Adelaide Literary Magazine No. 41, October 2020

Revista Literária Adelaide
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BIL JOHNSON

ON HIS AMAZON
BESTSELLING BOOK

1.  Tell us a bit about yourself – something that
we will not find in the official author’s bio?

Something that doesn’t appear in the “official author’s bio” is my lifelong love of the cinema.
George Pratt’s history of silent film, Spellbound in Darkness, captured my sense of watching
movies. In particular, I love film noir — which was probably influenced by my spending a
week at Yale sitting next to Fritz Lang, as he showed all his movies and discussed the process
of creating great cinema. I also love documentaries — particularly about history and music.
I’d have to say music has also had a great impact on my life since the early 1960s.

2.  Do you remember what was your first story
(article, essay, or poem) about and when did you write it?

I started writing reams of poetry in high school — and continued through college (it has now
translated into writing songs on the piano and guitar). I also wrote a play toward the end of
high school. I don’t remember, specifically, what the first one was but I know I spent lots of
time imitating Frost and the Beats. There’s also a 415 page novel sitting in a file drawer in our
home office — it was written as I was turning 30 in 1979.

3. What is the title of your latest book and what inspired it?
Right Time, Right Places: One Teacher’s School Reform Journey. It is the story of my career as
an educator trying to reform the public school system.

4. H ow long did it take you to write your latest work and how
fast do you write (how many words daily)?

The “bones” of it kind of poured out over a two-month period and then it took another
month or two to shape it into a readable book. It started as a daily blog post in February
2019 and continued through April 2019 — that’s where the raw material was created. When
I’m writing regularly I usually write between 1500 and 2500 words a day.

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5. Do you have any unusual writing habits?

Since about 2015 my outlet for writing has been my blog (The BLAST) which is featured on
my website (www.biljohnson.com ). The website is called “Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli,”
which is my favorite quote from the first Godfather movie. As far as writing goes, I’ll get an
idea (a “brain burst”) and basically do some initial “composing” in my mind before sitting
down and writing. I’ll write and re-write at the keyboard, often re-reading and editing as I go.
That’s my “process,” I guess, and I enjoy it quite a bit. My wife, the Lovely Carol Marie Bjork,
describes the process as an “explosion” of an idea followed by a “compulsion” to share it (in
writing or music).

6. I s writing the only form of artistic expression that you utilize,
or is there more to your creativity than just writing?

As I mentioned earlier, I do a lot of songwriting — mostly on guitar, a little bit on piano (some
of the songs are featured on my website) . . . they’re kind of “ditties.” I also like to sketch and
watercolor. I took some graphic/cartooning classes and watercolor workshops — and a blues
guitar workshop — at the 92nd Street Y in NYC before Covid shut everything down. I have
several graphic stories I wrote and sketched.

7. Authors and books that have influenced your writings?

Wow — that’s a long and variegated list. Off the top of my head I’d say Hemingway, Faulkner,
Ellison, Hunter Thompson, T.S. Eliot, Sam Shepard, Ferlinghetti & Corso & Frost, Joseph Con-
rad, Garcia Marquez, and Richard Price. Also: Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Bruce
Springsteen been an important influence on how I think about writing. Regarding education,
James Herndon’s How to Survive in Your Native Land had the greatest and longest-lasting
impact on me (and that’s related in the Memoir).

8. W hat are you working on right now?
Anything new cooking in the wordsmith’s kitchen?

I’ve been going through my blogs and putting together a collection of essays — and maybe
some old short stories I wrote years ago. The working title is: BoomeRant! Musings on Life,
Death, Baseball, and Democracy and it includes material on music, sports, politics, as well as
observations about life, in general.

9. D id you ever think about the profile of your readers? What do
you think – who reads and who should read your books?

Not really. I basically write for myself and hope that people find the work interesting and/
or entertaining. The blog is basically written for friends, colleagues, former students and
college classmates. I would hope anyone interested in education — and particularly in im-
proving education in this country — would read the memoir and find it informative as well
as entertaining.

