Retirement produces prolific writing career

MOSES LAKE – Regional author E. Hank Buchmann is getting ready to release two new books to his growing collection of published works.

"Love and War," a collection of three novellas currently in the proofreading stage, has a possible release date of early September.

"You can't make a full novel out of every story that goes through your head," said Buchmann, adding he followed writer Jim Harrison's lead in combining a collection of novellas to be published in one book. "I think I might do it again."

He hopes to have his next book, "Empire," released in the next year.

"It's a modern day Western, complete with cell phones and pick-up trucks," Buchmann said.

It's a switch from the Western series in which he published several books under the writer's name of Buck Edwards. Set in the late 1800s, they involve a U.S. Marshal named Boone Crowe who keeps law and order in Wyoming. The most recent in the series is "5 Bullets."

"I've made mistakes and I'm still making them," Buchmann said. "I don't pretend to be perfect, and neither are my characters. In fact, Boone Crowe makes some mistakes. But he's always got the one-armed preacher that kind of puts him in line."

Buchmann's writing began as a war correspondent, stationed in Vietnam with the 101st Airborne at the age of 22.

"I'm a farm boy from Washington state, and all of a sudden I'm in this situation," Buchmann recalled. "I imagine everybody that was there felt the same way."

His first article, about a medivac helicopter pilot who got shot down three times in 24 hours, made the front page of the "Stars and Stripes" Pacific edition.

His book titled "Until the Names Grow Blurred" follows the memories of a World War 1 veteran, as he looks back over a long and eventful life. The novel, despite graphically describing violent times, is as lyrically written as any of Buchmann's poems.

He said he came up with the idea for the story after working in New Jersey as an activities director at a retirement village.

"I came to find out some of these cranky old people really had a story to tell," Buchmann said. "There was a survivor of the Baton Death March, there was a Korean fighter pilot, and there was a woman who recently went blind, who had lost her parents within two days of each other to the Spanish Influenza in 1918."

"It's a special book," Buchmann said, adding he was criticized by someone on Amazon for not telling the man's story in straight, chronological order.

"I said, 'Have you ever talked to an old person? Their mind is up and down, all over the place.' And that's how I wanted to do it," Buchmann said. "One day he was in the trenches, the next minute he was in his bedroom or the dining hall."

Buchmann's stories also reach a younger audience, including his young adult novels "Lila B" and "The Homey."

"When I was 45, I started working at the Moses Lake School District, and that's when I really found inspiration," said Buchmann, 72. "I got close to these kids. I started teaching creative writing and poetry in all kinds of venues, and when kids would want to learn to write better, they would come to me."

Buchmann said he came across some sad stories getting to know the kids.

"My book "The Homey" was inspired by some of the kids I knew that didn't really have love where they should have it. And so I wrote a story about it; just because you don't get it where you should, it doesn't mean it's not out there."

Buchmann was invited to speak at Freeman High School, following the September 2017 shooting near Spokane that left one student dead and three injured.

"I gave them some copies of "The Homey." You try to teach people that writing is medicine. It's the broken people who help the broken people," Buchmann said. "I'm a sucker for a happy ending. So I try to give that to my characters, after they've gone through the wilderness."

"This is probably my masterpiece," Buchmann said of "Darling Liberty." "It took me 10 years to write. I kept overdoing it. Finally, at the end, I changed the point of view from third-person to first. It worked out well. Now when you open the book, it's just a man telling his story."

There's a story to every book, Buchmann said. "Nightly Crossings" started out as a poem he wrote to a former student.

"She was on her way to college, and she was kind of scared and nervous," Buchmann said. "So I wrote her a couple poems, just to cheer her up."

When the student told Buchmann "Nightly Crossings" was her favorite, he decided to turn it into a book. In a post-apocalyptic setting caused by a natural disaster, a teacher and a student have to travel across the country.

"They're in a land that's been completely wiped out. They start walking at night, but by the end of the story you realize that the 'nightly crossing' was crossing from who you were, to who you were meant to be. We think we know who we are, and then you gotta go through that wilderness. And when you come out of that wilderness, you're not the same person. You're a better person, if you're paying attention."

Buchmann said he and his wife have traveled across the country, in part to explore lands where his books are set.

"When you get that close to the country, it becomes a part of you. And so I work really hard to make the land as much of a character as my characters," said Buchmann.

He grew up on a sugar beet farm in Moses Lake.

"I knew every pheasant that was born, and all the quail and all those little bugs, and they make their way into my poetry," Buchmann said. "In the last couple of months, that's about all I've written, is poetry. I have a collection of poems out, and I'm going to have to put another one out. But I'm a storyteller. Sometimes you put an 'I' in there, and sometimes you put a 'he' in there. You just masquerade what's really going on in your life."