April 8, 2026

Pages of Passion: Chris Orcutt's Ten-Year Quest to Create a Teen Epic

Send us Fan Mail In this captivating episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we sit down with Chris Orcutt, a professional writer with over 30 years of diverse experience in journalism, teaching, and corporate speechwriting. Chris shares his remarkable journey from a cub reporter to a full-time fiction author, revealing the challenges and triumphs he faced along the way. He reflects on the profound impact of 9/11 on his career trajectory, leading him to pursue his passion for writing ful...

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Send us Fan Mail

In this captivating episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we sit down with Chris Orcutt, a professional writer with over 30 years of diverse experience in journalism, teaching, and corporate speechwriting. Chris shares his remarkable journey from a cub reporter to a full-time fiction author, revealing the challenges and triumphs he faced along the way. He reflects on the profound impact of 9/11 on his career trajectory, leading him to pursue his passion for writing full-time. Chris discusses his latest project, *Bodaciously*, a nine-part coming-of-age saga set in the 1980s that explores the complexities of adolescence and the freedom of youth. With insights into the writing process, the importance of focus, and the ability to delay gratification, Chris offers valuable lessons for aspiring writers and anyone tackling big projects. Tune in to discover how he transformed a decade-long dream into a reality and find out where you can follow his work and upcoming releases. This episode is packed with inspiration and practical advice for anyone looking to pursue their passion and navigate the creative journey.
For more information on Chris Orcutt and his work, visit orcutt.net.
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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. if you believe you can achieve. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today I am joined by, by professional writer Chris Orcutt. Chris has over 30 years of experience in writing. And while he was perfecting his skills as a fiction writer in his 20s and 30s, he also made a living as a journalist, an instructor, and a corporate speechwriter. So we're going to be talking to him about his career and he also has 12 meticulously crafted novels. So we're going to be talking to him about everything that he's up to and going to be up to. So, Chris, thank you for joining me.

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> Chris Orcutt>It's my pleasure, Curtis. Thank you for having me.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

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> Chris Orcutt>Well, I think you, you covered it pretty well. I was sitting back listening to everything you were saying, and I was like, who is that guy? I, I'm not really sure what to, to add. I think, you know, as I, as you mentioned, I've been a journalist and I've taught, English, at the college level for a while. I was a corporate speech writer and continued to write my fiction, every day a la Scott Turo. You know, the, the, the guy who really invented the legal thriller, ah, Presumed Innocent was really the first legal thriller. And he wrote, he wrote that, a good deal of it in between court cases and while commuting on the train. So he would be on the train and you know, writing with a legal pad. And, and while I was teaching high school, while I was a journalist first, you know, I was writing my fiction, you know, in my off hours. Then I was a high school teacher of American studies, that is American history and English. And I would get up at, you know, 4 o' clock in the morning and, you know, work on my writing until I needed to go, teach school. and then when I got into the corporate world, I did like Scott Turo and that is, you know, would write during my commute, usually on a legal pad. And, and then, you know, I was working with, for, Merrill lynch in corporate communications, right around 9 11. I say right around on 9 11. And I lived just outside of New York City and I worked at the World Financial center, in Manhattan, Lower Manhattan. In fact. My office was directly across the street from the Twin Towers. And I'll never forget that actually the day before 911 so it would have been the 10th of September. I was eating, I'll never forget, I was eating shrimp lo mein and sitting on my, my credenza, my office looked out on the street there, I think that was West Street, I can't remember, but it looked right out on the street.

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> Chris Orcutt>And I looked out and if I angled my head just right, I could see the top of the North Tower. And I had this feeling, I was like. At that time people were concerned about a, repeat of the, I believe it was 1993 bombing where, excuse me, where terrorists took a car or a truck laden with explosives and put it underneath the North Tower.

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> Chris Orcutt>And I said to myself in my office, I was like, you know, everybody's worried about them putting a bomb underneath the building. You know, what if somebody flew a plane into it? My hand to God, I had that thought, Curtis. And then that night as I was walking out, it was around, I was working

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00'.

