EP: This is your second book for Eckhartz Press. Your first book "The Scar Dance" was a finalist for CWA Book of the Year in the fiction category. This one is non-fiction. It's a memoir. Talk about what inspired you to write it.
William: "The Most Beautiful Place In Hell" is a book that was 45 years in the making. For many years I never spoke about my bullying to anyone. When I was in my 40s I began to tell my wife Kelly about it, but I was still not open about it to anyone else. In my 50s I began to talk more openly about it, and I wrote this book. I saw an interview with a group of men who were survivors of priest sexual abuse. They said that many of the men began to speak openly about their abuse when they were around 50 years old. I found this striking because it is the same age when I began to speak about bullying. I think there is something about approaching middle age where you refuse to carry dark secrets any more. I wrote this book because I felt it was a long buried story that finally needed to be told.
EP: October is anti-bullying month, which is the reason we released it this month. Anyone who has ever been bullied (and that's everyone) will relate to the stories you tell. They take place in the 1970s, but they could just as easily happen today. Talk a little bit about the type of bullying you encountered.
William: I experienced both physical and verbal/emotional bullying. Physically I took a beating during my early adolescence. I was punched in the face, punched in the stomach, and kneed in the groin. Verbally I was taunted about my severe acne. I had terrible acne during my teenage years, and the other kids taunted me about it. One kid called me pizza face because of my acne. I was also mocked for being physically awkward. I hated playing volleyball in my 8th grade gym class because I always got yelled at if I missed a shot.
EP: Did writing these stories provide a form of therapy for you?
William: I think it was a form of therapy to get this long buried story out of the darkness into the light. It is nice not to be burdened with this dark secret that nobody knew about. At the same time the book had negative effects on my personal behavior. While I was writing it I became more tense and irritable. There were times when I wondered if writing this book was a mistake, and if I would have been better off just leaving everything buried. In spite of the difficulties, overall writing this book was a positive experience which helped me come to grips with painful experiences from my past.
EP: As a victim of bullying as a kid, what message do you have for the kids going through that today?
William: My message to kids experiencing bullying today is to tell somebody about it. Tell your parents, your teachers, or any other adult who you trust. My biggest mistake of my bullying era was that I never told anyone about it. I never told my parents or my teachers. The reason was that I felt ashamed of my bullying. I felt like a sissy for getting bullied, and that if I ran crying to my parents or teachers it would make me even more of a sissy, so I suffered in silence. Do not feel ashamed of being bullied. It is not your fault. The shame is on the bullies, not on you. Do not suffer in silence as I did. Tell any adult you trust and it is their responsibility to help protect you.
EP: I love the title of the book. Explain where that comes from.
William: The title "The Most Beautiful Place In Hell" refers to the places where I grew up. My parents lived in two small towns in Colorado, Aspen and Silverton. Both of them were beautiful towns nestled in lush valleys surrounded by towering Rocky Mountain peaks, with a rushing river running through them. Both were former mining towns which had been transformed into tourist meccas, and were economically upscale. My parents had a strong marriage and I was raised in a healthy, stable home environment. In many respects my childhood and adolescence should have been idyllic, but they were not because of the dark shadow bullying cast.
EP: This is going to be a slightly different journey than your first book for a variety of reasons (fiction vs. nonfiction, normal life vs. COVID), but you probably learned so much writing that first one. What are some of the things you learned, and how did that help you write this book?
William: The two books were a much different experience to write. "The Scar Dance" is about one huge event, the dog attack, and everything else that happens is a ripple effect from that event. It covers one year and the action happens mostly in one place, and has four main characters. "The Most Beautiful Place In Hell" covers about 15 years of my life, from my early teens into my mid-20s. It has a wide variety of characters in a variety of settings. For that reason it was more difficult to organize than "The Scar Dance." It was also different emotionally. "The Scar Dance" is a fictional account of real events which was written while the events were actually happening. "The Most Beautiful Place in Hell" dredges up long buried events from 45 years ago. Despite the differences, the first book taught me in the second book that it is legitimate to write about traumatic experiences. It also taught me to better use dialogue and to be more in scene, following the writing mantra "show, don't tell."
