Ronald E. Yates's Blog, page 86

Elegy to Tribune Tower, an Archaic Newsroom, and a City Editor “Extraordinaire”

Last week, the Chicago Tribune moved or should I say, vacated, the iconic Gothic landmark at 435 N. Michigan Avenue, known since 1925 as “Tribune Tower.”

I am one of an ever-dwindling cadre of former Chicago Tribune reporters, photographers, and editors who actually toiled in the “old” Tribune newsroom. I joined the paper in 1969 right out of the University of Kansas, and when I walked into the yawning fourth-floor newsroom on my first day, I have to admit I was (input an appropriate adjective here) overwhelmed, stupefied, staggered, dumbfounded, flummoxed.

The place was humungous. It was also louder than the “clatter wheels of hell,” as my grandpa used to say. Of course, I didn’t start my life at the Tribune in that vast cavity. No, not by a long shot. Instead, I was assigned, as were all rookie reporters in those days, to something called “Neighborhood News” off in a much quieter and less imposing area of the tower.

But nine months later, after I proved that I could write intelligible and accurate stories about the lesser regions of the Chicago Metropolitan area, I was hurled into the reportorial breech and found myself ensconced at an ancient battleship gray wooden desk that was shared by several reporters.

In those days, new general assignment reporters “hot desked it,” meaning you sat at a vacant desk as long as some old-timer sporting a fedora and smoking a big stogie didn’t tell you to move. (Yes, boys and girls, back then the Tribune City Room was saturated with cigarette and cigar smoke. And sometimes the drawers on those old wooden desks contained half full bottles of Old Grandad or Wild Turkey. Ah yes, it was a very different time).

[image error] The 1970s: Legendary Tribune Photographer Val Mazzenga discusses a photo with the photo editor

But I digress. In front of me on that scuffed and gouged wooden desk sat a big black Underwood typewriter. I was sure the damned thing was just daring me to write something on it.

I could almost hear it saying, “Go ahead, ya big Kansas hick. Write somethin.’ I dare ya!”

I’m sure I gulped several times watching the turbulent activity in front of me with reporters running in and out of the newsroom amid a discordant symphony of ringing telephones.

I wondered how long before I would be one of those reporters. My heart pounded. My palms sweated. My mouth dried.

I didn’t have to wait long. From about thirty feet across the room, I heard somebody shouting my name.

“Yates, Yates,” the voice said.

I jumped to attention, just like I did on my first day of basic training in the U.S. Army when a rock-solid staff sergeant with a tan campaign hat covering his square, close-cropped head, called my name.

[image error] The lobby of Tribune Tower

Only this voice didn’t come from my drill sergeant. It emanated from a bespectacled man in shirtsleeves sitting in the driver’s seat of the Tribune’s horseshoe-shaped City Desk. He was flanked on both sides by a squad of rewrite men (not many women back then), a photo assignment editor, and a bank of squawking radios blaring raspy police and fire department calls. A couple of the grizzled rewrite men even wore (you guessed it!) green eye shades.

The man impatiently calling my name was the Chicago Tribune’s Day City Editor. His name was Don Agrella.

I looked over at him just in time to hear him say. “Yates, take an obit.” I looked down at the black telephone on my desk just as it started ringing.

“An obit?” I found myself thinking. “Geez, what a start!”

“Hello,” the voice on the other end said, “this is Weinstein’s Funeral Home on West Devon. Are you ready?”

That was my introduction to the Chicago Tribune’s city room and Don Agrella, a man I wrote about a few years back and who I called “a City Editor Extraordinaire.”

There is no way I could begin to talk about the Chicago Tribune abandoning Tribune Tower without talking about the man who, in my mind, will always personify it.

Here is that piece. I hope you enjoy it. It’s a look back a much different era in newspaper history.

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OK, right off the bat, I will tell you Don Agrella would have yelled at me if I ever called him City Editor “Extraordinaire.”

But the fact is, Agrella, who passed away at 92 in 2011, was an extraordinary Day City Editor and newsman. For about five years he was my boss at the Chicago Tribune. Between 1969 and 1974 I worked for him as a general assignment reporter, rewrite man and assistant city editor. During those five years, he provided me with a newspaper education that just doesn’t exist anymore.

Agrella’s trademark in the newsroom was to assign reporters to stories by yelling: “Hat and Coat!” as in, “Yates, hat and coat!”

Never mind that I or few other reporters my age in early 1970s ever wore a hat.

That would be my signal to trot over to the Tribune’s gray U-shaped wooden city desk where Agrella would issue my marching orders: “Go cover this (fill in the blank) speech, fire, trial, meeting, press conference, etc. and let me know if it’s worth anything.”

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Only once during my budding career as a general assignment reporter for the Tribune did I dare return and declare: “It wasn’t worth a story.”

“Is that right?” Agrella replied. “Well then, why in the hell does the Sun-Times have a story and what about this City News copy I am holding?”

All I could do is gulp. “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t think it was worth a story.”

“In the future, you go cover the story, call me, and I’ll decide if it’s worth anything,” he told me. “That way, you won’t have to apologize anymore.”

Then, noticing that my 6’4″ frame seemed to be sinking into the newsroom floor, he took pity on me.

“Look, it’s my job to decide if something is worth a story. It’s your job to report. OK? Let me do my job.”

Then he smiled. “Now go and write me a 4-head.” (A 4-head was a short, 3-paragraph story that usually wound up somewhere in the back of the paper).

I went back to my desk and wrote what was (in my mind at least) the best 4-head story Agrella had ever seen.

The Tribune newsroom in those days was alive with sound. No cubicles. No cell phones. No computers. No carpeted floors. Just lots of noise—as in the clacking of typewriters, telephones ringing off their hooks, editors yelling at reporters and reporters yelling “copy” at copy boys (and girls). In those days yelling “copy” didn’t mean to go to the copy machine and make a copy. It meant: “get over here and pick up this story I just finished and distribute it to all the relevant editors.”

Back then, we wrote on 10-page thick “books” that were cranked through typewriters. You had to pummel the keys so that the carbon paper in between those ten pages could produce nine legible yellow copies of your story that could then be distributed to and read by the plethora of relevant editors scattered throughout the newsroom.

Newsrooms forty-eight years ago were studies in semi-controlled mayhem. How anybody ever worked in them, let alone wrote anything of quality baffles me today. But, work we did and the stories produced were often damned good ones too.

Don Agrella saw to that. He was a tough taskmaster. He did not suffer fools nor did he tolerate sloppy reporting.

“You sure about this, Yates?” he once asked about an exclusive story I had just put in front of him.

“I am,” I replied.

“Would you bet your mother’s life on it?”

“I would,” I said with nary a hesitation.

“OK,” he replied. “But don’t forget, you only have one mother, but there are a million stories out there.”

I have to admit, that gave me pause. But on I soldiered. “Damn it, Don, it’s a good story.”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t good…but is it accurate?” he demanded.

Accuracy was at the top of Don Agrella’s list of reportorial essentials. He might accept a poorly written story (he could always have a rewrite man or woman rework it), but God forbid that it be inaccurate.

And one thing you learned early on in dealing with Don Agrella: you never lied to him. Don wanted to trust his reporters, and if he couldn’t take you at your word, you were on bad paper with him. I witnessed a few reporters fall into that trap and few, if any, ever climbed out of it and into Don’s good graces again.

Between 1973 and 1974 I became a City Editor myself. I was the weekend version of Don Agrella, assigning reporters to stories on Saturday and Sunday and putting together a local report. I am sure I could never have done that job had I not had the experience of watching Don Agrella at work.

In 1974 I was promoted to Foreign Correspondent and went off to Asia. I never worked for Don Agrella again.

But one day in 1975, when I returned to Chicago for a few days after covering the fall of Saigon in April of that year, Don grabbed me and took me aside.

[image error] L to R, Bernie Judge, Metro Editor, Ed (Lou Grant) Asner, City Editor Don Agrella

“You did a great job covering Vietnam,” he told me. “And just so you know, the Sun-Times never had a story you didn’t have. It looks like you learned something in my city room, after all, Yates.”

