Author Joe Carvalko on the Magic of Writing and the Strength to Tell Stories

Attorney, musician, teacher and author Joe Carvalko has written his first novel, We Were Beautiful Once, Chapters from a Cold War. He shares how the story came to be and how formal study informed his craft and art.

How did you come up with the idea for the novel?

Attorney, musician, teacher and author Joe Carvalko

Twenty-five years ago, I tried a case against the government demanding an accounting of Roger Dumas, a Korea War soldier [the government] claimed was MIA. The trial followed years of cover-up by the Army and the CIA; however, I won the first, Federal court-ordered reclassification of a U.S. soldier from MIA to POW. The documentary "Missing, Presumed Dead: The Search for America's POWs," narrated by Edward Asner, details my trial efforts. I fictionalized the events drawn around the case as tried, delving into the issues of PTSD, and generally converting it into a mystery with many characters over a wide expanse of time. 

Having tried many cases, I used experiences from actual trials and created a dramatic courtroom testimony that parallels events on the battlefield and in the prison camp. The juxtaposition of the courtroom and the battlefield makes the real seem surreal. In some sense, it has the feel of The Rack, a 1956 movie where Paul Newman portrays an American soldier who collaborated with the Chinese while being held in a prison camp during the Korean War, or A Few Good Men, where Tom Cruise cross-examines Jack Nicholson in defending Marines.

What makes this different from other stories you've written?
In addition to my knowledge of the trial, I researched the Korean War and used this in setting various battles, troop movements and troop surrenders. I have firsthand knowledge of the story's settings, having made visits to Korea, working for a short while with the highest level of the Korean Department of Defense in Seoul. I am also a Cold War veteran of the Cuban Crisis, the Vietnam era and served in the Air Force with veterans of the Korean War. So, my story tracks the Korean War with a high degree of fidelity. There are many books about war, however relatively few about Korea. And the recent success of James McBride's The Miracle at St. Anna (WWII) leads me to conclude that there also may be a sizeable interest in the war that preceded Vietnam.

I have published two other books: A Road Once Traveled, Life From All Sides (a memoir that deals with military service and war) and A Deadly Fog (poems, essays and short stories about war). I also recently published The Techno-Human Shell, a nonfiction book about the future of medical technology and how we may become virtual cyborgs in the future. This is my first novel, so in that regard it is different.

How did getting an MFA help your writing and this project?
Ernest Hemingway once wrote, "There are some things which cannot be learned quickly, and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring. They are the very simplest things, and because it takes a man's life to know them the little new that each man gets from life is very costly and the only heritage he has to leave." My [MFA] mentors all paid heavily in learning their craft and taught me much about what it means to hear, smell, touch and see through a finer-tuned perspective, a keener sense of what things are, what things mean, a skill still in the making that lets me put finishing touches on thoughts that laid buried for so long.

I came from hard-headed disciplines: engineering, science and law. My career was filled with successful and failed inventors, corporate flights of fancy, mergers, lawsuits and high-rollers who gamed the system. My retreat had always been storytelling, nonfiction, fiction and poetry. I taught college courses and played piano part time. My vocation was a job; my avocations were my passions. But my writing, teaching and music were neither well-schooled nor mentored.  Being around good writers and being piloted to good books helped me improve in expressing my thoughts through the magic of writing, and brought me to the place I am now.

We do not see process; we only feel it. My time spent pulling the oars under the beat of a first-rate [MFA] faculty impressed every fiber of my being with a point of view that gives me strength to tell my story and the stories of others, some mundane, some fascinating, some silenced in pursuit of their own journey. The first journey I wanted to take [as a novelist] was into the plot that became We Were Beautiful Once, Chapters from a Cold War.

Sting of the Heat Bug, by author Jack Sheedy

Someday, the heat bug will sting. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Tolstoy was so wrong when he began Anna Karenina with the oft-quoted sentence: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Our happy, Eisenhower-era family had its ups and downs, happy moments and unhappy ones, none of them at all like those of other families. We never considered ourselves an "unhappy family," even though we had unhappy moments; and in our happy moments, we still felt different from other families in our happiness.


