Tell it like it is? Life experiences, all of them, make fodder for good novels

By Kevin S. Giles

Did you know most of you are writers? Potentially writers, at least?

(And no, I’m not your long-ago English teacher coming to haunt you, so relax.)

Writing doesn’t require any qualifications, certifications, degrees or pedigrees.

But life experience? Yes.

Who doesn’t have life experience? It’s the cornerstone of all writing. For purposes of example, let me take you back to English class (painful as this journey might be) for just a moment.

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Visiting Gettysburg battlefields: A lingering sad tale of young men and war

Photo shows Gettysburg battlefield

Here I am surveying the view from Little Round Top, scene of a spectacular countercharge by Union troops at Gettysburg. (Photo by Becky Giles)

By Kevin S. Giles

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may
Old time is still a flying
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

When visiting the battlefields at Gettysburg (and there are many), I looked across those hallowed grounds at the faces no longer there, trying to picture them as sons and brothers, more than armies.

Two of my great grandfathers fought with the Union at Gettysburg. Abner Skinner belonged to a Wisconsin infantry unit. William Boyle, who immigrated from Belfast, Ireland, fought with the US Volunteers from New York. I come from an old family on my mother’s side, stretched over decades as marriages and kids came late, which is why both great grandfathers died long before I was born.

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Author Kevin S. Giles: If you want readers, publishing is only part of a long story

Photo shows Kevin S. Giles

The author, Kevin S. Giles, pondering his next cavalcade of words. Sunglasses optional.

By Kevin S. Giles

I learned a few things. One of these discoveries was a reminder that promoting a book takes a lot of work, even more than it did in the early Internet era. Infinite online opportunities await hopeful authors. So does the challenge of cutting through the “noise” of tens of millions of people trying to get noticed all at once, many of them promoting a political bias or sharing false information. Yes, the Internet has opened a new frontier to authors. No, finding an audience doesn’t come easy, because distractions abound.

When I published Summer of the Black Chevy, the spam started rolling in like a winter storm. Internet marketers promise they can deliver a rich market of readers — for an undisclosed price, of course — and they aren’t entirely wrong about that. Navigating the Internet, and rising above the noise, does require a strategy that largely involves social media to target customers.

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Postcards from a Montana town named Deer Lodge, where history lives on

Photo shows historic Montana theater

The Rialto Theater in Deer Lodge, Montana, was built in 1921 with 720 seats. The Beaux Arts theater featured extensive painted murals, artistic plaster designs, and a painted stage background. Fire destroyed much of it in 2006. The community rallied, restoring and reopening the Rialto in 2012. Here’s an early view.

By Kevin S. Giles

Everyone has a hometown, or should, because it figures strongly in matters of the heart.

Mine is Deer Lodge, a dab of humanity in a seam between two rambling mountain ranges. Deer Lodge is a dwindling place, even smaller than my long-ago days there, but it stands proud before a mighty promontory known as Mount Powell in western Montana. It’s here, in a town with a real Main Street, where memories sleep and the fictional Summer of the Black Chevy takes place.

My favorite postcards show the downtown district through the years. It’s less robust now, but the buildings remain much the same, like history stood still.

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Remembering a night in Missoula, Montana, with western novelist A.B. Guthrie

By Kevin S. Giles

Somewhere into that alcohol-fueled book signing that evening, Pulitzer Prize winner A.B. Guthrie warned us to “get the hell out of newspapering” if we had any hope of becoming serious fiction writers.

The famous novelist, a slender man who I remember favored unfiltered cigarettes and straight whiskey that night, sat between two authors of far less repute at a table stacked with books. I was to his left admiring my new book, Flight of the Dove: The Story of Jeannette Rankin. To his right was Steve Smith with his fine new book about Smokejumper pilots, Fly the Biggest Piece Back.

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