Dylan Is His Theme: A Visit with K.G. Miles, Author of the Troubadour Tales Series

K.G. Miles

Earlier this spring I learned that K.G. Miles, author of two books devoted to places Bob Dylan has had relationships with -- London and New York -- was assembling a book about Bob Dylan's life in Minnesota. Miles first two books are the first in a four-part series under the umbrella Troubadour Tales.  The Minnesota volume is slated for 2023. 

The third book in this series will be released later this month, August 18. The theme in this third book has to do with Dylan's relationship to Dylan Thomas. To enrich its value Miles reached out to Dylan Thomas expert Jeff Towns. It looks to be an eye-opener for many Dylan fans. 

It's fun to see the variety of approaches authors have taken with regards to the music and life of our generation's most significant singer/songwriter.

EN: How did you first become interested in the music of Bob Dylan? 

KG Miles: My Auntie Di took me to the Isle of Wight in 1969 and as about 9 years old my only real memory was of these alien creatures!. I came from a housing estate in South London where everything was pretty grey. She may as well have taken me to Mars!

Nevertheless, as with the Beatles and Elvis, there was never a time in my life when I wasn't aware of Bob Dylan. 

Like many people who were too young to remember the 60's I had to work chronologically back from Bob's music. My entry point, as it was for a lot in the UK, was More Greatest Hits, an astonishing double album that wasn't just a greatest hits at all and still stands the test of time as the most extraordinary introduction to Dylan's music. 

As a teenager the poster on my wall was from Dont Look Back (this poster now proudly hangs in a frame at The Dylan Room in the Troubadour Club in London).

Despite punk hitting (as with Sgt. Pepper, punk never really changed music at all!) the Big Bang for many in the UK (and places like Japan) was the 1978 tour. As many did, I queued all night on the streets of London for tickets and the overspill festival at Blackbushe kick started the modern music festival. (People don't realize that the old hippy festivals such as Glastonbury had been and gone. Only when they saw the success of Blackbushe, did they start up again.)

I was hooked completely from then on and I can't believe that he is still in 2022 making extraordinary, new music....and next month I am off to see him again at The Palladium. Astonishing.

EN: You’ve published two Troubador Tales books about Dylan – Dylan in London and Dylan in the Big Apple. What sets these apart from the many other books about Dylan?

KGM: There are hundreds upon hundreds of Bob Dylan books and we are decades on from the publication of Not Another Bob Dylan book! For the Bob Dylan in London book, with my co author Jackie Lees, we very much wanted to impart what we had found about Bob in London to other fans. It was astonishing that Bob Dylan in London had never been a book before. (Hundreds upon hundreds of books are just telling us what Bob means by his lyrics and 99% of it is likely to be wrong. Also sometimes Gibraltar just rhymes with Altar!). We also wanted people to use the book as a guide, so there is a map. Jackie and I had been on a pilgrimage and we wanted others to see the wonderful places in a currently sparse music tourism. We also wanted the books to be an easy read. Too many Dylan writers start to think they ARE Bob Dylan and make the books turgid in an attempt to be deep and meaningful. Bob Dylan is fun and so are the books. I want a reader to get the joy and to turn each page thinking, "Wow! I never knew that!"

Easily the best review I had was one that said the Troubadour Tales were "refreshingly non academic!"

EN: What is the third book about that you’re releasing later this summer?

KGM: I was lucky that I got approached by great publishers, McNidder & Grace and they wanted 4 books. Bob Dylan in London had been a great success. (A Number one Amazon bestseller...beating Tom Jones!) For the third I wanted to explore the creative links between Bob and Dylan Thomas. (And yes, I have definitively proven in the book that he got his name from the Welsh poet. 

To me Bob and Dylan Thomas are the two rock n roll poets. They are the only artists who truly master the art of Performed Literature. I was so lucky to have on board a Bob fan and an expert on Dylan Thomas, Jeff Towns. We explored the creative Venn diagram, the links that tie the two men, everyone from the obvious such as Patti Smith and Arthur Rimbaud to the less obvious such as Nelson Algren and Johnnie Ray. It was a joyous project in every way!

As both men appear on the cover of Sgt. Pepper, we were honoured to have the same cover artist for our book...Peter Blake. We are hoping that you can indeed judge a book by it's astonishing cover!

EN: I think writers enjoy researching as much as writing because of all the things we learn along the way. What have been your two or three biggest insights gained while writing and assembling these books?

KGM: So many insights! From finding the correct chronology for Bob's first London visit to the finding of the extraordinary George Margolin from Greenwich Village for the Big Apple book. Mostly though, anyone who looks at the life of Bob Dylan will see from Dinkytown to London to Greenwich Village and beyond, that when a door opened for him, he just ran through. As someone for whom a door opened at the age of 61 it is a lesson for life. Run through!

I hope also there is an insight in the books into the real Bob Dylan, the man you hear on Theme Time Radio who gets so much joy from music, who embraces the full fat fun of life.

EN: How many more books do you have planned for this series?

Marc Percansky (center) with the artists from Brazil
who painted this six story high mural in Minneapolis

KGM: After Two Dylans there is hopefully one more Troubadour Tales book. I had thought of Japan which holds a special place in Bob's heart, as he does from them. It was too difficult to do when travel was restricted. It is a strange and mysterious place to a boy from South London.

Bob Dylan in Minnesota is a work in progress and in addition to you, Ed,  I have been overwhelmed by the friendliness and enthusiasm from Paul Metsa, Spider John Koerner, Marc Percansky, Matt Steichen, Kevin Odegard etc. Minnesota people are clearly wonderful and for me it is important to get this book absolutely right so that it can be the definitive, useable guide to Duluth, Hibbing and Dinkytown. I love visiting and giving a talk at the Tulsa Center but to me there is only one place that Center should have been... Minnesota.

EN: Where can people find your books if they want to purchase?

KGM: Bob Dylan in London and Bob Dylan in the Big Apple can both be bought via any bookseller or are about $9  (so a steal!) on Amazon. Two Dylans will be out on 18th August and on Amazon over here. If you know someone with Amazon Prime it can be soon winging its way to any Bob Dylan fan in the world!!

* * * 

Here's one of the many kind reviews of Miles' book on London, by Harvard prof and author Richard Thomas who gave a John Bushey Memorial Lecture at Duluth Dylan Fest  a few years back:

‘The Troubadour, where Dylan played in 1962 on his first trip out of America, the Royal Festival Hall, the Royal Albert Hall, venues of the mid-1960s masterpiece performances before and after “going electric”, the triumphant return to Earl’s Court in 1978, and Camden Town, scene of a 1993 Dylan stroll and photo session. These are just some of the places in this endlessly invigorating city to which Jackie Lees and KG Miles take us in Bob Dylan in London: Troubadour Tales, their highly readable and essential archaeological tour through Bob Dylan’s London, a city that has always been dear to him.’