A few years later, while I was based in Los Angeles for the Tribune, I met with actor Ed Asner, who at the time was playing the part of Lou Grant, City Editor of the fictional Los Angeles Tribune.  It was 1978, and Lou Grant was one of the top TV shows in America.

Asner asked me if I thought his portrayal of a tough city editor was accurate. I told him he should go to Chicago and watch Don Agrella at work. He actually did do that, and one day, when Don wasn’t expecting it, Asner walked into the Tribune city room and yelled; “Agrella, Hat and Coat!”

I wish I could have seen that. I’m sure Don thought it was a hoot.

When Don retired from the Tribune in 1979, it was unquestionably the end of an era. He was an old-school newspaperman leaving at a time when the business was on the verge of changing in ways that make many veteran hacks like me, sad.

Once in the 1990s a bunch of us Agrella disciples gathered for lunch at Ricardo’s (once a classic hangout for Chicago news people). Don was in town from Florida where he had retired. I had just returned to Chicago from Tokyo where for the past seven years, I had been the paper’s Chief Asia Correspondent and Tokyo bureau chief.

“Well Don,” I asked. “Are you ready to come back to the Tribune city room?”

“What city room?” he replied. “The place looks like an insurance office. I couldn’t work there. There’s no noise.”

I realize today that I was one of the lucky ones. I got to work in a REAL big city newspaper newsroom with its clamor and clatter and its palpable turmoil and tension. I can still recall the muffled grumble and shuddering of the newsroom floor when the vast banks of old presses started six levels below.

When the Tribune’s presses began to roll it was the highpoint of the day because on those presses was the culmination of a day’s hard work by a legion of highly dedicated and talented people.

Yes, I was one of the lucky ones. Not only did I get to work in a noisy, dynamic newsroom, but I got to work for Don Agrella: a City Editor who was, without a doubt, indeed “Extraordinaire.”

(Click on the link below to view a video in which a few of today’s Tribune staffers share memories of working in Tribune Tower. Sadly, few, if any of the zany characters that made working in the old pre-computer newsroom an unforgettable experience, are around to share their memories.)

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-flash-tower-memories-tribune-moving-0610-20180605-story.html

 

 

Book Tour: The Staircase of Fire by author Ben Woodard

Today, ForeignCorrespondent is pleased to participate in a book tour coordinated by BeachBoundBooks for The Staircase of Fire, a new young adult mystery by Ben Woodard. The tour began May 23 and runs until June 13, 2018.

[image error]       Ben Woodard

About the Author

Ben is a (mostly) retired amateur adventurer who has traveled across Tibet, climbed to 18,000 feet on Mt. Everest, and solo backpacked wilderness areas. Now his adventures come in the form of imagining stories, writing and telling them to kids and teens. He works with teachers, schools and literacy organizations spreading the word that books are vital—and fun.

Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads| Google+

Author’s Website | Publisher’s Website | Netgalley

About The Staircase of Fire

 Summary: A quiet town in Kentucky explodes from a racial incident and fourteen-year-old Tom Wallace is in the thick of it. His past haunts him and  now  he’s witness to a horrific event leaving him devastated and afraid. He must escape his town and its memories. But leaving has consequences, too. He will have to betray his friends and his new love.

Nothing stops his nightmares. Not high risk activities or running away. But when his past returns, Tom is forced to confront his greatest fear and finally realizes he cannot escape himself. Now he has to take a stand that could change his life—or end it.

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Title: The Staircase of Fire (A Shakertown Adventure, Book 3)

Author: Ben Woodard

Genre: Young Adult Mystery

Number of Pages: 276

Publisher: Miller-Martin Press

Publication Date: May 25, 2018

“…a highly recommended pick for teens looking for something different…”

D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

iTunes | Kobo| Barnes & Noble | Amazon |Indie Bound | Publisher

Other books in the series…

  A Stairway to Danger (A Shakertown Adventure, Book 1)

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An eyeless body. A menacing stranger. And a tangled mystery.

It’s the summer of 1923 and two cousins hunting for hidden gold stumble on an decayed body. Fourteen-year-old Tom Wallace is convinced the death was murder and drags his older cousin into a harrowing struggle against a shadowy group. Not even attempts on their lives can stop the boys from relentlessly pursuing the mystery. But when their curiosity leads them to investigate a derelict barge, what they find is bigger and more dangerous than anything they could have imagined.

A STAIRWAY TO DANGER is a fun-filled thriller with humor and adventure in a Twain-like setting.

Winner! Orangeberry Hall of Fame Best Young Adult novel for 2013

Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Steps Into Darkness (A Shakertown Adventure, Book 2)

Explosions, sabotage, deadly warnings, and a dangerous red-haired man. Imagine The Hardy Boys meet Tom Sawyer. Add a layer of teen angst and excitement plus a mysterious group stirring up racial tensions.

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That’s STEPS INTO DARKNESS, the second book in the Shakertown Adventure Series by Ben Woodard.

Fourteen-year-old Tom Wallace again makes plans to escape the small town in the 1923 Kentucky countryside—the town that won’t let him forget his past, when a horrific event changes his mind. He teams with his cousin, Will, and young FBI agent Rick Sweeney to solve a perplexing mystery. Attempts on the boys’ lives and a bewildering list of suspects keep them on edge and confused until they discover the real villain—and then wish they hadn’t.

STEPS INTO DARKNESS is a fun, page-turning thriller with a hint of romance that delivers adventure and mystery while exploring the fears of a teen living with a frightful memory.

Amazon | Kobo | Barnes & Noble

Here is a link to Ben Woodard’s Amazon Author Page where you can check out his prodigious and profuse production of books: https://www.amazon.com/Ben-Woodard/e/B005J3HR1S/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1527113219&sr=1-2-ent

This book tour was coordinated by BeachBoundBooks https://www.beachboundbooks.com/

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The Lost Years of Billy Battles Now Live on Amazon!

HOORAH! The Lost Years of Billy Battles (E-Book edition) is NOW live on Amazon. ASIN:  B07DKD5MYX.

Thanks for your patience, if you have been waiting for it since May 29 (as many of you have).

The softcover version of this last book in the Finding Billy Battles Trilogy will take another week or two before it hits the shelves.

Here is the Amazon link:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=The+Lost+Years+of+Billy+Battles

I want to especially thank my Editor, Susan Hughes and my First Readers for their exceptional work in going over the book with incomparable assiduousness. (Billy Battles would NEVER use those last two words!)

Once again, thank you for your patience if you have been waiting and if you haven’t been waiting, I hope you will give The Lost Years of Billy Battles a look see.

With gratitude,

Ron Yates

 

Book Tour: Jan Sikes & Her Award-Winning Book, “Home at Last.”

Today, ForeignCorrespondent is pleased to host award-winning author Jan Sikes as she continues her Spotlight Author tour for her book, Home at Last.

 Jan is not only an excellent writer, but she is also an accomplished musician. Home at Last, is part of a series of four biographical books about a Texas musician who is a pioneer in the Outlaw Music movement, a subgenre of traditional Country & Western music. Along with each book, Jan also released a music cd of original songs that fit the time period of the story. Why? Because the stories revolve and evolve around a passion for music.  

[image error] Jan Sikes

For the uninitiated, Outlaw Music is best represented by C&W singers such as Willie Nelson, Shooter Jennings, Tanya Tucker, Merle Haggard, Sturgill Simpson, Johnny Paycheck, Jessi Colter, Hank Williams, Jr. and Waylon Jennings.

And I would add that Jan Sikes who, like Johnny B. Goode, can “play a guitar just like a-ringin’ a bell,” belongs in that line up too!

Read on as Jan discusses Home at Last.

 ABOUT  HOME AT LAST

The third book in the series was originally intended to be one book. But, it got too long, and I had to divide it up.

The biggest challenge was deciding where to end it. I finally concluded that I needed to end it on an upbeat note with the beginning of a new music career.

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After much editing and re-writing, I was satisfied with it.

But, I made a mistake in this book that a multitude of readers never caught until one day, a reader discovered that I had inadvertently used Rick’s name instead of Luke’s in a passage.

