Flying Saucers and Fiction: Dave Kenney's Journey from Nonfiction to Novel

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. A show where I interview guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today I am joined by Dave Kenney, who is the author of more than two dozen books, historical nonfiction. He just wrote his first novel, Helium. He loved Flying Saucer. He has worked as a local reporter as well as a writer for CNN. So we're going to be talking to him about the Flying Saucers, his books, and his interesting life. So, Dave, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_02 0:55

Well, thank you, Curtis. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

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

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Sure. I guess on the most basic level, I'm a storyteller. But the type of storytelling I've done has changed over the course of my career. So as you mentioned, I started as an on-camera reporter at local TV stations, first in Asheville, North Carolina, and then in Norfolk, Virginia. After that, uh did that for a few years, then I gave up my reporting career and I moved to Atlanta to marry the love of my life, uh, who I'd met a few years earlier in graduate school. Got to Atlanta and I started working at CNN. And I uh where I had been in front of the camera before, then I moved uh behind the camera to become a senior writer. And basically that meant putting words in the mouths of uh anchor people like uh Bernard Shaw and Judy Woodruff and other people like that. Um for the better part of a decade, I did that, and then um I eventually left CNN to try a different kind of storytelling in the print world, first writing for magazines, and then as uh a writer of nonfiction books, mostly histories. And now, uh after two decades of doing that, I'm trying something completely different. I'm trying fiction. And as you mentioned, my first novel, Helium, is coming out uh in a couple weeks.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

All right. Well, speaking of those historical novels, uh, you you chose to write one about uh flying salsa. So tell us about that and tell us why you decided to write it.

SPEAKER_02 2:44

Okay. Well, years ago, back in the mid-1990s, I I came across a photograph that that just really interested me. It was uh, you know, uh Kodachrome, I believe, uh, from that period. And it was of um this this family showing up in a kitchen, and it was one of these 1950s kitchens, had uh, you know, the the correct colors and all that sort of thing. And it looked like they were arriving for uh uh maybe a Christmas dinner or something like that. But what was striking about the photo was that the woman in the photo was holding this book. The man was holding uh their child, a baby, in his arms, and the woman had this book and that took a closer look at it, and it was uh by a man named George Adamski, and it was uh called Flying Saucers Have Landed. And I had never heard of George Adamski. I didn't really know why anybody in that period would be arriving at a Christmas dinner with a book about flying saucers. So I started looking more and more into this. Um and the deeper I went into it, the more interesting it got. And I I ended up spending uh, you know, off and on, a couple decades, uh, collecting as much material about the flying saucer phenomenon of the late 1940s and late 1950s, um, with hopes of maybe putting together a documentary since I was from a television background. Uh that never worked out. I tried a few other things. I even wrote a a uh screenplay. I wrote uh I wrote a pilot for a podcast, nothing really got any traction. And then I finally decided, well, I've been I've been uh trying to sort of go the nonfiction route with this story. Maybe I should try to just uh write a novel uh based on the information that I'd gathered over all those years. I I'm just fascinated and loved the topic. So I gave it a try. And helium is the result, and I'm pretty happy with it.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

You know, you mentioned George Adamski, so uh kind of tell us about him and uh do you consider him a prophet for a fraud or something in between?

SPEAKER_02 5:21

Okay. Well, uh, for those who aren't familiar with the name, uh George Adamsky was probably the best known of what were called the contactees of the 1950s. And these were people who not only claimed to have seen flying saucers in the sky, they also claimed that they met and communed with the beings uh who, I guess, piloted those those uh what they claimed were spacecraft. And uh these people became quite well known during the starting in the early 1950s and uh going out through the rest of the decade. And George Adamski was, I don't think there's any question, he was the best known because uh he published over the course of about a decade, I think uh five different books um that in one way or another touched on the idea of people from other planets, people from other galaxies showing up uh in at in the atmosphere of Earth to deliver, in his case, sort of a message of universal uh love and brotherhood. And so he was taken as a prophet uh by many people at the time. He also was considered a fraud by many people at that time. I have to say that I've probably come down more on the side of the those who believe he was making up his stories, but I also find it almost impossible to consider him one or the other. I I'm he's a he was a human being, and he had um he had ideas and motivations that were, I feel, quite complicated and often got lost uh in the stories that were told about him, either from the side of the people who considered him a prophet or those who considered him a fraud. I I just was interested in him as a human being and what might have motivated him at the time. And that's how I sort of incorporated my fictionalized version of George into uh into helium. Um, and I'm hoping that maybe what I ended up doing through fiction gets closer to who George Adamski actually was uh than people on either side of that debate were willing to consider.

