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An Interview with Author George Kent Kedl

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Former philosophy professor George Kent Kedl gave up his 20-year teaching career for life on a sailboat with his wife and children. His award-winning release We Ran Away to Sea: A Memoir and Letters (2023) was written with a combination of his late wife Pamela Thompson Kedl’s letters and his own memories of their adventures. Look for Kent on his website JacanaPress.com, on Facebook and on Tiktok. We Ran Away to Sea is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.

At its heart, what is your memoir about?
It is the story of my mid-life crisis, roughly spanning from 1984 to 2000, when I was obsessed with creating a life of cruising the world on a sailboat. First, with my wife Pam and our two young sons, and later with my wife alone. I attempted to escape the American way of life, which I had come to see as materialistic and shallow. I was influenced by Thoreau’s admonition to “Simplify, simplify, simplify” and Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, a book that confirmed my thinking about how wasteful and unsustainable our lives in the United States were. Although neither one of us knew anything about sailing or the sea (we had both grown up in Wyoming and were living in South Dakota), a sailboat looked like a perfect solution. We could travel anywhere in the world for free with the wind to blow us about. We wouldn’t be wasting valuable resources. The boat would serve as both a home and a means of travel, and we could sustain ourselves from the sea. If we ran out of money, we would get work wherever we were. My previous experience of living and working in Colombia as a Peace Corps volunteer convinced me that working in foreign countries was the best way to learn to appreciate the ways of other people. Pam, the co-author of the book, did not share precisely the same ideas about what we were doing, so my attempt to create a new life ultimately failed. One reviewer calls the book a love story, and it is. We weathered our differences and stayed together because we loved each other.

What unique challenges did this work pose for you?
I wanted to preserve some of Pam’s writing, primarily her letters to friends and relatives, which reported on our locations and discoveries at various stops, as well as her often witty observations and reflections on our experiences. Finding a way to combine my stories and Pam’s in a way that avoided needless and boring repetition while maintaining the tension of our different perceptions was challenging. I wanted the book to be more than an outdated travelogue. Our excellent developmental editor, Jacquelin Cangro, played a crucial role in guiding us through this process. Reviewers say the book flows smoothly from one voice to the other, so I think we succeeded.

When did you know you wanted to write your memoir? What prompted the push to begin the project?
The simple, one-word answer is: Linnea, my second wife, whom I met after Pam’s death. During the COVID pandemic, I came across a batch of Pam’s letters and thought they were clever and amusing, and ought to be preserved for our sons. When I showed them to Linnea, she said, “Oh, no, they are too good for that. These should be made into a book!” Over the years, I had written for my amusement and to get things down while I could still remember them. I had many stories about our years on the boats. So, we had lots of material to draw from—indeed, way too much. We had to cut a lot to keep the book in bounds. The memoir was our COVID project. I wrote, and Linnea edited (both Pam’s letters and my stories), and made me keep my nose to the grindstone. (Note from Linnea: At first, I was hesitant to edit Pam’s letters. As a historian, I felt they should be preserved as written. But with advice from other readers and thinking about it more deeply, I realized that if I had written those letters, they would not have been intended for publication. Often writing on a rocking boat, I would have eventually edited them for publication, and would want someone else to do so if I couldn’t. So, I became bolder in my editing, always keeping in mind what Pam intended. I also cut passages that impeded the flow of the story.)

How is the book structured and why did you choose to put it together that way?
The book is divided into three parts. The first part tells the story of our first boat with the boys. It includes why we gave up our rather conventional life in the States, the search for a boat that took us to England, finding the boat, the almost immediate desertion of mate and crew, the stormy first sail to the Canary Islands, the reuniting of the family, the sail across the Atlantic, the cruise through the Caribbean and eventual sale of the boat in Florida.

The second short, transitional part is about the years getting the boys through school and settled enough for Pam and me to take off on a second boat. It was a time of growing desperation. We escaped to China for a semester and also searched for and found another boat.

The third and longest part is about our escape to the Caribbean on our second boat. We had more adventures as we traveled throughout the Caribbean, and South and Central America. The growing tension leads to our return to the States, where we reestablish ourselves, at least temporarily, and eventually sell the boat. That is the end of the dream and the book.