Professor Richard F. Thomas, Harvard University

Author of Why Bob Dylan Matters

Related Link

A Visit With Richard F. Thomas

Roz Warren Writes for Everyone from the New York Times to the Funny Times

Librarian/author Roz Warren

As I've indicated many times, Medium has been a great place to meet a lot of interesting people. It's a community of writers and readers, with a full spectrum of interests on every facet of life and a range of experience from beginners to lifetime professionals.

In some ways Medium is similar to other social media platforms. For example, you can choose to "follow" people, and they frequently follow back in turn. And since Medium was founded by Ev Williams, who co-created Blogger and later Twitter, it has gives member writers a chance to write self-descriptions that succinctly say who they are. I very much liked Roz Warren's slogan, which got me into reading one of her stories, and then another.

She's got a bright wit, and knows how to tell a story.

EN: Can you briefly describe your path as a writer?

Roz Warren: Like a lot of writers, I began writing as soon as I could hold a pencil and never stopped. I began publishing short fiction in my 20s, in magazines from Beatniks from Space to Seventeen Magazine. These days, I write essays and humor, for everybody from the Funny Times to the New York Times.

And, of course, I write on Medium.

EN: What kind of law did you practice and was there a trigger incident that prompted you to leave that behind to become a librarian?

RW: I was a bankruptcy attorney. Twenty-two years ago, I impulsively took a job at my local public library when I realized that having fun was more important to me than having money. I have no regrets.

EN: Do you have an especially funny library story you can share here?

RW: Here's the first funny story I ever wrote about library work. It's included in Our Bodies, Our Shelves, my collection of library humor.
(EdNote: Go read A Nun Walks Into A Library...)

EN: Were you a class clown? Would it surprise your Detroit classmates to see you getting published in Reader’s Digest and the New York Times?

RW: I was never a class clown. I was not a goofy, attention-grabbing little girl. Instead, I was the kid in glasses with her nose in a book at all times. So I doubt anyone was surprised when I became a writer. But they may not have expected that I'd be a humor writer.

EN: Do you have a philosophy or process about humor writing?

RW: I don't know why, but I've always cared a lot more about funny stuff than other people seemed to. I like to laugh. I read a lot of humor and watch a lot of comedy, and when I write, I "write funny." That's just my voice and it always has been.

EN: What is it that makes written humor effective?

Roz loves libraries and being a grandma.

RW: For written humor to be effective, it has to surprise the reader. In a good way.

EN: In the same vein, have you ever done stand-up? You strike me as outgoing. How is stand-up comedy different from humor writing?

RW: I'm not at all outgoing. I think of myself as a friendly introvert. Library work is perfect for me because I love interacting with people, but one at a time. And in a situation that has some structure.

I've never wanted to do stand-up. Becoming a successful stand-up means hanging out in bars and clubs with other comics till 2 in the morning. It also means hitting the road to hone your act.

I want to write in my home office alone in my pajamas and be in my own bed every night by 10. That, to me, is a perfect life.

I once appeared on the Today Show. My Today Show goal was to not die of fright on live TV in front of 5 million people. I'm happy to say that I met that goal. And while I'm glad I met the challenge of entertaining millions of people on live television, that one taste of fame didn't make me eager to repeat that kind of live, high-pressure tightrope walk.
(EdNote: Here's where you can read Roz's An Introvert on the Today Show.)

EN: Your Leonard Cohen story was a fun read. Did you ever get a chance to see him again?

RW: I'm glad you enjoyed it! It's so great when your heroes turn out to be as wonderful as you'd hoped they'd be.

My editor at the Times required that Cohen sign off on the accuracy of the essay before it was published, which he did, through his manager, so I know that Cohen read it. But I never saw him again after the night I wrote about.

But that's okay. I got one more night with Leonard Cohen than most fans got.

EN: Any tips here on how to get bylines in Reader’s Digest or the NYTimes?

RW: In both cases, I didn't submit work. Instead, editors read my work online and got in touch with me. Reader's Digest asked if they could reprint one of my humor pieces. And an editor at the Times recruited me to write for "Booming," their (at the time) brand new blog for Baby Boomers.

I wrote about that experience here: Why Every Essay You Write Should Be the Best Essay You Can Write.

The takeaway? Make sure that everything you write on Medium is as good as it can possibly be before you publish it. Because you never know if an editor for Reader's Digest or the New York Times (or a Today Show producer) will end up reading it.

EN: Thanks, Roz. Great fun, and useful info for writers as well.

* * * *
Related Links 
OUR BODIES, OUR SHELVES: A COLLECTION OF LIBRARY HUMOR 
JUST ANOTHER DAY AT YOUR LOCAL PUBLIC LIBRARY
You can also read more of her work here: https://muckrack.com/roz-warren
What’s In A Name? A Batch of People With Interesting Medium Profiles
Roz Warren on Medium

Ten minutes with Greg Hickey, Author and Forensics Professional

Author Greg Hickey.

One day I received two emails from two authors asking if I'd be interested in reading their books. As it turns out, Greg Hickey's The Friar's Lantern is a book about choices, an interactive story, and my first decision was to choose this one, in part because Hickey is a Borges fan and the genre is a literal garden of forking paths. (I happened to be halfway through two other books at the time, but put his in the fast lane once I got immerse. I will return to that other author's work soon.)

The interactive story genre has a new dimension. With hyperlinking, an eBook can take readers anywhere. You don't have to find Page 133 if you choose to run and Page 79 if you choose to stay. The hyperlinks take you there. Needless to say, the book was a fun read and in return I asked Mr. Hickey to share a little about himself and his writing.

EN: When did you first take an interest in writing stories?

Greg Hickey: In seventh grade, I wrote a short story for English class about the passengers of a shipwrecked cruise liner forced to coexist on a deserted island. It was a kind of grown-up Lord of the Flies. I had a lot of fun writing it, and it received some positive feedback from my teacher and classmates. So I decided I would spend the following summer expanding the story into a full novel.

I didn’t get very far. I had good intentions, but as a junior high student, I soon realized I wanted to be outside playing with my friends, not typing away on the old Apple computer in our basement. But that experience kindled my passion for telling stories.

EN: Briefly share how you came to be a serious writer?

GH: I took a creative writing class as a senior in high school, which further fueled my passion for writing. During that class, I started the practice of keeping a writing journal to record any story ideas that came to me. I continued to use that journal through college and beyond.

