Dreaming Beyond Decades: Beth Brookhart on Writing, Aging, and the Power of Perseverance

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Living the Dream Podcast with Curveball. If you believe, you can achieve.

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast. Today, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today's guest proves that it is never too late to achieve your lifelong dream and goal. That Burkhart produced her first book or published her first book at age 67. She is drawing from her experience working on her local historical museum board. Now she's on to her second book, so we're gonna be talking to Beth about uh you know, achieving her dreams uh no matter what, and um really really proving that age is just a number. So, Beth, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

Thank you so much for having me, Curtis.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Oh, sure. I um I'm originally from Denver, Colorado, but have lived in California uh for most of my adult life. Um I spent 20-some years as an agricultural journalist covering stories about agriculture and farming in California and uh Texas and Arizona, and then moved into doing some communications work also in agriculture, because where I live in California, there is a lot of farming, and so that seemed to be the thing to do. And uh just a little bit on the personal side. My husband is a farmer, he grows grapes, the kind you eat, not the kind you drink. And uh I have two children and five grandchildren and two big slobbery dogs. So that's my personal side, but I began writing uh a novel, actually, a different novel than the one I had published back in 2010, realizing I had no clue what I was doing. So uh since 2010, I retired uh a little ways after that from my job and um began writing full-time and have been really enjoyed it, enjoyed the process. And um I guess that's a little bit of my story.

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Well, tell us about your writing process. Uh do you do an outline or do you just wing it?

SPEAKER_02 2:37

No, I just wing it, which I wish so badly I was the kind of person who outlined it because I think that's so organized and orderly. But no, I generally let a novel rattle around in my head. I've probably got three or four novels rattling around in my head, and I usually know the beginning and I know the end. I just don't know the middle. So a lot of times I'll just start it knowing how I want to start it and who my character is. I I let my character sort of simmer in my head for a long time. Who is my main character? What are they doing? What are they like? What are their traits? I don't write it down. I should, but I feel like I know them, like they're somebody I know. So I just kind of keep it in there until I start writing, and then it just kind of comes out naturally. The problem with that kind of process is I end up making a lot of changes down the road, you know, like, oh, this just didn't work. I'm gonna take this part out, and then sometimes I move things around. So that's why I wish I were an outliner, but it's just not in me. I'm I'm just not that kind of a person.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Well, uh the characters in your book are any of them real.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

No, everyone asks me that, and everyone tries to guess. It's kind of funny, but no, some were very much inspired by people I knew because you know, along your way you meet some really interesting people, some people with some interesting personality characteristics. And um, so of course I've been inspired by that, but nobody is real. And my book is set in the 1950s, so it's I mean, I'm old, but I'm not that old. I didn't I didn't grow up in the 50s, so um, no, nobody is real in the book, but um, there's some commonality in a few of them.

SPEAKER_01 4:22

Well, I know volunteerism is a theme, common theme in your book. So why did you choose that as a theme?

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Well, I I didn't initially set out to make that a theme, but it just sort of came about as I wrote because I realized, you know, it's one thing to have a job and you and you work for a company or an organization. There, you know, you have as an the employer has some controls on you. There are rules you have to follow. You know, if you don't do this, this or this, you know, you might lose your job or whatever. With volunteers, you don't have a lot of control. And volunteers are a lot of times used for organizations that are struggling, that need a lot of help, that don't have the money to hire people to do things. And so I realized how incredibly important volunteers are, and they really truly can save an organization, or sometimes they can make it go a little bit off the rails and wreck. Um, so I did a little bit of the wrecking side in the book, but um it's I thought it was an interesting dynamic in that you really could not control the four queens of the Button Bush Museum. There was nobody to stop them because they were volunteers, they weren't getting paid.

SPEAKER_01 5:45

Yeah, well, um talk about your publishing process. You know, how did you choose to publish a book and uh what what do you feel about the uh state of the publishing uh industry today?

