In 2023, I found myself on my own “Michael Fedor LinkedIn Page” writing sentence after sentence describing my experiences over 20 years of my career. That is because for the second time in my professional life, I faced economic uncertainty with the elimination of a position I loved.
If you have ever faced job loss – yourself or through a loved one – you know it can be an emotionally tumultuous experience. Research shows that those facing job loss are likely to experience depression and severe feelings of inadequacy.
I was turning into your typical case. The grey clouds of gloom had rolled into my subconscious, and I was having a hard time remaining hopeful in my search. When you start receiving one to two rejections a day because of the volume of resumes you are sending out, it becomes a vicious and harmful cycle.
Let’s face it. You can only revise your resume 40 or 50 times before you start to get punchy, and by the 60th time, you cannot for the life of you find alternative words for experience, lead, or deliver.
Why Independent Author Writing?
Twenty-four years ago, I was a writer. I wrote voluminously and with skill because I was a liberal arts college studnet. Creativity was something that had come naturally since I was very young. Nonfiction writing, with well-reasoned arguments, logical conclusions, and perfectly written citations required a little more work, but was just as attractive to me.
I was at Penn State University preparing to become a high school English teacher. I was fashioning myself after my favorite English teacher, Mr. John Keating. I am referring to the fictional teacher with unorthodox methods for 1959, played by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. Keating was a rebellious English teacher who recently landed a job at an all-boys private school in New England in 1959. He whispers and proclaims carpe diem, Latin for “seize the day” to his class. I am not going to recount the entire movie in this post. If you haven’t watched the film, go watch it on Apple TV, Amazon Prime, or YouTube after you read this post.
If you have seen the incredible Academy Award winning film (Best Original Screenplay Tom Schulman) from 1990, go watch it again. You will feel hopeful and inspired, which are never bad feelings.
When I landed my first teaching position two years later, it began with a desire to shape minds, inspire youth, and embrace creativity. I stood on desks. I pushed my students to explore the humans they were becoming. We read Shakespeare aloud in class, as it was meant to be enjoyed through the life-giving force of the human voice. I taught an elective on the language of dissent, using nonfiction and fiction texts to explore the First Amendment.
Then No Child Left Behind (NCLB) was passed, and the dream of teaching English became a nightmare. The art of teaching writing, media literacy, and the power of words evaporated within a year, replaced by the notion that every child must achieve satisfactory performance on a standardized test in 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th grades, or schools faced penalties and the student faced the inability to earn their diploma. The era of high stakes testing began (and has never ended, contrary to the predictions of the veteran teachers who at the time told me “this too shall pass”).
At first I raised my hand to take on the duty of providing tutoring before and after school for 9th and 11th graders who did not score well. Then I took on what our district called “remedial classes,” which were comprised mostly of kids with years of educational damage, inadequate support, and identified learning disabilities. These students felt hopeless and were allowing one test to determine their self-worth.
This is around the time when I wrote an email the the executive director of my state political party, asking how I could learn the ropes enough in politics to work to elect people who would put an end to such bad policymaking as NCLB or my ultimate dream, become an elected leader myself. Amazingly, he replied. He told me to go work on a campaign and learn what it meant to run. Win or lose, I would learn a great deal about politics and elections. Remarkably, 20 years later, we are still close friends and his advice was and remains on the money every time I seek it.
I took his advice in late 2003. I went to volunteer on a campaign. It taught me a mountain about what it took to run a campaign, but we lost. So I did not learn a great deal about winning. I continued to teach, but there was an itch now building for the gold ring – an election victory.
I tried to satisfy the itch through writing. For a year I wrote in my free time and came up with a book I called Bullmoose. The book told the story of a crooked politician who is the president. He attempts to rig a national election to retain the White House. He did not count on the power of a hero who emerges to resurrect the Bull Moose Party. When the Bull Mooses win, the incumbent cries “foul!”- that “the election was stolen” and refuses to leave the White House.
