Follow-up Interview: Charlie Sheldon

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Follow-up Interview: Charlie Sheldon

Post by kandscreeley »

Good morning all you lovely people! In today's author interview, we are once again talking to Charlie Sheldon, author of Strong Heart and Adrift. Strong Heart was book of the month in October of 2017, and Adrift will be book of the month coming soon. Since we've already done one interview with Mr. Sheldon about Strong Heart (click here to view that), this interview will focus more on Adrift. To view Adrift on Amazon, click here.

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1. During our last interview, you mentioned that you spent quite a bit of time on the sea. Can you tell us a bit more about that?

I worked in the commercial fishing industry 1969 - 1984, initially summers when attending graduate school, then full time, aboard a 65 foot vessel based on Cape Cod. We fished for groundfish 1969-71 (cod, haddock, etc) with longline gear, then offshore lobster with traps 1972-1974, and finally swordfish with drifting longlines 1974-1978. I served as deckhand, then mate, then alternate captain. Later I worked as a consultant, assisting with fishery management and gear technology issues, also spending time offshore aboard vessels, mostly off the northeast United States coast but also in the Gulf of Mexico and off Nova Scotia. Then, after spending 28 years working for various ports in various positions, I retired from port work and at age 65 returned to sea as a merchant sailor with the Sailors Union of the Pacific. Over a four year period I served aboard commercial container ships and military reserve ships as an able bodied seaman and as bosun, mostly sailing the New York to Singapore run through the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean via the Suez anal and Red Sea, a 70 day round trip. All told I think I have about four years - 1200+ days - sea time (days at sea) - which isn't much, actually, but hopefully enough to have a sense of the life.

2. Who has influenced you the most as an author?

This is a hard question to answer, because the list is long. There are those who influenced me as far as technique - Joseph Conrad, Elmore
Leonard, Annie Proulx; those who have influenced me as to scope and scale of vision and concept - Melville, Tolkein, Twain; and finally those who have helped me find the stamina to keep at it, and these tend not to be authors, though recently I would mention Jon Evison as a working author who is a model of persistence and quality writing, my publisher, Ethan Yarborough of IronTwine Press, close friends who encourage me, my wife; and a host of teachers and early life supporters who helped me along the way.

3. There is one question I always like to ask anyone with a modicum of success. What were your biggest obstacles to overcome?

The biggest obstacle for me is the voice in my head saying, this is a waste of time, this will never be any good, this won't appeal to readers - the biggest obstacle for me is to keep at it, no matter what, which I have done, sporadically all my life, like an illness, actually, and to continually remind myself success in this business is many sided - there is the telling of the tale, getting it right, and then there is the reader reaction to the tale, drawing them in, not to mention the need to get the tale before readers, an entirely difficult, luck-based, competition with the million other tales out there....

4. In this interview, I'd like to discuss the sequel to Strong Heart, Adrift. Tell us more about it.

Adrift is a stand alone companion and sequel to Strong Heart, opening four months after Strong Heart ends, when one terrible night in the Gulf of Alaska in December the ship Seattle Express, where William works (readers will recall William as the narrator,
basically, of Strong Heart, a towering Haida sailor aboard Seattle Express), catches fire. The ship must be abandoned, the lifeboats away, some crew missing, salvage companies chasing a prize, and relatives ashore (William's daughter Myra and friends Sarah and Tom Olsen, other characters from Strong Heart) cooking up a desperate plan to save their missing family members. This story continues the basic story thread of the series - a group of Pacific Northwest people who find themselves facing desperate conditions, a rapacious mining company threatening their homeland, and an orphan who has found her ancient roots now seeing those roots threatened.

5. @@jhollan2 was afraid this book was completely unrelated to the first. Will there be a tie in? Is it a small one or a major one?

These stories are closely linked, and this has been confirmed by those who have read both volumes. The core of the series lies in the characters of Sarah, Tom, Myra, William, and Sergei. These form the basic structure of this world. Adrift introduces new characters while continuing with those already known and moves the overall story along. Originally the first draft of Strong Heart started with the same frame as Conrad's Heart of Darkness. In Conrad's book a group of people waiting on a pilot boat for the turn of the tide are told a story by Marlow (I think), which is the tale of Kurtz and the river. In my tale, I had a lifeboat crashing ashore on Haida Gwaii one winter, and the sailors, among them William, marooned and having to wait for the weather to break to strike off inland over mountains to seek help. To keep the marooned crew sane, the mate asks William to tell them a story, and he does - Strong Heart. That draft was very long and while I personally like the structure, I wanted to do more with the lifeboat and the sailors, and William, so I took away the frame, just leaving the Strong Heart tale, and then used some of that frame and lots of new chapters to write Adrift.

6. One thing our reviewers in the book of the month forum for Strong Heart were discussing is the possibility of turning it into a movie. From your response, it seems like you would like to see it as a film. Who would you cast as the characters? @Christina Rose mentioned perhaps Bella Thorne or Emma Roberts for Sarah.

I think these books would be great as movies, especially with all the digital stuff we can do these days for scenes and animals. I don't watch
that many movies these days and so cannot really suggest who could be the characters. The Sarah character would of course be key and need a very young actress who is entirely believable.

7. Strong Heart raised quite a few issues including child abuse, mining versus conservation, and cultural issues. What themes are we going to be seeing in Adrift?

