Ebenezer: Book Spotlight # Two
Q: How did you come to write this book. What was the trigger, or idea?
A. It was a conglomeration of happenings. We have a large family, and for a couple of years while the older kids were finding their 'feet', we had them coming and going.
Q: Coming and going?
A. Yes. They would find a job and be doing fine, then their world would change, and they would find themselves in between jobs, or in between in their place of abode. We had a rule if they needed some place, they could always come home. The old adage, 'If there's room in the heart, there's room in the home.' So their first few years several of them took us up on the rule on occasion. It wasn't ever to be a permanent solution. We also had taught them the adage: 'After three days company, like fish begins to stink.'
Q: And it worked?
A. Well, when they were in need of help like that they weren't really company. They were still family, and there was leeway, but it revolved around the idea of respect. Sometimes a few days was all that was needed sometimes longer. God helped it work.
Q: And how did this lead to a book?
A. At one point our third and fourth children were back home, and our fifth son was about to graduate and would head for the military. We had five of the seven kids at home, but three were there temporarily. My daughter said laughingly, 'mom, you're going to have to do something to occupy your time, pretty soon we'll all be gone except Benjamin.' I could see she was right. Her older brother left, then my daughter left, and the next son left for the military, and there was only two at home. The next son was up to graduate soon as well.
Q: Empty nest almost with time to burn?
A. We had ten years between our sixth child and our last one, so our youngest would be with us for awhile, and I've never been an idle person. We had a large garden, and I was still homeschooling the last two. Something people miss about homeschooling is no matter how many students you have in a class you still have a class. If I have a twelfth grader and a first grader, they both need class preparation. Then there were still church activities--I taught two quarters of Bible classes, and odds and ends. Never a dull moment. But it had planted a seed.
Q: And the theme? A mystery/detective?
A. That's a trickier question to answer. I've since learned there are several different types of writers. Some writers have an outline. They are called 'outliners or plotters', and they have a plan for their story(ies). Then there are what is called 'seat of the pants' writers or 'pansters'. They sit down and let the story rip. No plot, no plan, the characters tell their own story.
Q: So you're a panster, then?
A. That's the size of it, but I'm in good company. I've read that Louis L'Amour typed as fast as he did because he wanted to find out how the story ended.
Speaking of Louis L'Amour, last book highlight I tried to find a certain quote by him and couldn't find it. However, thanks to a fellow writer on a 'historical writers' group I now have the quote:
L’Amour once wrote, “I’ve written all these stories without pornography, without any obscenity. I grew up among sailors, miners, and lumberjacks and the roughest kind of men in the world, but I never found it necessary to use all that in the stories. I can make them real without that. I think much of that kind of writing is a cover up for lack of real skill.”
Q: So how did the detective story come about?
A. It began with my main character, Julius C. Armstrong, standing by the backyard gate and an old woman coming out the back door. I'm not sure how it rolled out from there, but apparently my characters wanted a detective/mystery. Even though it no longer starts in the same place, and I've polished it during the years since, the things written in the first rough draft were important and had a part in the finished book. As a side note, Ebenezer started out as a book with 628 or more pages, and at least 180,000 words.
Q: Wow that's an epic tome. You say it started out as? What happened?
A. When I realized my name wasn't Tolkien or Margaret Mitchell, and publishers weren't looking for manuscripts from first time writers that were that length, I divided it into three books. The first one then is 'If I Should Die'.
Stay tuned folks for the next installment of Book Spotlight #Three and other notes and side notes.
