Dave Gehrke

I grew up reading comic books in my uncle’s toy and hobby store. I didn’t know how to read at first so I contented myself staring at the colorful drawings while trying to figure out what the words meant. I believe the first word I learned was “Pow!”. “The” wasn’t far behind. Then my uncle started sending me home with a comic, often, purportedly so my parents could read them to me, but also because he grew tired of me being in the way of paying customers. I learned two things from that experience; how to manipulate my uncle, which came in handy as I grew older, and how to read at an early age, which served me well my entire life. Reading opened up a whole new world for me; a world of knowledge, entertainment and imagination, and that world lay just across the alley from me at the Dyckman Free Library. By the time I reached the second grade my family had named me “Professor”. By the eighth grade I’d demonstrated to Mrs. Dombrowski, the librarian, that had I not only graduated from the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew section, I was well on my way through the adult fiction section and could pass a comprehension quiz on any book I’d already managed to smuggle out of the adult section. In high school my standard answer when a teacher questioned how I happened to know something esoteric or arcane was “I read that somewhere.” Which also brought a standard groan from my classmates. Writing is a natural evolution from prolific reading. And when I discovered I could wow both my classmates and instructors with my completed writing assignments, I decided at age sixteen that I would someday become a writer of books. Then life got in the way; marriage, kids, college (I’ve earned three degrees), various business pursuits, various stints at journalism, teaching, coaching, school administration and half a dozen hobbies. But I never forgot about becoming a novelist. So I studied people (characters); their mannerisms, how they spoke, the way they conversed, how they reacted in various situations, what motivated them, how they expressed their hopes and their dreams, the way one wrinkled her nose when she laughed, the way another tended to begin the answer to any question with “basically". And I gathered reams of notes; character descriptions, possible storylines, potential plots, locations, time periods, etc. And I continued to read, sometimes for entertainment, sometimes to study the different techniques used by my favorite authors in crafting their books. Then, when the drawers holding my writing notes were overflowing, when my kids were off having kids of their own and I retired to my own semi-isolated place in the countryside, I did what I’d always been meant to do; I started writing books. Life, as they say, goes full circle. Some circles just have larger diameters. less