Don Kirk: 50 Years of Covering Asia

(Today I am pleased to re-run a story that recently appeared in the Asia Times about my former Chicago Tribune colleague Don Kirk. In the piece, Don talks about the changes he has witnessed during 50 years of covering a tumultuous, changing Asia. Don was one of the most persistent, aggressive, and prolific reporters ever to cover Asia. We worked together for a short while when I was named the Tribune’s Tokyo bureau chief, and Don was headed for a journalism fellowship back in the U.S. Not long after that Don left the Tribune, but we bumped into one another often over the years when we were covering the same stories. Few American journalists have ever covered Asia as long and comprehensively as Don Kirk. My thanks to the Asia Times. Read on!)

By ANDREW SALMON

[image error] Don Kirk at the Tiger’s Nest Temple in Bhutan.                 Photo: www.donkirk.com

Tables were thumped, bottles were emptied and off-key songs resounded in Seoul’s La Cantina – the oldest Italian restaurant in South Korea – on a recent Saturday evening as foreign correspondents gathered to celebrate the 80th birthday of one of their number: Don Kirk, an American journalist who has been reporting on Asia since 1965.

Since that year, the still-working old Asia hand has built up a formidable clipping file of stories covering everything from Vietnam’s Tet offensive to Korea’s “Economic Miracle,” while also finding time to pen a shelfful of books and amass families on three continents.

Living dangerously

The New Jersey native was first bitten by the journalistic bug as a student, doing summer reporting for his local paper The Plain Field New Jersey Courier News. “I was covering the board of education, the town council, the police and rewriting a lot of press releases from churches and the Lions’ Club,” he said. “I really wanted that job: It paid US$55 per week, and looking at inflation now, it was not that terrible!”

More distant horizons soon beckoned. Kirk first traveled to Asia in 1962 when, as a Fulbright Scholar, he flew to New Delhi to undertake a project on the Indian media. After an interregnum in New York and Chicago, in 1965, he paid his own way to Hong Kong, where he found work a sub-editor of the South China Morning Post, before decamping to Vietnam in the early days of the US troop build-up for a story on black GIs.

Then it was Indonesia, where an abortive coup took place. For the chaotic island nation, this would be “The Year of Living Dangerously.”

“I was stringing for a bunch of papers including the New York Times, the Washington Star and the Daily Telegraph, traveling around Indonesia,” he recalled. “About 300,000 people were killed in that bloodbath.” Despite the scale of the carnage, he was not unduly traumatized, courtesy of prior experience in inner cities in the US. “I had previously covered stories in Chicago, and New York so had covered the run of fire, police, and scandal.”

[image error] Don Kirk and an F18 aboard the USS George Washington. Photo: www.donaldkirk.com

His most vivid memory was the sacking of the Chinese Embassy. “I covered the riot and the sacking of the Chinese embassy and remember this Chinese diplomat screaming in the face of the foreign minister,” Kirk said, reflecting on reporters’ luck: “I remember the NBC correspondent left the day before and missed that story!”

But there was more pressing business for US reporters in Southeast Asia that year: America was shifting from military advice to kinetic engagement in South Vietnam. Kirk returned to the country with Businessweek, “for a story on the economy and all the great things the Americans were doing there, the prospects for US investment – but really, I was interested in covering the war.”

The draw of war

With America’s eyes increasingly focusing on Vietnam, Kirk relocated to Saigon. The press corps there would expand across the greatest playground for war correspondents in modern history.

“We were a disputatious group, some good people, some not so good people – I won’t say who fell into which category!” Once accredited and armed with a Military Assistance Command Vietnam press pass, reporters had the run of the war. “You had incredible freedom; you could jump onto a helicopter and go just about anywhere free of charge,” he said. “You could go on patrol, you could go on and off bases and into officers clubs, just by showing your press card. You don’t have that freedom now, partly as a reaction against Vietnam.”

[image error] Don Kirk’s wartime Saigon apartment is now Cafe 39. Photo: www.donaldkirk.com

A firewall rose between field reporters and bureau journalists. “There were some guys who were gusty and covered a whole lot of stuff out of town, and some who stayed in wire service bureaus and did not get out but were quite well known. Some freelancers wrote brilliant stuff.”

Kirk was in the midst of some of the heaviest fighting as the communist Tet Offensive was unleashed in 1968. “I was in Danang when word came that they’d hit the embassy and other things, and I saw a lot of fighting,” he said. “I simply asked the troops what the hell was going on – you could do that in those days! You developed a kind of refined sense of where was secure and where was not.”

[image error] Don Kirk just south of the DMZ in 1968 with a broken arm – courtesy of a fall from a  taxiing aircraft at Khe Sanh. Photo: www.donaldkirk.com

He was on hand when the most famous “quote” of the Vietnam War surfaced.

A press briefing was held in a town from which enemy forces had been driven, but with massive collateral damage. Kirk takes up the story. “They gave us a great briefing and this officer was flipping charts, and Peter Arnett piped up, ‘So, you had to destroy this town in order to save it?’ and the major kind of said, ‘You could say that.’ I did not include the quote in my story as the major had not said it, and my editor got back to me and asked, ‘Why did you not include this?’ So Peter Arnett had made his own quote, and that became the watchword of the anti-war movement.”

Still, Kirk got “the best quote of my career” in a similar situation. In another devastated village, he interviewed a civil affairs major who had called in air strikes. “He said, ‘First I annihilate them; then I rehabilitate them!’” Kirk said. “The Pentagon went nuts and came up with all kinds of denials. I suspect that major did not make lieutenant colonel!”

His most dangerous moment gave him an appreciation for the battering the enemy endured. “There was a ceasefire, and I went up a road north of Saigon where the North Vietnamese Army was. They had a big banner, so I went up with my driver and was talking to the NVA when this plane started circling and dropping bombs. We started running back down the road, and you could hear the goddam bombs coming down, and we just fell into the ditch beside the road, we ran through the smoke and then [the pilot] began firing at the NVA with the miniguns in his plane. We got back to where the [South Vietnamese] were. We did not ask why this happened – we were so goddamned relieved we had survived, we just did not give a shit.”

[image error] Don Kirk revisits the Majestic Hotel in Saigon. Photo: www.donaldkirk.com

And between interviews, assignments, and operations, there was the extraordinary social whirl of Saigon. “You got caught up in life in Saigon, which had good restaurants and bars and some of the most delectable bar girls,” he recalled, trying, but failing, to suppress a grin. “It was said that the girls got their basic training from the French and went to grad school with the Americans!”

Tragedies and turmoil

As his byline became known, Kirk spread his wings across the region. “I first came to Korea in 1972 to cover the North and South Red Cross talks, and they were talking family meetings, trade, commerce, getting together, cultural contacts, all that,” he said. “In fact, all they are talking about today – the one difference is they were not talking denuclearization.”

Meanwhile, the US had lost faith in its Vietnam mission. Collapsing morale on the home front was reflected among troops. “I got a sense, interviewing GIs, of their sense of loss,” he said. “They went there to fight a war, and at a certain point, it became clear that we were not fighting to win.” The Americans went home, and in 1975, Kirk was appalled by the falls of Phnom Penh and Saigon. “I thought it was very sad, very tragic; I could not believe that we had basically run out on them,” he said. “People think how terrible we were to the Vietnamese, but two million came to the US.”

Along with communist victories in Southeast Asia, there was turmoil elsewhere in Asia. In 1980, Kirk covered a watershed event in Korea: The uprising in the city of Gwangju, protesting the creeping coup launched by General and subsequently president Chun Do-hwan. “Was it an uprising? A revolt? Were they rebels?” he mused. “They were going around in trucks and waving rifles and shouting slogans, and you could not believe that Chun would let them take over the city.”

Some 200 people were killed as the army retook Gwangju, an event that ignited a simmering fury in Korea that lasts to this day, with many convinced that Washington aided and abetted the generals. “It was an ugly incident and raised questions about what kind of government we were supporting,” Kirk said.

He was also in the Philippines for the “people power” revolution that toppled Ferdinand Marcos. “I had interviewed Marcos a couple of times, and when he was overthrown, you could sneak into Malacanang Palace,” he said. “I went in, and there was still food on the table, plates of uneaten food – they had left in a hurry.”

