Swift Six Author Interview – Max Willi Fischer
Name: Max Willi Fischer
What attracts you to the genre in which you write? As a son of German immigrants growing up in a small Ohio village named after an exotic North African seaport (Mogadore), I have always had an innate love of history. After four decades of teaching intermediate grades and middle school, I knew quality historical fiction engages students like no history text ever could. Years before I retired, I set a goal of writing at least one Y/A historical fiction novel after I retired. This September I’ll be releasing my fifth novel.
What piece of writing advice do you wish you’d known when you started your writing adventures? I had written numerous resource books for teachers during my career. Initially, I didn’t think there’d be that much difference between non-fiction and fiction. I learned about that fallacy in a hurry. “Show, don’t tell.” I dove headlong into my first novel without realizing that paramount rule of engaging readers. With some help from a local author, I started editing my manuscript to remove the telling from an omniscient narrative and replacing it with descriptive actions from the characters.
If you could have dinner with any famous person or character who would you choose? Pino Lella, the teenage hero from Mark Sullivan’s Beneath a Scarlet Sky. His incredible courage and daring in resisting the Nazis in Italy during the Germans’ inevitable retreat from the Italian peninsula seems like a page out of James Bond. However, much of the novel was based upon actual events, and I’d have liked to have interviewed the young man whose courage only grew as the danger kept confronting him.
Who has been the greatest influence on your own work? Without a doubt, my high school English teacher, Vicki Wilkerson, set my writing pursuits into motion. She got me to think for myself and realize writing was a valuable tool for my self-expression. While I choose historical topics/eras of my interest, Vicki’s influence on my literary expression has never left me.
Do you think the e-book revolution will do away with print? I think e-books will continue to grow in popularity, but I don’t envision the complete demise of printed books, at least not for some time to come. People love holding a book between their hands, and some even enjoy the smell of a freshly opened novel.
Which 3 books would you take to a desert island and why? “The Life We Bury” by Allen Eskens—The Vietnam War coincided with my late adolescence. Wrapping a murder mystery around a veteran’s recollections seems fascinating to me.
“Fever 1793” by Laurie Halse—History often repeats itself and human nature is often to blame. Although we had, for the most part, the science with which to combat Covid, over a million Americans died from it, often from wanton ignorance of or resistance to science. One of my novels deals with an 1837 epidemic of consumption (tuberculosis) in the near complete absence of science. I’d love to see how Halse approaches the same topic in a slightly different era.
“We Germans” by Alexander Starritt—A letter from a German soldier on the Russian Front to his grandson and the subsequent struggle to survive after the war poses an intriguing plot for me. My father was a master sergeant in the German Luftwaffe on the Russian Front and survived the bombing of Dresden in 1945. He never spoke of the war and its aftermath until bits and pieces came out during the last weeks of his life. I wonder how closely, if at all, this book would mirror my father’s experiences as a common German foot soldier of the time under duress.
Author bio and book synopsis
Please introduce yourself (250 words or so): Born into an immigrant family seeking new opportunity in America after World War II, I was raised in a village named after an exotic North African seaport—Mogadore, Ohio. With such a background, it’s little wonder I grew up with an inborn curiosity about history. The first novel I ever recall reading was James Fennimore Cooper’s The Last of the Mohicans. I spent four decades as a classroom teacher, primarily teaching sixth, seventh and eighth grade. The latter half of my career was devoted solely to the teaching of the history of the world and/or American history.
All those years in the classroom made me realize that history should be a vibrant, well- told story. My goal in writing is to engage adolescents (and adults) with an exciting, yet accurate, view into our nation’s past.
Retired, I live with my wife and trusted four-legged companions Kole, Bunnie, Lucy, and Izzy. I enjoy rooting for my favorite sports teams, dabbling as the home-handyman, and doing some volunteer work.
Tell us about your book(s) – title, genre etc (short)
Hobbadehoy Rising (September 2023, self-published) Historical Fiction. An orphaned teen in the notorious Five Points district of lower Manhattan in 1854, Pencil is a “guttersnipe”, cursed to survive the unforgiving streets where trust is a stranger. Led by Sachem, his thieving mentor, the shady adults who surround him believe Pencil is a “hobbadehoy,” a youth who has not quite reached manhood. Even though he has been abused over the years by orphanages, reform schools, and criminals, he hasn’t lost his empathy for others . . . yet. As the lieutenant of Sachem’s pack of street rats, he craves greater control of his life. Pencil’s luck finally runs out when some unknown person’s treachery sets him up to face significant prison time.
Through a mysterious stranger, Pencil is given another opportunity when he is shipped off to Ohio on one of the first “orphan trains.” Life on the farm proves to be a different challenge under the demanding, and occasionally drunken, thumb of his new guardian, Samuel Gombert. As a one-sided romance blooms with the farmer’s much younger wife, Pencil protects the woman from the farmer’s alcoholic rage. He is forced to flee, a much stronger physical specimen than when he arrived.
Pencil ends up in Cleveland, where Miss Victoria Large, a daguerreotypist, takes him under her wing. She teaches him about capturing images on glass and copper while trying to impress upon him the importance of trust. Navigating encounters with corpses, kidnappers, and grave robbers test his acceptance of the idea … and his empathy.
The Corkscrew App (2016, Royal Fireworks Press); Historical Fiction. A mysterious time-warp app on a cell phone sends eighth-grader Justin Deveraux back to Fort Necessity and a young George Washington in 1754 where Justin learns about coming to grips with one’s mistakes.
American Brush-Off (2020, self-published); Historical Fiction. It’s 1942, and seventeen-year-old Lud Mueller is designated “a dangerous enemy alien” by the FBI as he and his family are shipped to an internment camp in the Texas desert. There, they become pawns in a secret government program that threatens to send the family to oblivion.
Revelations from the Dead: Chronicles of the Night Waster (2020, self-published); Historical Fiction. Faced with his father’s rejection, cabinetmaker’s apprentice Thomas Sullivan helps his master’s family deal with a deadly consumption epidemic in the 1830’s while uncovering the bizarre truth of the Night Waster, who allegedly is sucking the life out of the surviving family members. (No, this is not science fiction.)
The Reformation of Nate Adare (2021, self-published); Science Fiction/Historical Fiction. Fatherless for the past decade, Nate expresses his rage in various negative ways on a road to nowhere. A series of concussions awaken a dark ancestral secret, which begins to haunt him.
Links
Social media www.maxwilli.com (my author web page)
https://www.facebook.com/MWILLIFISCHER Facebook author page
https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-fischer-5b650647/ LinkedIn author page
https://www.instagram.com/maxwilliauthor/ Instagram author page