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10. Do you have any advice for new writers/authors?
I used to teach writing a lot to high school students — and, later, undergraduates and gradu-
ate students — and I always used this gruesome phrase “You have to kill your babies.” What
that meant was, people often love something they wrote — be it a phrase, a paragraph, a
whole section of an essay or a story, or a scene in a play or screenplay. As a writer you need
to try to objectively look at your own work and be able to delete, excise, revise(“Kill”) that
part of the writing that you love but doesn’t add value to the writing.

11. What is the best advice (about writing) you have ever heard?
Read. Read. Read. Write. Write. Write. Re-write. Re-write. Re-write.

12.  How many books you read annually and what are you
reading now? What is your favorite literary genre?

I don’t know how many books I read annually — it’s decreased, I think, as I’ve gotten older.
I tend to read periodicals and online writing more these days but I probably knock off a
book or two or three a month if I think about it. I’m partial to police procedurals these days
— Richard Price is the best (real literature) but Michael Connelly is very entertaining, as is
George Pelecanos and Walter Moseley. Maybe the police thing fits in with my love of film
noir?

13. W hat do you deem the most relevant about your writing?
What is the most important to be remembered by readers?

I hope readers can “hear my voice” and hear the passion I have for whatever I’m writing
about because if I didn’t care about it, I wouldn’t be writing.

14.  What is your opinion about the publishing industry today and
about the ways authors can best fit into the new trends?

The publishing industry today seems to be in flux. Books — real books, paper-in-hand books
— seem to be losing ground to online/Kindle books, so that’s a big shift obviously. I think, as
with so much else in our culture, Oprah and Reese, with their “book clubs,” can determine
what millions buy (if not read), which is too bad. I think social media and the internet in gen-
eral has shortened attention spans and created an even greater “instant gratification” world
which is dominated by YouTube, podcasts, and quick-hits (like TikTok), to the detriment of
publishing and reading in general.

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STEPHANIE V. SEARS

Author of
The Strange Travels of

Svinhilde Wilson

1. T ell us a bit about yourself – something that
we will not find in the official author’s bio?

I am a restless dreamer. Like a lot of people who take a walk to develop an idea, I need to
take some mode of transportation and go somewhere. The excitement has barely dimin-
ished since my first trips when I was little. Sometimes looking down at cloud landscapes
from an airplane and listening to favorite music I feel that I never want to come down. In
the poem’ A Chamber of Wonders’, written after traveling through the Magellan Straits
to Ushuaia, I expressed that feeling of just wanting to continue on South. But I ran out of
money. There must be a moment for astronauts when returning to earth is very unpalatable
to them.

I would love to at least tri-locate. Sometimes, sitting at my desk and emerging from writing
about a place to answer the phone, for example, the feeling of return is so strong that I do
feel that I have actually been to that place in what the Platonic language calls ‘astral body’.
The esoterism of things, places, people always finds me. It has turned me into something of
an Animist as far as nature is concerned.

I prefer individuals to groups of people, and how in the individual, personal contradic-
tions correspond to an inner logic which to me is rich with intuition and inspiration. Ethno-
graphic fieldwork taught me to listen carefully to what individuals said, not just for the infor-
mation they provided me in that context, but to understand the personality from which the
information issued. The group, by its very format, suppresses the more interesting aspects
of an individual’s mind. I think that a lot of organized groups are responsible for much of the
strife and misunderstanding we see in America and societies at large. By essence they lack
subtle thinking and cause conflict. Poetry to me is the ultimate escape, the ultimate freedom
of thought, the ultimate lucidity. The poet can encode messages into a poem and throw that
message out there for some to grasp. Of course, the Russians who are some of the greatest
poetry lovers in the world, knew the power of poetry so that government in Russia was not

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averse to neutralizing poets they considered enemies, to the Russian Revolution, for exam-
ple. But for the time being….. in the western world….