You will see additional issues about the mining and conservation, and cultural issues, but expressed a bit differently. In Adrift I have marooned sailors stranded along a coast that is surely the same coast Sarah passed in her journey or vision from the first book. Adrift is a tale of survival, and how family bonds and friendship, and faith, can prevail. Adrift also continues and even increases the tension between Buckhorn, owner of the Express and some salvage tugs, and the locals, who are desperately fighting to maintain their sense of community, worth, and history.

8. How long do we have to wait for the third book in the series? Is the name still Found at the moment?

The name is still Found. The tale is completed and edited, and we are currently planning a publication date, tentatively September or October 2019. I hope we can get this tale out soon as I have been structuring and outlining a fourth tale as well.

Let's take a couple of questions from other OBC'ers now.

9. @ButterscotchCherrie would like to know how you created your characters, especially Strong Heart's companions.

This is not an easy question to answer. I am not even sure that "creating" characters is the proper way to deal with this. I see them, they come before me, and then I write them as I see them. Of course I think a bit about who should appear, whether I want an old man or woman, or a young girl or boy, for example. Early on when I wrote my first novels I struggled to form characters. I might have one person who seemed real who I could picture and watch behave, but the others felt as if I was dragging them from the muck, until they sloughed off stuff and became clear, and during that time I was writing on faith alone until the characters became real enough to stride off on their own, and then when I had two or three that were real the story would take off for me (ie, be easy to see and write). For the Strong Heart Series though, maybe because I spent three years doing research and that research continues as I add tales, it seems that all the information stuffed into my feeble brain does something in there such that the characters come forth fully formed. Really. Specifically to Strong Heart's companions, and I assume you mean here her canoe journey, right? Here I pondered a bit about things like, how many would make such a trip, how many would you need, and who would they be (from the home community)? You'd need a leader, someone linked to the leader of the community, a navigator, or finder, paddlers, warriors, a spiritual person, and then I thought, because in this ancient world the sexes were more egalitarian, let's have a mixed crew, they are going after wives, after all, so it would help to have women present to work with the new captured girls; and because the community is small people would be related, and desiring different things and each other....I think also the characters that appear arise from the basic threads or tensions I am interested in exploring; for example in Strong Heart I wanted something between a young teenager and a grandparent, and while initially I began with a boy, as this is typical for teen adventure tales, I thought, why not a girl, you never see girls in stories like that, at least in true wilderness settings; I wanted to fool round with different scientific theories so needed someone to counter Myra and thought, why not someone from a different culture, especially because the basic structure of the story dealt with the whole North pacific arc of human migration, so why not, a Russian, though I have also spent time in Kamchatka in Russia among some Koryak people so felt familiar with them, enough, to write of them....as I said, not an easy question to answer. In its simplest form, I think all these characters rise from one's own experiences, the people they see and interact with, their quirks. I would also say that without exception none of the characters in my tales are fully modeled after
someone in real life I know.

10. @Mariette15 asks: "I was wondering what happened to atlal, as that plot was not really cleared up."

Toward the end of Strong Heart I describe exactly what happened to the atlatl. As far as the plot not being "cleared up," it seems some readers really loved the ending of Strong Heart and others did not, feeling there were loose threads. Yes, there were, that is how life is. I believe I resolved the basic human interaction issues among the main characters and answered the fundamental questions. Yes, there were some open issues - what about the mining, did they get back from the forest fires, what about Sergei and Myra - and all these and others are eventually dealt with in later stand alone books (Adrift published September 2018 and Found to be published later in 2019) but none of them, I felt, were essential to the ending of the first book. The other piece of this is that as an author it is great if the readers don't want the tale to end, if they are so invested in the characters they want to know how everything turns out. This tells me there are engaged, and truly there in the story, which is the point.

How about a few more fun questions.

11. Are you usually early or late?


Early or late as regards what? If you mean, arriving at places, early or on time. If you mean, rising from sleep, early for sure. If you mean,
Christmas shopping, once in a while early, but usually totally late.

12. What TV channel doesn't exist but should?

I don't watch TV but think after You Tube most subjects can now be found. I think society needs to reintroduce the stocks and then televise the placement of corrupt politicians or preachers as they are pelted by rotten fruit....

13. What's your dream car?

MGTD, 1952
A book is a dream you hold in your hands.
—Neil Gaiman
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Post by Espie »

I've read and loved Strong Heart enough to give it a perfect rating. I've got an inkling that Adrift really has something in store for us who loved the first series piece, too. My reading list is already updated, and I'm looking forward to when I could proceed with what's next.

I'm curious about some things, though. I know that Strong Heart is a product of extensive research and collaboration with heaps of people in various fields. (I've seen the long list!) However, is Sarah's travel with Tom not considered illegal? Would that issue be resolved perhaps in Adrift?

I'm not cajoling anyone to give out any spoilers. It's fiction anyway and obviously not meant to be a prescriptive work. I also know authors are not required to respond to any questions. I just can't help but think out loud, so please bear with me.

Nonetheless, much thanks to both of you for this follow-through interview. And, as we used to say when I was still in the Navy, may we all have "fair winds, clear skies, and following seas" as we man our stations, pull up the anchors, gather in the ropes, and go full steam ahead.
"Life has many different chapters for us. One bad chapter doesn't mean it's the end of the book."-Unknown
"To err is human; to forgive, divine."-Alexander Pope
"Put GOD first; He'll bless your efforts with success."-Proverbs
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Post by Eclecticmama »

Yay I'm so happy to see there will be more to this series. I started with Adrift, and plan on reading Strong Heart next, especially if William is the narrator :D
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