Stephen B. Gladish

                                                              
Stephen Gladish is a fiction and nonfiction writer and teacher of writing at Pima Community College in Arizona. He worked as a teacher and career counselor in the Ohio and Arizona Department of Corrections’ Education Programs for twenty years, forming the inspiration for the anthology, Freedom of Vision, which he is editing and preparing to market with author-editor Robert Yehling. He has written education books, and numerous literary essays based upon his lifelong love of the teachings of mystical masters such as Emanuel Swedenborg and Henry David Thoreau. One of two state finalists for the Arizona Correctional Education Association’s Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999, Stephen has seen many inmates achieve academic and literary successes beyond the public's wildest expectations. Now, he sets about bringing his own dream to life: A novel drawn in part from his own experiences in the Samoan Islands. Stephen came of age in a proud family tradition of serving one’s country: a Marine in WWI, his father became a Lieutenant Commander in the U.S. Navy during WWII, serving in the far Pacific. Stephen served from 1959-1963 in the USAF, following his father’s footsteps, predominantly with the fabled 6th Weather Squadron (Mobile). During his stint, he spent many months in American Samoa and Nevada. He took special interest in the people, the natural surroundings, and their spiritual and metaphysical components wherever he was stationed.

A lifelong follower of eminent scientist, mystic, and revelator Emanuel Swedenborg, and graduate of The Academy Boys’ School, he returned from the Air Force to become a Junior College Honors Graduate of Bryn Athyn College in Pennsylvania. As a student of American History and Literature, including History and Literature of the American Indian, he earned his B.A. in English Literature with Honors at the University of Illinois, and his M.A. in American Literature at Northwestern University. He began his academic career in 1967 as a College and University Writing Faculty at Elgin Community College and then Northern Arizona University. He earned an M. Ed in Counseling and Guidance at the University of Arizona, and began twenty years teaching and counseling in the Ohio and Arizona state penitentiaries, beginning with Urbana University in Ohio.

Now retired from the University and Prison System, Stephen continues to teach writing half-time at Pima Community College. Stephen enjoys promoting “Moonlight, Missiles, and Moana”, the first in a trilogy of Young Adult Inspirational Fiction, and revising future titles including “Mustang Fever” and “Tornado Alley”.

Happily married to his college sweetheart, Betsy, for forty years and counting, Stephen is the proud father of two daughters—with full families and careers—and two adventurous sons, both First Lieutenants currently distinguishing themselves on active duty in the U. S. Army. http://www.stephenbgladish.com

 

"Moonlight, Missiles & Moana becomes an adventurous romp that mixes all of the characteristics of good storytelling: compelling characters, a central romance that is alternately sweet as waterfall spray and painful as a sea urchin, pacing that matches the scenes, a backdrop of island life rich in detail, layering and local languaging that would make South Pacific Oscar-winning cinematographer Leon Shamroy proud, and enough character-fed twists and turns to keep the reader turning pages."

 

PageOneLit.com: Where did you grow up and was reading and writing a part of your life? Who were your earliest influences and why?

Stephen B. Gladish: I grew up in Glenview, Illinois, a little farming town 23 miles northwest of Chicago. With encouragement from father, whose absence during WWII and emotional detachment thereafter provided further incentive, I became an avid reader and escapist at an early age. I grew up in a family with five sisters where I didn't belong. My two uncles, adventurers and both WWII pilots, one a POW, had compassion on me and took substitute father roles for me despite having many children of their own. Both grandfathers were pastors, various teachers and ministers throughout my childhood and youth took an interest in me and again became fatherly surrogates. These influences steered me into a field of teaching, journaling, and writing of religious and spiritual essays. Only later in life after a long apprenticeship of teaching writing models, did I tackle the creative writing of fiction short and long.



PageOneLit.com: Why do you write?  What makes your adventure and romance novels different?

Stephen B. Gladish: Male romance writers are rare and atypical: I am driven to write young adult inspirational fiction in a military adventure ambiance which appeals to all ages. As a male growing up in the 1960's, I am fascinated with the woman who practices individualism and true female empowerment far ahead of her time.  With the lifelong practice of journaling, writing is a way to perfect myself emotionally, intellectually, socially, and spiritually. To follow in the footsteps of my heroes who marched to the  beat of their own drummers, existential individuals, willing to stand alone for what they believed:  Jesus, Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, HD Thoreau, Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, F. Scott Fitzgerald, J.D. Salinger, Black Elk, Jimmy Santiago Baca, Rumi, Sherman Alexie, Neale Donald Walsch, Charles Eastman (Ohiyesa), Emanuel Swedenborg, Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, General George S. Patton, Jr.,  Thomas Jefferson, St. Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther King,Jr., Shirley Chisholm, Nelson Mandela, Mohammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sidney Poitier, St. Stephen, Johnny Cash. All those that stood for what they believed, provided role models for the common man and the outcast, wrote and even sang inspirationally, and spoke eloquently about their passions.


