Each month in the blog archive contains a piece or two of the collection. Some of the stories are accompanied by a "Facts Behind the Fiction" post.
In 1996, while living in Oklahoma, I began writing Walking Pocatello because I was homesick. I may have over-romanticized the town, because when I began reading the pieces in writing workshops, listeners would often come up afterward and say, "Pocatello sounds like a fascinating place!" I had to remind them that I was fictionalizing many of the people and events, although the locations were real.
When I returned to Pocatello in 1997, I was unemployed, so I sat in a tiny apartment in The Brentwood and wrote the rest of the collection. By the time I finished, my savings account was gone, but fortunately, I was then hired to teach at Idaho State University. ISU Press published Walking Pocatello a few years later. The book continues to sell modestly, but consistently.
After retiring from teaching in August of 2009, I began blogging and decided to publish the collection online. This allowed me to add photos to my narrative and also reach a wider reading audience.
To answer a few frequently-asked questions:
1. Yes, the places that lend their names to the titles are real. However, some of them have ceased to exist.
2. Yes, many of the events really happened to me or others in very much the way I describe.
3. Yes, a few of the characters are real people, but most of them are composites or completely invented.
4. No, I am not the main character or narrator of each story (except for the Prologue). Some of the first-person narrators are male.
I hope you enjoy "walking" Pocatello by reading these stories as much as I enjoyed writing them.
Walking Pocatello is available for purchase on Amazon.com or at the Idaho State University Bookstore, (208) 282-3237.
To see photos of the beautiful landscapes surrounding Pocatello, visit my friend Ruth Moorhead's photo gallery at http://www.pbase.com/moorruth/root
