Interruptions - 2006-10-17 08:53:16 Interruptions This author's life might be described as fundamentally dynamic with occasional, and welcome, moments of necessary quiet so I can get some work done. That is, my real work..writing.
There are many interruptions so it is a good thing I can quickly refocus.
Rocket Boys, by the way, was my second book. Torpedo Junction was the first, a non-fiction history of the U-boat war along the American east coast during World War II. It came out in 1989 and has never gone out of print. When I look at TJ these days, I have to confess I'm impressed with the amount of research that went into it. I'm not certain I could pull it off again. Hidden in those pages is a great adventure. To learn all that I could, I led expeditions into the Graveyard of the Atlantic off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. It was deep, dark, and dangerous work. For instance, I led a team onto the U-352, a German U-boat wreck far out to sea. When I dived on it the first time, I found a skeleton in the conning tower. I also found live 88 mm. shells littering the deck and a torpedo nose-down in the sand. I made the first penetration of the U-boat, entering the galley hatch and getting stuck. Only by removing my double tanks in the stirred-up interior (resulting in zero visibility) was I able to get out. Writing Torpedo Junction was a combination of adventure and nerve. I had never been published before, but I had the confidence my writing would find a home. It did, and the book was a big success. It was seven years later I began writing Rocket Boys.
As to the interruptions, one of them is for the next book. Titled The Far Reaches, it is a novel set in the South Pacific during World War II. Josh Thurlow, the hero of The Keeper's Son, and the Ambassador's Son, is thrown into the battle of Tarawa where he is terribly wounded. Unconscious, he is taken away by a young Irish Roman Catholic nun to a distant group of islands called the Far Reaches. There, Josh and his bosun Ready O'Neill plus a few American marines confront a Japanese warlord. The little nun also harbors a terrible secret that threatens her and all who live in those islands. Although I completed the novel last March, there is now necessary work to get it ready to be published and marketed. Publication is in June, 2007, and I still have the copy edit to receive and mark up, so that work is out in front of me. We have a marketing meeting teleconference this week with my editor and others at St. Martin's, then we'll start to pull together the book tour and advertising and scratch our heads on what we can do to get folks to go out and read the book. Let me know if you have any ideas! Go to www.homerhickam.com to read an excerpt.
Today, I will do three things, unrelated to the new novel I'm presently writing, tentatively titled The Red Helmet. This blog, of course, (it only takes about 15 minutes to write - I'm a fast writer), then I will go to a recording studio to record a message for West Virginia voters. I am supporting Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito for re-election. She's done a good job and so I'm willing to stand up for what I believe. One thing to always keep in mind when you're trying to decide your politics: most everything you read in the newspapers or hear in the media is wrong, to some degree. I've been involved in many historical events and when I read about them later, I am amazed at how slanted the articles are. The best way to learn is to read books from all sides, then make up your mind.
The second thing I'll do is talk to a group of readers at Marshall University. The third will be to talk to my editor about marketing all my books. Oh, wait, there's a fourth: I've been asked by Parade Magazine to write an article for them. Got to work on that one, too. Yesterday, I wrote the foreword for Cut in Stone, a picture book about my alma mater, Virginia Tech, and the day before the foreword for a book about Coalwood, written by my friend David Goad. There are also several manuscripts on my desk from publishers begging me to give them a blurb to go on the covers. I'll get to them, by and by.
I'll wrap this up. Next blog, I'll write about something that happened last week. I went with Linda and my friend Chris Welch, a reporter for the Huntsville Times, to visit late at night the Huntsville Depot, which is reputed to be haunted. We had a remarkable time. And is it haunted? Well, some VERY strange things happened that I'll be telling you about. It's a perfect Halloween story!
- Homer
PS - For those who have asked, my foot has healed. I'm back to running several miles a day! That's also an interruption but a welcome one.
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