strings. Life is good.

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

I work as a volunteer for the Capital Area Chapter of the American Red Cross as an orientation and a disaster response instructor. I also volunteer at Big Bend Hospice. Recently, I am hoping to get more involved at the Veterans Domiciliary Home in Lake City.

Would you like to find Jack?

Check out the links to this talented author:

Jack's Website

Loose Strings on Amazon.com

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 funny Southern Blog