Note: Author Ken Post will be in Sitka on Thursday, December 5, for a reading and book signing. He’ll be at the Sitka Public Library beginning at 6 p.m. Greyhound Cowboy and Other Stories was published by the Cornerstone Press in November, and is available in most bookstores.
KCAW: “I wasn’t surprised to hear that you’ve had this long career in the Forest Service, because your stories are sort of populated with ordinary people who might be kind of thrust into circumstances that stretch them emotionally or physically.”
Post: “The stories are about real people having real problems, and I think that’s what makes them relatable. But some of the places they take place in, and the circumstances, add a little bit to the drama, whether it’s in a lookout or what have you on. There’s one story called ‘Into the Black’ that has the Forest Service hotshot crew. I think I tried to make it about real people having real issues, and that makes it pretty relatable.”
KCAW: “And all this time, were you writing? Or have all these stories just kind of percolated to the surface since you’ve retired?”
Post: “I didn’t really start making a conscious effort to really set something down until about 2014. I had a story that was kind of kicking around in my mind. And it’s in the book called ‘Palm Sunday.’ And basically it takes place at a summer camp in New Hampshire, and the Palm Sunday is the term – and this is the autobiographical part – is that halfway through the camp, the parents came and took their kids away for Parents Weekend, and they always came back and gave tips to the counselor, so that you’d put your palm out and got your tip. And so I had an instance where someone gave me a $50 tip in 1975 for teaching their kid how to build a campfire. That really stuck with me, and I had to figure out how to put that into a story. And that stuck with me all the way until 2014 when I actually wrote the story.”
KCAW: “That was a mountain of money, for sure.”
Post: “Yes it was. The people at the camp, most of the parents, were very well-to-do, and so they thought nothing of giving you a tip, you know, for teaching their kid how to make a fire.”
KCAW: “What do you think makes a good short story?”
Post: “I think a good opening, for sure, interesting characters, and certainly an ending. And I think one of the characteristics of short stories is you don’t always know exactly how it ends. You might have some ideas. Sometimes it’s fairly apparent, but in other cases, it kind of leaves you thinking. And that, I think, is a sign of a good short story: it makes you think. And in between all that, it is nice to have some plot that kind of carries the story along, some tension, etc. And all those things are in a novel, but in a short story, it’s really very compressed.”
KCAW: “What’s next for you, Ken, in terms of your writing? Are there more stories on the way, or are you thinking about a larger arc in a novel, or what exactly, or is this it? Have you got it all out of your system?”
Post: “I think I’m going to try to get another collection out there. What I try to do is get each individual story published in a literary magazine somewhere, usually somewhere in North America. And if I can get them published, that just makes it a little bit easier to get a collection published. But I have about 12 more stories. I actually just finished the 13th, and I’ll see which kind of stories make it into that collection. But I suspect I’ll try to get one more collection out, and then I’m at a real head scratching point, because I don’t know if I have a novel in me. It’s just such an incredible commitment in terms of time. I’m thinking of starting getting into woodworking more, totally shifting gears.”
