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Literary Spotlight: Colin Woodard
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Colin Woodard is an award-winning global environmental journalist and author of bestselling nonfiction about the deterioration of the world’s oceans and the environmental
history of coastal Maine.
Q: How has being a journalist and foreign correspondent helped you with your writing?
A: Enormously, as it’s a medium that doesn’t tolerate superfluous tangents, cluttered transitions, or dense writing, or as I call them the Three Great Curses of Non-Fiction, which plagues the historical field with particular intensity.
Q: Describe the amount and kinds of research required for your books.
A: My first book was on the global crisis in the world’s oceans. I traveled to Antarctica and five other continents to see the oceans and interview people. I met with marine biologists, ecologists, fisheries scientists, glaciologists, historians and anthropologists while researching the book. The pirate book was a down-and-dirty archival treasure hunt. I spent days digging through dusty letters in the British Archives and organizing clues on a series of vast Excel spreadsheets.
Q: What has been the most successful marketing avenue for selling your books?
A: National Public Radio is a gem. I also find that speaking events are by far the most effective means of promoting my books. I’ve also learned that museums, clubs, libraries and other organizations with their own following usually have the best turnouts, while big box bookstores have the worst.
Q: Why did you decide to write Republic of Pirates as non-fiction?
A: There’s plenty of pirate fiction out there. The real story had never been told and is far more interesting and peculiar.
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.