2. D o you remember what was your first story
(article, essay, or poem) about and when did you write it?

I wrote a lot of things, starting when I was an early teen-ager, and that are quietly fossilizing
in a cellar at home. But I remember one poem written during unbearable algebra class-
es under cover of my desk. It was written in Arthur Rimbaud style and wildly impertinent,
about nuns, because I was in a Catholic school. Naturally, I was caught writing the poem and
it acquired an unwanted notoriety in the school, causing me a lot of trouble. I’d rather not
remember what I wrote, frankly.

3. What is the title of your latest book and what inspired it?

The title is ‘The Strange Travels of Svinhilde Wilson’. The name Svinhilde is Scandinavian and
in itself implies to my ear both fragility and strength; and Wilson is the name of Swedish
cousins from Goteborg on my American grand-mother’s side, and that I have never met. It is
a homage to that Viking side which I feel in me in a number of ways but particularly in that
impulse to ‘go’ and see what Is on the other side of the world. The adjective ‘strange’ alludes
to specific oddities encountered in my traveling but also to the general strangeness of life if
you look at it closely enough.

4. H ow long did it take you to write your latest work and how
fast do you write (how many words daily)?

When I write an essay it takes a long time between the research and the drafting. But If you
mean, my latest poem, I think it took shape quite quickly. I think that for a poem to be suc-
cessful , the initial impulse has to be intense, passionate, clear like a spring of water, with an
idea that also contains emotion and a ‘picture’ of the shape of the poem: a sense of struc-
ture, of form, the arrangement of the lines etc…. But after that initial and essential stage, I
re-write and tweak sometimes for weeks, months. But it can also be finished very quickly
almost as though it was dictated to me from somewhere. At times, I leave the poem and take
it up again, in which case it is difficult to say exactly how long it takes me.

5. Do you have any unusual writing habits?

I exhaust all the little procrastinating activities I can think of around the table where I write:
re-arranging fountain pens, sharpening pencils, staring into space or at squirrels or whatever
is moving out there, listening to music. I like to surround myself with attractive objects like
an old English teapot and porcelain cup and inspiring books which I just stack on the side of
the table and which seem to help even though I don’t open them. I don’t take any substanc-
es other than Lapsang Souchong tea and Paul Newman pink lemonade, the latter when I am
in the US. I might also jolt my brain alternating heavy metal music, which I find in its slower
rhythms very enticing, and classical.

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6.  Is writing the only form of artistic expression that you utilize,
or is there more to your creativity than just writing?

I draw and play the lute (badly) and I used to sing lyrically a bit. Also photography.

7. Authors and books that have influenced your writings?
Joseph Conrad and Yukio Mishima, which is why I wrote poems about them in The Strange
Travels of Svinhilde Wilson. They are always with me. Their intelligence mesmerizes me.
Also Tolstoi ( as novelist) and Bulgakov. These are probably the novelists who have affected
me the most. The poets that I admire the most at this point are Zbigniew Herbert, Joseph
Brodsky, Eugenio Montale, some Pablo Neruda, Octavio Paz, Ivan Bunin, Ted Hughes and
always: Rimbaud, Byron, Holderlin, Shakespeare.

8 W hat are you working on right now?
Anything new cooking in the wordsmith’s kitchen?

I just finished an essay on Venice and how, in my view, it will have to change its image after the
Covid crisis to survive as a living city. And I came upon a narrative thread for another book of
poetry, when my lute teacher the other day played me some harmonies once considered sinful
and therefore shunned from certain places, like convents. Such harmonies are typical in Ba-
roque music. On the whole, I write poetry according to a fluid and rather constant timetable.

9. D id you ever think about the profile of your readers?
What do you think – who reads and who should read your books?

Often. What they look like, in what place they choose to read: outside, indoors, with their
pet, lover….. I want to reach out to them through the pages like ET with that luminous digit
of his. I hope they are of all ages and types. I think that individuals who can’t travel for one
reason or another should read me because it might take them far away for a while.