SPEAKER_02 5:57

That's that's a big topic. Well, I had originally written a different novel that that didn't go anywhere, and I had what they call queried that. And for those who aren't familiar with that, if you want to publish traditionally, the old-fashioned way of publishing, the first step is you have to get a literary agent. And to do that, you have to do what they call query, which is you write a letter. There are lists and lists of these literary agents, they're most all all in New York, they're all very young, usually. And um, you write a letter and you say, Here's my book, here's what it's about, blah, blah, blah. And um they may or may not read it. You don't know where it goes, it just ends up in some vast email pile at their desk. So you never really know what happens. So I did that with the first book, and I also did it with the four queens of the Button Bush Museum book as well. I queried that and I got no luck there. So then I decided I would try to go straight to a publisher, a small publisher who didn't require a literary agent. There are some that don't. Most publishing houses do ask for a literary agent to represent an author, but there are some that don't. So I started sending out uh query letters to them, and I didn't hear anything because it usually takes a long time to hear things like that. So I began investigating self-publishing, which is a perfectly legitimate way to publish a book. I think self-publishing has truly opened up uh writing to so many people who would have no access to it, who have no way to get their book out before. But I really wanted to make it quality. So I was looking for quality self-publishers, but it was very expensive. I priced it out, and gosh, the ones I looked at, it was anywhere from $10,000 to $35,000. So that was a lot. So I was hemming and hawing, like, oh, I don't want to spend that kind of money. And um, that's when I got an email from my publisher, Sibyline Press. They're a small, very small publishing house, and they publish only the works of women over the age of 50, which I thought, yay, I fit that, I fit that criteria. And so uh that's how I found them. And it's kind of fun to be in a cohort of of women, you know, about the same age. And uh we all had tried really hard to get published, and nobody would look at us, nobody would give us a shot in most cases. So um, in that case, it's it's turned out really well. It's still a really hard process. I think it's very, a very inefficient process to have to query a literary agent. Um, it takes a long time, they often don't respond. I sent out countless emails of query letters and got nothing back, not even a thanks but no thanks. Just nothing. So it's it's a really inefficient and archaic process, in my opinion, but they don't seem inclined to change it. So I'm glad I I found the route I did of going straight to a publisher and being able just to work with the publisher directly.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Do you find it difficult to write humor?

SPEAKER_02 9:09

Why why not? Oh, um humor kind of comes naturally to me, but it you have to be really careful when you write humor because not everything works for everybody. Um, and I was the book is set in the 1950s, so I had to adjust it to that time period. You know, humor now can be really vulgar in a lot of cases, really cruel. Um, and I didn't want to write that kind of a book. So and in the 1950s, that really wasn't a thing. So I drew a lot on my mom and my grandma, who who both were pretty good jokesters and could pop off a one-liner here and there um to crack me up when I was a kid. And so I drew a lot from them. Um, but I I tried not to take it overboard because nobody wants to be hit over the head with humor. You just kind of want it to be sort of steady and and subtle, but not, I didn't want total slapstick, at least not for this.

SPEAKER_01 10:15

Or tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that LSS need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_02 10:20

Sure. Well, if it's in with the your curveball name of your podcast, it's I'm calling it a novel, and it's in right now at my publisher. It's it'll be um right now my publishing date is April 2nd, 2027. It's I'm calling it a field of dreams for women. If you remember the Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams, about the baseball players who come out of the cornfield. Um, but mine is about a female softball coach who loses her job at an elite high school in Denver, Colorado, and ends up taking a job at a little tiny rural high school where the kids are really there, it's a lot of poverty, a lot of challenges. And um, she decides she's gonna try to make them champions and get her old job back. And while she's doing this, she meets kind of a strange man who kind of shows up around the ball field a lot and he becomes her mentor. He's very nice and kind, and he he he uh he encourages her. And um she's gonna have a little bit of a reckoning with her family's past with this man because there's some things that will come to light that will be very surprising to her. So it's got a little bit of magic in it, magical realism, you'd call it. And I hope a lot of heart because it's you know, it's a team story of girls who don't have much and they learn to come together as a team and how she coaches them to that.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

All right. Well, so everybody can keep up with everything that you're up to, don't have to contact info.

SPEAKER_02 11:49

Sure. I have a website, Beth Brookhart.com, B-E-T-H-B-R-O-O-K-H-A-R-T dot com. I'm also on Instagram and Facebook as Beth Brookhart. And uh my book's available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and I think Target and Walmart as well. So um, but but my website's a place to find me.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

All right, we'll close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on, or any final thoughts you have for the listeners?

SPEAKER_02 12:21

Um, no, uh other than I would just say if you know, for listeners who have a dream of something they've always wanted to do that's in reason. I mean, obviously, if you're my age, 67 years old, you're you're not gonna play uh NBA basketball. You're not you're not gonna get on a team like that. You know, you've that's that's gone past you. But things like writing and other creative processes, you can do it. And I would say don't let your age hinder you. Just just go for it. Try it out, learn, learn the craft, whatever it is, learn about what you're what you want to do, and um just go for it. You life is short, so make the most of it.

SPEAKER_01 13:03

Absolutely, ladies and gentlemen. And once again, to keep up with everything that Beth is up to, Beth Brookhart.com is the place to go. So please be sure to follow rate review, share this episode to as many people as possible. Also, please share the show and the website www.curveball337.com to everybody that you know. And uh, if you haven't checked out the site, uh go check it out and leave us a review, follow the show, leave us some voicemail or anything like that, and check out some episodes. Thank you for listening and supporting the show, and Beth, thank you for all that you do, and thank you for joining me.

SPEAKER_02 13:45

Thank you so much for having me.

SPEAKER_00 13:47

For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.curveball337.com until next time. Keep living the dream.