Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to write your book.
As a kid, I wrote poems and songs. But writing wasn’t a “career.” Though I came from a family of readers, no one in my family was a writer or knew any writers personally. I didn’t have any “connections.” But I had hopes. In 8th grade, for a class project, we assembled our essays and poems into a book. As modest as it was, that act left an impression on me. As an adult after years in international business, enjoying the report writing aspects of my jobs the most, during the dot com boom I shifted into working as a technical writer, a web content manager, and an online magazine editor, but I always secretly longed to author books. Marrying my love of sailing and adventure with my love of writing seemed a natural place to begin publishing book-length manuscripts.
What is your newest book about, and where did your decision to write it come from?
Over the years I’d been hearing snippets of the epic voyage my husband had taken with his family around the world and their shipwreck when he was fourteen. Family dinners had been filled with “you remember the time when …
⦁ gun boats forced us to sail across mines in the Red Sea?
⦁ our pilot Abdul got lost in the Suez Canal?
⦁ the boat starting sinking in Israel?
⦁ Mom tried to poison us?
⦁ we ran out of food and nearly starved?
Such tantalizing anecdotes intrigued me. I got possession of the famous letters the family had mailed home. Hundreds of them. Inside them was more detail than any writer could hope for. Too much, sometimes. But in combing through them I fleshed out the outline of the story that I’d developed in my mind of the voyage. I asked a lot of questions of the family members and took copious notes. I consulted guide books and sailing directions, maps, and the ship’s log to ferret out the details. I read the newspaper articles, listened to the interviews with the family. And started writing. And double checking details with the ones who had lived through it. With a rough draft completed, I had them read every word to check for inaccuracies or things that didn’t seem true to their experience. It was a family bonding experience.
I got possession of the famous letters the family had mailed home. Hundreds of them. Inside them was more detail than any writer could hope for. Too much, sometimes. But in combing through them, I fleshed out the outline of the story that I’d developed in my mind of the voyage. I asked a lot of questions of the family members and took copious notes. I consulted guide books and sailing directions, maps, and the ship’s log to ferret out the details. I read the newspaper articles and listened to the interviews with the family. And started writing. And double checking details with the ones who had lived through it. With a rough draft completed, I had them read every word to check for inaccuracies or things that didn’t seem true to their experience. It was a family bonding experience.
What I uncovered was such a dramatic story that I could hardly believe anyone had truly lived through it. Especially people I knew. It featured things like pirates, gun boats, mines, thieves, starvation, and scurvy.
And that’s AFTER surviving the shipwreck.
How long did it take you to write the book?
It took me a couple of years.
Read the rest of the Interview here: https://bookyoursales.net/tightwads-loose-sea-trials-author-wendy-hinman
