Mentorship project, week 4

Today D. and I met with local author William L. Sullivan, who was as nice in person as he was gruff in e-mails. He makes a good living from his hiking books, and now he’s got the time to write novels as well. He has his own publishing company and seems to enjoy the distribution process. He also gives lots of talks (about the hiking books, local nature, history, etc.), and a few years back I got to see him portray our city’s founder (at a birthday party for him in one of the pioneer cemeteries), which was pretty impressive. This weekend, I read his light mystery novel, The Case of Einstein’s Violin, which was immensely entertaining (and it was lovely to get to spend part of the snowy weekend on a sunny Greek isle). His house is lovely, too, with a beautiful bay window in the dining room, a big terrarium for his daughter’s Greek tortoise, which the cat snuggles up in as well, for the heat, a full-sized pipe organ, and many of his wife’s paintings, which I quite liked.

Last week we couldn’t see Bill Sullivan because of the snow, so D. wrote up his journal for the week based on helpful e–mails from Lisa Goldstein. She explained about working with an agent and being a “mid-list” author. I find it all fascinating. With four interviews completed, D is now two-thirds done with the interviews! Two more to go, plus putting together the presentation.