PeterHogenkampWrites

It was 1988 and I was teaching at an international school in Salzburg, Austria. It was late May, and school had just ended for the year, meaning that the traveling season for my fellow teachers and I was just beginning. My friends Bill and Chief and I had been planning to hike from the Italian/Austrian border, across the spine of the Austrian Alps, to the German/Austrian border, staying at Alpine Mountain Huts at night. I had been looking forward to the trip all year, but when it arrived the weather forecast was a deal breaker: cloudy, raining and cold. So, we improvised, and rode our bikes downtown and found a travel agent offering last minutes deals on trips that other people had already bought and paid for and then cancelled last minute. A few hours later we were on board a plane for Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. To be honest, I had never even heard of the place, but it had been a dreary spring in Salzburg, and the travel agent had promised us sunshine (or that's how I translated ...

It was twenty-five years ago and I was on a train going through southern France, or perhaps it was Spain, I honestly can't remember. But I do remember running into this guy in the dining car, called himself Chris. He was a cheesecake guy; the first five minutes talking to him, like the first bite of cheesecake, was flavorful. The next ten minutes, like the next few bites, were pretty good, although not quite as good as the first bite. And then, out of nowhere, the fried calamari, the six pieces of bread, the Caesar salad draped with anchovies, and the steak that looked like an entire side of beef catches up with you and you can't stomach even the thought of another bite. This is what the next hour of talking to Chris was like, only with lots of gas. Imagine hoping for a bout of cholera or other highly infectious and unpleasant disease in order to encourage him to find someone else to tell his embellished stories to. Of course, I can only blame myself, as there were clues early,...

My entire life has been a quest to get educated, beginning in kindergarten (where my skills at napping were unparalleled) and right on through the CME (continuing medical education) course I took last week on mosquito-borne illnesses (sounds fascinating, right?). Along the way, I have had the pleasure of having many excellent teachers, and I dedicate this post to Bob Rohner, who taught human pathology at Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse, NY for 40+ years (and he did it with panache!) Now that I have taken up the pen, I spend a lot of time thinking about the great communicators with whom I have crossed paths, and I ask myself what it is/was about her/him that made he/she such an effective communicator. Why? Because if you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. And also because writing and teaching are really about communication. If I want to write/communicate better, then study the people who could communicate/teach. Bob Rohner was such a teacher, and after some thought, I have...

Just a quick post for those of you out there who have completed a manuscript and want to submit it to an agent. My literary agent and her entire agency are doing a Webinar August 26-29, on how to make your submission stand out among the hundreds agents get every month. Check out the specifics on the agency website HERE . If you haven't had a chance to get to a conference yet, this is an excellent chance to get the same insider information without travel and hotel costs. Ciao.

It occurred to me last night as my brothers and sisters and cousins were sitting around after dinner, retelling all the old stories we have retold for years and years: There is a commonality to every good story, and that commonality is "Nothing that goes right will ever make a good story." Allow me to give an example. Ten years ago my family and I went hiking at High Point Park in Northern Jersey, with my brother Eric and his wife. It was a sunny Good Saturday in April, and we were enjoying the warm air after a cold winter. The group spread out as groups do on a hike, and the kids went charging ahead as kids do. But I wasn't worried, because we were experienced hikers from VT, and there wasn't anything in NJ that was going to phase us Vermonters (even my boys, who were 7 and 9.) Well, we made it to the top and tried to gather everyone for a photo--with the Manhattan skyline as the backdrop--when we realized my seven-year-old wasn't there. Apparently he had lagge...

My seventeen-year-old son and I were sitting in the admissions office of Holy Cross College last week when it hit me: it was thirty-two years to the day when my father had escorted me there for my own interview. It was the summer of 1981 and we were on our way to Cape Cod for a week's vacation and a visit with my sister who had been working in Hyannis for the season. My father had asked me several months previously if I had wanted to visit Holy Cross College on the way, but I had dismissed the idea without consideration. I was seventeen-years-old, and the prospect of following in my father's footsteps at Holy Cross hadn't appealed to me. Since he hadn't brought the subject up again, I had thought the matter had been dropped until I woke up from a nap and found us parked on the side of a steep street lined with tall trees. "Where are we?" I yawned. "Holy Cross College," my father replied. "I thought you might want to stretch your legs for a bit....

Have you ever wondered why some memories are just burned into your head, and why others--perhaps those attached to more significant events in your life--get lost in the neurosynaptic shuffle (and, yes, I made that term up, but I kind of like it.) For instance, I have very few memories of my graduation from grammar school, and yet I have almost visceral recollection of an event that took place the following summer, an event that will seem very mundane to many of you. I was fourteen-years-old and an avid reader of comic books and similar magazines for boys. My favorite part of these was the small ads in the back hawking all kind of things that a boy my age might want--like a model airplane with a real Cox engine. I can still feel how badly I wanted that plane. When I spoke to my father about it, he shared my enthusiasm for it. "Best get going earning some money," he said. So I put a sign up looking for work, lawns, raking, weeding, stacking wood, whatever. I remember being ve...