Official Interview: Charlie Sheldon
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Official Interview: Charlie Sheldon
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Now, let's get down to the nitty gritty.
1. For those that are unfamiliar, can you tell us a little bit about you personally?
I grew up in western Massachsetts, went to school and college in New England, and did a lot of hiking and camping and skiing and fishing as a boy. I worked summers on a farm when I was a kid, and when in college cleared brush from beneath power lines summers and after graduating went to sea as a commercial fisherman for a few weeks before graduate school. I studied wildlife biology and resource planning at UMass 1969-1971, a Masters Program. I continued to fish for several years - groundfish, lobster, swordfish, squid, red crab - in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, and I also did some consulting work on gear technology and fisheries management (this was during the fight for the 200 mile limit). I got married and raised a family. In 1984 I changed carers from the fish business to working with ports, and for the next 28 years worked as a planner, project manager, and executive for seaports (New York-New Jersey, Seattle, and Bellingham). In 2012, age 65, retired from ports, I verified my sea time as a fisherman, got my seaman's papers, joined the Sailors Union of the Pacific, and shipped out as an Able Bodied Seaman aboard container ships and military vessels until 2016, when I came ashore for good to focus on three books I had written while sailing. When not working I was hiking, usually in the Olympic mountains near Seattle, and I continue to hike. My kids are grown and launched, I cook for my wife, and I keep pondering tales.
2. Our book of the month right now (Bluewater Walkabout) is about a journey on the ocean and in Africa. Since you trained in wildlife biology, I feel it's only fair that you have to answer the question that every one else is asking: What is your favorite animal?
The short face bear.
3. Let's talk about Strong Heart. Living so near the Olympic National Park, I'm sure that influenced the setting of the book. Where did the characters come from?
The characters appeared. I did a lot of research before starting this book (unlike previous books which I just started and kind of dragged into the light) and had an idea I wanted a range of ages and sexes in the tale, but I did nothing else. One day I just started writing and each character emerged, fully formed, before me.
4. How much research went into this book and how long did it take you to write it?
I pondered a tale about ancient legends, the Northwest Coast, and the wilderness ever since I first moved to Seattle in 1990. I even did a little research, mostly about local tribes and cultures because I was working with Puget Sound Tribes on fishing issues and became fascinated with their history. I started serious research for Strong Heart in 2010 and this continued for 3 years when I had the time, studying human origins, glacial geology, climate, seagoing archeology, the history of the settlement of the Northwest, human DNA history, ice age mammals, primitive weapons....I filled several notebooks. It took me less than three months to write the first draft, the fall of 2013, and then it took another nearly 3 years to adjust, prune, cut away, and refine until I felt it was right.
5. Did you have a specific audience in mind when you wrote it?
Anyone who likes adventure tales, the Pacific Northwest, and strong female characters.
6. What is the most important thing you want your readers to get out of the book?
If someone who reads the book keeps thinking about the characters and the issues raised in the tale, is provoked to think, and enjoys the story, I have been successful.
7. I see from Amazon that you have a few other books out. Can you tell us a little bit about those?
Fat Chance, my first finished and published novel, is a caper set in New York about the 80s, which was published by Pocketbooks and then republished by Felony and Mayhem Press. Chasing Davy Jones, Iuniverse, is about the fishing industry in the 1970s when the 200 mile bill was passed and everyone thought dollar bills would be leaping from the ocean and a young skipper with great ambition and in a huge hurry runs into some bad characters and makes some bad decisions. Guardian, also Iuniverse, is about a young man finding his strength and power in a new sport as his family comes apart around him.
[To view the author's works on Amazon, see the author's page on Amazon: here]
8. Do you have any more books that you are currently working on?
Yes - Adrift, the next book in what I am calling the Strong Heart series, will be published by IronTwine next summer or fall, and this tale continues with some of the same characters and issues first seen in Strong Heart. There is a third book in the Series, Found (though that title may change) which I have written and am adjusting, as well. There is a fourth tale I can't wait to start, also in the same series. Plus, I'd like to do a couple of non fictions books as well.
9. Are you a reader yourself? If so, what do you like to read?
I am a reader, I like fiction and non fiction both. I find myself returning to the great old classics again and again - Melville, Conrad, Dos Passos....
10. Who in your life has influenced you the most?
Interesting question. Earlier in my life I would have mentioned others, but as the years have passed and life has intervened, family, kids, making ends meet, tragedies and difficulties, a few little triumphs, I find myself now saying, without hesitation, my father.
And a few fun questions:
11. What's the best gift you have ever been given?
Quilts made for me by my wife.
12. Describe your worst Holiday experience.
Once my wife and I took the little passenger boat 20 miles up Lake Chelan to Steheiken in the Cascades to a weekend rental there over Christmas. Steheiken can only be reached by boat, there are no roads, and the lake usually does not fully freeze. It was cold, there were 2 feet of snow on the ground, and few people around. We had to carry our bags a mile to the cabin. Still, the stove was warm and it was nice. But. We had to be out of the cabin by 11 am. So we packed up and left the cabin, humped our gear that mile back to the ferry dock, and waited. The boat was 4 hours late and we, and about eight other people, stood on that cold dock, because there was nowhere we could go to get warm, and shivered and beat our feet before it finally arrived about dusk. That key information - the huge gap between leaving the cabin and the boat's arrival - was missing from all the information we had read about "holiday in Stekeiken". We haven't been back.
[Interviewer note: That does sound really horrible. My hands would be turning blue by then. I don't know how they did it!]
13. What's your favorite movie? TV Show?
Favorite movie - The Professionals, an old western. TV Show? I don't watch TV.
Strong Heart on Amazon
Strong Heart on OBC Bookshelves
—Neil Gaiman
- gali
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Thank you both for the interesting interview!
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Strong Heart is awesome. It was not an easy read, especially in the middle part where Sarah is relating her abduction and canoeing experiences, but the rest of the story more than compensates. I have always been fascinated with Indians, at least since I started singing "Ten Little Indians."6. What is the most important thing you want your readers to get out of the book?
If someone who reads the book keeps thinking about the characters and the issues raised in the tale, is provoked to think, and enjoys the story, I have been successful.
- kandscreeley
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Very cool interview.
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