Literary Spotlight: Sandi Shelton

Sandi Shelton is the author of three novels; What Comes After Crazy, A Piece of Normal, and Kissing Games of the World. A humor columnist, she has won numerous journalism awards.

Q: Why do you think readers relate so well to your humorous experiences in parenting?

A: Well, I wrote three non-fiction humor books about parenting because I was stunned to realize that my life had completely derailed around the time I became a parent. Don’t get me wrong: I LOVE being a mother, however, it was undeniably a life changing event, this parenting business. When I started writing my humor column for the newspaper where I am a feature reporter, I honestly did not know that it was a humor column. I thought it was a family life column. It was only when other people started telling me that it made them laugh and made them feel better because such things were also going on in their own houses, that I felt better. I think that people are comforted in knowing that they are not alone; and that we all have this secret anxiety that we are the only ones mismanaging life to such a HUGE extent.

Q: You have been described as a young version of Erma Bombeck? What is your response?

A: Erma Bombeck was the master, pure and simple. I never aspired to be her, but I did like her work. Before she came along NO ONE was admitting that motherhood wasn’t all just roses and sunshine every single minute. These days, I no longer write humor columns, having switched to novels some years ago. Writing novels was always what I wanted to do; the humor column came out of the fact that I wrote for a newspaper to make a living, and started the humor column there because it felt somehow closer to writing fiction than the news writing I was being paid for.

Q: You started writing fiction at six years old. How important is it to foster writing as early as the primary grades in our schools?

A: It’s true that as a child, I always did love writing and I would sit for hours and create stories. Beyond providing children with opportunities to express themselves creatively instead of always giving them multiple choice tests instead of chances to write – school systems aren’t really the ones responsible for creating little writers. I think that falls to the parent. Let their imaginations go and don‘t insist on measuring or judging the outcomes.

Q: How did you turn your columns into a book?

A: Whenever I asked my agent if I could sell a book of columns she said “no,” that publishers weren’t interested in them. But then one day I was contacted by Working Mother magazine which ran my column each month, and told that a publisher had contacted them and wanted to talk to me. I boxed up about 400 columns and sent them to the founder of Bancroft Press in Baltimore and three months later he proposed a book. The newspaper where I work gave it their blessing. It turned out that I actually owned the columns because they weren’t part of my reporting job there.

Carlotta Holton is the author of Salem Pact and Touching The Dead, and is a member of the National Federation of Press Women and an affiliate member of the Horror Writers Association.

Carlotta Holton has just received her second award for Touching the Dead from the National Federation of Press Women Communications Contest. Click here to purchase the book.