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Clock. I was walking out to go to the subway and something told me to turn around and I turned around and I had, I had this view of the towers and went home. And then 9, 11. The sky has never been bluer. I have never seen such a blue sky and I don't think I'll ever see one. It was a really, really deep blue, indigo blue, you know. And I was on the train commuting in when the message came over the PA that something had happened at the Twin Towers. After some debate, the train conductor, they took us into Grand Central. My wife and I met at our pre designated meeting spot which was the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue. It's only a couple of blocks from Grand Central. And, and we went over to her office in on 8th Avenue. We saw the South Tower come down which was horrendous. We were on the roof of the, the building looking down when, when it came down. And after that we were, we had to hike out of Manhattan. Curtis, it was, I, I forget his Manhattan. Eight miles long or 14. I think it's 14. Well, we had to hike many, many m miles. We hiked out of Manhattan. The only bridge that was open was this really small bridge at the very tip of Manhattan into Bronx, into the Bronx. And my former manager picked us up there and we went home. this is all, ah, I don't know how I got on the, the 911 train talking about it, but I think you know, I can rein this back in. I think the thing about 911 was shortly after that, my wife basically said, look, life is short, Chris. And this is this meaning fiction writing is what you want to do. So I want you to focus on it full time. And then shortly thereafter, Merrill lynch started offering these basically, voluntary severance programs. And I took it. And that's when, that's when I started becoming a full time, full time fiction writer. It came out of 9 11.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, you have also earned a living as a journalist and instructor and a corporate speechwriter. You want to talk about that part of your career?

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> Chris Orcutt>Yes, absolutely. I loved writing for newspapers.

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> Chris Orcutt>my first job out of college was as the cub reporter for a small weekly newspaper that is now defunct. It was called the Millbrook Roundtable, and it was part of this group of weekly newspapers in the Hudson Valley here in New York. there were seven or eight of these newspapers, part of Taconic Newspapers. Unfortunately, the Internet killed a lot of small local newspapers. But my first job out of college was writing for this weekly newspaper. And I loved it. You know, I really did. I really enjoyed, you know, the, the characters, I, getting to meet people. And I did this profile piece every week, where I would find some obscure person in the community who had an interesting story to tell. I'll, I'll still, I'll always remember this Silver Star winner. Silver Star. He won the Silver Star in World War II. And I'll never forget him telling. He was a, he was a Bombardier, for a, you know, I forget the exact plane, but he was a Bombardier and he was flying over Germany. And he, he said, no, excuse me, he was flying over North Africa at the time. And he said, he looked down his site at the area he was going to be bombing. And he said that he saw this glint of metal, this shiny glint. And it turns out that that shiny glint was General Patton's helmet because he used to have, apparently he had this glaring, this glaring helmet that he would wear when he was in battle. So I really enjoyed, journalism. I worked for a weekly newspaper and then I wrote for a daily newspaper here in New York in Poughkeepsie. Poughkeepsie, New York. It's the Poughkeepsie Journal. It's, the oldest newspaper in New York. I just, I, I enjoyed it. I, I, what I enjoyed most, Curtis, was the investigative aspect of it. I, I'm quite proud of the fact that I, you know, you know, I'm not trying to brag or anything, but I, I single handedly kept my Community, Millburg, New York, where I went to high school and to some extent grew up. I kept that community from being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous developer. this developer came into the community and he claimed to have done all of these various projects. And he had his eye on, this historical site in the community, Bennett College. It was a small women's college in the 20th century, or, you know, mid 20th century and early 20th century. And he had his sights on this place to. He was talking, you know, big game. He's going to develop it and he's going to put in condominiums, etc. And something just felt off about the guy. And so I took it upon myself. I went to my editor and I said, I think this guy's fishy. I think. I think this guy's a crook. That's what I think. And so I started looking into, these projects that he claimed to have been a part of. And I called a number of, basically the town planning departments in these communities in Florida where he claimed to have the projects. And the guy pulled the blueprints, and he told me, this guy isn't on any of these blueprints. You know, this is, This guy has had nothing to do with these projects. And I revealed that in a article, that came out that week. And within a couple of days, the guy and his crew were gone. never got a thank you from the. From the town mayor or anything. I would have liked that, you know. so, you know, there was the newspaper reporting. In my early, very early 20s. Then I taught us, history in English, at the high school level in Freeport, Maine, for a couple of years.

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> Chris Orcutt>Trouble. I loved teaching Curtis, but it was very difficult to make a living at it. It really was.

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> Chris Orcutt>and it's probably, in my case, good that it didn't pay well, because I think had it paid well, had it been comfortable, I probably wouldn't have had the impetus to, you know, to leave that job and to strike out and, you know, work for Merrill lynch and to work for JP Morgan and do corporate speech writing, which led to me doing my fiction full time. So, I guess I'll mention one thing about the corporate speech writing. One thing that I learned in it was that you really. Speechwriting is really an art. And the way in which it's an art is that you really have to spend some time with the person for whom you're writing a speech, because you really have to be attuned to their speaking style.

