We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Mark R. Hunter a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Mark R., thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Looking back, do you think you started your business at the right time? Do you wish you had started sooner or later?

First, “started” has to be defined. I’ve been writing since I was too young to write–thanks to my mother typing out a story I told to her. I “completed” a novel rough draft at age fourteen. It was just as bad as you’d imagine.

But I didn’t try to sell any of my writing until I was seventeen. The pages were saturated with youth, inexperience, and desperation. If that counts as started, I was an abject failure.

Ironically, after years of writing fiction, my first paying job was part-time at the Albion New Era, the local newspaper. I wrote news and features, then got a humor column that lasted twenty-five years (until the paper was sold). At the same time, I wrote public information pieces for the Albion Fire Department, a volunteer organization. Although I still thought of myself as a fiction writer, the only fiction I published was an annual Christmas short story in the paper.

In the end “sooner or later” depends on the genre. I didn’t have much to say when I was fourteen, but fortunately no one wanted to hear what I didn’t have to say, anyway. But I didn’t sell my first novel until well into my forties, and I very much wish I’d been able to kick start my book writing career before then. That’s the problem with traditional publishing: It took me almost forty years to get past the gatekeepers and sign on with a publisher. Yes, I was a business for years before that, but a business losing money. To this day I’m not making enough to give up my “day job”, which is why anyone who doesn’t love writing should avoid diving into it for the sake of profit.

Mark R., before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

The writing business is hard to explain, because most writers aren’t selling their products directly to readers, except at author appearances and through their websites. My service is writing, and I try just as hard to deliver there as I do in my full time job as a dispatcher, or my volunteer job as a firefighter.

It’s also hard to explain, for most writers, how we ended up loving this craft. Why do I write? Because I can’t NOT write. If I go without writing for more than a week or so, I also go into withdrawals. Writing is something you have to love, or there’s no good reason to do it at all.

I can’t say why I started writing; I just had stories to tell, so I told them. But I started to take it seriously as a business when I met my wife, who in addition to being a writer herself edits my work, and for our self-published books acts as editor, cover designer, format expert, and sometimes distributor. When she’s not there she assigns our dog, Beowulf, to supervise. Thanks to her encouragement, I got my first book contract in 2011.

I’ve developed an eclectic brand, unintended as it was. I thought of myself as a fiction writer, but half of my published books are non-fiction. That started as a book about my fire department’s history, then two collections of my humor columns, a local history book through Arcadia Publishing, and finally my favorite, written with my wife: Hoosier Hysterical: How the West Became the Midwest Without Moving At All.

We toured Indiana in researching that book, and it’s still both my favorite writing experience and my favorite product. So much for preferring to write fiction! Hoosier Hysterical is a non-fiction humor book about Indiana history and trivia, and it’s become my most popular book yet. I think my love for the product shows through to the reader.

All my so far published novels also lean toward the humor, so it seems that’s the one thing my writing work has in common so far. My goal is to entertain people. If they learn a thing or two along the way, well, that’s just gravy. In the end I want the reader to walk away with a smile, a little happier than when they arrived–and that’s not a bad goal in life.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

Any? How about all? I started out pre-internet (yes, there was a time before the internet). As far as I was aware, I was the only writer in my small town, or anywhere nearby. At seventeen I moved into a tiny apartment with my mother’s old manual typewriter (It’s true!), a stack of typewriter paper, and the certainty that I would make it as a writer. Considering my paper-thin self-esteem, I don’t know to this day where I got that certainty from, but there it was.

Where’s the first place you should go if you need something? The library, of course. Ours had a few books on writing, and one on publishing: Writer’s Market, which showed me there were indeed places to submit my work. Eventually I discovered a magazine on writing, then a book club for writers, and gradually taught myself the basics of submitting and publishing.

All the time I’d spent in the back row of English class, writing stories, worked against me. I didn’t have a good grasp on my own language, which is like declaring yourself a carpenter when you don’t know how to use a hammer. I actually bought a used English book and taught myself all those rules my teenage self apparently didn’t think applied. I also started a collection of books about all aspects of the business, from the basics of writing to the publishing industry itself, and I took some writing courses.

Then came the internet. There were other writers out there! They loved talking about the business, and helping out other writers, and they’re the greatest resource a young writer could hope for.

I wish I’d had access all those resources when I started out. The sheer volume of what a working writer needs to know would have knocked that overconfidence right out of me.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

Well, it’s sure not the money! And while some creatives are satisfied with the act of creating, or seeing the product of their creation, for me it’s when others enjoy that product. If I make someone laugh, I can say “My job is done, here”. Then I can ride away on my white horse that looks a lot like a burgundy Ford, leaving a silver pen behind, while readers say, “Who was that masked writer? I wanted to get his autograph.”

The Lone Ranger comparison may be right on the mark, considering writing is usually a solo and somewhat lonely task.

I’ve often stated my desire to make enough money so I can retire from my thirty year dispatching job and write full time. But the truth is, I’d continue writing even if I never made another dime. (Don’t tell any publishers that.) People actually read my stuff, and enjoy it, and yes, even pay for my books. The idea of bringing that pleasure into the lives of others is … well, pleasurable.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter
• Other: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

Image Credits
Photos by Emily Hunter