In college, I took a course called Dostoevsky and Popular Culture, in which we read several of Dostoevsky’s works and then watched their film adaptations. Our final assignment was to write a film treatment for The Brothers Karamazov. When the semester ended, I continued to work on my film idea outside of class. I wrote a complete screenplay based on my treatment and later modified the script into a wholly original story titled Vita.

But I would say I really became a serious writer in the year after I graduated from college. I had played baseball in college and accepted a position as a player and coach for a team in Sundsvall, Sweden after I graduated. My responsibilities there were limited to about three practices and three games per week, so I had a lot of free time. During that summer, I wrote most of the first draft of my debut novel Our Dried Voices, based on an idea I had recorded in my writing journal three years before that.

EN: You’ve now written how many books? Do you have a full-time job and write on the side, or have you been able to make it as a career writer?

GH: I have published two novels (Our Dried Voices and The Friar’s Lantern) and one novella (The Theory of Anything). And I’m putting the finishing touches on a third novel titled Parabellum.

I have a full-time day job as a forensic scientist with the Illinois State Police. I work in the firearms section of a laboratory in Chicago, where I analyze guns, bullets and cartridge cases from crimes. I write during my lunch breaks, in the evenings and on the weekends.

EN: Are your books self-published or do you have an agent and a publisher? How did those decisions come about?

GH: Our Dried Voices and The Friar’s Lantern were traditionally published by two different small presses. The Theory of Anything was self-published and Parabellum will be self-published as well.

When I was starting out as a writer, I assumed the best way to reach as many readers as possible was through traditional publishing. That may be true if you’re Stephen King or you place a title with one of the big publishing houses. But that was what I believed was the best approach, and I spent months sending query letters to publishers and agents. When I got rejected, I revised Our Dried Voices and sent out more queries. It was a great thrill to get that first acceptance letter!

After having two novels traditionally published, I found that most of my sales came through my own outreach efforts. It’s great to have the stamp of legitimacy that comes from being traditionally published, and I appreciated having someone in my corner when it came to producing and selling my work. But while I know the publishers worked to promote my books, I also realized publishers will always be splitting their efforts among all the titles they offer. In contrast, I know my stories better than anyone and am dedicated solely to my work and no one else’s.

The Theory of Anything was a test case for me, to see if I could self-publish a short novel and have it look professional. I feel good about the way that book turned out, and I’m excited to do it on a larger scale with Parabellum. I’m still going through the steps I would for a traditionally published novel—hiring an editor, a cover designer, etc.—but I’ll be in control of everything and won’t have to accept a percentage of the profits from a publisher.

EN: Your book The Friar’s Lantern is intriguing on several levels. It’s an interactive story in which the reader decides where the story will go by making choices along the way in a series of forking paths. What prompted you to try this kind of story telling?

GH: I distinctly remember having the idea to write an interactive novel for a grown-up audience almost fifteen years ago, when I was in college. Up to that point, my experience with interactive fiction had been limited to the original choose-your-own-adventure books and related titles, which were written for younger readers. Bringing the genre to an adult audience wasn’t a new idea—I since discovered that other authors have written grown-up stories in this genre—but it was new for me, and I hung onto it until I could decide what I wanted that book to be about.

At the time I had that idea, I was reading a book of short stories by Jorge Luis Borges. For those who aren’t familiar with Borges’s work, he wrote stories that used science fiction, fantasy and magical realism to explore creative ideas to their full potential. His stories were often mazelike in the way they plunged deeper and deeper into an idea, if not mazelike in structure (the story collection I was reading was actually called Labyrinths). So I’m guessing the idea of a labyrinthine exploration of an idea also inspired me to tackle this interactive, multiple storyline structure.

Over time, I decided it would be a nice synergy to make a novel in which the reader has to make choices focus on that act of choosing. I began to draw on various examples of choice—in philosophy, science, law, artificial intelligence—and incorporate them into what I wanted the story to become.

EN: I assume that hyperlinks or hypertext is what made this possible. Can you explain what you did to build this document?

GH: Yes, the ebook format is a helpful tool for reading an interactive novel because the reader can use hyperlinks to get to the appropriate page instead of having to flip through physical pages. My publisher created the hyperlinks for the ebook, so I didn’t have any influence on the actual construction of that format.

However, the challenge of navigating through an interactive novel became very apparent when I was drafting the manuscript. I knew the page numbers would change as I revised my drafts and as the novel went to print or was formatted for ebook. So instead of page numbers for each choice, I labeled each new scene with a unique three-letter code. That approach made it easier for me to find my way when I was revising the novel, and it was simple to replace those codes with the appropriate page numbers when the book was ready to publish.

EN: Stylistically there’s an Earle Stanley Gardner starkness in the way your story is told. Was this creator of Perry Mason mysteries an influence?

GH: Thank you very much! That’s high praise.

I actually haven’t read any Erle Stanley Gardner novels, but I’m aware of his renown and influence. But as a forensic scientist, I do work in criminal investigation and I am occasionally called to testify in court about my findings. So even though The Friar’s Lantern isn’t entirely a crime novel or courtroom drama, it does draw on my experiences in those fields.

EN: Who have been your biggest influences as a writer?

GH: I try to write entertaining stories for smart readers. So I’ve always gravitated towards authors who combine an engaging plot and compelling characters with the exploration of a bigger idea. I mentioned the importance of that high school creative writing class. The summer before that school year, I was assigned to read Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead for a course called “Ethics in Literature.” I think the combination of those two events built upon the passion for writing I had discovered in junior high school.

During that school year, I was reading and discussing a book with an engaging story and an overt philosophical agenda while also learning the craft of writing stories. Plus, one of the messages in The Fountainhead is that people should be free to pursue the work that makes them happy. All of those events inspired me to continue writing as long as I enjoyed it and made me see that there was a place for the kind of stories I wanted to tell.

Other influences include writers like George Orwell, Albert Camus, David Foster Wallace—authors who use their fiction to explore deeper questions about who we are, the world around us and how we should live. I’m not sure they’re stylistic influences, but they inspired me to create the kind of stories I have written so far.

EN: You were a professional baseball player? What position and what countries or teams?

GH: Yes, I was paid to play baseball, although I never made enough money that it could have become a serious career. I mostly played shortstop through high school. In college (Pomona College, a small Division III school in southern California), I moved around the infield and also played some catcher.

When I was a junior in college, I studied abroad at the University of Cape Town (South Africa). There, I met a baseball player on a local team and joined that team until the semester ended. After college, I took a job as a player/coach for a team in Sweden, as I mentioned earlier. When their season ended in the fall, I went back to Cape Town for the Southern Hemisphere summer and played a full season there. While abroad, I played mostly third base and shortstop.