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> Chris Orcutt>Their cadence problem words that they might have.

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> Chris Orcutt>there was one executive I was writing for who had something of a lisp and that was, that was a challenge to try to find, you know, avoiding words with you know, S's in it. It's not easy. so you know, it's, it's been a seemingly sinuous journey of, of getting to the point where I've, I'm, you know now a full time fiction writer and have written over a dozen novels and this nine part or nine book, novel that I've been working on for the past 10 years. But it's really all related because it's always been writing, you know, writing and, or the teaching of writing. Communication has always been the through line.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, it kind of talk about your novels, you know, kind of tell the listeners about the novels and what they can expect when they read them and where they can get them.

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> Chris Orcutt>Oh, so would you like me to talk about the Bodaciously novels now?

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Yeah, go ahead.

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> Chris Orcutt>Oh, okay. Well, Bodaciously True and totally awesome is a. It's basically one giant novel in nine parts. And I'm going to be releasing the first novel is coming out on January 20th of 2026.

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> Chris Orcutt>So that's basically just a month away and every 12 to 15 weeks there'll be a new episode or another novel. And I wrote it to be like the 80s nighttime soap operas where know you. some, some of the novels will be left on a cliffhanger, some will just be continuations of the story. it's a, a coming of age and teen romance story about teens in the 80s in the suburbs. And one way I've described it is it's like War and Peace meets Fast Times at Ridgemont High. You know those, a number of those 80s, you know, those 80s comic movies.

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> Chris Orcutt>there was something about that movie that when I saw it when I was you know, 10, 11 years old and having lived through the 80s and Benetine in the 80s, I, you know, I wanted to capture some of the, some of the zeitgeist that, that we lived through and lived with in the, in the 1980s and the fact that you know, my generation is, was largely you know, under parented, you know, or if not outright unparented. And that's a, you know, that's not meant to, to be a slight against our parents. It's just a fact. It's you know, in many cases both of our parents were working and you know we were the original latchkey Kids, you know, we were coming home from school to you know, an empty house, our parents are working, and we're kind of left, we were left to our own devices and that, you know, that's a double edged sword. There was a lot of freedom. We had a lot of freedom and we learned to figure things out for ourselves and we kind of depended on and leaned on our friends or you know, our friends were basically our support system. But the negative side of that was, you know, teen sex, teen pregnancy, you know, alcoholism, drugs, you know, ran the gamut. So what I've done with, with Bodaciously is I've basically created what I call a teen epic. I, as I started to write this Curtis about in 2015, I got about two years into the process and I realized that this wasn't going to be, it didn't want to be just a novel the size of the length of something like Catcher in the Rye, you know, which has always been held up as the, you know, the quintessential coming of age novel.

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> Chris Orcutt>I realized that I really wanted to dig down into the emotional core of what it is to be an adolescent. And so the nine books follow the central character. Avery Craig or Avery Ace Craig, his nickname is Ace and his friends over the course of two years. 19, 86, 1987. And you know, it's the, the story of a young man and his friends, you know, learning about the, the nature of love and true love and you know, contending with basically, you know, having that freedom I just mentioned and learning how to live with it and figuring out the solutions to problems on their own and depending on each other, and a lot of these conflicts, and adventures that teens had here in the US in the suburbs in the 80s. I've spent the last 10 years writing this, writing this giant novel and splitting it up into nine books.

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> Chris Orcutt>And the reason I did it this way is because I, you know, there, there have been other authors who have created a series or a character like I think of the, the Harry Potter books and I didn't want readers to have to wait years between each novel.

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> Chris Orcutt>And I also wanted the continuity, the continuity that comes when you write the one big thing and you write it together over time. The trouble is that if you go away from a novel that you've written, you come back to that world, you know, it gets a little hazy. You know, you, you forget exactly what a character looks like or you know, you, you're not as attuned to, their dialogue, the way they speak. so I've spent the past 10 years working on this and now it's, you know, it's going to be coming out in January. And, and the, you know, I, I learned a lot out of that process and I think it would be, it'd probably be better if I just, you know, if you're ready for me to. I can just talk about what that process was like.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Yeah, go ahead, sure.

