Interview with Carol Bodensteiner

Last month I had the opportunity to have coffee with Carol Bodensteiner and interview her for the bookstore's newsletter:

Carol Bodensteiner hails from Jackson County in the rolling hills of eastern Iowa and just wrapped up a semester as a visiting professor at Drake University. Growing Up Country: Memories of an Iowa Farm Girl is Carol’s first book and she recently finished working with the Department for the Blind to put her book on tape. “I'm very excited about that,” says Carol. “My mother had macular degeneration and I intended to read my book on tape for her. She died before I could get that done - in fact before my book was in printed form. So I wanted to do that as a memorial for her and others with macular degeneration.”

Though she spent most of her adult life in the public relations field, Carol has always been a writer. Since becoming an independent consultant in 1999 she has more time to focus on creative writing. The positive response Growing up Country surprised Carol as she wrote the book mostly for her family, especially her mother. “I love it that people like my book,” she said. “I don’t even know how to take that. As it turns out my book resonates with a lot of people.”

When she isn’t writing or teaching Carol can be found writing articles for the Iowan magazine, consulting on a public relations project and researching her next book. Carol is currently reading The Horizontal World and enjoys seeing how other people approach writing memoirs. Check out her website at www.carolbodensteiner.com for news on her next book and opportunities to meet Carol in person. Her next scheduled Des Moines visit will be at the Iowa State Fair in the Agriculture Building.

One of Carol's favorite quotations:

I write when I'm inspired, and see to it that I'm inspired at nine o'clock every morning. -Peter De Vries

Messages

Messages
By Jennifer Luing-Schafer
Published by iUniverse.com
March (?) 2008

For about $600 and a little time anyone can publish a manuscript and receive a set of books featuring a genuine ISBN. For some people this is a great opportunity to do a small printing for family and friends. It also allows an author to skip the publishing world drama and try for success outside of the mainstream book distributors.

When it comes to Messages however, I wonder if the world of self-publishing shouldn't have a gate-keeper. I'm not suggesting anything too severe, perhaps an editor to make sure the first sentence is grammatically correct before bestowing "book-ship" upon a piece of work.

Messages is a story of two teenage girls who come across a Ouija board and become involved with an evil spirit. The rest is a jumble of poor grammar with an incoherent storyline. It's told as if a child was asked to describe her worst nightmares and then the book was translated from some foreign language. I feel sorry for the English teachers the author thanks in the dedication.

I rarely write negative reviews, but the story didn't scare me nearly as much as the writing. This book is a warning to would-be authors: be careful what you publish. Someone might read it.