Tell us how the book came together.
The whole process took about two and a half years. Aside from Linnea’s editing as we went along, we hired a developmental editor who was most helpful and led to more rewriting. We hired a local graphic artist who came up with several cover designs that were rather generic-looking and did not effectively convey the nature of the book. Then, on the advice of a writer friend, we hired Sara de Haan, a book designer, to format the book, design the cover, and add the maps based on my drawings and copies from Google Maps. A rather subtle feature of the structure is how we, at Sara’s suggestion, distinguished between our two voices by changing the margins.

Sara outsourced the maps, which required several edits (delaying the publication for months). The maps also needed minor adjustments to conform to Amazon’s printing specifications. She patiently came up with a variety of designs for the cover. We liked the first design better than most of the later ones. In the end, we narrowed our choices down to the first cover and the last one and took a survey of preferences (in our Christmas letter) and among friends and colleagues. In the end, we chose the final, less popular one, partly because it was based upon a piece of Pam’s artwork that conveyed the essence of the book in one picture.  We could reissue the book with the other cover and see if it sells more copies, but it has done quite well with the chosen cover, and we haven’t grown tired of looking at it. We also had it printed on a mug, a tote bag, a poster for book signings and readings, and selected an image from the cover for bookmarks.

The rewriting and re-editing seemed endless, but the book turned out to be much better for it. One of the more difficult tasks was cutting out stories simply because they would make the book too long. We naively thought Sara was formatting the book to be published on Amazon as a printed book and an eBook. That turned out not to be the case. She thought we should go through IngramSpark and let Amazon handle the rest. The research we did indicated we would do better to upload the book directly to Amazon ourselves. Which we were able to do because we purchased our own ISBNs. However, formatting the book for Kindle or any other eBook format would require more work. It looked like it was going to be an expensive proposition. Still, another writer friend recommended a book designer in the Netherlands who did it promptly and well for a fraction of the other bids we’d received. She also spotted a few errors that we were able to fix.

Is there a chapter or scene in your memoir that you’d love to see play out in a movie?
One of my favorite chapters that captures what cruising in a small sailboat allows one to do (that would be impossible through other means) is a trip we made up the Macareo River in Venezuela—one of the rivers that forms the delta of the Orinoco. We visited a Warao Indian dwelling, experienced the hectic and chaotic begging in a small village we anchored near, and had a sleepless night, desperately protecting the anchored boat from flotsam coming down the river. Best of all, we squeezed the boat up a small side stream into the uninhabited jungle to a spot wide enough to turn and anchor the boat in the heart of the jungle. We were miles from any other human being, and as alone with the natural world as it is possible to be with our little home with us. We sat in the cockpit, binoculars in hand, quietly reading and whispering to each other for fear of breaking the spell. For several days, we observed the wild birds and animals (Macaws, Toucans, Scarlet Ibises, Hoatzins, howler monkeys, and Spider Monkeys). We experienced awe that we never forgot.

What was the most rewarding aspect of writing We Ran Away to Sea?
Reflecting on our boating years, twenty years or more ago, reviewing the old logbooks, and especially rereading Pam’s letters, gave me a perspective on our lives that made me much more aware of what was happening than I realized at the time. If Pam were alive today, I would want to apologize to her for my lack of awareness about many things and to thank her for her patience and strength in accompanying me all those years. Writing this book forced me to think harder about what we did and made me recapture the past in a way that I could not have done in any other way.

What makes the book unique in the memoir market?
I don’t know of any other small-boat-sailing memoir in which a family sets out across an ocean with such a lack of experience with either boats or the sea as we had. There are other memoirs of boaters setting out with little knowledge, such as The Sail of Two Idiots, but they didn’t try to cross an ocean for their first sail—and their marriage broke up in the process, while Pam and I remained devoted to each other until the day she died. The two voices create tension because each author has different ideas about what they are doing and what is worth telling about. Reviewers have said that they expected the book to be a ‘we-went-here-we-went-there’ sort of book (as most boating memoirs are), but found it contained an unexpected human-interest aspect as well.