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> Chris Orcutt>you know, one of the things that I learned, See, what I was trying to do, Curtis, with bodaciously, was I. I wanted to create a time machine for readers, particularly readers my age, Generation X, to be able to escape the, you know, the craziness of today. I mean, you know, whatever someone's political beliefs are, we can all agree that just the Internet, AI algorithms, GPS smartphones, all of these things, it can be too much. It's just. And I think. And I started to talk to a number of people my age and I noticed a commonality that we were all longing for a simpler time. And we would get talking about, hey, remember when we were teens and all of the stuff that we would do in the 80s? And you know, it was so great, we had so much freedom and, and I started thinking about that and I said, you know what? I want to write the ultimate coming of age novel. I want to write something that is a time machine back to the 80s. But what I found, Curtis, in listening to the professional reviewers, as well as, other reviewers that have read the book on NetGalley library thing, and my own set of personal readers, like friends and family, what I found is that I didn't just create a time machine back to the 80s, I created a time machine back to anyone's adolescence. And I didn't intend to do that, but I've had older people say to me, gosh, you know, Chris, this took me back to when I was a teen in the 50s. And then I've had young people, you know, members of Gen Z write to me and say, you know, gosh, you know, this took me back to when I was in high school just recently. And you know, so it seems like I, I succeeded at getting at that emotional core of what it is to be a teenager. The, you know, the hijinks that we all engaged in and the, you know, the unsure of yourself or trying things out, trying on various, personalities or, you know, ways of living. So, you know, what I was setting out to do was create this time machine. But it was 10 years in the making. It was 10 years of writing. It was 10 years of every day, 1500 words a day. It was 10 years of waking up every morning being not, not disgusted with, but not approving of all of my characters choices. You know, there were times where I would wake up in the morning and I'd be like, oh, you know, the characters are doing this, this and this and I don't. It makes me uncomfortable and I'm, I'm. And having to. You gotta step back. Your job as the author is not to judge what your characters do. this is something that Anton Chekhov, the Russian short story writer said. You know, your job isn't to judge the characters and what they do. Your job is basically to report on what they do. And so it was, you know, 10 years of this internal conflict where the characters were doing things that I didn't necessarily approve of or the, that made me uncomfortable. It was 10 years of having to face the doubts every day, Curtis, of, you know, what's going to happen with this is, is anybody going to want to read? This is our feet when, when it's published, is anybody going to buy it? You know, anybody going to read? was 10 years of getting up each day and some days you don't know where it's going. And it, you know. The novelist E.L.

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> Chris Orcutt>doctorow said that writing a novel is like driving across the country at night using only your headlights. So you only drive at night and you've got your headlights that's as far as you can see in front of you. And. But I would add to that, I think that's true. But it's really, you know, driving, driving at night, you can only see as far as your headlights. But it's also raining and there are detour signs all over the place. And you know, you just, you don't know sometimes if you go down a detour, if it's going to lead back to the main road. sometimes in the writing you start down. I liken writing to basically mining. You know, the old days of gold miners or silver miners. You know, you're digging and blasting through rock and you think there's a vein of gold.

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> Chris Orcutt>You think there's a vein of gold down there or a vein of silver. And sometimes you go all the way into the tunnel, you go all the way down and there's nothing and you gotta turn around and go back. so it was 10 years of all of those. You know, the big one is Curtis. It's the dealing with the doubts. It's I would. Every. Every day, you know, you have these gremlins, you know, these gremlins that come at you where nobody's going to be interested in this or why are you even doing it. If, if this was such a great subject, somebody would have written this by now. You know, somebody would have created a teen epic already. it was all of these, you know, all of these doubts and concerns and worries that I would have to deal with every day. So, you know, I'm not ashamed to admit. I'm not ashamed to say that, you know, I did not write this all alone. You know, I. I prayed every day. I mean, I'm not ashamed to admit it. A lot of writers are. A lot of authors are.

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> Chris Orcutt>I don't know why that is, but I am not ashamed to admit that I would pray every morning, you know, to give me the strength to continue writing this.

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> Chris Orcutt>I mean, at this point, it was, you know, it. It's twice as long as War and Peace. You know, it's 1.2 million words. And when I, you know, got into it, I just was just weary and I prayed for the strength to keep going. I prayed that the. The next plot point or the next character point or the next scene would. Would come to me. I prayed for.

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> Chris Orcutt>I really just. I just really prayed for the strength to just keep going. There was something driving me to write this, and I wasn't going to quit. I wasn't going to stop, but I still needed that, that strength every day to continue. And I have a couple of. A number of quotes, on a whiteboard in my office that I would always go to.