EN: Very cool. You and I not only connect on Borges and the other authors you mentioned, but I also got JV and varsity letters playing shortstop. I too, dreamed of playing baseball when I grew up at one time. Where can people find more of your books?  

GH: Readers can download sample chapters of Our Dried Voices, The Friar’s Lantern and Parabellum on my website greghickeywrites.com. There, they can also get a free download of The Theory of Anything, which is a prequel to The Friar’s Lantern.

Our Dried Voices and The Friar’s Lantern are also available for purchase in ebook and paperback on Amazon:
• Our Dried Voices
• The Friar’s Lantern

Related Links
My first online Labyrinth, inspired by Borges, an experiment hyperlinks. (Entrance is at the bottom of the page.
Seven Really Cool Internet Finds Related to Borges

Roger DeLoach Shares His Passion for Nostalgia and Cars with a New Book: There Was A Time

About a month ago I brought my car to Melanson's in Adolph for an oil change and there on the counter was a new book by Roger DeLoach. I met Roger through the church we attended, but really got to know Roger through his involvement in stock car racing. Roger loved cars and enjoyed building race cars, for himself, his sister and later his son, who left the area to work with one of the NASCAR teams for a couple seasons.

The book is titled There Was A Time, and for car guys it's a pure delight. It's about the size of a glossy hard-cover children's picture book. Each two-page spread features a full-sized photo of a classic car on one panel and a story on the other. I was not only impressed by the beautiful photography, I was equally impressed at Roger's storytelling. He's a guy with a good heart and a passion for cars, and it really comes through.

EN: I like the title of your book, There Was A Time, where did the title come from?

Roger DeLoach: When I was young, I was anxious for the future. I had so many dreams that I couldn’t wait to get there. Now the future seems to be here before you know it, and the present slips into the past way too soon. At this age, I have a treasure chest full of dreams fulfilled; a treasure chest with the words “There Was a Time” carved deeply into its aged hardwood exterior. The title expresses my gratefulness for a past I very much enjoy remembering.

EN: You’ve always been a car guy. What is it that makes Baby Boomers so nostalgic about cars?

RD: I love this question because it goes to the very heart of the book. The term Baby Boomer was birthed in the aftermath of World War II. December 7, 1941 caused America to change over night. The bombing of Pearl Harbor forced men to war, women to factories and children to paper drives. Money once spent on creature comforts now went for War Bonds while factories stopped making toys and began making bullets. 1941 through 1945 became years of sacrifice. When the war ended, America took a deep breath and dove back into life with gusto. Our parents were ready to work hard and play hard. The price of freedom had been burned into their souls.

We Baby Boomers were blessed to be born in a time when people were happy to be alive. For most Americans, family time was valued: road trips, camping trips, trips to Grandma and Grandpa’s, visits with cousins who lived two hundred miles away, extended family picnics where grilled hamburgers and swimming made us believe life could never get any better. And all of these wonderful times had one common denominator…the family car. To a kid the family car was more than a mode of transportation to the next outing; it was a vehicle of anticipation for the next great adventure.

Not all Baby Boomers are car guys or gals. For many it’s not the love of the car, but the love of what the car represents. We are nostalgic about old cars because they spark a memory of a time and place we yearn to go back and visit.

EN: There are so many decisions that go into creating a book. This one is a picture book. How did you select your photos, and what was it like writing a story for each one?

RD: Sometimes I think the photos selected me. There were photos that just had a story to tell. Because cars have been such a big part of my life, it’s hard for me to look at one without being reminded of something. I can walk a car show and come up with a personal story for about ninety percent of the cars I see. In a way, writing this book was a wonderful release; it allowed me to put on paper things that have been rolling around in my mind for years. Of course, there were some stories that needed pictures. That began another adventure, hunting down the right picture for the story I had already written.

The challenge to this book was writing 25 one-page stories that had a beginning, middle and end, and, at the same time, convince the reader a complete story had been told. I read two books on writing short stories before I even attempted to put my thoughts to ink. Truth be told, though, I enjoyed this project more than most others I’ve done. This was not laborious; it was more like hanging out with old friends.

EN: Which are your favorite cars in the book and why?

RD: Picking a few favorite cars in the book is easy: The ‘59 Chevy, the ‘57 Oldsmobile and the ‘58 Corvette. The reasons simply come down to styling. I think they are beautiful cars to look at. The Chevy is the only one of the three I have personally owned, but the Olds was a family car and part of my childhood. The Vette, well, that’s something to dream about. My favorite car of all, though, is not in the book, but I am happy to say that it is in my garage. It was love at first sight, and I was only six years old at the time. The 1958 Chevrolet will always be first in the carport of my heart.

EN: Do you have a favorite story?

RD: Now this is a question that is harder to answer. It’s like asking which of my children I like the most. When you spend intimate time with each child you begin to see them as individuals that don’t compare to the others. I have favorite thoughts or maybe even a favorite sentence in each story. Some stories are true to my life, other stories I wrote because I knew they would be true to a reader’s life. The “Christmas Truck” that I end the book with, though, probably holds the most meaning. Yes, I did exercise some literary license in the telling, but the core of the story is true, and it was a life changing moment for me even though the full extent of its meaning wasn’t realized until some years later.

EN: My grandfather was supervisor of the Packard Plant in Warren, Ohio in the 50s and 60s. What makes the Packard so special?

RD: I have a feeling you threw this question in because you know the answer. If my grandpa was Supervisor of a Packer Plant I think I would know the answer. I do quite a bit of reading on automotive history, but I have to be honest and say I have not read up on Packard yet. You have sparked my interest, though, and now the Packard is the next car I am going to spend some time with.

EN: Was there a “best year” for Cars? Some might say 1957 because the ’57 Chev, ’57 Olds and ’57 Ford were all rewarding to drive and look at. What years were your favorites?

RD: Oh, golly, when we were kids we thought every new year was the best. I bet a lot of your readers can remember the advertising blitz that hit the airwaves and magazines as the new models were rolled out. The designs and innovations of the fifties and sixties were, at times, beyond our imaginations. Government regulations and gas shortages put the brakes on in the seventies. I couldn’t say which year was best, but I would be willing to argue that the fifties was the best decade. And if I ever did find a time machine, well, I know where I would be right now!

EN: Where can people buy your book?

RD: My website is cdmproductions.net. This is set up for single sales. If anyone is interested in multiple copies they can reach me at rjdeloach@juno.com to save some money on shipping. If brick and mortar retail stores are interested in carrying the book, I do offer wholesale pricing on bulk orders. “There Was A Time” retails for $19.95.

