Interview With Author Henry Rausch
Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I spent the first half of my adulthood underwater, on a fast attack submarine conducting classified missions against the Soviets. I wrote a memoir about it, and got approval from the DoD to publish it. It is called “Submerged: Life on a Fast Attack Submarine in the Last Days of the Cold War”, and it has sold well. The memoir connected with many submarine veterans who felt that I told their story. I tried to write “Two Years Before the Mast” for the twentieth century. Ask me in a hundred years if I was successful. “Hotwire” is my second book and first fiction book.
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
“How to Hotwire an Airplane” is based loosely on my exploits while flying in the US. When I left the Navy, I bought an airplane and used it to fly to sites to install satellite antennas. I was doing a job at a remote ghost-towny resort called Lajitas, right on the Rio Grande. It had a small airstrip right there on the border, which I flew into. One night at the hotel, I saw a whole “migration” of workers walking across the Rio into Mexico and asked what was going on. I was told they were day laborers; they worked at the ranch during the day and lived in a truck camp on the Mexican side at night. I walked across the Rio and partied with them. A few months later, I had to drive there to remove the antenna, and ran into the internal border patrol checkpoints–they are set up 50-75 miles north of the border and interdict everyone heading north. They just wave white people through, but give brown-skinned people a hard time. I thought to myself, “What stops me from giving a lift to these people in my plane, over the checkpoints, so they don’t get hassled?” That was the kernel of the book, but it addresses much more than the border. The protagonist is based on my father, who was really messed up when he came back from Vietnam, though it took decades for him to get help for his trauma. One of the central themes is redemption through service; the protagonist heals his psychic wounds by helping others. It is also just a rip-roaring flying adventure story–most of the flying incidents happened to me, or I heard about. It has elements of magical realism and romance too–I have always believed there is more to the world than what we perceive, that we have filters in our minds that stop us from noticing the real world, though we perceive it with our senses. And finally, it is a story of a romance from a man’s point of view, an outlook that you do not read much in literature today, because readers are predominantly women. I thought readers would appreciate how things look from a man’s POV.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
Ha ha I would say writing as a profession is unusual in itself! I write in the morning and type very fast with about 1 typo per word, to get the ideas down. That is my “Draft 0.5”. Then I go through it and write it properly, correcting spelling but also changing it, that is draft 1.5. Then I workshop it on Scribophile or Critique Circle, then run it through Pro Writing Aid as a final check (I do not use the generative AI components, only the grammar checkers.) Then I send it to my proofreader, then I use the “read out loud” feature of Word and listen to the whole book, then I send it to KDP and order an author proof copy and read it for punctuation errors–this usually results in an error-free document.
What authors, or books have influenced you?
I started reading at age 8 and never stopped, and went through various phases. Early on it was the Sci Fi classics–Asimov, Heinlein, Clark, Niven, Poule. Then for a while I was really into Jack London, read everything he wrote. Then Hemingway, a dangerous author to read when you are in your 20s and feeling your oats. Now I am drawn to character-driven stories, but they have to have a compelling plot. Neil Gaiman and Cormac McCarthy are two of my current favorites. Though I know their personal lives have tarnished their reputation, I enjoy their works.
What are you working on now?
An underdog story, two underappreciated lunkheads make an app that has the effect of bringing down the world’s GPS system. But it is not all bad, without GPS and an addiction to phones, people start connecting with each other, and the polarization we experience now crumbles.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
For “Submerged” it was easy, I had a built-in affinity group of submariners. I flew my little plane to submarine veterans groups around the country and sold it, and it took off by word of mouth. I wish I knew how to promote “Hotwired”–I thought it would take off given the current political environment–it is not didactic, but you could describe it as “Schindler’s List meets The Great Waldo Pepper.” But it has been a tough slog.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Get in a group–a writers club, or online like Scribophile or Critique Circle, or both. Writing is a lonely business and it helps to have people to talk to, bounce ideas off, just decompress with.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
I have never taken anyone’s advice in my life. If I ever heard good advice, I ignored it.
What are you reading now?
I have been reading some plot-driven novels–a few books by Victor Methos (courtroom dramas), an alternate history series by James Young called Acts of War. Plowing through all of Grady Hendricks humor-horror books–they crack me up! And they are not just beach reads, he has a lot to say about how women, and in general people down the ladder in life, are treated. For character-driven books, I finished both of Nathan Hill’s books and will probably re-read.
What’s next for you as a writer?
I will keep on like this. I submitted “Submerged” to the Writer’s Digest awards, and I think I have a shot at the grand prize, which includes an interview with an agent or publisher. I actually had an agent for both “Submerged” and “Hotwire” but elected to self-publish. I love to hear from readers. You can email me at author@henryrausch.com.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
The Bible, not because it is religious, but it packs a lot of entertainment into one book. I have a very thick book of all Hemingway’s short stories, which I would pack. And I have a very compact set of all Shakespeare’s works I would bring. People make the mistake of reading Shakespeare–wrong–you really need to hear it, or read it out loud. I would have hours of fun, reading each play in different voices, at the top of my lungs, on a desert island.
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