Richard Fellinger is an award-winning author, former journalist, and writing fellow at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He is the author of Summer of ’85, the story of a mass shooting and old summer love, released June 15, 2021, from TouchPoint Press. It’s the winner of the Novel Excerpt Contest at Seven Hills Review.
Where available:
Amazon at www.bit.ly/85summer
What sets your book apart from others?
This novel is a human story that tackles a serious social issue, gun violence. More specifically, it’s about a man in mid-life coming to grips with the death of his old summer love in a mass shooting at the same time his second marriage is falling apart. I thought it was important to tell a story like this to shine a light on one of the many human stories that are touched by the massacres we see all too often.
What authors inspired you most and how so? What do you admire about each one?
Lately I’ve been reading a lot of T.C. Boyle. I admire the way he weaves human stories into the fabric of cultural movements and problems, in addition to his eloquent writing style.
What advice do you have to offer in support of other authors?
Keep plugging and do things the right way.
What is your genre of choice and why? How did you come to write in that particular genre or niche?
Literary and upmarket fiction. I studied fiction at the University of Pittsburgh in the 1980s under the late great Chuck Kinder, who was better known as Raymond Carver’s best friend, and he was a major influence on me. His focus on reality and the human stakes in fiction struck me as important since I was twenty years old.
What are your future writing endeavors? What’s next on your authorship agenda?
My work in progress is a novel with the working title So Far Out of Reach, about two magazine colleagues struggling to make a relationship work when an editor’s sexual harassment case upends it.
Is writing for you synonymous with living and breathing, or just something you do as a hobby, and how so and why?
Yes, it is synonymous with living and breathing. As an old journalist, who spent fifteen years creating something every day for a newspaper audience, I crave that daily dose of satisfaction that comes with creating something, even if it’s just a paragraph of a work in progress.
What do you feel we need to hear or read more of that is rare today in a book?
Social problems, even if they touch on controversial political issues. The reaction to my book from publishers was both interesting and troubling. I had an agent for a while, but he was unable to place it with the big publishers, one of whom said they liked it but “can’t move forward” with a book on a mass shooting. Those three words are stuck in my craw. Others said it was in the news too much and/or too fresh right now. Can’t move forward? Why? Issues like this need spotlights shined on them.
Indie/Self-Published Author and/or Traditionally Published? What do you favor more and why?
I favor the traditionally published route. I believe the editorial process, as painful as it can be sometimes, makes my work better, and having the stamp of approval of another professional who’s willing to invest their time and ink and paper in my book is important to me.
What do you hope to accomplish with your literary creation? What change or enlightenment do you want to bring about in your reader if any?
I want to tell a story that helps people understand something about this beautiful, messy business of being a human being.
