David
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I was ten years old.
Thus began a writing career that has taken me from covering Nine-Man
football in Fergus Falls, Minnesota (where they have 287 words for "cold") to
the Edgar Award ceremonies in New York.
I was one of those annoying people who always knew what he wanted to be
when he grew up. What I wanted to be was a writer (for a brief period I felt
I was destined to replace Rod Carew as second baseman for the Minnesota Twins,
but that only lasted until I tried to hit a breaking ball).
For my twelfth birthday, my parents gave me a printing press, so naturally
I started my own newspaper, Neighborhood News. I sold it door-to-door
for a dime, which was good money back then (you could buy five packages of
Chum Gum for that). I also worked on my high school newspaper, eventually
becoming its editor when I was still a junior.
I was fired for printing an anti-war editorial. Course you need to
understand I attended an all-boys Catholic military school during the height
of the Viet Nam war. Of course they fired me. You would have done the same
thing.
To my astonishment, two months after I graduated from high school,
I was hired by a real newspaper -- Minneapolis Tribune. I started in
the sports department as a "copy boy" and quickly rose to staff correspondent,
covering high school and college sports and those events the senior reporters
didn't want to cover: Big Ten gymnastics, AAU swimming, World Team Tennis.
I loved it! I was the toast of my class at the University of St. Thomas,
where I earned a journalism degree.
Unfortunately, a full time position eluded me when a merger of the
morning Tribune and the afternoon Minneapolis Star caused massive
staff reductions. So after I graduated, I became a news reporter for the
Albert Lea Evening Tribune in southern Minnesota. It was there that I
met Holland Laak, the Freeborn County Sheriff.
Laak hated me. I was this pip-squeak reporter always asking questions he
didn't want to answer. Yet I liked him. He had no sense of humor that I ever
saw, but I admired the way he went about his business. He was a cop's cop; a
real crime dog. I named the protagonist in my first series of books after him,
even though the only things Holland Taylor and Holland Laak shared was a first
name and a compulsion to put things in order that were once out of order.
After a brief stint as a sports reporter again, this time for the
Grand Forks Herald in North Dakota, I left journalism and drifted into
advertising, working for several prominent Twin City agencies as a copywriter
and creative director. Eventually, I became creative director and part-owner
of my own shop, Gerber/Housewright, in St. Paul. Along the way I worked on
campaigns for a number of national clients such as Federal Express, Miller Beer,
Hormel Foods, Jim Beam, Tony's Pizza and 3M.
It was while at Gerber/Housewright that I wrote my "second" novel --
I had reached a true crossroads. I had always wanted to write books. To
me that is what a "real" writer did, write books. So the question was, am I
going to do this for real or aren't I? Is this going to be my life or just a
hobby? I think it took me about three minutes to decide to sell my advertising
agency to my partner and become a free-lance writer.
It didn't hurt that I had the full support of my lovely wife Renee
Valois, who was already a successful free-lancer. She was a contributing
writer for The History Channel Magazine, did theater reviews for the
St. Paul Pioneer Press, and managed to publish some poetry, all while
writing advertising for the same kind of clients as I did. (Most people will
tell you that she's a better writer than I am, but I am funnier - seriously.)
Five months later the Mystery Writers of America gave me the Edgar Award
for Best First Novel of 1996 and the Private Eye Writers of America nominated
me for the same prize. My second novel,
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text © 1999-2008 David Housewright |