What writing projects are you working on now?
We cut several stories from We Ran Away to Sea. They make enough material for another, somewhat shorter book. I am working on a second book that includes them.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner loves creating worlds of fantasy and science fiction. Her current work in progress is The Last Bonekeeper fantasy trilogy and short stories in the same universe. A member of SouthWest Writers since 2006, Kat has worked as the organization’s secretary, newsletter editor, website manager, and author interview coordinator. Kat is also a veteran, a martial art student, and a grandmother. Visit her at klwagoner.com.



An Interview with Author Daniel Pedrick

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Daniel Pedrick is a retired attorney and mental health judge who started his third career as an author with his 2017 debut Once, A Walking Shadow (Mercury HeartLink). Dan’s newest release, Liv’s Story: An Iowa Girl’s Rebellion (RMK Publications, June 2024), was inspired by the life of his stepmother Jo Ann Pedrick. Look for Liv’s Story on Amazon.

What would you like readers to know about the story you tell in Liv’s Story?
I have tried in this story to use important experiences that my stepmother had because she had a remarkable life. I also wanted to write a short novel with a female as the lead character.

Tell us about your stepmother. What was it about her that made you want to write a book inspired by her life?
Jo Ann Pedrick was like a second mother to me. She was a positive, resilient type who led such an interesting life. Her father passed away when she was an young teenager. Her mother had to be the provider which was very hard for women in the 1930s and 1940s. Jo Ann traveled extensively as an adult and never had children. We (me and my three siblings) were her children. She was taught by her mother to be self-reliant. She was a psychiatric social worker when she met my dad. She later ran for office in the Arizona legislature, and after that was appointed head of the Arizona Department of Aging, a cabinet position.

What was the most challenging aspect of writing/publishing Liv’s Story, and what was your favorite part of the process?
The most challenging aspect was capturing the voice of the heroine. My favorite part was capturing that voice in times of her stress, romance, and adventure.

When did you know you wanted to write the book and how did it come together after that?
The book was prompted by the reading of Jo Ann’s diaries up to her father’s death. It took me about four years to write the book, about two months to finish the editing due to the keen eye of my publisher Rose Marie Kern (RMK Publications), and a couple of weeks to procure the rights to the cover which is a watercolor painting done by Win Martinson, my son-in-law’s mother.

Why a fictionalized account instead of a nonfiction memoir?
A fictionalized account gave me more latitude with characters and timelines.

Did you discover anything surprising or interesting while doing research for the book?
I learned about the prowess of Japanese women pearl divers, college football dynamics in the 1940s, and the dangers of cave diving in Belize, to name a few.

How has your experience as an attorney and mental health judge benefited your writing life?
Working as an attorney for 20 years and as a mental health judge for 12 and a half years gave me good organizational skills which I desperately needed. It also helped with my vocabulary.

What first inspired you to become a writer? When did you actually consider yourself a writer?
I was inspired to be a writer after reading James Michener’s book Hawaii in the 8th grade. I considered myself a writer after completing my second novel which involved the fictionalizing of the life of my best friend growing up, as well as explaining difficult mental health issues.

Who are your favorite authors, and what do you admire most about their writing?
My favorite writers are T.C. Boyle and Abraham Verghese. I admire their ability to tell and weave together sometimes complicated plots. I also admire their extensive vocabularies.

What has writing taught you about yourself?
Writing has reaffirmed my tenacity as a person.

What writing projects are you working on now?
I am currently writing a memoir/eulogy of my late friend artist Ted Gibson, truly and undeniably a unique person.

Is there anything else you’d like readers to know?
I have been truly blessed in this life and appreciate the help of SouthWest Writers.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner loves creating worlds of fantasy and science fiction. Her current work in progress is The Last Bonekeeper fantasy trilogy and short stories in the same universe. A member of SouthWest Writers since 2006, Kat has worked as the organization’s secretary, newsletter editor, website manager, and author interview coordinator. Kat is also a veteran, a martial art student, and a grandmother. Visit her at klwagoner.com.



The Writing Life: Inspired

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by Sherri L. Burr

Inspiration can come from numerous sources. I started listening to an audiobook obtained from the library that inspired me to purchase the physical book. Between the two, I devoured the work’s 17 listening hours and 565 pages in three days. Then I felt inspired to write these words.