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> Chris Orcutt>And the one that I leaned on the most was. It was a quote by Nelson Mandela, who said, it always seems impossible until it's done. And I can't tell you, Curtis, how many times I would have read that and thought about what he lived through, on Robben Island, I think he was imprisoned 28 years unjustly and came out of prison and became the president of South Africa. I mean, everything he overcame. But that quote really gave me strength over time. It was just. It's always impossible until it's done. And so there were times when I was like, chris, you have. This is impossible.

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> Chris Orcutt>What the hell were you thinking in starting this damn thing? And I would just say that to myself. I would say, Nelson Mandela said, it's always impossible until it's done. And I'm looking forward to when the last episode is published in, November, December of, 2027. Because when, as soon as it's done, Curtis, I plan on taking, taking a three month vacation probably, in the Caribbean if I can.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay, well, tell us about any other upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

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> Chris Orcutt>Well, this is, this is it. I mean, I've, I haven't been working on anything except bodaciously for the past ten years. and the, the project is basically that every 12 weeks starting in January, there's going to be another novel, the continuing story of Avery Craig and his friends. And you know, it's it's just, it's basically going to be, it's basically going to be just a continuation of everything I've been doing. you know, I, I, I, I'd like to say a couple of things here about, you know, I, I think I glossed over how I, how I've done this, how, I've done this. And I think I learned some things in writing this that could be of service to all of your listeners. Anybody, certainly anybody who's embarking on a big project or they're dealing with a problem that they think is insurmountable or impossible. One of the things I learned, Curtis, was you can't get overwhelmed by the magnitude of the thing that you're working on or dealing with. You have to break the big thing into small steps. And so anytime I found myself becoming overwhelmed with the size of the project, I would just say, what is the next small step I can take? And I became very good at breaking up the big thing into a number of small steps. So, you know, I would write 1500 words a day and if I, you know, was editing a chapter, focus on one page at a time, one page at a time, one paragraph at a time, one sentence at a time, and just do each of those to the best of my ability. The other thing I learned was how important it is to have focus without distractions. You really have to eliminate the distractions in your life if you're going to be wrestling with a, a big problem or you have a big creative project that you're, you're trying to accomplish. There's so many distractions today, you know, it, I could, we could both go on and on about them. But you know, I found that I unplugged basically entirely from the Internet, between 2015 and 2025. And as a result, a number of these apps and technologies are foreign to me now. But I know that I couldn't have written this had I been checking my email every 10 minutes or had my phone around to read, or listen to get text on or watching TikTok videos in the middle of the day.

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> Chris Orcutt>You just, you have to decide what your priority is. And for me my prior priority was writing and finishing all, all ten, all nine of these novels.

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> Chris Orcutt>And I'd say the, finally the final thing that I learned that is, is so important if you're going to be doing something over a long period of time, you have to have the ability, you got to develop the ability to delay gratification. and that's hard today, you know, because we're, we're all bombarded by you know, likes and the quick and easy fix and you know, the 10 second news cycle.

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> Chris Orcutt>But if you want to have the success of finishing a big project, it's going to take time and things take, tend to take twice as long as you think they will. So you really have to have that ability to delay gratification. And so I've been delaying the gratification of publishing now for 10 years and I do have to admit that I'm glad that this is going to give birth to some of this very soon.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>What though I should contact info so people can keep up with everything that you're up to.

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> Chris Orcutt>Sure. I think the, the best, the best way is simply go to Amazon and you type in Chris Orcutt and you're going to see all of my novels as well as the bodaciously novels. But if you wanted to read my blog or read more about me and my work, you can go to orcutt orcutt.net and I've been, I've been told by quite a few aspiring writers that I've, you know, they've complimented me saying that, you know, I've, I've got a lot of writing advice on there. I don't know how it came about but I've got over you know, 20 plus years of blog pieces about elements of writing and techniques and things I've learned. So if there are any aspiring novelists out there who want to, you know, learn some things about craft or just basically the work of being a novelist, then go to my website.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>All right, ladies and gentlemen, rcut.net please be sure to check out everything that Chris is up to and check out this new novel, these nine books when they come out. Follow rate Review share this episode to as many people as possible and for more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, please visit www.craveball337.com and share the website and the show to everybody you know. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Chris, thank you for all day you do. And thank you for joining me.

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> Chris Orcutt>My pleasure. Curtis, thank you for having me.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>For more information on the Living the Dream with Curveball Podcast, visit www.crave curveball337.com until next time, keep living the dream.