Creating a Local Historical Book E-Book

Tyler R. Tichelaar

• Herausgeber: Modern History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 49

Beschreibung

Does Your City or Region Have a Fascinating Story that needs to be told before it's forgotten?
Yes, it does, and you can be the person to write it!
In this short text, Tyler Tichelaar, author of My Marquette and The Marquette Trilogy, talks in a conversational format about how he became interested in writing both local history and regional and historical fiction and his research and writing process to bring his books to fruition.
Readers of "Creating a Local Historical Book" will learn:
What kind of research is required What counts as research Where to do research How to organize that research into a book How not to go overboard with details Finding images and gaining usage permission How to make your book stand out from others Tips on marketing your history book
Tyler R. Tichelaar, Ph.D. and seventh generation Marquette resident, was raised on tales of his hometown's past. His other interests include literary studies ranging from King Arthur to Gothic texts. He is also a professional editor and writing coach who has guided dozens of authors through the treacherous seas of composition.
"Our committee would like to honor Tyler with this award in honor of his meticulous research, his enlightened and personal testimony about Marquette and his educational contributions to the preservation of Marquette's history."
--The Marquette Beautification & Restoration Committee, presenting Tyler with the Barbara H. Kelly Historic Preservation Award
"Tyler Tichelaar speaks from the heart about his love affair with the town of his birth. Join him on a nostalgic tour of one of the great small cities of America."
--Karl Bohnak, author of So Cold a Sky: Upper Michigan Weather Stories

Leseprobe

Creating a Local Historical Book: Fiction and Non-Fiction Genres

Copyright (c) 2012 by Tyler R. Tichelaar. All Rights Reserved.

Cover photo: “Ridge and Blaker Streets, Marquette, MI circa 1910.” Courtesy of Jack Deo, Superior View.

ISBN-13 978-1-61599-178-5 (paperback)

ISBN-13 978-1-61599-179-2 (eBook)

Modern History Press

5145 Pontiac Trail

Ann Arbor, MI 48105

www.ModernHistoryPress.com

[email protected]

Fax [phone]

Tollfree USA/CAN 888-761-6268

London, England: 44-20-331-81304

Contents

List of Pictures in this Book

Creating a Local Historical Book

Writing Effective Regional Fiction

Understanding Regional Fiction

Finding a Readership for Regional Fiction

Personifying the Region as Protagonist

The Strength is in the Details

Write What You Know

Books Cited

About the Author

List of Pictures in this Book

Railroad trestle removal in downtown Marquette (1999-2000) Photo Credit: Sonny Longtine

Former Marquette County History Museum where Tyler did his research

Bavarian Inn - another local landmark which has disappeared

The 1949 Centennial Parade has become a touchstone for local families

Upper Harbor LS&I Ore Dock in winter Photo Credit: Sonny Longtine

Marquette County Courthouse - film location for Anatomy of a Murder Photo Credit: Sonny Longtine

Tyler gives the “Sidetracked Book Club” a Marquette history tour

Creating a Local Historical Book

The following article is based on a transcript of the February 2011 interview of Tyler R. Tichelaar on Authors Access podcast with hosts Victor R. Volkman and Irene Watson. Due to the intense public response to this broadcast, we have made it available in this form for your enjoyment. You can still listen to the original recording by visiting the archive page at

http://www.authorsaccess.com/category/genres/historical-books

Legend: Tyler Tichelaar (TT); Victor Volkman (VV); Irene Watson (IW)

IW: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Authors Access, where authors get published and published authors get successful. Hi, I am Irene Watson and I am the managing editor of Reader Views.

VV: And I am Victor Volkman from Loving Healing Press in Ann Arbor, Michigan. I would like to welcome all our listeners to episode number 129 in our series. Tonight’s topic will be Creating a Local Historical Book with special guest Tyler Tichelaar. You can learn more about our guest on the Authors Access website, which is: authorsaccess.com.

Tonight we are on the line with Tyler R. Tichelaar, a seventh generation Marquette, Michigan resident, who has written five novels with many more to come, all set in Upper Michigan, including: The Marquette Trilogy, the award-winning Narrow Lives, and the most recently published, a history of Marquette entitled My Marquette: Explore the Queen City of the North, Its History, People, and Places.

Tyler has a PhD in Literature from Western Michigan University and Bachelor and Master’s degrees from Northern Michigan University. He has lectured in Writing and Literature at Clemson University, the University of Wisconsin, and the University of London. Tyler is also a regular guest-host on our show—which you know—and the President of the Upper Peninsula Publishers and Authors Association. He is the owner of Marquette Fiction and Superior Book Promotions—a professional book review and editing and proofreading service. Besides writing about Upper Michigan, he is interested in the Arthurian legends, and recently published King Arthur’s Children, a study of treatments of King Arthur’s children in literature from medieval times to twenty-first century novels. Tyler currently lives in Marquette, Michigan, where the roar of Lake Superior, mountains of snow, and sandstone architecture continue to inspire his writing. Good evening, Tyler!

TT: Hi, Victor and Irene, it’s great to be here. It is different being on the other side, not being the host.

IW: [laugh]. Yes, I can well imagine this, and this is really interesting to be talking to you. You are a very diverse writer, from fiction to all of a sudden the My Marquette that you wrote, which is non-fiction. Although it is historical as your other three books were—The Marquette Trilogy—but this is really different because it is not fiction. Let me start off immediately just talking about what kind of different types of research did you have to do in comparison to doing the fiction, which was historical, to the non-fiction?

TT: OK, sure. In writing, a lot of it overlapped, and in writing the novels, I basically did almost all the research. I would say probably about 80 percent or so of the research into My Marquette also was used in my novels. The main difference, I think, is I did not have to be as specific in the novels; I did not have to pin down specific dates; I usually could link things, and just as long as I got the year, an event took place, that was close enough. Whereas with writing the non-fiction book, the thing that frustrated me the most was trying to pin down a specific date. I would read one source that would say, this happened on February 28th, and the next source would say February 25th, and the third source would say February 27th. I would have to dig back and figure out what their sources were and maybe look up the actual newspapers that covered the event back in the day. I would sometimes spend hours just trying to check one little date, just to make sure that it would be accurate. That took a lot of time and because I was writing about real people—the actual historical people—I needed to do a lot more research into their backgrounds, especially since a whole section of my book is about historical homes in the area. There have been other Marquette history books, but none of them covered the historical residential district as thoroughly as mine has, and for me, that was the really exciting part of the book because I had always been fascinated by all these old Victorian homes and who would have lived in them.