Sean C. Morgan
Sweet Home Junior High science teacher Mark Holden wrote a book more than 20 years ago, but it took technology and his daughter Elise’s writing her own to prod him into publishing it.
Holden used the book for years in class, reading excerpts as part of his lessons when he was an elementary teacher.
In May, Elise Holden published her book, “Brothers;” and in July, he published his, “Innerland,” both of them through Amazon’s Kindle.
Elise, 18, completed her book as part of her senior project at Oregon Connections Academy, the high school program she chose to finish school.
Seniors were required to complete a project of at least 40 hours, write a paper and prepare a Power Point presentation.
“I’ve always been writing,” Elise said. “I wrote little stories in the second grade. My teacher (Debbie Aman) encouraged it.”
Her story is “about a girl my age,” Elise said. “She moves to a new town in the Pacific Northwest.”
The heroine’s new house is the site of a mystery, and she spends the book solving it, she said. It’s a kind of a ghost story.
Elise said she took inspiration from a quote by author Toni Morrison: “If there’s a book you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.”
When she finished it, she decided to use the Kindle direct publishing program offered by amazon.com. She published it a few weeks before she graduated in late May.
“It was kind of a dream come true,” Elise said. “I’d always wanted to write a book before I was an adult.”
She spent much more than 40 hours on the project, she said. “Toward the middle, when I was about halfway through, it was hard. I didn’t know how to end the book.”
She played with some ideas until she got it right, and then she finished the story, Elise said. She then went back and connected the middle to the end.
Her parents, Mark and Lana, were delighted when she published it, and it got Mark inspired. He picked up “Innerland” and went to work revising and editing it.
“It was kind of like meeting an old friend, picking up where you left off,” said Mark, 52, who teaches science at the Junior High. “For years I didn’t know where to go with it.”
And then Elise showed him the way, showed him how he could publish it. He tweaked a few things and published his book through the same program.
He enjoyed that, but most importantly, Mark said, he got excited about writing a second installment, moving a minor character to the protagonist position.
“I had this idea back before I even had kids,” Mark said. He was attending Boise State University and was bored with studying. He zoned out, looking at a pinhole in the wall, he said.
“I got to thinking about what it would be like if I was that small,” Mark said. That was the basis for the fantasy world he has developed, a place with eight cardinal directions. He doesn’t describe it as a tiny world existing inside a pinhole, but it is a world where tunnels lead between important places populated by odd creatures and species.
“It’s funny,” Mark said. “I had to think of a whole biome for these things.”
He completed his first draft when his son Jakob, now 21, was still a baby. He was teaching by then, and he chose not to work during the summer so he could focus on the book.
“I realized there was really no such thing as a muse,” Mark said. “Sometimes it was more productive than other times.”
Discipline and regular hours writing were key to finishing the novel, he said.
“I think anybody might enjoy it if they like a good fictional romp,” Mark said. The adventure story follows Jeff Ransford, a juvenile resident of Oregon living in a single-parent household.
“He’s a really good artist. He’s really intelligent, but he doesn’t see himself that way. He likes comic books, and he likes to draw.”
Jeff brings home a report card that isn’t too good and absently tosses it aside in excitement over a new comic book. That prompts a fight between Jeff and his father and during that fight, Jeff transitions to a new land, a place where time flows differently.
He thinks he’s dreaming at first, but then he realizes he’s not. He grabs the situation by the horns and quickly begins his adventure.
“It’s just been a fun thing,” Mark said. He was most excited when he received hard copies of the book, with ISBN codes on them – something he wrote.
Mark has taught for 25 years. He is in his 21st year teaching in Sweet Home and 13th at the Junior High. He and his wife Lana, who teaches history at the Junior High, have one other son, Dallin, 26.
Mark has been selling his book at the Sweet Home Farmer’s Market, and it is available at the Chamber of Commerce.
Both books are available through amazon.com and may be ordered for the Kindle or as a hard copy.
Mark will sell them at the Oct. 3 Harvest Festival along with his colleague Dana Simonson, who recently published “The Sea Dragon’s Lair.”
Mark and Simonson will appear and read from their books at an upcoming open mic night at the Sweet Home Public Library.
Elise will attend Portland State University this year in the pre-nursing program, and she plans to continue writing.
“I want to do maybe a short story collection or even another full-length book,” she said. “I just want to keep it a hobby.”