Back in Korea, he covered protests against an authoritarian government that raged around Seoul before the 1988 Olympics. “I visited the campus of Korea University and saw these hundreds of Molotov cocktails piled up outside the Student Union building,” Kirk said. “The police did not want to invade the campus; they did not want that kind of ugly stuff going up before the 1988 Olympics.”

He missed the massive protests of 1987, in which Korea transitioned to full democracy: “It was just one of those stories,” he said – but he would recall the 1980s protests in 2016 when millions again hit Seoul’s streets to boot out the now-jailed President Park Geun-Hye.

Asia rising

Despite war and turmoil, by the 1980s, Asia’s manufacturers were fighting to the forefront of the global economy, forcing ex-war reporters and political news junkies to transition. “There was this new emphasis on economic reporting,” he noted. “You did not have all this Dow Jones or Reuters Financial or Bloomberg at all, but now economic reporting dominates the press corps, and I got into it myself by interviewing business people, analysts, and specialists.”

Researching a book on Hyundai, Kirk encountered both the opacity and the charisma of Korea’s first-generation conglomerate chairmen. “I had interviews with the top people including [Hyundai founder] Chung Ju-Yung – even in those days it was hard to get an interview – and they were not very revealing, all they wanted to do was talk up Hyundai,” Kirk said.

“Chung knew how to speak in generalities and not reveal much. He was a man of many faces: He could speak soberly, or could put down a person in a very shocking way, or could be genial singing in a karaoke.”

The business of reporting was climbing the technological ladder. “Don’s first posting was in Indonesia where he was the young cub in the group and used to get the taxi out to the airport,” recalled an ex-colleague. “Don was always very good at getting his stories out first.”

Kirk himself revealed the secret. “I sent stuff by cable, and it was going out so slowly, so I struck up a relationship with the cable guy and gave him tea and $20, and I got my copy out faster!” he recalled. In Vietnam, reports went by telex – “I got pretty good at doing telex by myself,” Kirk said – but now the internet has equalized filing speeds for everyone, reducing what used to be cut-throat filing competition.

Looking back, looking forward

Kirk today cuts an avuncular figure among Seoul’s foreign correspondents, most of whom are half his age. He announces himself at the Foreign Press Center with this daily greeting – “What’s the news?” and is noted for an eccentric habit. Whenever free snacks are available, he appears, and the pockets of his sports jackets are customarily filled with loose nuts and cookie crumbs.

By Kirk’s own account, his frugality dates back to Vietnam: “I did not tend to buy drinks for the bar girls, so they used to say, ‘Ah, you cheap Charlie – you number 10!” he admitted.

He was not always so affable, though. “He got banned from a news agency office as he would go in there and look at their stories,” recalled a former colleague. “But reporters in those days were not people with masters’ degrees in international economics, they were a rough and ready crowd, and Don would prod away at his colleagues to make sure he did not miss anything. He burned some sources – people would regret telling him things.”

He retains a reporters’ healthy disrespect for authorities – even the most dictatorial kind. During a 2005 trip to Pyongyang, this writer was summoned to speak to a perplexed North Korean official, who was perusing a list containing visiting reporters’ personal information. I was asked whether I had heard of the university Kirk had attended; the officials had, apparently, never heard of it. On the list, Kirk had reported his alma mater as “The School of Hard Knocks.”

With his gravelly mien, loud voice and habit of barging in, Kirk may be unsuited for an editorial desk or teaching position. Still a field man, he files for outlets ranging from CBS Radio to The Daily Beast and Forbes. “Sometimes when you go somewhere you see or don’t see things by happenstance, but even if you miss them, you still have interesting conversations and experiences – unlike being a professor of journalism,” he said. “I have never, by the way, been a professor of journalism – thought I had taught a few lectures here and there.”

Why, at this late stage, is he still freelancing? “Why not? I am still sort of excited by the story, frankly,” he said. “And I say, ‘I have no job from which to retire. Therefore, I cannot retire, so I keep working!’”

Familial expenses may be one reason. A lothario in years past, Kirk has survived American and Japanese wives and a Philippine relationship; he is now wedded to a Korean. One son has graduated from Cambridge; another is a US Marine.

He has no regrets. “They say the luckiest man in the world has a Japanese wife, a French girlfriend, a Chinese cook and an American car, and I have had them all – though never at the same time.” He adds, after a second, “But now it is no longer an American car!”

Looking forward, he is wary of Beijing. “China is taking the South China Sea, challenging Japan and holds great influence on the Korean peninsula,” he said. “I don’t think China will democratize … [Chinese president] Xi Jinping may go down in history as one of the great leaders, or a terrible dictator.”

He sees Asia’s two giants on a collision path. “China is a lot stronger than India,” he said. “India is getting stronger, but I don’t see India as having the discipline or strength to stand up to China – but India has some good friends, including America.”

In the Trumpian era, Kirk hopes the US will remain engaged. “I felt like we were a severe disappointment to the Vietnamese, we let them down, and now we have a real obligation to the Korean people,” he said.

Although the bulk of his output now comes from Korea, his reportorial heart lies in Vietnam. “The story of my life was Vietnam,” he said. “It was ‘the best of times, the worst of times’ – which is a terrible cliché, but a pretty good line!”

Despite the millions of words he has filed, and all he has witnessed over half a century in Asia, Kirk makes no great claim to wisdom. “People say, ‘We should do this or do that,’ but at the age of 80, I still don’t know,” he said. “I am just a reporter.”

 

Tiananmen Square Diary

Today, much of the world will pause to remember the Tiananmen Square massacre. It occurred 29 years ago June 4, 1989, in China, in the world’s largest square. It was among the more horrific and heartrending stories I covered during my career as a Chicago Tribune foreign correspondent.

As the world focuses on the upcoming meeting between the U.S. and North Korea next Monday, what happened that night in Tiananmen Square seems incomprehensible. Even though China helped broker this historic meeting, just like the China of 1989, the China of 2018 remains a nation of one-party rule replete with human rights violations and corruption. I wonder if the result would be the same if hundreds of thousands of students and other protestors were to occupy Tiananmen Square today. I hope we never have to find out.

      The post that follows contains my recollections of that gruesome night in 1989—one that is indelibly etched into my memory. It’s a little longer than most of my posts, but that bloody night in Tiananmen Square was also one of the longest I ever spent. I hope you will read on. At the end of my post you can click on the link to an interview I did with National Public Radio for the 25th anniversary of the massacre.


China was the world’s biggest story in the summer of 1989 when several hundred thousand students, labor leaders, and other dissidents occupied the 5 million square foot concrete piazza known as Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing. For seven weeks as the world watched, some 500,000 “pro-democracy” demonstrators descended on Beijing’s most sacred site to protest corruption, human rights violations and one-party rule.

The protest would ultimately end in the early morning hours of June 4 with the deaths of at least 800 demonstrators (the Chinese Red Cross puts the number closer to 3,000 with 12,000 wounded) in what the world has come to know as the “Tiananmen Square Massacre.”




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Demonstrators in Tiananmen Before the Massacre

Today all evidence of that bloody night has been obliterated. Tiananmen Square is scrubbed and shimmering as it awaits the hundreds of thousands of summer visitors who will wander past the colossal portrait of Mao Zedong that hangs above the Forbidden City’s Gate of Heavenly Peace on the north end of the plaza and through the mausoleum that displays his waxy remains on the south end.

China today is relatively sanguine and confident. Profits, not protests are the driving force among most Chinese. However, that was not the case in 1989 when Tiananmen Square was turned into a squalid, fetid tent city of protestors.

For many young Chinese, the tragedy that unfolded in Tiananmen Square 29 years ago is ancient history—an event that has been glossed over, covered up and generally purged from the national consciousness by a nation eager to put forth its most dazzling and alluring face for tourists and the international business community.

But on June 3, 1989, as I walked through what is generally regarded as the planet’s largest city square, the world was just a few hours from seeing China at its most ruthless and ugliest.

The square that day was a hot, grubby place, strewn with refuse, canvass tents, and other makeshift dwellings. Under the towering “Heroes of the Nation” obelisk demonstrators cooked rice and soup while others linked arms and sang a spirited rendition of the “Internationale,” the world socialist anthem. Thousands of others dozed under flimsy lean-tos or blasted music from boom boxes.