10. Do you have any advice for new writers/authors?
Balance the wildest moments of inspiration with an internal picture of what the poem should
look like. It is funny for a zeroville in algebra like me to say this, but find the formula, the
structure of your emotion/idea, the most beautiful one, as mathematicians will say about
equations, the one that clicks into place inside of you. Test the emotion on yourself before
you send it out.

11. What is the best advice (about writing) you have ever heard?
Joseph Conrad’s famous citation: “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of
the written word to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see.
That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your
deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand — and, perhaps, also
that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.”

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12. H ow many books you read annually and what are you

reading now? What is your favorite literary genre?
I have not kept count and sometimes I read part of a book and leave it. But let’s say, some ten
different books of poetry, and some twenty prose books for leisure. If I am doing research the
amount of reading increases dramatically. I like the old gothic novels and short stories. I love
Bram Stoker’s short stories and the best time to read them is March in the northern hemisphere.
I love to be spooked by literature as long as it has the romantic element. I don’t like clinical horror.
13. W hat do you deem the most relevant about your writing?

What is the most important to be remembered by readers?
I try to be exact in my sense and description of a place , person, situation. And I don’t shy
away from the weirdness when it is there.

What is your opinion about the publishing industry today and about the ways authors can
best fit into the new trends?

I am not sure to understand the aim of the question. I don’t know much about the publishing
industry except that I get the impression, particularly in America, that a certain type of writing
is encouraged and finds more favor than others and I am not talking about the level of quality in
writing. I don’t like blatant activism in poetry. It usually bores me and I feel at times that poets
and their poetry are being rounded up to serve the directives of the social and political powers
that be. As I said previously, poetry is to me an escape from certain constraints of society. I think
there are other ways for poetry to have an impact on its time, in a deeper, less perishable way.

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DON TASSONE

Author of NEW TWISTS

1.  Tell us a bit about yourself — something that we
will not find in the official author’s bio.

I spent my career in public relations (PR) with Procter & Gamble — 31 years. I retired as a
vice president. So my background is in business. But I was an English major in college, and
I’ve always had a passion for writing.

Writing was a big part of my work at P&G. When I retired, I thought I’d flip a switch and
begin writing novels. But writing memos and writing stories are two very different things. I
realized pretty quickly that if I wanted to write creatively again, I needed some training.

So I went away to a one-week writing workshop in a small town called New Harmony,
Indiana. It was a wonderful re-immersion in the fundamentals of creative writing. After that,
I spent a few months writing a long, non-fiction story based on an extraordinary experience I
shared with my best friend in Alaska some years ago. I submitted it to a host of literary mag-
azines — which also was a brand new experience — and got a lot of rejections. Finally, it was
accepted for publication, and the story, called “Flashpoint,” was nominated for the Pushcart
Prize. This boosted my confidence.

I kept writing stories and submitting them to literary magazines. I’ve now had 240 stories
and five books published. Along the way, I’ve received hundreds of rejections. It’s part of the
process. I keep going. I’m still a relatively new author, but I’m learning to write creatively again.

2. D o you remember what was your first story
(article, essay, or poem) about and when did you write it?

The first “serious” thing I ever wrote was a speech for an oratorical contest when I was in the
sixth grade. That was hard. It taught me the importance of having a theme and developing it
and writing for “the ear.” I didn’t win the contest, but I learned a lot about writing composition.

I did a lot of news writing in college. I can’t remember what my first news story was about,
but my experience as a journalist was definitely helpful for my work in PR at P&G, where I
was working with reporters all the time.

My first “literary” story was “Flashpoint,” which I’ve mentioned above. I’m sorry to say I
had to wait to retire to write it.