Related Links
Hood Ornaments
One of my Pinterest Boards: All About Cars

Author Scott Stavrou Discusses His Life as a Writer

One of the features of social media is one's ability to obtain social access to people almost anywhere in the world. On of the features of the social media platform Medium is that you can hardly make a move without bumping into a writer.

My strongest immediate connection to Scott is Hemingway, whose powerful prose served as catalyst to ignite numerous authors over the past many decades, including myself.

Scott Stavrou is from Las Vegas and a graduate of Georgetown University. He's lived and worked as a writer in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Prague, and Venice. He and his wife presently live on a small Greek island. He's written fiction and non-fiction for numerous publications in America and Europe and was awarded a PEN International Hemingway prize for short fiction. (Several readers of this blog would be jealous.) Losing Venice is his second book. His new novel is due out in 2019.

EN: How long had you been writing before taking up the challenge of writing your first novel?

Scott Stavrou: Ah, the better question might be how long had I been writing before I finally completed the challenge of finishing a novel. There were a lot of false starts and missteps along my winding writer’s road before I finally found the time and commitment to finish one to my satisfaction.

Since I first started trying to grow up, I’ve always been a writer of one sort or another, though by necessity and interest, its taken many different forms in many different places. I wrote for the college paper and then after university worked as a copywriter, then did some journalism and corporate PR writing before I came to the realization that I didn’t like sitting at a desk and gave in to my wanderlust and did a lot of traveling, which led to travel writing to fund more travels, and then had a travel book published, Wasted Away. For years, I was a columnist and freelance writer and somehow managed to write two screenplays and some sappy TV scripts, and then a satirical stage play before finally committing to my real passion which is novels. So now I sit at a desk again but I get to move it around more and make more things up, which keeps me interested.

So the road to actually completing a novel was rather long and convoluted but one hopes — or likes to think, anyway — that lessons learned along the way lead to fuller and richer writing.

EN: You won the PEN America International Hemingway Writing Award for your Hemingway parody, Across the Suburbs and Into the Express Lane. What degree of Hemingway fan are you and which of his books first grabbed you?

SS: You can color me with the well-worn clichéd cloak of full-blown Hemingway acolyte. Like so many aspirant writers before me, Hemingway was the first classic author from the canon that I fell in love with. His style, his passion, his persona, his larger-than-life approach to living out loud and shaping and honing his image. The whole package. As a young writer with a passion for travel, for writing and wanting to live in Europe, The Sun Also Rises struck an early chord with my in my youth and remains my favorite. And though my writing style is very different from Hemingway’s, I like to think that I gleaned many lessons about writing and life from careful and devoted devouring of everything by and about Hemingway.

And because his style was so unique and different than so many writers before or after him, it rather lends itself to parody (however much Papa would have hated it) and I really loved the annual PEN America International Hemingway contest and finally winning it was a fine and fun accomplishment, not only because of getting the piece published but also because of getting to attend the awards dinner and meet some of the literary luminaries that judged the contest, a full cast of superb writers and Hemingway aficionados that included his old friend Barnaby Conrad, Ray Bradbury, Bernice Kert, Digby Diehl, Joseph Wambaugh and even formerly Jack Hemingway and George Plimpton. A great highlight of the awards ceremony was hanging out at Harry’s Bar and drinking Bellini’s with Charlton Heston, who, after we’d had more than our fair share of drinks, told me to call him “Chuck,” and then regaled me with stories of trying to arrange hunting trips with Hemingway and their mutual pal, Gregory Peck. You can’t help but feel honored to get to hang out over a fine dinner and drinks and hear your own words read out loud at the ceremony and then get to share drinks and laughs with so many living legends. You like to think that maybe some of the luster of the legend might even rub off on you. Isn’t it pretty to think so?

EN: Based on the reviews for Losing Venice you have quite the sense of humor. Is humor a theme in your stage play and screenplays?

SS: I’ve always tried to take a rather irreverent approach to my writing, even when dealing with serious themes. My stage play, Picketing With Prometheus, was all about life, destiny and the perilous future of mankind, but with a satirical and humorous approach. I like the interplay between the dramatic and the comedic, because part of the grand tapestry of life and all its troubles is that you hope you can always find light-hearted moments along the way. And though my screenplays were very different, one about Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution and one about a bar owner mired in debt, I tried to bring a bit of whimsy and irreverence into both of them along with the serious issues. And even though they both disappeared into Hollywood’s deep development wormhole, having some humor in them was probably what made them attract attention in the first place.

With Losing Venice, it’s a novel about the search for belonging and finding love when finding yourself lost and has some pretty serious identity, religious, and even historical aspects and having approached many of these with a light-hand and interjecting some humorous elements seemed at first a little discordant to my agent and editor and we actually discussed the possibility of toning down some of the humor in the novel but I’m really glad that we didn’t because in the end, going by the editorial and reader reviews, the humorous aspects seem to be some of what most readers found most appealing. You like to think you write a novel to make people think about life in a new way, to allow readers to see life from another vantage point or perspective. And it’s pretty gratifying if you hear that maybe you’ve provided some some laughs along the way

EN: You have obviously lived abroad and traveled. How much of yourself is in your lead character in Losing Venice?

SS: Like the protagonist in my novel, I was fortunate enough to have lived in Venice and then in Greece and of course some of those experiences seep into your writing when you set out to write about real life. Unlike the protagonist, I’d been blessed by already having found my life partner and been happily married for a few years when I moved there. But being happily married and content isn’t generally the fodder for riveting fiction and unlike him, I didn’t go around stealing gondolas and paintings from churches. In life you hope you can avoid conflict as much as possible but in writing you hope you can create it. Perhaps Mark Vandermar and I are different sides of the same coin. But maybe both are counterfeit currencies. I think the thing in writing — and in life — is that you hope you can invest some value in the currency of your creation.

EN: What is it about Venice that so inspires writers and film makers? I think of Death In Venice (Mann) and one of the recent Bond films with Daniel Craig.

SS: Firstly I think Venice resonates with artists because it’s so unique. An entire city built on the firm faith that it did not have to be like anyplace else. Secondly because the very nature of Venice is reflective. The city has spent centuries staring at its own watery reflections and writers, film makers, and artists are always seeking new ways to reflect life, to dredge something out of its depths.

Finally, there’s the sense of unreality that permeates the place. There’s a lot of in-between in Venice, floating as it does precariously on the misty borders between land and sea, dream and reality. It’s not quite fully water, not quite fully land, neither fully one thing or the other; a place where stones stride the sea but seeming floating on nothing. And I think writers and artists are always looking to fill the spaces in-between, to turn something unreal into something real.

