Helping me wind
up the week, and the month, is author Peter Davidson. He’s he to share a little
bit about his humorous personal experience and advice book, Marital Advice to My
Grandson, Joel: How to be a husband your wife won't throw out of the
window in the middle of the night.
Peter was last here at Reviews in Interviews in July 2017 when we talked about his humorous book, Penny.
Bio:
Peter Davidson is the author or co-author of
twenty-nine books published by McGraw-Hill Book Company, Perigee/Putnam
Publishers, Northwestern Publishing Company, Sweet Memories Publishing, Haworth
Press, and others. His works include fiction, non-fiction, college textbooks,
children's picture books, and training materials for business and industry. Davidson
is also a songwriter and one of his songs was used in a television series in
The Netherlands.
For more than two decades, Peter Davidson was
one of America's most active writer's seminar presenters, having presented over
625 one-day seminars in a fifteen-state area from Minnesota to Tennessee and
Colorado to Illinois.
Davidson has been a professional recording
studio owner, college professor, and retail store owner. He trained over 700
real estate agents, something that he believes he will have to answer for
on Judgment Day.
He is the recipient of the prestigious Leavey
Award granted by Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge. Davidson and his wife
life in the Lake Okoboji resort area of Iowa in summer and in Arizona in the
winter.
Please tell us about your current release:
When my grandson, Joel, got engaged, I decided
to jot down a few words of marital advice for him, based on my vast experience
as a husband. Then I thought, why share this wisdom with only one person when I
can share it with the whole world. So, I started a blog and
listed new marital advice every week. As the popularity of the blog grew,
people suggested that the material be turned into a book, and, well, here it is!
What inspired you to write this book?
This started out as a few words of wisdom for
my grandson for him to get a few chuckles from and maybe to pick up a few
helpful hints about his role in his marriage - and then it just evolved into
the blog and then evolved into the book.
One of my favorite parts of the book are the
more than twenty short quotes that each occupy a whole page and that summarize
some of the major points in the book or provide a little philosophical message
to ponder. Here are a few of my favorites:
As the marital bus rumbles
down the highway of life,
there cannot be two people
wrestling for the steering wheel,
or surely the bus will
crash. Know when it is your turn to drive
and when it is time to quietly
sit in the back seat.
When your wife gives you
that steely-eyed, clinched-jaw scowl,
known as “The Look,” it
means that you have obviously
done something wrong, but
what?
You will find out as soon as
she gets you alone.
“Buy me flowers, candy,
jewelry, clothing, perfume, a card,
or nothing at all -
but do not ever buy me an
implement of work as a gift.”
What exciting story are you working on next?
I have a manuscript completed that I was
working on when my grandson got engaged and the idea for Marital Advice to
my Grandson, Joel took off and occupied a lot of my time. Right now, I'll
be working on promoting this book for several months. Then, I hope to get back
to pitching the other book to literary agents. It deals with making your mark,
leaving a legacy, and when the time comes, going out with a bang.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
When I was a youth, I always had a paperback in
my pocket and read every chance that I got. The thought about writing a book
someday was in my mind at a young age. I didn't take the thought seriously
until I got to college and got a few nice compliments on some of my written
assignments by my professors and even more than that, when I got some nice
comments from my college friends when I wrote to them over the summer. I
actually considered myself to be a writer when I got my first work published.
Do you write full-time? If so, what's your work day like?
I pursued various ventures in addition to
writing for many years, as described in my bio, above, but writing has been a
major and constant part of my life for over four decades. Right now, writing is
my only work-related activity.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I suspect that a lot of writers do this same
thing, and a lot of people use it to help clarify or solve problems in their
life: I “sleep on it.” When I am having difficulty figuring out how a scene
should go in a novel or how some material should fit together in a non-fiction
work, I fall asleep thinking about the issue and when I awake in the morning,
the solution is there, after my subconscious mind has mulled it over while I
slept.
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I don't recall any aspirations until I became a
teenager, and then I wanted to be a Rock 'N Roll star. That didn't happen, but
the professional recording studio that I owned along with three partners was
inducted into the Rock and Roll Halls of Fame in Minnesota, Iowa, and South
Dakota, and us along with it, so I got a little taste of it and got to hang out
with a lot of musicians along the way.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
Although I was involved in various activities
and pursuits during my life, the one constant was writing – I was always
writing something. Sometimes I wrote only for my own pleasure, but usually I
had an eye on potential publishing. Not everything that I wrote got published,
but every one of those manuscripts that didn't get published, and never will
be, were a labor of love and I'm glad that I wrote them. To aspiring writers, I
have only one piece of advice: “Keep writing.” When I'm working on a book, I
like to work on it every day. I don't necessarily have a set schedule and I
have never had writer's block, so I can write about anytime and anywhere. We
have a summer home and a winter home, and I have completely staffed offices in
each home.
Links:
Thank
you for being here today, Peter.