Near the middle of the square, the 30-foot tall “Goddess of Democracy,” a pasty white statue constructed by art students and made of styrofoam and paper-mâché, stared defiantly at Mao’s giant portrait—almost mocking the founder of modern-day China. A truck swept by periodically spraying billowing clouds of insecticide and disinfectant over everything and everybody in its path.






Goddess of Democracy Statue




Hawkers guiding pushcarts containing ice cream, soft drinks, rice cakes, candy, and film encircled the students doing a brisk business. Even if the students in the square had not been able to topple China’s ruling hierarchy, at least there were profits to be made.

One enterprising entrepreneur raked in several hundred yuan within a few minutes after he began renting stepping stools for the hundreds of amateur photographers and tourists who arrived to have their pictures taken next to students or standing at the base of the “Goddess of Democracy” statue. Tiananmen, I wrote at the time, had evolved into a “Disneyland of Dissent.”

By June 3 the number of students occupying the square had dwindled to about 20,000 as thousands had already packed up and headed back to their provinces. But some students I talked with that afternoon were not ready to leave, and a few shared an intense sense of foreboding.

One of those was Chai Ling. Chai, who had been elected “chief commander” by the dissidents, was the only woman among the seven student leaders of the pro-democracy protests. As we sat cross-legged on the hot pavement, she talked about the protests and just what the students had accomplished during their 7-week-long occupation of Tiananmen.



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Chai Ling in Tiananmen Speaking to Students 1989 




“There will be a price to pay for all of this,” the 23-year-old child psychology graduate warned, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Some people will have to die for democracy, but it will be worth it.”

Chai, the object of a year-long nationwide search by the Chinese government after the violence in the square, would eventually escape China to Hong Kong sealed for five days and nights in a wooden crate deep in the hold of a rickety ship. She managed to elude capture in China by adopting a series of disguises, by learning local Chinese dialects and by working variously as a rice farmer, laborer, and maid. Eventually, she would come to the United States, be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and graduate from the Harvard Business School.

Barely eight hours after my conversation with Chai her warning would become a reality. Late in the evening of June 3 and during the early morning hours of June 4 the lethargy of weary demonstrators and the cacophony of boom box music would be replaced by shrieks of terror, gunfire and the guttural roar of tank and armored personnel carrier engines as the People’s Liberation Army rolled into the square, crushing tents and firing indiscriminately at protesters and anybody else who got in their way.

A couple of hours before the violence erupted a few of us foreign correspondents had enjoyed a quiet meal together in the venerable Beijing Hotel on Chang’an Avenue a few blocks from the square.

While dining we discussed the events of the night before when several thousand young unarmed military recruits were sent marching toward the students in Tiananmen Square. Before they got very far, an estimated 100,000 Chinese civilians poured from their homes near the square and confronted the soldiers—berating them for even thinking of entering Tiananmen to clear it of the thousands of students who had occupied it since late April.

This rather benign event was nothing more than a probe to determine what kind of resistance armed troops might face when they stormed the square. For several weeks some 200,000 Chinese troops—most from provinces far away from Beijing—had been massing on the outskirts of the city.

As Beijing entered its 15th day of martial law, it was also obvious that the government was still unable to enforce that decree. The government did admonish members of the foreign media to “observe regulations on news coverage” as they relate to martial law.

“Foreign journalists must not talk with student protesters, and any news coverage of any kind in Beijing must receive prior approval,” said a statement by Ding Weijun, spokesman for the city.

The statement also warned the hundreds of foreign reporters still in Beijing against inviting Chinese citizens to their offices, homes or hotels to conduct “interviews regarding prohibited activities.” Several foreign reporters had been expelled from the country for violating those rules.

Many of us ignored those edicts and talked to anybody who wanted to speak anywhere that was deemed away from the prying eyes and ears of government authorities. I also ignored the curfew, often riding my red and white Sprick bicycle down dark streets from my hotel to the Tribune’s offices that were located in a foreign housing compound a half-mile away. I got to know most of the Chinese police who were supposed to enforce the curfew. They would smile and wave as I peddled past.



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Aboard my Sprick Bicycle




The morning of June 3, once again ignoring marital law rules, I took the Tribune car and my nervous Chinese driver, and we drove outside of the square and into several neighborhoods where streets leading toward Tiananmen had been shut down by angry civilians intent on keeping the Chinese Army from reaching the students. Dozens of intersections were blocked with buses, trucks, and makeshift barricades. Neighborhood leaders proudly showed me their arsenal of weapons—rows of gasoline-filled bottles complete with cloth wicks, piles of rocks and bricks, shovels, rakes, picks and other garden tools.

“We will protect the students,” a man named Liang Hong, told me.

“But how?” I asked. “The army has tanks, machine guns, and armored personnel carriers. They will kill you.”

“Then we will die,” he replied. Several dozen others quickly echoed his words. “Yes, we will all die. These are our children in the square. We must help them even if it means death.”

Several days after the attack on the square when the authorities allowed people to travel once again in the city, I drove back to this same neighborhood. True to their word, I was told that Liang Hong and several of his neighbors had died or were wounded attempting to keep the army from entering the square.

After dinner in the Beijing Hotel, I decided to take one more stroll through the square. As I rode into the square on the bicycle I had purchased after my arrival in Beijing from Tokyo two weeks before, I could see that many of the students were obviously spooked—not only by the unarmed incursion of the night before but by the intelligence pouring in from the neighborhoods surrounding the square that the army was on the move.

“I think something will happen tonight,” one of them told me. “I am very afraid.”

I stopped at the foot of the Goddess of Democracy. The statue was illuminated by a couple of small spotlights as it looked toward the Forbidden City and Mao’s portrait. On the edge of the square, I bought a bottle of Coca-Cola then pushed my bicycle toward the four-story KFC restaurant on the south end of the square. It was about 8:30 p.m. and the restaurant (the largest KFC store in the world) was almost empty.

I then rode the 2 miles down Jianguomenwei Avenue to the Jianguo Hotel where I was staying. I needed to file a story on the day’s events—specifically my conversation with Chai Ling and the other students that afternoon. I finished writing my story around 10 p.m. and decided, despite the curfew, to ride my bicycle back to the square for one more look around. I parked my bike on Xuanwumen Dong Avenue near the hulking Museum of History and Revolution on the east side of the square and began walking toward the “Heroes of the Nation” obelisk which had become the headquarters for the students.

I hadn’t gotten very far when the sound of gunfire erupted. The firing seemed everywhere, amplified by the massive buildings that surrounded the square. I ran toward my bicycle, not wanting to be trapped in the square should tanks roll in. Moments later I ran into BBC correspondent Kate Adie who was walking toward the square with her camera crew.

“What’s going on,” she asked.

“Looks like the army is making a move tonight,” I answered. I explained that I hadn’t seen any troops or tanks in the square at that point, but I did see muzzle flashes from the roof of the Great Hall of the People on the west side of the square. A day before several hundred troops had massed behind the Great Hall and I assumed they had been positioned on the roof.

I rode my bicycle north toward Chang’an Avenue and hadn’t gotten very far when I noticed a line of Armored Personnel Carriers moving toward the square flanked by hundreds of soldiers with fixed bayonets. Seconds later the dark sky was interlaced by red and yellow tracer fire, and I could hear bullets ricocheting off of concrete. I turned my bike around and raced back toward the south end of the square. Like a lot of my fellow correspondents, I never thought the government would use deadly force against the students.

As the firing intensified thousands of more residents poured out of their houses and formed human blockades where streets entered the square. They quickly became targets for the machine gun and small arms fire. As the casualties mounted, the crowds became increasingly belligerent. They armed themselves with bricks, bottles, iron rods and wooden clubs and attacked some of the military contingents, including tanks.

An infuriated mob grabbed one soldier and set him afire after dousing him with gasoline. They then hung his still smoldering body from a pedestrian overpass. It was one of the many examples of instant justice meted out that night. The crowd accused the soldier of having shot an old woman to death.

I watched the wounded and the dead being carted from the square and the area surrounding it on the flatbeds of three-wheeled vehicles. The stinging stench of tear gas hovered over the embattled city and burned my eyes.