PageOneLit.com: Who and/or what have been your biggest influences with regard to your writing and why?

Stephen B. Gladish: I loved American history and literature of all kinds; Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Adventures of Robin Hood, and Treasure Island, which father read to me prior to my reading age, were the most powerful influences. Next, The Catcher in the Rye, Moby Dick, Typee, and The Great Gatsby lived in my heart and soul as a teen. I began a collection of Louis L'Amour's novels. Somehow I developed a great affinity for the American Indian, and read all books I could find on famous chiefs: Crazy Horse, Dull Knife, Chief Joseph, Tecumseh, Cochise, Geronimo, and many others. Victor Hugo's stories appealed to me. I loved Gauguin's paintings and biography.  I read and listened to anything I could on The American West.  I identified with themes of adventure, escapism, courage, brotherhood, different types of family, and society's outcasts. I lived through my heroes and characters, and survived by teaching for my first sixty years, twenty of those in state penitentiaries, providing education and encouragement to society's outcasts.  It's only fitting that my last twenty years is taken up with creating my own novels, ideal heroes and fiction, to provide inspiration for other young adults.



PageOneLit.com: You were one of two state finalists for the Arizona Correctional Education Association's Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999. You have seen many inmates achieve academic and literary successes beyond the public's expectations. How does this make you feel? Are there any inmate writers that stand out the most from your years and experience? How did you begin working with inmates? Talk a little about this experience and how it has touched you and your own writing...

Stephen B. Gladish: From childhood I have identified with the existential individual, the rebel, the misunderstood, the falsely imprisoned, from Robin Hood to Gatsby, from Hurricane Carter to Nelson Mandela, from Crazy Horse to Geronimo-falsely imprisoned on barren reservations. From 1956, I identified with and followed Johnny Cash, one of the few singers and songwriters who later went to prisons to sing to the inmates.

I knew and taught in the same Arizona State prisons that Professor Richard Shelton, the University of Arizona Poet and Teacher Emeritus, went into and taught writing workshops for thirty years. I knew of and followed Jimmy Santiago Baca when he was doing time in Arizona, and kept current with his career as he became a nationally known poet and writer, going to his readings, ever since. Ken Lamberton, who worked as my Teacher's Aide for ten years in prison, has won various awards for writing, including the National John Burroughs Award for nature writing. I sent out nationwide requests for inmate and ex-offender submissions to over a thousand prisons in our country, so that by encouraging them to get published in our prison anthology they would continue to perfect their freedom of vision and be able to inspire other prisoners to transform themselves. I loved encouraging my students in prison every day, every hour. It was a calling, a ministry of heart, education, and nurture.




PageOneLit.com: Congratulations on  "MOONLIGHT, MISSILES, AND MOANA" an EXCELLENT first novel   -- This book has it all, romance, intrigue, adventure set during tense war times but in the beauty of the South Pacific -- Did you plan to write this perfect novel or did it write itself? Discuss your plot and where and how the story went from brain to fingers to publishing.

Stephen B. Gladish: The plot for MMM came easily because it was based on settings and events and characters which I encountered and journaled about while on duty in 1962 out in the Pacific with a mobile weather squadron in the Air Force. It went from one character's adventures into three characters. As a Thoreauvian, I wanted my readers to experience a proverbial return to paradise--with the flora and fauna and lifestyle of American Samoa in its last days of innocence as an island archipelago. I wanted my readers to experience the challenge of falling in love and giving up all for love with a Polynesian, which required a massive transformation of all Chance was taught in a provincial Midwestern setting. Could he meet the challenge of being accepted by a Polynesian community? Would he survive the parental and national ultimatum to return to his family and his church and his community? Could he find redemption with whatever his choice would be?

Marriage has always been a key teaching in my religious upbringing as a Swedenborgian in the New Church (The General Church of the New Jerusalem, headquartered in Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania), and I lived by the ideals taught us. Beautiful Betsy and I just celebrated our 40th Wedding Anniversary, with four children and six grandchildren.
 

PageOneLit.com: In "MOONLIGHT, MISSILES, AND MOANA" your main characters are Moana and Chance -- Talk a little about these characters and what made them interesting to you.

Stephen B. Gladish: Chance is interesting to me because he is a composite of son Dave and me; modeled after Dave's looks and personality but based on the prototypical character of me--created by me and my experiences. I gave Chance more of son Dave's courage and independence and initiative. So Chance is the best I want to be.

Moana is a composite of three Polynesian girls I knew: Lotu (translated as the act of worship), Mavis, and Talani. Lotu was a past love and romance interest, sweet, shy, young, religious and innocent. Mavis was older, more sophisticated, a singer and dancer, with the willowy frame and social exuberance who attracted many men. Talani was a sultry singer who had separated from her Marine husband and loved to go swimming, boating, picnicking, and singing on the beach with any group of Samoan girls and American servicemen. All three of these women were enchanting to me and seemed to be the archetypal island goddess--women Gauguin wrote about and painted-the ones I dreamed about and wrote about in my journals.
 