EN: Finally, what other question would you ask yourself if you were interviewing you?

SS: What do you do when you’re not writing?

My life is finally pretty centered on my real passions: reading, writing, and traveling. In addition to working on my new novel, I still do some freelance writing but one of the other things I love doing most of all which combines all these passions is working as a mentor and facilitator with Write Away Europe’s Creative Writing Retreats, which gives me the opportunity to be surrounded by groups of inspired and inspiring writers several times a year in some of my favorite places in the world, including Venice, Tuscany, Prague, and the Greek islands. The stimulus and inspiration of spending several weeks a year being surrounded by creative people in such captivating places is always invigorating, fun, and fulfilling.

EN: What are you working on now?

SS: I’m pretty deep into my new novel, a tragic-comic satirical novel set in LA and Greece that explores movie-making, the Greek economic crisis, the refugee crisis, the vain and possibly impossible attempts to make art that matters and makes a difference during such turbulent times. The yawning conflicts of commerce and art, humanity and its inhumanity. But because I like to think that life is sometimes shockingly serious and sometimes strange, funny, and imponderable, I’m trying to make it strange, funny and imponderable. But you know, in a funny way.

It’s promised for the first half of 2019 so I just have to finish putting the words in the right order — and learn some more about how shockingly serious, strange, funny and imponderable life is.

I’m excited to see how it ends and hope that’s the feeling readers will have when they have it in their hands.

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Stay current with Scott's writing at ScottStavrou.com
On Medium (@ScottStavrou)
On Twitter (@WriteAwayEurope)

Losing Venice is his second book and is available in paperback and eBook in select bookstores and at all your favorite online booksellers, including: Amazon  and Universal Book Link

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Engage it.

A Visit with Amazon Bestselling Author Jill Klunk

I first became aware of Brian Tracy about thirty years ago or so when I was taken up with books and tapes from the "motivational" section of our library. W. Clement Stone, Napoleon Hill, Zig Ziglar, and others of their ilk were part of the motivational diet I was slurping in big gulps at the time. I most vividly recall Brian Tracy's Psychology of Selling as being dense with useful insights, later purchasing the two CD set to listen to while commuting.

In June I began contributing as a writer on Medium, the blogging platform developed by Ev Williams (who previously co-founded Blogger and Twitter.) If you're a writer, there's much to like about what Williams and his team have created. Facebook is a social community of one sort, and platforms like Pinterest and Instagram seem to be visually oriented communities. Medium, on the other hand, is a virtual community for writers and readers. Imagine going to a party where everyone you meet happens to be a writer. And it isn't just Americans here, but writers from every corner of the world.

Jill Klunk, like myself, is relatively new to Medium, but not to writing. She had the privilege of being selected as a contributor to a new book by Brian Tracy titled Ignite Your Life, which became an instant bestseller on Amazon.

EN: You were selected to contribute to Brian Tracy’s 2016 bestseller Ignite Your Life. How did you come to be chosen for this opportunity?

Jill Klunk: I responded to a FaceBook post. DNA was looking for candidates to submit their story on how they got to be where they were. So, I shared this opportunity with my Mentor and we felt it was a great opportunity. On October 23, 2015 I received a letter from Celebrity Press, LLC congratulating me for being selected to participate in Ignite Your Life. On December 17, 2015 I received a letter from Celebrity Press congratulating me that I had been selected by the Editor as one of their recipients of the "Editor's Choice Award" in recognition of the best chapters in the book Ignite Your Life. A couple of weeks later I was interviewed by Lindsay Dicks and Nick Nanton, Esq. On November 4, 2016 the book Ignite Your Life was officially released for publication and my story was one of the 40 stories featured in this book.

EN: The chapter you wrote was about Attraction Marketing. What is “Attraction Marketing”? And how does this differ from Inbound Marketing?

JK: Attraction Marketing is providing your audience with information to build trust and relationships to attract them to my products. It is one of the most powerful ways to provide value and grow my business. I attract people to my business through Facebook, postings, word of mouth, as a minimum.

Like Attraction Marketing, Inbound Marketing is a technique for drawing customers to products and services via content marketing, social media marketing and search engine optimization.

EN: You had a successful career in real estate.

JK: Yes, I did have a successful career in real estate for 13 years. In real estate I not only sold and listed properties I was responsible doing my own marketing, ads in newspapers, postings on Facebook and preparing my own newsletters to my firms and Clients. This was in essence my "jump off" into writing.

EN: How long have you also been writing? 

JK: I started writing stories in college (2002) and wrote them very sporadically until I got into the real estate business. When I would be showing homes to my Clients I would share information with them about neighborhoods, cities and my experiences. This ultimately was what prompted me to pursue writing more seriously.

EN: What lessons from your real estate experience would you apply to people who want to be successful as writers or entrepreneurs in other fields?

JK: Number 1 rule in my book is to just be your self. Your Clients can sense when you are being sincere and when you are not. My favorite story I share with my Clients is: A young man, a college student, lived across the street from me. He approached me one day and said "Miss Jill, my grandparents are coming to my graduation next week and would like to look at homes. Are you available?" My immediate response was absolutely.

As it turned out his grandparents had recently lost everything they had in Hurricane Sandy and were considering Conway SC as one of the areas to move to. After looking at homes, they decided to purchase a home in the neighborhood their grandson was living in.

EN: What was your biggest take-away from working with Brian Tracy?

JK: All of my dealings with Brian Tracy were through Celebrity Press, LLC and Dicks and Nanton Agency. I never spoke with him directly. The folks from Celebrity Press were very professional and I would highly recommend then.

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Here are some links where you can follow Jill Klunk or find the Brian Tracy book which she contributed to:

Blog: https://www.facebook.com/OwnYourOwnBeach/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillklunk
eBook: IgniteYour Life

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Meantime, life goes on all around you. Get into it.

British Playwright and Author Steve Newman Shares Valuable Insights on the Writing Life

Steve Newman  inside Holy Trinity Church.*
Photo credit: Hilary Newman

Early this summer I began sharing my work on the Medium, a blogging platform for writers and readers, created by Ev Williams. It wasn't long before I saw a piece about Hemingway by a writer named Steve Newman. It was only natural that this would catch my attention, first because Hemingway's writing served as a catalyst for my own writing career. The second reason is self-evident.

Because the quality of what Steve wrote was consistently high I began following him on Medium and soon learned he lived in the same town where Shakespeare was born. A British playwright like the Bard, he shares a lifelong passion for theater and literature. He graciously accepted when I asked if we could do this interview and capture his thoughts about the writing life.