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Carting the Wounded out of the Square




“Tell the world!” the crowds screamed at me and other foreign journalists they saw. “Tell the United States! Tell the truth! We are students! We are common people-unarmed, and they are killing us!”

Around 2 a.m. at the height of the armed assault, a maverick tank careened down Jianguomenwai Avenue in an attempt to crack open the way for troop convoys unable to pass through the milling crowds.

With its turret closed, the tank was bombarded with stones and bottles as it sped down the avenue. Young cyclists headed it off, then slowed to bring it to a halt. But the tank raced on, the cyclists deftly avoiding its clattering treads by mere inches.

On the Jianguomenwai bridge over the city’s main ring road, where a 25-truck convoy had been marooned for hours by a mass of angry civilians clambering all over it, a tank raced through the crowd. It sideswiped one of the army trucks, and a young soldier who was clinging to its side was flung off and killed instantly.

The worst fighting of the night occurred around the Minzu Hotel, west of the square, where grim-faced troops opened fire with tracer rounds on milling crowds blocking their access to the square. Bullets ripped into the crowd and scores of people were wounded. The dead and wounded were thrown on the side of the road among a pile of abandoned bicycles as the troops moved on to take the square.



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Dead and Wounded Amid Abandoned Bicycles




One tank ran into the back of another that had stalled on Chang’an Avenue. As they hurriedly bounced apart, the machine guns on their turrets began to train on an approaching crowd of about 10,000. The machine guns erupted, sending tracers above the heads of the crowd. Men and women scurried for cover, many crawling into the piles of dead and wounded along the side of the road.

In my haste to return to the square, I had forgotten to bring my camera. Even though it was night, the square was illuminated by street lamps and the sky above it was lit almost continuously with tracers and bright flares. I decided not to ride my bicycle to avoid becoming a larger target. At the same time, I didn’t want to lose the only form of transportation I had, so I pushed it wherever I went, sometimes crouching behind it. Finally, I found a small tree and padlocked it to the trunk.

For most of the night, I found myself caught between trying to cover the tragedy unfolding in and around the square and watching my back. I didn’t want to be caught in the sites of some trigger happy soldier.

At one point several hundred troops successfully occupied a corner of the square and I watched as a crowd of some 3,000 howling unarmed students surged toward them on foot and by bicycle, intent on breaking through their line with their bare hands. A few in front of the main body rammed their bikes into the troops and were quickly beaten to the ground by soldiers using the butts of their rifles or clubs.




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Dead Demonstrators Piled in a Hospital Hallway

“Fascists! Murderers!” the crowd chanted.

As the main body of the crowd got within 50 yards of the first line of troops, an army commander blew a whistle, and the soldiers turned and fired volleys of automatic rifle fire. Screams of pain followed.

The protesters threw themselves and their bikes on the pavement of the Avenue of Eternal Peace. Dragging their bikes behind them, they crawled to safety, pursued by rifle fire and the throaty war cries of the soldiers.

When the firing momentarily stopped, the crowd regrouped and slowly crept back toward the square. Then the volleys rang out again, more intense this time. Two lines of soldiers began to chase the mob, alternately firing tear gas and bullets. I watched several people stagger and fall to the ground.

The acrid smell of tear gas triggered a paroxysm of coughing in the crowd. People ripped off shirt sleeves and used them as handkerchiefs over their mouths. The bodies of three women were laid out on the pavement of a side street to await transport. A crowd gathered around them, waving fists and cursing the government.

“How many people did you kill?” they shouted at steel-helmeted soldiers who stood stonily with AK-47 assault rifles cradled across their chests.

The fighting continued throughout the night as exhausted students and other dissidents engaged in hit and run battles with soldiers, tanks, and APC’s. Some students, many of them wounded, scrambled aboard abandoned buses seeking refuge and aid. I watched soldiers pull them out and beat them with heavy clubs.



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Students Confront APC’s in the Square




Several of the students, bleeding from head wounds, ran toward where I had taken cover behind a low stone wall. One of the students, a girl of maybe 16, had been shot through the shoulder and was bleeding profusely. She was falling in and out of consciousness and looked to be in shock. I looked behind me to see if there was some way to get her assistance.

In the distance, I saw a man waving at me from a doorway of a brick wall. He was motioning me to bring the girl and other wounded students to him, all the while carefully watching for soldiers. I pulled her up and with the help of another reporter, dashed with her and several other wounded students to the gate. The man quickly wrapped a blanket around the girl and took her inside the compound with the other students.

“Thank you,” he said. “I am a doctor. I will take care of them.”

I jogged back to the low wall where I had been kneeling before. I recall thinking that if I were wounded at least, I now knew where I could go for help. For the next few hours, I moved from one location to another, trying to find a spot where I could see what was happening while making sure I had an escape route should I come under fire.

The square was finally cleared at dawn when four personnel carriers raced across it, flattening not only the tents of the demonstrators but the “Goddess of Liberty” statue. I looked at my watch. It was about 5:30 and dawn was breaking over the city.

Ten minutes later a negotiated settlement allowed the hard-core remnants of the democracy movement—some 5,000 students and their supporters—to leave by the southeastern corner of the square. As they left singing the Internationale, troops ritually beat them with wooden clubs and metal rods.

 The army had been ordered to clear the Square by 6 a.m, and it had done so but at a terrible cost.

As daylight broke over the Avenue of Eternal Peace dazed knots of Chinese, many of them weeping and all of them angry at their government, stood at intersections, reliving the events of a few hours before when tracer bullets and flares turned the black Beijing sky into a deadly torrent of crimson.

Along the roadside leading into the square lay several wounded, some perhaps already dead.

“They murdered the people. . . . They just shot the people down like dogs, with no warning,” said a man whose shirt was soaked with blood. “I carried a woman to an ambulance, but I think she was dead.”

“Please,” he said, “you must tell the world what has happened here. We need your protection from our government.”

Perhaps the defining moment of the massacre came a bit later that morning when a student jumped in front of a column of tanks on Chang’an Avenue and refused to move. This student, as yet still unidentified, shouted at the tank commander: “Get out of my city. … You’re not wanted here.” Each time the tank would attempt to maneuver around the student, he would jump in front of it. The column of tanks turned off their motors and then several other students ran out and pulled the student to safety. To this day nobody is sure who the student was or what happened to him. Most Chinese still refer to him as the “tank man.”



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The Still Unidentified “Tank Man” Confronting Tanks




I walked back to where I had left my bicycle and rode to the Jianguo Hotel. As I peddled along mostly deserted streets, I tried to make sense out of what I had seen. With the students already dispersing from the square or planning to, the attack by the army was unnecessarily brutal.

There was little doubt that what I had witnessed was an assault designed to punish the demonstrators for embarrassing China’s leadership—Premiere Li Peng and Deng Xiaoping, the ailing leader of China’s Communist Party.

China’s hard-line rulers, clearly in control after the bloodbath, issued a statement that morning that said:

“Thugs frenziedly attacked People’s Liberation Army troops, seizing weapons, erecting barricades and beating soldiers and officers in an attempt to overthrow the government of the People’s Republic of China and socialism.”

China’s leaders have not forgotten the pro-democracy demonstrations of 1989. Unnerved by turbulence among Tibetans and always nervous about the possibility of human rights protests in the heart of the capital, China barred live television coverage from Tiananmen Square during the 2008 Beijing Olympics—just as it had in 1989. It will probably do the same on the 29th anniversary of the slaughter.

However, it remains to be seen whether or not such a ban will exorcise the ghosts of June 4, 1989, that still hang over Tiananmen Square. There is little doubt that time has not healed the deep wounds inflicted on China’s people that terrible night 29 years ago.

CLICK HERE FOR MY INTERVIEW WITH NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO ON THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MASSACRE. (Note: there are two links that will take you to the NPR site. The top link on the NPR site is a shorter edited interview and the bottom link is an extended interview.

https://will.illinois.edu/player/audio/tiananmen-square-diary

Interview with author Marcha Fox

Today it’s a great pleasure to welcome Marcha Fox to ForeignCorrespondent.

