18Q Butch Holcombe

Butch Holcombe

1. Did you choose the writing profession or did it choose you?

You mean I had a choice? It just happened, so I guess I chose it.

2. What is your background? (education, work, etc.)

I was born in 1955, illiterate and without a penny to call my own. Although I tempted them often, my parents decided a postnatal abortion was out of the question, and decided to let me live. My education was two years in college (architectural engineering), two years at tech school (machine tool technology), then a career in sales for 10 years, followed by being a machinist for 15. Quit my day job a year ago to devote my full efforts to a magazine I started, American Digger.

3. When did you ‘know’ you were a writer?

I remember in grade school writing down stories (because if I just verbally told them, they were called “lies”) but I never showed them to anyone. In Junior High I started writing satires of the teachers and the school I attended and passed them out to my friends. I usually got caught, but didn’t much care as long as my friends laughed. One teacher intercepted such a story, and I could see her trying to keep a straight face as she read it at her desk. Even though she sent me to the principal’s office, I knew I was on the right track.

4. How would you describe your style of writing?

If Dave Berry and Lewis Grizzard had a love child, I would be that bastard.

5. What is your writing process?

I’ll do a rough outline based on a vague idea, and start filling it in from there. I do several rewrites, adding and refining each time until it begins to click. When I laugh out loud, I know I’ve got a part right. When I can read the whole work from start to finish and laugh until coffee shoots from my nostrils, I know the work is complete.

6. What was your path to publication?

I had been freelancing for about fifteen years, and thus already had a name of some infamy among certain groups. I had pushed the envelope early on by submitting humor to a magazine that was devoted to a serious subject (Civil War history), but they took a chance and published my submissions. It worked, I developed a fan base, and life was good to my ego if not my purse. When it came time to publish my own books, I never even considered the long and tedious path of submitting to a publishing company, but rather self published in order to get my books out as fast as possible...I figured that anyone who was a fan of mine was most certainly ill and in danger of being institutionalized, and I wanted them to buy my books before that happened.

7. What is your favorite self-marketing idea?

Speaking engagements and book signings. Without a doubt, these work wonders if for no other reason than if you look pitiful enough, folks will buy a lot of books! Also, I always include a few illustrations. Many authors miss a big segment of the market, i.e. the illiterate.

8. What are the biggest surprises you’ve encountered as a writer?

That more people know me on a first name basis than I know on any basis. They claim to be darn good friends, although I’ve never even met them. One came up to me in a discount store that shall remain nameless, and right there in Wal-Mart he started talking to me like a long lost friend. “Do I know you,” I finally asked. “I hope so, because I read all of your stuff.” Turns out I’d never met him before.

9. How do you inspire yourself? What are your sources of creativity?

I pick up on the ironies of life, which I get from the news, conversations, and other sources, then run them through the blender in my mind, spice them with my own twisted view, and come up with a buffet of humor that would make almost anyone nauseous with laughter. Inspiration is rarely a problem. Neither is creativity. I seem to have had it all of my life.

10. What is your proudest writer moment?

When I was asked to come to Winchester, Virginia to do a book signing and also a radio interview in a nearby town. It was cool getting to travel abroad, and sampling such exotic cuisine as unsweetened tea and grits made from wheat paste.

11. What’s the best advice you were given about writing?

Write to please yourself. After all, we’re all alike in different ways, so that means there should be plenty of people just as twisted as myself. Thus, if I write to please myself, others enjoy it, too.

12. What is your most embarrassing writer moment?

I was at a book signing where nobody showed up. Honest. The store had done no publicity, the weather was bad, and the town was small. I was there for an hour, sitting at the table and entertaining myself by doing something that involved a pencil and my left ear, when finally an elderly couple walked up to the table...with a Joy of Deep Frying Nude cookbook or something like that. They wanted to know if this was where they paid. It was embarrassing, but I sucked in my pride, pulled the pencil out, and used it to point them towards the cash register. It was the right thing to do, and besides the owner had installed security cameras over my signing table.

13. What business challenges have you faced as a writer?

I started publishing a magazine last year, and along with occasional freelancing this is now my “day job”. Thus I’ve had to learn all aspects of business, although I’ve yet to get an agent...partially because I’m still paranoid in that respect. Believe it or not, my biggest worry is getting insurance, as the finances always seem to work out. But since starting the magazine (American Digger-”The publication for diggers and collectors of America’s Heritage”) I haven’t had enough time to promote my writing. Thus, I need to find an agent to help me.

14. What is your writer life philosophy?

Write it, and they will read it. Some will even buy it.

15. When you’re not writing what do you do for fun?

Metal detecting...although the truth be known, most of my life is now spent writing, editing, or doing layout and graphics for American Digger.

16. Who do you like to read?

Stephen King, Lewis Grizzard, Jerry Jenkins, Bill Wilson, Dave Berry

17. What’s your advice for new writers?

Write what you enjoy. Forget the money at first, it will come later but only if you enjoy what you write. And never underestimate the power of a good title...If the title is intriguing, the person will pick up the book and open it up to the first page (you hope). Thus make sure that your opening paragraph is a real grabber. Get them hooked at that point, and they’ll buy the book. But the overall work must be dynamic, otherwise they’ll never buy your works again, and speak ill of you to their friends. You want to developed a fan base, not a literary lynch mob.

18. What are you currently working on?

I’m finishing up my first novel, about a writer in a small town who becomes trapped by his own pseudonym. He can’t escape, nor can he stop without turning the world upside down once two rival “social” groups adopt him as their figure head. The ways he deals with it make for a dark comedy that the reader will find hard to put down. I’m also working on another humor book which is a collection of essays and observations strung together into a steady stream of consciousness. It should be ready in about six months.

Butch’s 18Q