Ask the Author: Mark Shrager
Answered Questions (8)
Mark Shrager
None, really. I make those decisions when I go to the bookstore. Don't plan my reading that far ahead.
Mark Shrager
How about this one? My father graduated from the University of Pittsburgh in 1928 with a doctoral degree in dentistry. He took out a business license to enter a dental practice, and then took a job as a shoe salesman. I knew none of this until he died and I found the diploma and license tucked away in a closet. He sold shoes for the next 40 years. What do you suppose happened? No one in my family could tell me, and since they're almost all gone, I guess I'll never know. We always think of it as The Shrager Family Mystery.
Mark Shrager
I think the best part is being able to make my opinions and feelings known and realizing I'm communicating with an audience of people who share my enthusiasm for the subject. Getting complimented by an editor or publisher is also nice. I'm still awaiting my first royalty check; hopefully this will also join the list of "best things."
Mark Shrager
Step away from the project for awhile. I'm fortunate to have had few bouts of writer's block; my problem is more often that my mind races ahead of the plot and I can't write fast enough to keep up.
Mark Shrager
Write! Write every day. I finished my first book at age 67, and I certainly advise aspiring writers to get an earlier start than I did. Also, find some way to get known in whatever field you plan to write about. Building a platform is far more important today than ever; without it, you may not even find an agent, let alone readers.
Mark Shrager
Mostly on promoting The Great Sweepstakes, primarily through social media. I've begun a book about the progressive movement in New York in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and its impact on such matters as boxing, horse racing, Sunday concerts, dancing, etc. It's a story of coalition building between political and religious groups.
Mark Shrager
I've always loved writing. One of my high school teachers once confessed to me that he'd given our class more writing assignments than any class he'd ever taught, because he enjoyed reading my writing so much. My first magazine article submission (in 1972) was accepted, and with this I felt that I could be a writer. Once I retired from my "real" career, I began writing full-time.
Mark Shrager
I became fascinated by thoroughbred racing as a youngster, when a sports book club inadvertently sent me Joe Palmer's racing classic This Was Racing instead of the baseball book I'd ordered. One of the stories in the Palmer book was about this race, and I was interested that a horse race could be so important that Congress would close so that its members could attend. Throughout my working career, I thought I might like to try writing a book about the race, and with my retirement I was able to do so. The more I wrote, the more I realized that the real story was less about the horse race than about the America of 1877, so I incorporated much of the history of the time as I told the story of the race. But the idea itself came from a book I'd been sent by mistake, and that turned me on to the amazing history of a sport I might otherwise never have known.
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