Author Jack Sheedy



In fact, we felt protected. Other families — happy or otherwise — occasionally experienced poverty, disaster, disease, even death. We looked on in horror and sorrow, and we thanked our Catholic God (if he is so!) that he protected us against such calamities. When we did have to endure troubles — such as losing most of our possessions in the flood of 1955 — we at least recovered eventually. God seemed to be protecting us, even as our parents grew old and we five siblings entered middle age.

And then it ended.

My older sister, Peggy, a Type 1 diabetic, went into an insulin coma in 1985 and died three months later. Peggy was my "Irish twin," born just a bit more than 10 months before I was. From infancy, we shared a bond no one else shared. As kids, we spent hours watching ants in the driveway. We listened to the "heat bug," the cicada high in the trees on a hot summer day. I asked her if it stings. She said yes, if you bother it. I asked how you could tell if you were bothering it. "Because it stings," she said.

As adolescents, she taught me to dance — or tried to. As adults, we had each other's backs when things went wrong. And now, just weeks after her 40th birthday, she was dead.

The Catholic miracle didn't happen. Whatsoever I asked for in Jesus' name was not granted unto me.

If I chose, I could have re-categorized our family as unhappy. Instead, I decided to write about Peggy's death, to make sense of it, to figure out whether God had abandoned me or I had abandoned him. Why did the heat bug sting me?

A poignant work of hope

I wrote most of the 60 short chapters of Sting of the Heat Bug  between 2004 and 2008 while a member of Shepaug River Writers, a writing group centered in Litchfield. When I was too maudlin, the other members let me know. When I was too flippant, or too depressing, my critics gave me the thumbs down.

My goal was not to get readers to say, "Oh, poor Jack!" I wanted them to say, "Poor me! I wish I had known Peggy!" If I had tried to elicit pity for myself, most likely readers would have thought, "Get over it already. So you had a tough time. Who hasn't? Deal with it!"

Before attempting to write, I had to get to a place where I no longer needed pity. I had to get to where I could feel hope. I recalled the reactions of other family members and acquaintances to this and to other misfortunes, and in every case I saw people taking positive control of their lives — getting more involved in church or community activities, reaching out to even less fortunate people, saying a kind word. I was amazed at the depth of their faith. They seemed to echo the words of Job: "Shall we receive good from God and shall not receive evil?"

The heat bug stings us all, sooner or later. We won't see it coming. We won't know just why it stings. We won't know what we might have done to bother it. But if we're lucky, we will survive it. We might even get healthier because of it.

To learn more about Sting of the Heat Bug, go to Signalman Publishing, where there is a link to both the paperback edition and the e-book.

Cool Resources for Writers

Helpful online resources

Scriptologist: This site combines the three most powerful elements of online marketing — content, commerce and community — for those in screenwriting.

Sips Card: This paying market puts short fiction and poetry in local coffee shops around the country. Each card has a quick response code loaded with a short story or set of poems from an independent writer meant to last as long as a cup of coffee. The card includes the author's name, story title and website/email.

Stoneslide Books: Launched in February 2012, this fiction press seeks narratives — primarily novels — that prompt readers to think, ask questions and "move the mind forward."

Teachers and Writers Collaborative (T&W): T&W sends professional writers into schools and communities to teach creative writing, and conducts professional development workshops for teachers and administrators. T&W has published more than 80 books, and publishes Teachers & Writers Magazine.

Writer's Bloq: This supportive site is about and for writers and their writing. Writers can create a portfolio and share their work with writers and gain a readership that can open publication doors. The community is based on creative cooperation and idea promotion.

Writers Conference & Centers (WC&C): This database allows writers to search for regional, national and international conferences, centers, festivals, residencies and retreats. Search by region and/or genre, and find scholarship opportunities as well. WritersNet www.writers.net/agents: This site helps writers showcase their work to be found by agents, editors and publishers.

Even More Great Resources for Writers

Great resources help make great writers

Literary Agent's Directory: This comprehensive listing of U.S.-based agents includes locations, phone numbers and websites.

LitReactor: LitReactor enables writers to improve their craft, gives readers a place gab about books and provides a platform to jump-start your writing goals. Offerings include monthly online classes, a great writers' workshop and a magazine filled with interviews, reviews and columns.