PageOneLit.com: If and when "MOONLIGHT, MISSILES, AND MOANA" is made into a film who would you select to play the roles and why?

Stephen B. Gladish: Let's put Ben Affleck and Matt Damon back together. They do good films together. They have good chemistry together, just like Chance and Luke. Ben Affleck of Pearl Harbor, more dark complected and athletic, plays Chance, and Matt Damon, of The Bourne Supremacy plays Luke. Matt is more reserved, less ebullient, shorter than Ben and Chance.

For Moana: that's a little harder. Vaitiare Bandera could do it: she's German, American, and Tahitian, can sing and dance. Miracle Laurie would be great with her striking blue eyes, and her Polynesian dancing. Monica Bellucci, although she's Italian, looks the part of Moana, and could sing and dance.



PageOneLit.com: Which in your opinion is most vital to good storytelling -- Plot or Character? And why?

Stephen B. Gladish: Plot is important. It is the map and time line upon which the hero and heroine travel; it has to make sense out of the time, space, and chronology of the romance adventure. But character-as in character development-puts the crucial third dimension into the story. It isn't just what each character does, and where he or she does it; it is how he or she does it, or says it, or implies it. More importantly, we want to see each character's goals, motivation, and conflicts-both inner personality conflicts and outer other-people or event conflicts. And if they make mistakes or display faults, can they find redemption? What personal growth must take place in order for these two people to find romance and true love? What must they give up in order to reach the goals they have?


PageOneLit.com:What do you hope readers walk away with after reading "MOONLIGHT, MISSILES, AND MOANA"?

Stephen B. Gladish: They will have a love for the island flora and fauna and lifestyle found in American Samoa, Western Samoa, and Tahiti. They will see the value of a family based culture, and communities who live in harmony with each other and with nature, just as the Native Americans did.

They will experience the excitement of the female empowerment of my heroines-far ahead of the times back in the 1960's...
They will be inspired by the spiritual ideals and romance of Chance and Moana, Nakia and South Sea Island.

They will see the value of preserving the beauty and chastity of marriage by holding onto their ideals.

They will be uplifted by the morals, integrity, and purpose of the heroes and the heroines. They will see Chance and Luke as servicemen of stature, in contrast to the more common view of the "Ugly Americans" who go to foreign lands and take whatever they can.

 
PageOneLit.com: What's next?

Stephen B. Gladish: Mustang Fever: Run Free with Wild Mustangs, the sequel and second novel in the series, have Chance and Luke back in their same roles, providing weather support for nuclear bomb testing, but this time in the following year, 1963, at the Nevada Test Site. It is due to be published by Koboca Publishing in Spring, 2007. Chance is befriended this time by a band of wild mustangs. He meets Cheyenne Autumn, a Paiute Indian, and helps her solve the mystery of her missing father and his prize mustang stallion. He again risks everything in his search for his own identity and a new love interest.

After that, the third book in the series-- Tornado Alley: Chasing Twisters Across America-- comes out next Fall, 2007. Beginning as a prequel, we focus on Luke LaCrosse in the first person narrative as the main character, starting out in Oklahoma in 1961; we trace Luke's adventures from Oklahoma out into the Pacific-from Samoa to Hawaii, to Nevada, back to Oklahoma.

Coming out in May 2007 is a Prison Anthology, Freedom of Vision, co-edited by Bob Yehling and myself, packed with stories and details about my teaching in state penitentiaries for twenty years, and including almost one hundred submissions—essays, poems, drawings, songs, stories, and sketches--from inmates and famous ex-offenders from around the country, proving that people can change and transform life and themselves even behind bars.


PageOneLit.com: What was the last book you read?

Stephen B. Gladish: The Art of Watching Films, the main text for the fall class I taught on Literature and Film at Pima Community College, which included the novel, Moonlight, Missiles, and Moana... and, of course, I reread Moonlight, Missiles, and Moana.

The Iraq Study Group Report,
Reread Louis L'Amour's Mustang Man,
Reread The Great Gatsby.



PageOneLit.com: Do you have any hobbies? What are they? How do they enhance your writing?

Stephen B. Gladish: Everything I do helps enhance my writing. I meditate. I read mystic poetry. I read spiritual texts and journeys. I watch documentaries and Discovery Channel on countries and peoples and cultures. I work out at Desert Fitness. My characters have to be in shape for adventures, and so do I. I take personal growth and spiritual growth programs. I co-lead groups of growth. I take yoga classes for balance and health and poise.

I study movies. I hike and get out in the mountains and desert trails. I sing in the choir. I read everywhere, and keep track of events and news.

I belong to the Correctional Education Association of Arizona and America and keep up with those studies. I am a member of SSA (Society of Southwestern Authors) here in Tucson, and a member of RWA (Romance Writers of America), and am enriched by my association with fellow writers and kindred spirits.