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3. What is the title of your latest book and what inspired it?
My latest book is called New Twists. It’s my fourth short story collection. For this one, I wanted
to write stories based on abiding themes but with new twists, stories that explore old ideas in
today’s world. What does tolerance look like, for example, at a time of such great divisiveness?

I also wanted to write longer stories. Some of my readers have told me my stories are too
short. One of them said, “They’re a tease.”

So 15 of the stories in this collection are among the longest I’ve ever written. For those
who like a tease, I’ve sprinkled in five very short selections too. I hope people enjoy them all.
The book is off to a good start.

4. H ow long did it take you to write your latest work and how
fast do you write (how many words daily)?

I wrote the 20 stories in this collection over more than a year. The original versions of most
of them had been published in literary magazines. I write at least 500 words a day. I write
one short story a week.

5. Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I’ve always been drawn to crisp writing. So “writing short” feels natural to me. That said, I
love the challenge of long-form writing too. For me, writing both short-form and long-form,
and going back and forth between the two, like a train switching tracks, feels right. It gives
me a sense of balance, and the skills I’m sharpening with each form of writing help the other.

I write on a laptop and tend to edit as I write. I know that’s a bad habit, but I can’t break
it. I’m always rewriting.

As I begin writing a short story, I often write the first and last sentences. That way, I know
how the story will end, and I write to it.

6. I s writing the only form of artistic expression that you utilize,
or is there more to your creativity than just writing?

I run every day. I’ve always needed a balance between the intellectual and the physical in
my life. Running doesn’t just keep me in shape. It’s therapeutic mentally, even spiritually.
Sometimes I write in my head when I’m running. I also find listening to music inspiring, not
just the lyrics and the melodies, but the flow. I think good writers care deeply about the flow,
the rhythm of their writing. In a way, stories are like songs.

7. Authors and books that have influenced your writings?
Hemingway, Steinbeck, Bradbury, O. Henry, Whitman, Thomas Merton, Kahlil Gibran. To Kill
a Mockingbird is the first novel I ever read and still the best.

It might sound strange, but the writer who’s probably most influenced me is Rod Serling.
I grew up watching The Twilight Zone. Even as a boy, I realized those stories were more than

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science fiction. Serling was writing about the big, important issues of his day. He always had
a point of view, which he expressed powerfully though his stories and eloquently through his
narrations. His stories were provocative. They made you think.

His writing was lyrical too. Serling had a background in radio, and I’ve read he dictated
the first draft of most of his stories on a Dictaphone. You can tell. They’re written for the ear.
I try to write for the ear too.

8. W hat are you working on right now?
Anything new cooking in the wordsmith’s kitchen?

I’ve just finished my second novel. It’s called Francesca. The story begins in the year 2055. It’s
about the first female pope. She’s a wife, a mother and an American. It will be published by
Adelaide Books in June 2021. It’s the best thing I’ve ever written, and I hope people enjoy it.
Beyond that, my fifth short story collection, called Snapshots, will be published by Adelaide
Books in August 2021. It features 75 stories.

9.  Did you ever think about the profile of your readers?
What do you think -– who reads and who should read your books?

I mainly write short stories, and most of them are very short. I write with busy people in
mind. We’re all busy these days, even with the pandemic, and it seems we have less and less
time to read. It’s a sad fact that leisure reading in the US is at an all-time low.

It’s not that we’re not reading. We read every day. But these days we’re reading text
messages and emails and the headlines that scroll across our TV screens. But that’s hardly
reading. We don’t get much nourishment from a tweet.

So most of my stories are short, but they’re also metaphors, stories which serve to illu-
minate larger points. Someone described my stories as secular parables. Maybe they are.
Whatever they are, I hope they deepen people. I hope they invite people to think about the
seemingly ordinary things that happen in their lives in new ways.

I suspect my second novel, Francesca, will have wide appeal, from progressives to politi-
cal junkies. I can see it being popular with book clubs.