EN: Perhaps we can begin with a brief overview of your career.

Steve Newman: When my second play, Tamarind, was produced in 1988, at the Half Moon Theatre in London, before moving to the Edinburgh Fringe, I was living and working in Southport (a small seaside resort in Lancashire), earning a living as an oriental carpet buyer for a large department store. At that time hundreds of Afghan rugs were arriving in the UK depicting the Russian occupation of that much fought over country, showing violence in a very graphic style. I bought dozens of them, creating quite a stir when the local media got hold of the story. Even though we raised a good deal of money to help displaced Afghans, the owner of the store became increasingly unhappy with the publicity. It cost me my job, which proved to be something of a blessing.

I moved back to Warwickshire working as an assistant manager of a filling station in the small village where I was born. Working shifts gave me space to write, and study for a degree in history with the Open University. I graduated in 2003.

When on late shifts one of my regular customers was the head voice coach at the RSC (Royal Shakespeare Company), an elderly lady who spotted I’d been writing, and asked to read some of my stuff. When she left I thought no more of it until a couple of evenings later when she called in again to fill up, and told me how much she’d enjoyed reading a couple of the short stories, and a page or two of a play, but was less then complimentary with regard another piece, which she thought was rubbish, but as she left she shouted back, in very strong language, “…don’t stop, keep on ‘effing’ writing.”

I did, and in the late 1996 I was commissioned to write a musical play about an all-girl jazz orchestra fronted by a singer I rather admired. The result was Am I Blue - A Jazz Musical, produced for the RSC Fringe Festival in 1997. It was good fun, with a good deal of comedy, plus half a dozen songs. It was great to work with a live band, too. The show then toured a number of outlying south Warwickshire villages.

In late 1997, after a boozy party, I co-founded – with two other Stratford playwrights – The Bird of Prey Theatre Company. It was, and still is, a company dedicated to new work, and in the six years of its initial life BoP produced fourteen new plays by writers from around the world, including four of my own, two of which – Ancient Pinnacles, and Portrait of the Artist – were produced at the RSC Summerhouse in 2001, and again at the Crescent Theatre in Birmingham. The following year my Hemingway play, Across the River, was also produced at the Crescent.

In 1999 I directed Reg Mitchell’s musical version of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol at Stratford’s Civic Hall (now The Playhouse), which was extremely stressful, aiding the aging process no end, but worth it.

For many years I’ve written features for magazines on military, social, cultural, literary and theatrical history. I’ve also written dozens of RSC reviews over the last twenty years or so.

In 2008 my wife and I created the Stratford-upon-Avon International Festival of Literature, which was held at The Shakespeare Hotel, here in Stratford, over a weekend in April, with guests that included Canadian actor, director and playwright, Brian Gordon Sinclair, the late Sebastian Peake, the writer and musician son of novelist Mervyn Peake, and the author of The Outsider, Colin Wilson. It was a great concept (and weekend) but couldn’t, in the end, compete with the Stratford Festival of Literature (which sneaked up on us a couple of weeks later), which continues with great success. During the festival Brian presented me with the Canadian Hemingway on Stage Award, for services to the Memory of Ernest Hemingway. I’m very proud of that.

Later in 2008 Hilary and I created Newman Books. So far we have published five titles, including, in October 2016, award winning poet Dallin Chapman’s first novel, Tree of Shadow, which received good reviews. Its sequel, and the second part of a trilogy, Isle of Deep Waters, was published on September 7th 2018. The third volume is coming out in January 2019.

2010 saw the re-invention of The Bird of Prey Theatre Company, with a re-staging of my diner play, 1651: An Evening with Oliver Cromwell, at the Dirty Duck (The Actors pub, just down the road from the theatre), and later for The Battle of Worcester Society at the Commandery in Worcester, which was the Royalist HQ during the Second Battle of Worcester in 1651, a battle from which Charles the Pretender (later Charles II) fled. In 2016 I was commissioned, by The Worshipful Company of Bakers, to write a dinner play to commemorate the 350th anniversary of The Great Fire of London. The resulting drama, The Great Fire of London Remembered: An Evening with Samuel Pepys – which included five new songs - was performed, for five nights at The Baker’s Hall, a splendid venue in the City of London. The script had to be changed slightly every night to accommodate different City of London Guild members.

Over the years I’ve studied and written extensively about American literature, not least Ernest Hemingway.

EN: When did you first begin to see yourself as a writer?

SN: After a read through of an early play of mine, Doughboy, about a horse in the First World War (don’t ask) I could certainly see myself as a writer, and kept bashing away on my little portable typewriter (I replaced it with a word processor in 1987), concentrating on learning to write plays by reading plays: everything from Shakespeare, Shaw, Pinter, Miller, Drinkwater, O’Neill, Priestley (who is rather underrated these days), Delaney, Rattigan, Dunn, Hellman, Maugham, Sherwood, a lot of Chekov, and Wilder, plus a good many screenwriters; in fact just about every playwright and screenwriter I could lay my hands on. It’s only by reading, and widely, that you can write.

Of course, living in Stratford, I was able to see the odd play or two at the RST (Royal Shakespeare Theatre), all the time watching the stagecraft very carefully, and how certain directors use dialogue, lighting and set design.

After Tamarind my playwriting ground to a halt for a bit, so I then tried my hand at reviewing, with my first attempt – I forget which Shakespeare play – accepted by a national theatre magazine. They paid well too. I wrote for them until the husband and wife team, who owned and edited the magazine, decided to give up. It was a huge learning curve for me, especially when faced with some really bad productions.

By 1997, when we created The Bird of Prey Theatre Company (it was a sort of antidote to Bill Shakespeare, the ‘Swan of Avon’), I realised I could actually do it, and do it reasonably well. But it took a good ten years to learn.

EN: What was it that most fascinated you about writing?

SN: For a playwright the most fascinating thing about writing is seeing your characters, especially historical characters (and I tend write about historical characters) come alive: firstly on the page, and then on the stage. It can be a very emotional experience indeed when an actor first stands up and looks at you as say Walt Whitman, or Genghis Khan, and speaks your lines. You know then that you have achieved something just a bit special. Thereafter it becomes a drug: you have to do it again, and again.

It’s the same when writing magazine features about writers, which I did for twenty years or more (and still do), breathing life into well known, and not so well known names, and how their work can change an individual, and then a whole generation, and future generations, and the world in which they live. The most interesting writers I’ve tackled so far would be D.H. Lawrence, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, Walt Whitman, George Bernard Shaw, Denys Val Baker, Martha Gellhorn, and Edgar Wallace.