Erik Larson’s The Demon of Unrest (New York: Crown, 2024) captures your attention and doesn’t release you until its last words are consumed. The subtitle of the book is “A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of Civil War.” We all learned in elementary school that the Civil War commenced after South Carolina fired upon and captured Fort Sumter in 1861. What Larson reveals are tales told in diaries, newspaper clippings, and many additional sources that depict what led to the momentous occasion.

Larson tells the Southern part of the story primarily through lenses that have been buried in archives for over 160 years. Larson begins each part of his work with a quote from The Code Duello to anchor the conflict as one perceived of honor by Southern planters who had been raised or married into “The Chivalry,” or the elite. Larson deftly explains that Southern planters felt they had a right to their high-born lives based on the unpaid labor of millions of enslaved men, women, and children. Many planters perceived a cataclysmic threat to their lifestyles in the November 6, 1860, election of Abraham Lincoln, despite his repeated statements that he did not intend to disturb slavery where it currently existed.

South Carolina was the first to secede on December 20, 1860, followed by six additional states (Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas) before Lincoln was sworn in on March 4, 1861. As The Demon of Unrest unpacks, a series of errors and miscommunications led up to the bombardment and fall of Fort Sumter on April 12-13, 1861. Lincoln’s call for federal troops to suppress the rebellion led to four additional states (Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee) to secede by June 8, 1861.

What was disheartening to read in The Demon of Unrest was how President Buchanan and President-Elect Lincoln did not understand that Southern elites mistook the communications from the North as an attack on their honor. Even the initial failure of Major Anderson as the commander of Fort Sumter to return fire was viewed as a violation of The Code Duello. That said, no amount of diplomatic overtures could have headed off the Civil War. In a situation of deep mistrust, communications were constantly misperceived.

In Erik Larson’s “A Note to Readers,” he explains that he was researching the events leading up to the Civil War when the storming of the capital took place on January 6, 2021. He writes, “As I watched the Capital assault unfold on camera, I had the eerie feeling that present and past had merged. It is unsettling that in 1861 two of the greatest moments of national dread centered on the certification of the Electoral College vote and the presidential inauguration.” He continues, “I was appalled by the attack, but also riveted. I realized that the anxiety, anger, and astonishment that I felt would certainly have been experienced in 1860-1861 by vast numbers of Americans. With this in mind, I set out to capture the real suspense of those long-ago months when the country lurched toward catastrophe.”

As Larson was inspired by the events of January 6, 2021, to capture the dawn of the Civil War, reading his book can inspire writers. We, too, can follow current events, read books, head to archives and libraries, and sit at our computers to type stories long buried in our past or that of our nation’s. What most impressed me was Larson’s sources. By tapping into diaries (some of them over 4,000 pages long), he reveals why the Southerners thought the war would be quick and the North would capitulate to their desire for independence. Many wrote with giddiness about secession. The ease with which they captured Fort Sumter led many planters to believe they would be left alone to lead their lives enriched by the enslavement of other human beings. Some even thought the entire conflict, like the capture of Fort Sumter, would end with no bloodshed. None predicted that approximately 750,000 people would lose their lives in the Civil War. The 1860 population of South Carolina, for example, was 301,000.

Reading The Demon of Unrest encouraged me to write these words. Whatever motivates you, take up the call. You may produce work that inspires others in their pursuits.

Sherri Burr’s 27th book, Complicated Lives: Free Blacks in Virginia: 1619-1865 (Carolina Academic Press, 2019), was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in History. West Academic published Wills & Trusts in a Nutshell 6th Ed., her 31st book, on October 31, 2022. A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Princeton University, and the Yale Law School, Burr has been a member of SouthWest Writers for over 30 years.



Author Update: Vicki Kay Turpen

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Author Vicki Kay Turpen is a retired teacher of English, the Bible as literature, and drama who co-founded the Durango Lively Arts Company in Colorado. She has published dozens of articles for The Christian Science Publishing Society, and in 2019, released her first novel, The Delicate Balance (co-authored with Shannon Horst). Her newest release, Opelika Opiate (June 2023), is set in Alabama “where cars, men, and race collide to unhinge the life of a young woman.” You’ll find Vicki on her SWW author page and her Amazon author page for Opelika Opiate.