Marcha is a multi-talented author of science fiction novels—a genre for which she is uniquely qualified given her more than 20 years’ experience at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas where she was a technical writer, engineer, and manager. She also holds a degree in physics from Utah State University, which was but a prelude to her interest in the unexplained mysteries of the cosmos.

Inspired by her love of science fiction to pursue a career in a technical field, Marcha hopes to instill the same fascination in young readers by including a tantalizing dose of accurate science in her stories, which are written in the tradition of classic hard sci-fi.

[image error]      Marcha Fox

Born in Peekskill, New York, she has lived in California, Utah, and Texas in the course of raising her family. The mother of six children, grandmother to 17, and so far, great-grandmother to five, Marcha’s never at a loss for something to do. Besides writing, she’s a professional astrologer and amateur astronomer who pampers her two Bengal cats and a sassy tuxedo while trying to keep up with her friends, family, and home situated on a half-acre of weeds in the Texas Hill Country.

Please join me for my interview with Marcha.

Q.     When did you first realize you wanted to be a writer?

When I was old enough to hold a pencil, or maybe even a crayon. I remember writing a story in 1st grade about me and my next door neighbor. In 6th grade, I was writing science fictions stories about the extraterrestrial origins of our teachers.

Q.     What advice would you give to someone who wants to become a published author?

Realize that this is not something that happens overnight and if you think you’re going to make a living doing it anytime soon, think again. The odds of becoming a bestselling author and making huge sums of money are about the same as if you went to Hollywood to get a job as an actor or actress. Nonetheless, if writing is in your blood and it’s something you can’t ignore, get all the practice you can, read voraciously, study others’ work, and never give up. If you want to earn a living writing, then get a job as a journalist or technical writer.

Q.     What do you think makes a good story?

A personal connection with the characters is critical, so you live the story vicariously through their eyes. Emotional involvement is essential. If a book can make me laugh and cry, it’s usually one I’ll remember and even read again someday. Vivid imagery is important, too. I’m a visual person, so this also makes an impression on me. If a story is all action and dialog, I’m usually not very impressed. Learning something thanks to an author’s research is another factor that I look for, whether it’s about human nature, science, history, geography, or cultural.

Q.     If your book became a movie, who would be your first choice to play the lead roles? 

I did a dream cast reveal for my series on my blog back in 2015. Here’s the link: https://marcha2014.wordpress.com/2015/02/13/release-date-countdown-with-dream-cast-reveal/  

  Here’s the list. Since I came up with this a few years back, the ones noted to play the kids are probably too old now. Oh, well.

Creena: Taylor Dooley

Dirck: Jason Behr

Laren: Josh Brolin

Sharra: Wendy Benson

Deven: Preston Bailey

Jen: Gerard Butler

Bryl: Senna Guemmour

Troy: Ben Bass

For Gabe, the botanist in “The Terra Debacle: Prisoners at Area 51”, I  think the actor who narrated the audiobook, T. W. Ashworth, would be perfect!

Thyron, the telepathic walking planet, would obviously have to be animated.

Q.     What’s your favorite under-appreciated novel?

There are dozens, so I couldn’t begin to name just one.

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Q.     Do any of your characters have qualities/characteristics that are similar to  yourself?

I think they all have some part of me, whether it’s the scientist, mother, manager, friend, adventurer, or astrologer. Either that or they’re people I’d like to know, or I’ve compiled from those I have known, for good or ill. LOL. Then there’s Thyron, the telepathic walking plant who’s the protagonist in “The Terra Debacle: Prisoners at Area 51.”  He may be more like me than any of the others, though he’s a lot smarter than I am.

Q.     Is being a writer a curse or a gift?

I think it’s both. A curse because it’s something I just have to do, regardless of how frustrating it can be at times, yet a gift, because it’s so satisfying and fun when I’m really on a roll with my muse, the two of us flying along at Mach 10, or perhaps the speed of thought.

Q.    Where do you write and how long on average does it take you to write a book?

I have a desktop computer in my home office where I do most my writing.       However, the best ideas can come anytime or anywhere, such as doing something entirely mindless, e.g., mowing, pulling weeds, doing dishes, vacuuming, or even cleaning the cat litter box.

I don’t really know how long it takes me to write a book. If I focus on it and don’t let anything else get in the way (hahaha), I can get a draft out in about six weeks, but that’s only the skeleton. After that, it depends on how much research I have to do, editing it as much as possible myself, eventually working with beta readers, incorporating their comments, then the final edit.

Thus, I’d say no less than a year.  In a way, I’m one of those people who never finishes a book but rather abandons it, because new ideas keep coming at me for plot twists, character personality glimpses, or imagery/descriptions. So after I think I’m done, I really need to let it sit for at least six months while all this processes through. I definitely write in layers and continue to refine it for quite a while after I thought it was done.

It’s easy to incorporate changes in ebooks, but a bit more of a nuisance with the print versions. Thus, with this next one, I need to remember not to think it’s done when I type “The End.” For me, that’s only the beginning of the end.

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Q.     How do you market your books? What avenues work best?

This is probably the most frustrating part of writing for me. I’m an introvert at heart and have a hard time with self-promotion. I do a lot of tweeting, have Facebook pages, a blog, and websites. I’ve probably had the most success with author groups like we have at RRBC.  There’s so much competition out there, and we also wind up in a do-loop where places like bookstores and libraries aren’t interested if you don’t already have a big following, yet if you can’t get the book out there, how do you find readers? I live in a rural area, which makes it more difficult, too, for me to get out there and connect with people face-to-face.

Paid advertising has been a bust, too. If I weren’t one of those “born writers” who HAS to write, I’d avoid this occupation like the plague. I’ve written all my life, but now that I’m retired and don’t have to make a living at it, I can indulge in being an author, but the income is pretty pathetic.

People out there want books for free, which are easy to find these days, then every time you turn around you’re paying for services unless you do it yourself, which is what I try to do. This, of course, cuts into my writing time. It’s almost a year since my last book came out and I haven’t done any serious writing other than reviews and blogs since. If there’s a panacea out there for marketing, I haven’t found it, and as you can see it’s easy for me to go on a rant about it.

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I make most my income from my astrology clients via my valkyrieastrology.com website and my astrology book, “Whobeda’s Guide to Basic Astrology.” Next to that, I make some helping other authors with cover design, formatting, editing, and creating book trailer videos, which I do through my website kallioperisingpress.com. However, writing fiction is where my heart is, but as you can probably figure out, there isn’t much time left.

Q.     Is anything in your books based on real-life experiences or are they all solely the product of your imagination?  

Since I write science fiction and worked for NASA for over twenty years, that experience definitely had a bearing on my writing. Raising six children certainly had an influence, as well as my life in general. But my books are entirely fiction, though they’re based on things that interest me. When you figure I’m a physicist who’s also a professional astrologer, you can see that my interests are rather diverse. I love weird stuff, i.e., mysteries of the universe, quantum physics, metaphysics, psychic phenomena, conspiracy theories, etc. There’s a lot of fodder there for stories.

Q.     If you could have dinner with one person, dead or alive, who would it be and why?

[image error]      Richard P. Feynman

Without a doubt, it would be Richard P. Feynman, who’s unfortunately dead. He was such a fun and interesting character to say nothing of being a brilliant physicist. His book “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman” shows that a scientist at the genius level doesn’t have to be dry and boring. Or politically correct.

Q.     What books have most influenced your life?

Over the years I’ve done a lot of DIY psychotherapy. LOL. Along those lines, “Your Erroneous Zones” by Wayne Dyer; “Feelings Buried Alive Never Die” by Karol Kuhn Truman; “The Emotion Code” by Bradley Nelson; “Journey of Souls” and “Destiny of Souls” by Michael Newton, and a host of astrology books, which are the original source for psychological analysis, as Carl Jung discovered, which have all had a huge impact. I’ve gotta say that I’ve learned more about myself and human nature in general from astrology than anywhere else.

Q.     If it were mandatory for everyone to read three books, what books would you suggest?

First, at least one of Michael Newton’s books, either “Journey of Souls” or “Destiny of Souls.” Next, Linda Goodman’s “Love Signs,” which contains a wealth of information about relationships based on astrological compatibility. Last, but not least, one or more of mine, preferably print copies, because I could really use the money.