SPEAKER_01 8:13

Well, how do you balance fact and fiction when tackling a phenomenon that sparked such a passionate debate of on whether it's real or not?

SPEAKER_02 8:21

You know, that's that's what I consider probably the the biggest challenge of trying to to write this book is you know, I I have my own uh ideas about what was real and what was not uh during this period. Um but I also through the course of writing this book became more and more fascinated with the concept of of and the importance of letting wonder into our lives. I like to think that maybe we were being visited uh during that period and maybe have continued to be visited uh by beings who have messages along the lines of what what Georgia Damski was talking about. Um but in coming from my background, which was based mainly in trying to get facts right in journalism and writing history, um I had to to sort of balance what I considered to be the facts of the period with the possibilities that I didn't that I haven't quite got gotten to. And so in a way uh the the fact that I was writing fiction um allowed me to deal with these concepts in uh uh a deeper way, I think, than I could have if I was say trying to create a documentary uh about this period. Um I it it was challenging, but it also gave me opportunities to to think about and consider concepts that I I wouldn't have otherwise. And I found that quite fulfilling.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Well, has the government's re-release of uh UFO files changed the way that you feel about the early early flying salsa error?

SPEAKER_02 10:41

Well, to tell you the truth, Curtis, I I haven't delved too deeply into it. So and I know that a lot of people have spent a lot of time um you know looking at what at what is new, what is not out of these documents that have been released. Um from what I understand, there has not been too there have not been too many revelations, I guess I would say, uh, from this period that I'm most interested in. We're talking about the early, early flying saucer period. Um most most of that information uh to my mind that I've seen hasn't hasn't really changed the narrative that much. Um because I spent so much time thinking about and writing about the contactees, I have looked for places where these documents do intersect with that part of the story. And it appears that most of the documentation that the government produced having to do with the contactees was was more about how they might be delegitimizing the the story of the stories that people were considering during that time. So uh I'm keeping an eye on what has been released and maybe what will be released in in the future. But since I'm more interested sort of in the the human side of this story, um I'm gonna I'm letting letting others who take are more seriously inclined to be looking at uh you know what actually might have been showing up on camera or that type of thing. I'm gonna let those people do that. And I'm gonna stick to more the the people side of the story.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Well, I know you've wrote more than 2,000 nonfiction, uh historical uh nonfiction books. So can I tell us about those?

SPEAKER_02 12:52

Yeah, what happened was after I pivoted from uh my journalism career, I ended up back in my home state of Minnesota. And I was lucky enough to get hired by the Minnesota Historical Society to write a new version of the Minnesota History textbook that's used in schools throughout the state. And that was a wonderful experience. It got me sort of uh sent me on a trajectory I hadn't been before. And that gave me the um the ability to go to other people and say, I can write your history. And so I I ended up with a dual career where I would be occasionally writing sort of labor love type uh histories, general histories on topics like uh what was happening in the state during World War II, or how the movie industry um played out in Minnesota uh throughout the decades. Um, a few other books like that. But then on the other side, uh the other track I was on was um uh doing contract work for companies and institutions and organizations who who wanted their histories researched and written about so that they could capture their, in many cases, their institutional knowledge that might otherwise just disappear if it wasn't brought into one place. So that has kept me busy for the past past uh couple decades plus. And um, it's allowed me to put food on the table, but it's also allowed me, as I said, to continue doing uh projects that are are just more close to my heart.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Well, tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