I’ve also written features about composers, jazz musicians and soldiers, most interestingly Edward Elgar, Frederick Delius, Vaughan Williams, Duke Ellington, T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia), who was a great writer as well as a soldier and spy.

EN: Someone once said that the British are more concerned about making art, whereas Americans are more concerned with fame. I realize this is a generalization, but I get the sense writing well (art) is a concern of yours. What were the steps you took to improve in the craft of writing?
Also, you’ve drawn a measure of inspiration from Ernest Hemingway. What are the most striking features of Hemingway’s writing?

SN: I don’t see too much of a difference between the American and British outlook on art. I think both countries have, over the last couple of hundred years, created an impressive number of writers, composers, musicians and artists that have changed the very shape, word and sound of every aspect of our lives.

If we go back to the 19th century and look at Walt Whitman for instance: we have a man driven to write a poetry that was passionate and different, a kind of poetry he’d never come across on any bookshelf, or read before, with the exception of his Welsh grandmother’s Bible, which gave him the determination, and the vocabulary, to write an ocean and a prairie of work that changed his life, and ours, forever. Realising what he’d created he was determined to make a name for himself – to get his work read - and, as a consequence, he became concerned with fame. It never made him any real money, but brought him recognition and a lasting reputation. He’d worked for it.

Britain was little different. Think of Dickens, who had discovered and mined a resource within himself that had to be written down and then exploited – by himself – because he knew it to be good, and, like Whitman, realised it was somehow important. As a result he sought and found fame, then worked himself to death.

Think of Sam Clemens, and the work of his creation, Mark Twain, and the seeking of fame thereafter, and the influence it had on one of the 20th century’s most important writers – in the US and UK -- Ernest Hemingway, whose fame came about through the growth of a different element – the publisher’s editor.

Perhaps the most famous literary editor of all, in the US, is Max Perkins, who brought fame and fortune to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, James Jones, and the South African novelist, Alan Paton.

In the UK, it would not be a single publisher’s editor that brought writers to the attention of the reading public as much as other writers (certainly in the first third of the 20th century) who were part of the so called Bloomsbury Set, most notably the novelist David Garnett, who helped bring novelist D.H. Lawrence to prominence, a writer who (like his namesake T.E. Lawrence) always backed into the limelight and then wondered why he was the centre of attraction. This happened spectacularly with his self-published novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a book that earned him £4,000, no small sum in the late 1920s, and a reputation for writing ‘dirty books’ which did the sales of his other books no harm at all. Sadly he didn’t live long enough to enjoy the money.

But generally speaking the above mentioned writers -- and many who shared their time, and came after them in both the UK and US -- wrote because it was part of their psyche to do so: because they read good writers, writers who had also read well and long.

In the States, in the 1950s and 60s, it would be a predominance of excellent magazines, such as The New Yorker and Life, that rightly exploited the ever increasing demand for good contemporary writing -- especially after World War II -- by a public in search of writers who might be able to explain what was going on in their new nuclear world. Those same readers also read the books by American literary historian, Van Wyck Brooks, who took delight in reminding them in splendid and clear writing of their rich literary heritage. It was a golden period of quality publishing. In post-World War II Britain it would be the BBC who promoted a great deal of new writing, as would Penguin books, and, from the 1970s, such commentators as the writer and broadcaster, Melvyn Bragg, who continues to remind the British of their literary past and hopes for the future. A national treasure.

All I would say to aspiring writers is read, and having read write. What makes good writing is good reading: it is food and nourishment.

As a young man I found such nourishment in the works of Hemingway. I also found an honesty in his writing, an honesty born out of his own readings of D.H. Lawrence and Tolstoy, two writers I had been reading before I found Hemingway on a bookshelf in a small cottage in North Wales not long before he shot himself.

Hemingway was an absolute revelation that is hard to explain, but when I read his story ‘A Cat in the Rain’ on a cold Welsh afternoon, something clicked inside my head and I realised that reading is writing and writing reading. It is as essential as food and drink. Charles Dickens had pushed me in the right direction, but his world was far too populated by over-developed characters, characters who suffered or created hardships. It was, is, writing that leaves you exhausted. Lawrence and Tolstoy (although Tolstoy suffers a bit from Dickensamania) are able to bring you up close to a moving, revolving world made of flesh and blood and desire and sexuality. You are moved hugely by it, you never want to let it go. But you cannot enter, only hang on. It is their world.

Hemingway takes you all the way in, so much so that you immediately understand his language, his emotions and his contradictions, his selfishness and his generosity. His addictions, and his madness. His gentleness, aggression, and, not least, his ability to lead you into danger. You become his bravery. You understand them because they are yours too.

EN: You live in the vicinity of where William Shakespeare was born. In what ways has Shakespeare inspired you or influenced your career?

SN: Shakespeare?

As I write this Shakespeare lies in his grave inside Holy Trinity Church, a ten minute walk from where I’m sitting. Today he would still recognise the church he is buried in and was baptised in, with the exception of a spire built in 1768, a year before the first Shakespeare Birthday Celebration. He would recognise the congregation too I’m sure, and the people of the town, all 30,000 of them, the majority of whom seldom set foot in the church – it has a congregation of 400 -- or go to see any of his plays, although they’re on six days a week, every week of the year.

Stratford attracts 3.5 million visitors a year and most will come because of Shakespeare, with just 350,000 visiting the church, and a lot less than that stumping up £50 a seat to see one of his plays. But he, and his world, and his home town, and the world he wrote about (not always the same thing) are what people come to experience, and God bless them for doing so.

And it’s the worlds Shakespeare created that attracts the visitors: they want to be a part of it for a while: and it’s still there if you care to look for it. The trees and the flowers, the houses, the streets, relations of the poet, friends of relations of the poet. It is still there, just, in the way native Stratford people speak: in the short-cuts of language you can read in the dialogue of his plays.

Shakespeare is everywhere in the gentle sarcasm and cynicism of speech and thought, and like Hemingway he takes you in, allows you in, keeps you in. Also like Hemingway, Shakespeare is honest: he knows he cannot write comedy, and if the actors play it knowing that, they will have found the joke, and the awkward humour that comes from a situation, from life. The same is true of his darkest of tragedies: they are true and real, and you know, like Hemingway, they come from a truth that cannot be denied.

That is how Shakespeare has influenced me – a truth that cannot be denied.

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You can follow Steve Newman on Medium as well as his personal blog here:
stevenewmanstratfordwriter.wordpress.com

Photo at top of page was taken this morning at Holy Trinity with Steve Newman standing below the 18th century bust of Shakespeare, which looks over his grave.