National Association of Memoir Writers (NAMW): The NAMW is a member-based organization for memoirists worldwide. This targeted memoir-writing community works on writing, marketing and publishing skills through events, teleseminars, articles and resources. The goal is to empower memoirists to develop and publish their stories in various venues.

PressBooks: Built on WordPress, PressBooks allows users to create e-books for any device, Web books for accessibility and promotion, and PDFs for print books and print on demand. The aim is an easy blogging-style way to get books into Kindle, Apple iBooks, Nook and other venues.

ProBlogger.com: This site gives bloggers a chance to collaborate, learn and network in a private forum. Whether you're looking to find readers, make money, write content, design a blog, collaborate, find technology help or get a critique, this eclectic site offers a bit of everything.

More Great Resources for Writers

Resources for writers

Byliner: Byliner is a digital publisher of compelling fiction and nonfiction written to be read in one sitting. Stories range from 5,000 to 30,000 words, and are sold as Kindle Singles at Amazon, Quick Reads at Apple's iBookstore and NOOK Snaps at BN.com.

Find a Literary Agent: This tool helps writers and agents cut through the red-tape of making a match

GalleyCat: Part of Media Bistro, this site helps writers, agents and publishers connect, and is building a directory of best agents on Twitter.

Help a Reporter (HARO): Looking for free PR? Nearly 30,000 media members have quoted HARO sources. Founded in 2008, HARO is one of North America's fastest-growing social media services, and is free to sources and reporters.

Great Resources for Authors and Publishers

Best resources for 2013

Here is the next installment of the January writers' resource list.

Association of American Publishers (AAP): AAP's 300 members comprise premier publishers of entertainment, education, scientific and professional content, and deliver that content to global audiences through the latest technology. Writers in various genres can use the site to find valuable contacts.

Association of Author's Representatives (AAR): While primarily for agents, the AAR is a site writers can use to confirm that the agent of interest has a solid reputation.

aStore: For writers seeking their own store featuring Amazon products, this site is worth investigating. aStore by Amazon is a quick way to create a professional online store that can be embedded in, or linked to or from, your website. Writers can choose products to complement or augment their current offerings.

Author Buzz: Founded in 2005, this fee-based marketing service links authors with booksellers, librarians, readers and reading groups. It gets the buzz out through key online publications, such as Book Movement, Dear Reader, Kindle Nation Daily, Publishers Marketplace and Shelf-Awareness. Author Buzz works with fiction, nonfiction, young adult, middle grade and picture book authors, and tailors its programs to their needs and budget.

New Year, New Information

Welcome to 2013. This month, we'll feature some great online resources for writers and editors. Some you may be aware of, and some not.

Archway Publishing

Archway, a venue for emerging writers

This comparatively new venue for emerging writers comes from mega-publisher Simon & Schuster (S&S). S&S teamed up with Author Solutions, a leading self-publishing company, to create Archway, which offers a specialized approach to design, formatting, editorial and marketing services through packages tailored to meet each author's objectives and audience.

Create the Best Scene to Propel Your Plot and Reveal Your Characters

Revise scenes to enhance the story

Actor Jack Nicholson often offers directors more than one version of a scene. Why? Besides the fact that he's an outside-the-box thinker, Nicholson's rationale for doing a scene more than one way is, simply, choice — to provide the best scene for the story. Writers can benefit from the same approach.

If you're writing a story whose plot lacks forward momentum, or have created a character that isn't fully realized, try this technique:

• Start with a blank page, and write a completely new scene, without considering for the moment whether it meshes with the rest of the story.
• Put the scene aside for a day or two, then repeat the process.
• Wait another day or so, then compare the three scenes — the original and the two new options.

Now ask yourself these questions:

• What does each scene reveal about your character(s)?
• How would each choice affect the story as a whole?
• Which option works best, or feels most real? Why?
• If you're fairly far along in the story, don't start over.

Simply note what will need to change as the thoughts come to mind, and continue writing based on what you know now. You can use what you've learned to inform Draft 2 during the revision process.

What story are you working on that could use a fresh direction?

Happy writing!

For more tips, visit Word for Words, or visit Adele's blog.