10. Do you have any advice for new writers/authors?

Read everything you can get your hands on because what you absorb will subconsciously
become a part of your writing. Read different genres and types of writing. The more you
read, the more distinctive your voice will be when you do write because you’ll have your
bearings. You’ll know what you like and dislike. O. Henry said the only rule for writing is to
write what you like.

Get started. Hemingway said: “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the
truest sentence that you know.”

Write every day. Turn writing into a practice.

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Creative writing may be new to you but realize you have skills and experiences that apply.
When I started writing creatively, I thought I’d have to unlearn my business writing skills. I
figured my many years of business writing had killed my creativity.

But what I now know is that many of the skills that made me a good business writer are
also helping me get good at writing stories and novels — and getting them published. If I
hadn’t mastered the one-page memo, for example, I’m not sure I’d be writing flash fiction. If
I hadn’t learned how to patiently work the system, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to get
240 stories and five books published.

For anyone who is thinking about writing for the first time, there’s a temptation to think
about it as something completely new — as a left turn from whatever you’ve been doing.

But it’s simply a new way of expressing yourself based on who you are and what you
know. Writing is an extension of us. It’s as unique as a fingerprint. You can learn new skills
as a writer, but you shouldn’t change who you are in order to become a writer because
good writing always comes from the heart. Ultimately, in writing, we’re telling our own
stories.

11. H ow many books do you read annually and what are you
reading now? What is your favorite literary genre?

I read a few books a year — not nearly enough. Right now, I’m reading Resurrecting Rain, a
novel by Pat Averbach, a fellow Ohio writer. I like novels and biographies. I loved Ron Cher-
now’s biography of George Washington and Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs.

12. What is the best advice (about writing) you have ever heard?

Ray Bradbury said, “Jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.” That rings true to
me. When we try new things, we have to take a leap. It’s scary, but I think that’s how we grow.

I think when we go in a new direction, when we decide to try something new, we take
with us all we know. In deciding to write creatively, to become an author, I brought with me
all the skills I had developed over a long career in business.

But if I had done only that, I wouldn’t be writing stories and books. I’d just be writing bet-
ter memos and news releases. Writing creatively really does require taking a leap.

13. W hat do you deem the most relevant about your writing?
What is the most important to be remembered by readers?

I doubt I’ll ever be a bestselling author, but that’s not why I write. I write as an invitation to
think and feel more deeply. I write to move people. That’s what good writing does for me.

I’ve gotten notes from strangers who have read my stories and were writing just to let me
know how much they enjoyed them or how much they meant to them. For me, one note like
that is more valuable than selling a million books, although I wouldn’t mind selling a million
books too.

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14.  What is your opinion about the publishing industry today and
about the ways authors can best fit into the new trends?

I think there are two trends in publishing which are particularly actionable for authors.
First is the continued strong growth of audiobooks. Research shows half of all Americans

over the age of 12 have listened to an audiobook in the past year, and audiobook listeners
are trending younger. Not every publisher offers an audiobook option. So the onus is on us,
as authors, to learn how audiobooks are created and distributed and to consider creating our
own audiobooks. I have a good friend, a former advertising executive, who used his connec-
tions to create an audiobook version of his debut novel last year and offer it for free. Imagine
how many more readers enjoyed his book as a result.

Second is the decline in organic reach. This means discovery of our new books will not
happen organically. Unless your publisher can devote a lot of money to advertising and has
strong marketing capability, we have to take charge of promoting our books. In my view, this
begins with capitalizing on our own networks. For me, my personal email list is probably my
most valuable asset for getting the word out about my new books. It’s a marketing channel
that I actually own. I’m building a base of readers who I know and know me.
15. How do you come up with your story ideas?
Most of my stories come from a combination of two things: something that’s happened in
my life or is happening in the world and some larger idea. In the case of New Twists, each
story is based on an abiding theme.

I usually start with something real because I’ve found that often the most profound and
extraordinary ideas are revealed in the most ordinary things in our everyday lives.

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