ABOUT THE BOOK
This is a collection of short stories written over many years. Some are more or less contemporary, a few are set in the 19th Century, and a few others were inspired by the work of other people (to whom I am much grateful).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harry Hutchins has been interested in folklore, mythology, history, fantasy and science fiction for a long time. His home is largely decorated in full bookcases. During a career as a teacher of mathematics and computer science, he has been writing stories of several kinds.
This is a collection of short stories written over many years. Some are more or less contemporary, a few are set in the 19th Century, and a few others were inspired by the work of other people (to whom I am much grateful).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Harry Hutchins has been interested in folklore, mythology, history, fantasy and science fiction for a long time. His home is largely decorated in full bookcases. During a career as a teacher of mathematics and computer science, he has been writing stories of several kinds.
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00This is speaking of writers. I'm Steve Richards. The book is tales of now and then the author Harry Hutchins
00:06It's a collection of short stories written over many years
00:09Some are more or less contemporary a few are set in the 19th century and a few others were inspired by the work of other people
00:16Harry Hutchins has been interested in folklore mythology history fantasy and science fiction for a very long time
00:23During a career as a teacher of mathematics and computer science. He has been writing stories of
00:29Several kinds happy to have Harry Hutchins join me here on speaking of writers
00:34Harry welcome to this program. Thank you. Glad to be here. So tell us a little bit about you Harry. Well, um
00:41I'm an American I
00:43Metal as you said, I spent a long time teaching mathematics and then computer science at several different
00:50Midwestern universities here in the United States. I've been writing short stories and other things for many years
00:56I think the start I think I started writing stories in the 1970s is only in the last few years
01:02I've tried to get any of them published. What got you into short story writing?
01:06Well novels are longer and more work for one thing
01:10I come up ideas for stories and and they go where they go. Some of them are longer. Some of them are shorter
01:17There was some point in my life
01:18I thought I should be more creative than I was and I worked on it and I came up with
01:24Story ideas, how do you come up with the names of your characters in your short stories? Oh, that's hard. That's a hard
01:30That's a hard question. I I have a story characters in my short stories named after Oh
01:36Characters from not from other people's books one of this for instance
01:39There's a character named Meg in one of these stories and Meg is the name of a character and little women by
01:46Louisa May Alcott. There's also story here based on characters from Louisa May Alcott
01:51I guess I use names. I've heard you mentioned Louisa May Alcott. Was she one of your influences? I hope so
01:58She wrote little women and there's a character named Beth and little women who never had a boyfriend and died at the age of 19
02:05But I found a loophole in a story where I could interpolate in my own little
02:09Account of her having at least a gentleman caller that that takes place in Oh, maybe 1870 or so
02:16Who else were some of your influences authors? I'm very fond of
02:20Well various science fiction authors, I'm fond of Ursula again, I'm fond of the work of Jane Austen
02:26I'm fond of the adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Samuel Clemens
02:30I've I'll have a whole house full of books
02:33I've read a lot of them chatting with Harry Hutchins here on speaking of writers
02:36His new book tales of now and then is out now, by the way, it's available at Writers Republic comm
02:42Barnes & Noble comm and amazon.com as well when you construct a short story Harry
02:49What's your process often the hardest thing is to know where to start?
02:52I have an idea for a character at things that happen to my character
02:57But what should the first sentence be and that's often hard and all and then eventually have to figure out what the last sentence is
03:03And that's often hard and tales are nine now and then I have a very various different things
03:09I have a story about gossip at a company where everybody's busy gossiping about everybody else
03:15Some of it's fairly nasty. One of the things I had in mind there was a couple of anecdotes about harm done by the gossip
03:21They're all fictional. It's all made up where I worked was nowhere near as bad as that
03:25Another one of these stories is about about movie music. The young man is a movie buff
03:31He knows all about classic movies and things that happen to them
03:35He can explain the plot of you know, the big sleep which is impossible
03:39He's an expert on them the move the music played in movies
03:42So he could tell two characters are about to meet cute by the music
03:47And then he starts hearing a lot of music in his head and it goes on from there Harry
03:50How did your career as a teacher of math and computer science help you with your writing? Oh, that's hard
03:57I have written at least one or at least one story, which is not in this collection. They
04:03Computer science related
04:05It's hard to say
04:07I
04:08To some extent writing was so cool. It's quite completely different from some of the things I was doing in my teaching
04:14It was good to have a way to get away from it. I've written a lot of material
04:18It's not in this book and not I'm hoping to get some of a publish center later science fiction
04:23Fantasy stories about religion things like that as I mentioned in the introduction
04:27You're interested in a lot of different genres here with folklore
04:31Mythology history fantasy and as you mentioned science fiction
04:35I think you should be interested in a lot of things
04:37What would you like readers to take away from this book tales of now and then? Oh, that's hard to say
04:42I'd have to say I try to write about role
04:46Relatively civilized people and I think and I think these are reasonably nice clean stories
04:51I think you could tell a good story without dealing in violence for the most part
04:55There's such enough variety here that I hope the variety itself inspires some people to think about different possibilities
05:02Are you working on another book right now? And if so, can you give us a sneak peek into what it's about?
05:08I'm writing at the moment
05:10what I think I'm working on is a short story based on things in the Old Testament of the Bible and
05:16I hope
05:17Eventually to have a collection of stories based on things from the Bible or related topics
05:23Yeah
05:23I have in mind a story about a young woman who
05:25Wants to know more about angels and gets the opportunity to learn about them
05:29Alright, he is Harry Hutchins. The book is tales of now and then it is out now available at writers Republic comm
05:36Also Barnes and Noble comm and Amazon Harry. Thank you so much for joining me
05:40Thank you very much for the opportunity and this is speaking of writers