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| An interview with Lynette King, of Mountain Mist Products, an E-Book Publisher in
Austraila. You ask what first drew me to writing. I wasn’t drawn to writing. Rather, over a two-day weekend, I became suddenly obsessed by writing. Years later, I wrote that extended story in an autobiographical novel, BELIEVING IN THE WIND. But Believing is a painful story to read, just as it was a painful story to live and then to write. Answering what inherent qualities a writer should possess first takes some explanations. I have never had any interest in becoming a commercial fiction writer. I was an established Industrial Engineer and Plant Manager in the garment industry. A little more than a year later, I was a dishwasher in an Italian Restaurant and a hermit who had gone in search of writing literature. I have always written what I wanted to write, in the way I wanted to write it, unedited, and with little regard for the reader. And these certainly aren’t the qualities a writer should possess. What I regard as my greatest success is easy to answer. That would be the first reader letter I received thanking me for writing a particular book, saying that it changed their life and helped them to better cope. Ah, why does so much of my writing focus on the sea. The obsession that my obsession became. Because commercial fishermen are obsessed with their boats and their fishing and their sea, to the exclusion of friends and family and safety and security. I saw myself in them, and so I became one of them. A brotherhood of highly skilled and very brave misfits. I would describe the characters in my books as likable but flawed. Not criminally or psychologically flawed, just your everyday screwed-up individuals who get by the best they can with what they have to work with. The character who stands out far above the rest is the sea captain David Midgett in my novel DAVID MIDGETT. You are awed by his skill and experience when on a boat on the ocean fishing. Then you are baffled by his inability to function when on land. Then you are disgusted by his inability to make correct decisions anywhere. I love David Midgett. If he were real, I would give him a big hug and a handshake. How much is this character me? Not at all. David is a composite tribute to all commercial fishermen. It takes awesome men to go where they go and do what they do. Where my writing is going is where my writing has already started. I have one hundred and fifty pages finished on a huge, sprawling Southern novel. Until now, I have been a writer who happened to be from the U.S. South. Huge, sprawling Southern novels are a genre within themselves here in the states, and it is an exciting challenge to see whether I can reach this next plateau. Lynette, considering my maverick writing career, I certainly am not qualified to give advice to new writers. To those going in search of commercial fiction, though, I would be their loudest cheerleader for success. And to those going in search of literature, I would repeat what a lady told me years ago, “it will be what you have in place of everything else.” My motivation behind MarkRaney.com was and is to have a safe and warm home for all my books finally. And, Kathie Akins, my writers assistant, and Shelley Sullivan, my web designer, have made this a reality and me a very grateful writer. Building our E-book website MarkRaney.com was all seriousness with very little fun. But with this new venture of our E-movie website, http://www.isaltyman.com, we will have all fun with very little seriousness, and turn out some very good short E-movies in the process.
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