Sure. Uh the next big one, and and we're talking about uh here, or I'm talking about the uh the uh non-fiction history track. So I do have a pretty big book coming out next month. It's a history of the Red Wing Shoe Company, which is sort of known around the world for its work boots and and other uh uh footwear. It's based in Red Wing, Minnesota. And uh I worked with the Minnesota Historical Society to uh put together this book. It's coming out next month, and it's absolutely gorgeous. It just has it's sort of a uh coffee table type book, but also a lot of history in it. But the photographs are gorgeous. It's uh I'm I'm very happy with the way this one turns out and it turned out, and it's sort of fun that I've got this pretty big nonfiction project coming out around the same time that Helium is coming out. Um, so I'm pretty lucky in that regard. But that's the big one is the Red Wing Shoe Company.

SPEAKER_01 15:57

All right. Well, so people can keep up with everything that you're up to, close our uh you know, though at your contact info.

SPEAKER_02 16:06

Sure. I think the easiest way uh if anybody wants to learn more or get in touch with me is to uh go to my website, and that is www.davekenny.net. And uh Kenny in that case is with an EY, so it's Dave K-E-N-N-E-Y.net. And uh I'd be happy to hear from anybody who's who's interested.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

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. Any final thoughts you have for the listeners?

SPEAKER_02 16:41

Yeah. Um, you know, I I come from, I guess what people call a creative field. Um you know, I don't work on an assembly line or behind a counter, and I don't wait tables and I don't trade equities or file court briefs. I don't do any of those things that that most people do. Um, you know, I write stories, which is not the way most most people are able to make a living. So I may not seem like the perfect person to offer up advice to uh the folks who listen to your podcast, but but there is one lesson that I did learn during my career that's always stuck with me, and maybe some of your listeners would find it worthwhile. Um it it happened one day while I was working at CNN. Um it was a slow news day, and uh sometime during the mid-1990s, I think I was hunched over my keyboard, and I can't remember what I was writing about. It I think there's a good chance it probably was about O.J. Simpson because at the time the OJ Simpson trial was going on, it was a huge thing at CNN. And um whatever it was, I I it the story was giving me trouble and the words weren't coming, and you know, I the struggle must have been showing in my eyes. And and that's when uh my producer, a guy named Simon, he he arrived at my side and you know, he didn't ask me how I was doing or inquire on the story I was working on. All he did was he just came up to me and he issued a directive, basically. And he said, lean back, close your eyes, let it come. And that was it. Um, you know, he walked off to deal with whatever minor crisis needed to be dealt with next. Um, that may not sound like a big deal, but for me, it really was. Um, CNN was at the peak of its you know, churning out news era before it turned into sort of a carnival of talking heads. And my my fellow writers and I had to feed copy into this maw of the insatiable news hole almost nonstop. And we were we were paid not to stop, we were paid not to pause, and that's why Simon's directive hit me as a you know sort of borderline revolutionary. He was telling me to take a moment, breathe, open myself to the possibility of in uh of inspiration. And I did as he suggested. And I leaned back in my chair and I closed my eyes. And I can't remember if it produced any immediate insight. I I suspect it didn't, but the experience did actually change the way I approach my work. Because in the years since then, I've continued to heed Simon's advice whenever the words stop flowing. I lean back and I close my eyes and I take that breath. And sometimes the word spigot re-reopens and sometimes it doesn't. But you know, that's okay when I when I place my fingers back on the keyboard, I know the words will come soon enough. So that's my piece of advice that might actually be worth listening to. Basically, no matter what you do, no matter who you are, find a way to pause and close those eyes and take that breath and let it come, whatever it might be. And you might be surprised at what happens next.

SPEAKER_01 20:09

All right, ladies and gentlemen, and for for more information on Dave's books and everything that he's up to and gonna be up to, visit Dave Kenny.net. And if you know people that are interested in buying saucers and UFOs and things like that, follow great review, share this episode to as many people as possible, and to keep up with all things living the dream, you can find us at w dot curveball337.com. Share the website and the show to everybody that you know. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Dave, thank you for all that you do, and thank you for joining me. Thank you, Chris.

SPEAKER_00 20:51

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