Bestselling Novelist, John Shors, Talks Tossed out TVs, Travel & "Teeny-Tiny"

I thought I'd change things up a little this week. Most of the calls I've gotten for freelance work in the past six months have been related to the legalization of pot and school shootings. While both of those stories may need to be told, there's only so much telling I can do. So a couple of weeks ago, after one of those calls, I did a little reflecting about what I really loved most about my career in hopes that I might be able to incorporate a little bit of that in my blog.

There are lots of perks to a working in television, but believe it or not, meeting celebrities and the occasional free loot didn't top my list - (waking up at 3:45am and trying to book interviews with people who didn't want to be interviewed didn't either - that was the worst!) But after a little introspection, I came to the realization that the part of my job that I loved the very most was getting to meet and interview authors. Dorky, I know, but writers are way more fascinating in person than P. Diddy. Yep, I just name dropped.

Again. No shame.

The photos are fun to have, but all kidding aside, I consider myself lucky that books are my thing because I guarantee Jimmy, Jennifer and the Jessicas are not interested in hanging out if I'm not producing a live hit for them, but I think I may be able to twist a few authors arms for an interview. Which is how I ended up sitting in a bestselling novelist's home on a piano stool, throwing questions at him for this blog...

A couple years ago, when we first moved to Colorado, my sister-in-law gave me a copy of a book she liked called Beneath a Marble Sky. (Thanks Angela!) It was based in India and unraveled a beautiful love story in the midst of the construction of the Taj Mahal.  I love historical fiction and I couldn't put it down. When I got to the last page I came across this message from the author:

My immediate thought was: "How cool is that? A bestselling novelist is inviting his readers and book clubs to reach out to him". Then I flipped to the following page and found out he lived near Boulder, just like me. I let my Mom borrow the book and kind of forgot about the whole thing until I was having my little reflection. That night I downloaded his most recent novel on my Kindle, ran a web search for his name, found his email address, and sent him an email introducing myself and asking if he would be open to letting me interview him. I got an email back within 24 hours, and within a few days I was heading to his house with my camera.

John Shors is about the nicest guy you could ever meet, and if you like to read, write, travel or have ever considered throwing away your television, I think you'll enjoy the interview below. Also, I know I said I don't have anything to give away in my first post, but he signed a couple of books for me, so now I do!  I'll be putting the names of anyone who shares this blog post within the first 24 hours into a hat and letting Noah and Benjamin each choose a name. If they pick yours, I'll mail you the autographed book (so go share and then come back and read/watch below).

Q: How did you know you wanted to be a writer? 
"Basically, I grew up reading. When I was probably 13-years-old, I came home from school one day and my father had thrown away our television. My brothers and I were very distraught at the time - it was quite traumatic - but what it did was sort of push us into books and we all became avid readers. I’ve pretty much read a couple of books a week ever since that day. At some point I just decided, probably when I was in high school, that I want to do this, I want to become a novelist. I had no idea how hard it would be to get to that point, but I just felt like I could do it and luckily things worked out."

Q: Did reading about faraway places inspire your travels?

"I think books really did inspire me to travel because so much of what I was reading was set overseas. I grew up in Des Moines, Iowa – very nice city, nice place – but I wanted to sort of go beyond and I was reading books set all over the world and I think that really was the catalyst for me to get interested in traveling. I was lucky enough after college to hop on a plane, fly to Japan and teach English for a couple of years and that really got me excited about seeing the world."

Q: Do you have a favorite place?

"I love Asia. I really have an affinity for Asia, whether it’s Vietnam or Thailand or  Cambodia, India, Japan. To me, it’s exotic and so very different from the west. I’ve been to some of these places twenty times, but yet I feel like every time I go it’s a new adventure and new experience."

Q: Tell me about the process of writing your first published novel…

"Yeah, it was difficult. At the time I had a very busy day job, I was helping to launch a public relations agency in Denver, and I had this dream of becoming a novelist, so even though I had this very busy day job I would come home at night and work on this novel, which was based on the story of the creation of the Taj Mahal. It is a famous story in Asia, it’s beloved, but no one in the west had ever really heard about it so I felt like there was an opportunity to make a splash with my first book. It was hard having a full time job – writing at night, on weekends and vacations. Under those sort of confines I worked on it for five years. It was a true labor of love."

Click on the book to go straight to Amazon

Q: Part of its success could be attributed to your book club program.  How did that come about?

"When Beneath a Marble Sky came out as a hardcover it got great reviews, it won a national award, we sold the movie rights, all these really good things happened – and I just decided that I wanted to give something back to readers.  So when the paperback version came out two years later I put a letter in the back of the paperback inviting book clubs to invite me to their evenings via speakerphone. I included my email address in there, which had never really been done before. It just took off. I got quite a bit of media attention and 'word of mouth' buzz.  So at this point I’ve spoken to about 3,000 book clubs all over the world."

Q: What’s the best question you’ve gotten from one of these book clubs?
"It’s so hard, I mean, some of them have been "googling" facts for hours and they’re very studious and serious. Other clubs have been drinking margaritas for hours, so I’m never sure what kind of group I’m walking into and the questions are very different and they’re both fun."

Q: Now you're actually traveling with your readers to the places in your books - how did this happen?  Did you go to your publisher and say, "I’m thinking about doing this..."? 

John and some readers at Angor Wat, the setting for his most recent novel, "Temple of a Thousand Faces".

Q: Where do you write?

"My home office, nothing fancy, just a laptop and a monitor – but I’ll try to get myself in the right frame of mind. I’ll listen to some song that I love and try to motivate myself, because writing is hard work. I always feel like when I’m starting a book I’m about to climb a new mountain and it’s a heck of a lot of work, so I do need to sort of motivate myself and inspire myself and I’ve got various ways of doing that."

 Q: What music did you listen to today?

"Actually, I listened to One Republic. My family is going to their concert later this spring so I'm trying to get intimate with all their songs."

Q: Best and worst writing advice…

Q: Favorite Children’s Books?

"Shell Silversteen’s stuff I loved, poems. Ferdinand and the Bull [The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf], that was always a fun one. My Mother used to read us this book called Teeny Tiny and the Witch Woman which was kind of a scary book, so that was always fun."

I'm going to order this on Amazon - Noah loves/hates/loves scary stuff!

See, I told you he was super nice! Go ahead and email him yourself if you don't believe me. His email address is shors@aol.com and his website is www.johnshors.com. When I told Ryan he had spoken with over 3,000 book clubs since placing that letter in his first novel, he replied, "that's like two a day!" He is a math guy, I'm not good with numbers, but I know it's a lot of readers and I think it's a wonderful gesture.

Speaking of readers, I thank you, my dear blog readers, from the bottom of my heart, for giving me an excuse to use my camera for something other than home movies this week. I'll be back with a post about "5 Ways My Life as a Mom is Like Going Insane" in a few days.