Q.     If you could spend a day picking the brain of one author, who would that be?  Why?

I’d like to pick the brain of Dr. Steven Greer. He’s written numerous nonfiction books about UFOs and weird stuff like that, which fascinate me. He’s a medical doctor who would have no reason to lie about any of that stuff, and I’d like to know more about how he knows what he does.

  If you mean a fiction author, it would be very hard for me to name only one. If I had to, it would probably be Corbin Duke, one of the authors of “The Worst Man on Mars.” That was one of the funniest books I’ve ever read, other than Scott Skipper’s “Alien Affairs” series, and I can always use a good laugh.

Q.     What do you think makes a book “a great book?”

For me, authentic, interesting characters who come to life, an unpredictable, complex plot with plenty of suspense due to lots of twists, a strong philosophical message beneath it all that makes me think and see things a bit differently, probably politically incorrect, and strong emotional involvement such that it makes me laugh out loud one moment and cry the next.

[image error]    A book signing

Q.     What’s next for Marcha Fox?

After I return from the Space Coast Book Lovers Conference in Florida this June, I hope to get busy working on my next one, which I started a couple of years ago. I put it aside to write “The Terra Debacle,” which it turned out had elements in it that have a bearing on this final book in the series, which will stand alone, yet ultimately tie all my other books together.

It’s called “Dark Circles” and will have a slightly deeper, darker side than the others. Maybe one of the reasons I haven’t gotten too far with it is because I’m intimidated by everything I want to include (like my definition above of a “great book”), besides tying up all the loose ends of my stories.

I’m also going to have the Star Trails Tetralogy series made into audiobooks. “The Terra Debacle” just came out as one, which I hope will stimulate interest in the series as a whole.

Check out this excerpt from Dark Circles, Marcha’s new novel in progress; It is on the Rave Writers International Society of Authors website: https://marcha2014.wordpress.com/2017/08/20/watch-rwisa-write-showcase-tour-day-21/

My thanks to Marcha for joining me today. I highly recommend that you check out her books on Amazon and elsewhere. You won’t be disappointed! 

Here are Marcha’s social media links. Buy links for her books and the audiobook are on her website.

Amazon Author Page:  http://www.amazon.com/Marcha-Fox/e/B0074RV16O/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6481953.Marcha_A_Fox

Author Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/marchafoxauthor

Author Website:  http://www.StarTrailsSaga.com

Bublish Author Page:  https://www.bublish.com/author/view/3111

Twitter:  https://twitter.com/startrailsIV

Blog Page: http://marcha2014.wordpress.com/

Tumblr:  http://startrailsiv.tumblr.com

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/pub/marcha-fox/86/440/326/

Google+:  google.com/+MarchaFoxAuthor

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/kallioperisingp/

YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZsgOqTmtMFutwU3lt4RByQ

 

 

 

Honored to be selected as Rising Writer for May 2018

The Rave Writers International Society of Authors (RWISA) has honored yours truly as its Rising Writer for May 2018. I am honored by this selection. RWISA is an exclusive community of talented writers and I feel privileged to have been invited to join, let alone to be selected for this honor.

Here is a link to a very short video RWISA has produced about me. Please take a look if you have time.  https://ravewriters.wordpress.com/rwisa-rising-writer/

In the meantime, I want to thank all of you who have supported me, my blog, and my books.

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Coincidentally, this honor coincides with the May 29 release of Book #3 in the Finding Billy Battles trilogy (The Lost Years of Billy Battles).

I hope you will pick up either an e-book or softcover version of the book and let me know what you think of it.

 

 

Meet Maretha Botha, RRBC Spotlight Author

It is my pleasure today to host Maretha Botha, author of “Fauna Park Tales” a series of children’s books that focuses on the animal world. These are wonderful books. Please read on. . . .

 “I’ve received a few free gifts – one is the gift of life and another the gift of choice – and so I choose to live my life positively, despite life’s many ups and downs,  hoping that tomorrow will always be better.”

― M.M. Botha

Maretha Botha is an Italian National who grew up in South Africa. She and her family now live in the United Kingdom. She has written and illustrated a series of children’s books, “Fauna Park Tales” for 9-14 years old, but she is convinced that anyone who loves animal and bird adventures, coupled to survival stories will also enjoy reading these tales – often based on fact – to younger listeners.

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She tries to live up to the words quoted above and one way to do so is to make readers aware of the wonder of nature, because so many folks live in cities.  Wild life has much to offer, but they cannot survive without our care and protection. Throughout this series, the furry and feathered friends live up to their Fauna Park Promise to care for vulnerable, young and hurt bush creatures. A few good humans help them.

Excerpt from Trail Three – “The Risky Route.”

HOURS LATER – JUST AS OLD Star began to fade in the early morning sky, the horses suddenly stopped, neighing in fright and rearing.  Fortunately, they remained in their saddles.  If the horses hadn’t stopped, they would have gone straight into a small area where a clan of brown hyenas squabbled, yowling and growling at each other.  They surrounded a small group of young calves and tired, frightened cows.

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‘Oh no! Where did they come from?  The brown hyenas must be hungry, attacking such big animals.  I must chase them away!’ Clement cried.  While he spurred his horse on to go to upwind from the clan of predators, Kgabo slipped off his horse, sank down into the shrubs, crawling through the grass.  He came to a hole in the ground.  In Old Star’s fading light, he saw a movement and heard a warning hiss.

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Kgabo struck out at a curled-up cobra, stunning it long enough to grab it behind its neck. Then he jumped up and ran at full speed towards the clan of brown hyenas, shouting at the top of his voice and swinging the snake up above his head.  When he was within throwing distance from the clan, he flung the cobra right into their midst. They had such a fright that they began to fall back.

The brown hyenas had to face another attack that night.  Clement, riding on his horse with the other two in tow, came from the other side.  He also shouted as loud as he could while swinging a piece of camel thorn tree back and forth.  Their tactics worked, because the clan scattered in all directions with loud yaps and growls. Clement whistled shrilly, and the frightened calves, recognising his sounds, immediately followed him into a glade surround by rocks and thorn trees.

 

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Maretha’s links:

https://www.amazon.com/Maretha-Botha/e/B00MOORJAO/

https://twitter.com/MarethMBotha

https://twitter.com/FaunaParkTales

https://www.facebook.com/MarethMB

https://www.facebook.com/flameandhope.co.uk/

https://marethmbotha.wordpress.com/

https://marethabotha2013.com/ (child-friendly blog)

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/marethabotha/pins/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/maretha-botha-976191b8/

THANK YOU SO MUCH RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB AND THE BLOG POST HOSTS FOR YOUR WONDERFUL SUPPORT AND THE PRIVILEGE TO BE THE SPOTLIGHT AUTHOR THIS MONTH!

The brave furry friends in Book 4 also say thanks in their own way – with barks, whinnies and meows. The birds of prey, Mars the martial eagle and his friend Vera, the eagle owl would have said thanks too, but they are not in the end – yet.

 

COMING MAY 29! “The Lost Years of Billy Battles” (Book 3 of the Finding Billy Battles Trilogy)

Where in the world is Billy Battles?

As Book Three of the Finding Billy Battles trilogy begins we know where Billy is. He is in Chicago with his wife, the former Baroness Katharina von Schreiber living a sedate and comfortable life after years of adventure and tragedy. That changes with a single telephone call that yanks Billy and Katharina back into a life of havoc and peril.

Persuaded by a powerful old friend to go undercover for the U.S. government the two find themselves in Mexico during the height of the violent 1910-1920 revolution. There they encounter assorted German spies, Mexican revolutionaries, devious political operatives, and other malefactors. Caught in the middle of the 1914 American invasion of Veracruz, they must find a way out while keeping their real identities secret.

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Later on, disaster strikes. It is a tragedy Billy is all too familiar with and one that will send him plummeting into a chasm of despair and agony. Then, Billy vanishes leaving family and friends to wonder what happened to him. Where is he? Is he dead or alive? What provoked his disappearance? In Book 3 of the Finding Billy Battles Trilogy, those questions are answered, and the mystery behind Billy’s disappearance is ultimately revealed.

Look for The Lost Years of Billy Battles May 29 online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads and wherever fine books are sold!