D.L. FOWLER WITH E.C. MURRAY

D.L. Fowler, like many of us, came to writing in a round-about fashion. He graduated from the University of Southern California, and served three years in the air force during Vietnam during which time he trained as a Bulgarian linguist. After picking up an MBA, he became a CPA for two decades, until a cancer scare which steered him to devote his full attention to writing, something he’d wanted to do since high school. Fowler’s books include Lincoln Raw, The Turn, Ripples, and Bittersweet. Fowler is the founder of the Gig Harbor Literary Society which you can read more about in our “Resources” section. Next to writing, his next favorite passion, other than family, is creating tasty dishes in his Gig Harbor kitchen.

1.      You’ve written mystery, poetry, and a book on writing well, but you’re best known for your historical fiction about Lincoln. How and where did you do your research?

a.      I started with the usual suspects—nonfiction history books and biographies, especially Team of Rivals, Professor Burlingame’s volume on Lincoln, the volumes by John Hay and John Nicolay who were Lincoln’s private secretaries and William Herndon who was Lincoln’s law partner in Springfield. Another great resource was Joshua Shenk’s award-winning book, Lincoln’s Melancholy: How Depression Challenged a President and Fueled His Greatness. In all those works, I paid close attention to footnotes, because that’s where the bodies are buried. The Lincoln Log is a website that catalogs Lincoln’s daily activities, from birth to death with citations for each entry.

b.      I also visited a number of sites that were pivotal in Lincoln’s character development—either in person or through internet archives of photographs or on Google Earth. I made several trips to Springfield, Illinois where Lincoln spent most of his adult life, a couple of visits to the reconstructed village of New Salem, Illinois where he spent the first 4 years after moving out from under his father’s roof, to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum also in Springfield, and to the Lincoln Cottage in DC where he and his family lived about 40% of the time while he was president.

c.       I’m working on a new book now that will benefit from access that I’ve been given to one of the largest private collections of letters, journals, and artifacts related to a person Lincoln called “the best friend I have met.” This person literally saved his life only a year after he took office.

d.      I suppose I’ve just spilled the beans that I’m seriously OCD and a nerd. My daughter says I’m like a dog on a bone.

2.      In historical fiction, how do you decide what you can “make up” and what must be true according to source documents? Is there any unanimity among historical fiction authors?

a.      Historical fiction is an interesting beast. One faction believes real historical people should only play cameo roles in a novel while the principal characters should be fictional. Of course, I and a few others, don’t agree. I think there is general agreement though, anything that is a historical fact should be presented accurately. That goes for people, places, events, customs, modes of transportation, essentially anything related to the setting.

b.      In my most recent book, The Turn, I had to make up a principal character’s entire backstory, because there are no records of him before he meets Lincoln about a year before the 1860 election. I also had to make judgement calls about how and when that principal character fit into real events because his mere existence was rarely recorded. However, what we know about their relationship provides strong clues as to how and why Lincoln likely included him in those scenes as well as other undocumented scenes involving engagements between them.

3.      You taught classes on the psychology of storytelling which (I believe) meant getting into the readers heads. Can you explain that more?

a.      The psychology of storytelling is mostly about triggering readers’ emotions using words—sounds, tempo, rhythm. Story structure and characterization are only the beginning, the frame over which we stretch our upholstery. Or the musical score that cues your emotions while you’re entering the scene in a film. How do you make words create the kind of effect that musical scores do? Scripts are like novels, short stories, poems, essays, even business letters. They are most effective when they present relatable characters and follow familiar patterns that we call that story structure. But it’s the musical score that triggers the right emotions at the right plot points of the story or in the ebb and flow of scenes. So, the psychology of storytelling is about how to evoke in readers the same emotions we envisage our characters experiencing. How do we insinuate a character’s emotions into a reader’s experience?

b.      A caveat—it’s a workshop for writers who are willing to work hard at their craft.

4.      You are a model example of a true literary citizen, supporting the literary arts in Gig Harbor. What is the Gig Harbor Literary Society?

a.      A friend recently put it this way—a rising tide lifts all boats. We don’t care who you are, where you’re from, or how what your relationship is with literary arts. You can be a writer, a reader, or someone who wants to celebrate stories. We want you to join us in building community around the written word. In terms of activities, we currently laying the foundation for a robust schedule of activities to bring readers and writers together.

5.      How did you find a new slant that intrigued you (and we readers!) on a familiar subject, Abraham Lincoln? (Larry - I ‘ll move this question up to where we’re discussing Lincoln. I’m sure readers would be interested in both hearing about characters as well as Lincoln’s melancholy/depression.) 

a.      When I was struggling with depression, I came across an article about Lincoln’s depression. I knew an aspiring author and suggested she write a novel about Lincoln conspiring to stage his own assassination. When she didn’t bite, I decided to write my own novel. It turned out to be Lincoln’s Diary. But writing that story led me down a rabbit hole, chasing answers about how Lincoln was able to accomplish so much despite is depression. In one of the tunnels, I discovered Joshua Shenk’s book, Lincoln’s Melancholy. That book dragged me farther down the rabbit hole where I discovered several characters who had a profound impact on Lincoln’s evolution and whom history has largely ignored. It was in that vein that I realized that all history is revisionist and to some extent fictional. None of what we are taught is the full story.

b.      Lincoln Raw is a biographical novel that tries to present Lincoln’s life before his presidency from what his point of view—had he would have told it had he been inclined to do so. The Turn explores Lincoln’s relationships with marginalized people who were part of his daily life—how they influenced him on major issues. I focus especially on his young valet William Henry Johnson. My current manuscript in progress is about a Union Army Nurse who was assigned to care for the Lincoln family after eleven-year-old Willie Lincoln died of typhoid in the White House. It is the never-before-told story of how her life experiences prepared her to save the President and First Lady from debilitating depression during our nation’s darkest days as the Union Army was losing the war.

6.      Your author website is superb. Will share who did it and your process?

a.      Thank you for the compliment. The truth is technology caught up with my imagination when it comes to building a website. I did it myself using Weebly for Square. I used it because it syncs seamlessly with my Square card reader. I hesitate to say it was easy because I find a number of things to be impossible that other people say are easy.

7.      You made audiobooks of most of your books. What were the pros and cons of your process of making audio books?

a.      I think audiobooks are wonderful because there are people who love listening to them or who are wise enough not to read while operating automobiles or other machinery. The Turn has not been made into an audiobook so far, because I have not found the narrator that I want. I create audiobooks for people who want them, even though my experience is they’re not a great business proposition for authors.

b.      Personally, I don’t listen to them because I’m one who concentrates deeply as I read. I read slowly and savor most every phrase.

8.      What advice do you have for aspiring authors?

a.      First decide why you want to write. Let that decision drive everything you do along your journey. As a result, you may or not make much money, but you will be proud of what you accomplish.

b.      Regardless of why you want to write, invest your energy in learning how to write the next story better than you wrote the last one.

c.       Once you know why you write and begin to master the craft of writing, you’ll be able to choose which rules to follow and which ones to flush. Kurt Vonnegut talked about swoopers and bashers. A swooper writes a story straight through, quickly and any which way it flows—just like the rules say you should. A basher goes one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they go on to the next one. Vonnegut remains a literary legend. He was a basher and so am I—because it fits me.

Thank you so much for your interview, Larry. Readers, you can find Fowler’s Website at https://www.dlfowler.com/.