Interview with John Keeler Mitchell

Published 2017-08-17.
What is the greatest joy of writing for you?
Having written. Well, and there's more. While there's a fair amount of time staring at the screen...let me add this -- a favorite cartoon: a guy is sitting in the next room, staring at his typewriter, even as his wife stands, hands on hips, staring at the guy, and he says, "Just because I'm not writing doesn't mean I'm not writing!" It can be that way. Who knows? It could be that the ratio of thinking about what to say to actually putting words on the screen is on the order of six or seven to one. Could be. But the reward -- or "joy" if you insist -- is a couple of paragraphs that really sing, to the point where you say, "Wow! Did I just write that?!'
What are you working on next?
Now into final edit: "Jumping the Border," a story of a draft age (remember what that's all about?) guy who decides to bail to Canada at the height of the Vietnam war, then urges his girlfriend to join him in Montreal. Lots of complications, of course, including an especially nutso nemesis who follows our hero and manages to find and greet him with a bullet. "Jump" may have found exactly the right timing, given that Ken Burns will be releasing his new series on Vietnam this fall. I'm hardly advocating draft evasion or taking sides; rather its simply a look at what it might have been like for the more than 100,000 expats who landed north of the border -- and elsewhere -- during the adventure in southeast Asia. Turns out that a lot of the people liked what they saw and stayed.
What inspires you to get out of bed each day?
Well, there is this donut shop a block away...
Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?
You mean the one that I fashioned from a nasty limerick? "There was a man from Madras...and so forth and so forth...had long ears and ate grass."
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Books by This Author

Jumping the Border
Price: $1.59 USD. Words: 72,770. Language: English. Published: December 18, 2017 . Categories: Fiction » Romance » Action/adventure, Fiction » Romance » Action/adventure
With a draft notice hot in his pocket, Frank Bixler jumps the border to Canada in 1968, swapping the threat of the steaming jungles of Vietnam for cool Montreal. Boston College paramour Brit Goldner joins him for the start of a new life under the safety of a new flag -- but the couple soon finds that their actions are now threatened by the arrival of pro-war Americans set on a violent response.
Mr. Merson Goes Home
Price: $1.59 USD. Words: 78,280. Language: English. Published: August 17, 2017 . Categories: Fiction » Romance » Action/adventure
(4.43 from 7 reviews)
The perfect rainy night read…especially if your high school days are a long way back in the rear-view mirror! On a hot summer night in L.A., Keith Merson walks out the back door of a nostalgia club and into his own past, moving from 2009 back to 1959, from age 67 to 17. But Is Keith condemned to relive it all a second time?
Somewhere Children Shout
Price: $2.09 USD. Words: 52,330. Language: English. Published: November 4, 2013 . Categories: Nonfiction » Biography » Autobiographies & Memoirs
Roll back to the 1950s, courtesy of Somewhere Children Shout, a new retrospective by author John Keeler Mitchell, who lived it all. As he recalls, it was a time of black-and-white TV, movies where the word “damn” was used with great discretion, and computers were room-filling contraptions with whirring wheels of tape. All across America, the Boomer Generation was on the rise.
Zephyr Again!
Price: $1.79 USD. Words: 30,730. Language: English. Published: April 9, 2013 . Categories: Nonfiction » Entertainment » Humor & satire » Form / essays
We’re back! Zephyr Again! brings together more than 40 choice selections from the blog Zephyr, now into its third year of publication. Featuring a cool look at the world around us, with wit and wisdom, Zephyr reaches a loyal readership in the U.S. and Europe. Here in a single sampler, each selection is just long enough to romp through while you wait for the kids to clear out of the bathroom.