However, when you’ve worked as a writer, you realize that a publisher is excited about giving a contract to a professor who can assign his textbook as required reading to 1,000 students a semester. For example, when you’re in college you’re impressed to be taking a course by a professor who wrote the textbook that is assigned to the class. Having actually worked as a writer provides you with a strong perspective shift as to what writing is all about. However, the whole class wasn’t dedicated to Marquez, we only read “Innocent Erendira” over a weekend and spent about half a lecture in discussion. We read “The Incredible and Sad Tale of Innocent Erendira and her Heartless Grandmother.” I didn’t even appreciate how good that story was at the time, I only realized about ten years later that I’d thought about the story weekly since I read it. The only writer whose work blew me away that I encountered because of college was Gabriel Garcia Marquez. One of the main reasons I chose literature as my field of study was that I wanted to be introduced to writers I’d never heard of. I’m kind of curious to go back and take another look at standard canonical writers to evaluate how many earned their status through the quality of their work, and how many were manufactured for profit or ego. I have to admit that I’m becoming more and more cynical. What has your career taught you that you didn’t learn in college? I also spend time as a contributing blogger at (a Mt. Perseid Press has recently published an autobiographical novel inspired by tales from that period titled Reckless Traveler which has been very well received so far.Ĭurrently I’m working on a sequel to my dystopian fantasy The Reader of Acheron. I didn’t have hot water, but that was a small price to pay for the ability to enjoy a seemingly endless amount of free time. Back then, you could live comfortably in Lima for less than $8K a year. I wrote the novel anyway, and self-published it to the dark obscurity where it belongs (it’s terrible).Īfter I graduated, I moved to Lima, Peru and supported myself in part through editing and writing articles. Initially I’d hoped to submit the novel as my senior project, but then they told me I had to do a critical paper instead. I’d had several articles and short stories published while I was in college, but in my last semester I decided to write a novel. I graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire in 2001 with a degree in English Literature. Walter, please, tell us a little bit about yourself and your writing career. Walter Rhein, an author of the Reckless Traveler, and many, many more stories, was kind enough to stop by on my blog today.
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