What would you like readers to know about Opelika Opiate?
Opelika Opiate is the result of my own disappointment with leaders in today’s world. There is a lack of education and brotherly love and a tendency toward anger and blame. My story is based on an actual experience I had when I was fifteen. I was stranded in a run-down motel with my grandmother. She was allowing her emotions and brain to stupefy her and halt all normal functions. She refused to get out of bed and drive us home. For years, I never thought back on that experience or the man who tried to rape me then. Now the world news can be full of women and men accusing each other of harmful actions.

As I was growing up in the American south with its unjust and unequal laws and social life, I was so disappointed with even my own relatives who allowed prejudice to rule their lives. Until we all begin seeing ourselves as more than sexual objects and see ourselves and each other as equal human beings there will never be real equality and harmony in our world.

Your first novel, The Delicate Balance, was a science fiction story exploring climate change. Opelika Opiate is not only a different genre but it seems to be a huge departure from your first book. What inspired you to take this new direction? What themes do you explore in the story?
My experience with the man who tried to rape me was over 70 years ago. I never told my grandmother (who later was healed of her problems and became a loving and helpful friend). I never told my parents. I never shared the experience with anyone or allowed shame, blame, or hatred to rule over me. However, my heart goes out to women and men who allow themselves to become life-long victims to their own thinking, and then much later take revenge. Why has forgiveness and love so disappeared from our lives? I decided to write about my own decisions, hoping my story would encourage young people today never to think of themselves as victims.

Who is your main character? Why is she the best choice to carry your story?
The main character in Opelika Opiate is Karla Sue. She is a 15-year-old taking care of her depressed grandmother. The story came from the real experience I had in 1953. The incident with my grandmother and all of the heat, rain, fear, and actions with other characters is based on my experience. The forward of the book is written by the author (me) in explanation of her memories. The actual characters, except for Karla Sue, are fictional, but the actions are based on how Karla Sue handles the attack. Then the story states why she refuses to think of herself as a victim for the rest of her life. That reflects back on the opening statements by the author. I suppose you could say there are two protagonists, the author and Karla Sue, but they are the same person at 15 and later at 80.

How did the book come together?
I began writing Opelika Opiate while on vacation with my daughter Kelly. My daughter-in-law Toni helped me with complicated technical aspects. A good friend who is an artist did the sketches for the book, and I created the cover. It was published by Austin Macauley last year.

Choosing a book’s title can be a complicated journey. Tell us why you chose the title for your newest novel.
In choosing the title for Opelika Opiate I was also expressing my deep feelings concerning our increasing delusions about drugs. Look around today, one opiate is supposedly recreational, when the combination of several others or just one can cause death. Many opiates that are used just for pain never really heal, and our leaders are boasting about the money gained by legalizations. I was hoping to discourage the reader not to sleep away his or her life with the use of drugs. I wish to encourage them to never destroy their ability to think, reason, and lead creative lives.

For your first book, you shared the writing responsibilities with a co-author, your daughter Shannon Horst. What was it like this time, writing a novel on your own?
I loved writing with my daughter, it was fun. I also enjoy doing my own writing. I found out when I retired from teaching that writing was a very happy way to spend special time alone with my thoughts. I write the same way I directed theater. I chose characters, like I did for a play or musical. I see them in real life-moving through their lives either in conflict to their own thought or in conflict with others, or in instances that bring harmony. They are in my consciousness and often tell me how they feel and how they are trying to deal with life. Often the ideas are ones I never have thought about, they come directly from the character.

What writing projects are you working on now?
I just finished writing a historical novel that takes place in Louisville, Kentucky in 1900. It is called Kat’s Dilemma and is based on events that occurred in my great-grandmother’s life. It answers the question, “What was it like to be a woman then?” Katherine Amelia (Kat) faces the belief she has no individual rights or no freedom to make decisions for herself. I did a lot of research and discovered shocking facts, laws, and attitudes concerning women. Kat’s intelligence, her searches through books, and her determination to be a real person eventually create her happiness and success. My next book is a memoir entitled Mike and Me and Music about marriage and family.

KLWagoner150_2KL Wagoner (writing as Cate Macabe) is the author of This New Mountain: a memoir of AJ Jackson, private investigator, repossessor, and grandmother. Kat has a speculative fiction blog at klwagoner.com and writes about memoir at ThisNewMountain.com.



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