I asked my mentor, a fellow English teacher in the department read the early chapters. She was trying to coach me to “show not tell” as I had done with dozens of students. She encouraged me to develop these characters with more life. My wife read an early version and felt like too many people from the real world were plainly in the pages of the book.
The Path that Led to Political Fiction
I hit a wall and started pursing a new career in political action. So I tossed the book into a drawer, saved the files on my iCloud, and ignored it while I made a living in politics for ten years.
Then House of Cards aired Season 3, and I saw a major piece of the plot of my unpublished book happening on my screen. I was kicking myself. And yet, I left the book untouched.
As the 2016 congressional and presidential elections unfolded, I felt like my unpublished book had predicted some of the major themes a full eight years before they happened. So I dug the book out and reread it, convinced it was time to give the book the light of day. I sent it back to my mentor-teacher-friend to read to make edits. I took a free course on self-publishing. The book was ok, still not great. My mentor was not as thrilled with the edits as I thought she would be. The story was missing a lot to keep it moving and to draw the reader in. Back into a drawer it went.
In 2017, my wife and newborn son (our third) faced a life-threatening crisis that nearly made me a widower. Luckily ,they survived. Everyone who knew I was a writer at heart told me I had to write their story of survival. It indeed was a powerful story of love, medicine, and prayer, but the task of facing my own trauma made the writing processes almost impossible. The daunting task of researching thoroughly and accurately a medical crisis nonfiction memoir ground the writing process to a halt. I did not know how to write a nonfiction book like this. The book was begun, but I cried as I wrote each chapter. I had to set it aside.
Three years later, Election 2020 and the events of January 6, 2021, were the last straw. I was horrified like much of the world, but to see scenes from Bullmoose playing out on live television, I wondered if I had missed the moment of impact for my novel.
Lightning struck for me this past fall. First, the house took historic action to vacate the speakership in the House of Representatives and a circus ensured. It was a spark of inspiration that had me thinking of the opportunity for a great story. I had gotten back to reading, and had just finished my eleventh book this year (The River of the Gods by Candice Millard, The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah, And Then There was Light by Jon Meacham, The Last Wish by Andrew Sapkowski, 1776 by David McCollough, The Collector by Daniel Silva, The Last Campaign by H.W. Brands, Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, Gods and Generals by Jeff Shaara, and The Coming Wave by Mustafa Suleyman). And sadly, I suddenly had hour and hours of time on my hands with the elimination of my job.
The 2024 presidential election was beginning to take shape, and a burr got under my saddle again about powerful stories after I finished the books above. I knew I had created a political fiction universe in Bull Moose that had depth, importance, and attraction for a certain group of readers. I needed to give writing another try.
Chapter by chapter I have undertaken a rewrite of the entire book. Some chapters lightly touched, others shit-canned, and the creation of an entirely new direction and feel of the story. I changed the audience and focused on what my reader was looking for in a book. And landed on a way, way better title.
As I complete What it Takes to Kill a Bull Moose and prepare it for release in early 2024 in time for the presidential general election, I am excited about sharing the story I am telling with readers who like me love to see politics as a great backdrop for a thrilling and suspenseful story. And I am beginning work on two other books at the same time.
I thank you for looking into my story about why I have returned to writing. I hope you will subscribe to get emails from me below announcing the date of What it Takes to Kill a Bull Moose actual release date, and also some amazing prequel short-story fiction in the same universe as Bull Moose, giving you a peak in some vital backstory before the novel’s release.
I want to give a shout out to Author Media and the Novel Marketing Podcast. On days when I was down in the dumps and unsure where on earth to begin this monstrous undertaking, and wondering if independent, self-publishing was even real, tt was Thomas Umstattd, Jr. and his thoughtful expertise that was a bright, shining light in a very dark tunnel.
Here’s to finally finishing a novel twenty years in the making, and a plan for many more successful books to follow.
