PeterHogenkampWrites

  I was going though some old posts this morning, and I found this one (2014) gathering dust. It was written after I had been writing for just over a decade, and yet was still, despite having signed with a top literary agent, not published. I love this post because despite ten years of frustration, rejection and beating my head against the wall, you can see why I do this to myself--it's because I like to write. I would say I need to write, but that sounds too melodramatic (and my wife says I need to be less melodramatic.) In the interim, many of my dreams have come true. I have published or won the following awards: The Vatican Conspiracy, (Bookouture/HachetteUK, 10/2020) The Intern (TouchPoint Press, 4/2020) Finalist, 2019 Killer Claymore Award Top Finalist, 2020, Vermont Writer's Prize Doubt, the sequel to The Vatican Conspiracy, (Bookouture/HachetteUK, 4/2021) The Woman From Death Row, hopefully coming out in October 2021. So, I've had some success, and I appreciate you

I started writing when I was ten (46 years ago!) and in that time I have spent a lot of time thinking about how cool it would be to be interviewed about my craft as a writer. Well, bucket list check time.  I would love for you to watch the interview; I would also love for you to read  The Vatican Cospiracy  which, by the way, is available on e-book for 99cents at this time.  Cheers, peter :) ,  Peter Hogenkamp is a practicing physician, public speaker and author living in Rutland, Vermont.  Peter's writing credits include  The Intern , TouchPoint Press, 4/2020;  The Vatican Conspiracy , the first book in the Marco Venetti thriller series, October 2020, Bookouture/HachetteUK; Doubt, Marco Venetti #2, April 2021;  and THE LAZARUS MANUSCRIPT, a stand-alone medical thriller;   Peter can be found on his  Author Website  as well as his personal   blog,  PeterHogenkampWrites , where he writes about most anything. Peter is the founder and editor of  The Book Stops Here ,  the  literary blo

Americans spend 50 Billion Dollars on Vitamins and Supplements. Check out #YourHealthMatters to see if this is a wise investment. Just hit the Play arrow above.  On another note, check out  The Intern (TouchPoint Press, 4/2020)  on Amazon (and write a review if you want.)  Cheers, peter :) ,  Peter Hogenkamp is a practicing physician, public speaker and author living in Rutland, Vermont.  Peter's writing credits include  The Intern , TouchPoint Press, 4/2020;  The Vatican Conspiracy , the first book in the Marco Venetti thriller series, October 2020, Bookouture/HachetteUK; Doubt, Marco Venetti #2, April 2021;  and THE LAZARUS MANUSCRIPT, a stand-alone medical thriller;   Peter can be found on his  Author Website  as well as his personal   blog,  PeterHogenkampWrites , where he writes about most anything. Peter is the founder and editor of  The Book Stops Here ,  the  literary blog for readers and writers written by authors, editors, agents, publishers and poets.  Peter is the

We have all heard it before, Sixty is the new Forty, and now, the recent corollary, Fifty is the new thirty. Well, having turned 56 this past March, I am taking objection. Yes, that's right, you heard me: I am fifty-six, dammit, and I don't want to be thirty again. Being thirty again would mean I would have to give away 25+ years of hard-earned experience, and I am not willing to do that. Being 30 again would also mean I have to: Throw out two-and-a-half  decades of learning and knowledge. Hell NO! Wipe clean nearly a quarter century of memories, both good and bad. Nahhhh. I earned every grey hair and wrinkle, and I am going to keep them. There is a greater point here, though, and sooner or later I am going to get around to making it. (But I'm 56, so it takes me a while.) We live in a culture that is dominated by youth. If you need evidence of this, just turn on the TV. In less than one program, you will be assaulted by advertisements promising you that you can look yo

I know what you're thinking. Why put up with all that rejection? Wouldn't I have been better off sometime after the first fifty rejections to just take up Canasta? After a hundred rejections try to fine tune my German pronunciation? Close to the two-hundred-and-fifty mark, shouldn't I have have attemtped to learn the didgeridoo, the King of Aboriginal instruments? (FYI, I haven't had 250 rejections, although I am getting close and it feels like a thousand.) The answer, of course, is Nein ; I wouldn't have been better off. And there is a simple reason why. My gut instinct is to tell you that if I had, then (insert shameless plug here) my first published novel,  The Intern , would never have been made it to print, (Insert another shameless plug here) nor would  The Vatican Conspiracy  have either. And while that is very good incentive for a guy that has been writing for a long time, it's not what I am getting at. I started my first manuscript fifteen years a

It was 2015 by the time I sat down to write the book that would eventually become my first published novel ( The Intern , TouchPoint Press, April 13, 2020) a solid twenty years after meeting the twelve-year-old boy who inspired me to write his story. Maya Angelou said that “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” and she was dead on, because I can’t remember many of the things he said and did, but I can remember, with complete and absolute clarity, the way he made me feel, the punched-in-the-gut feeling that has stayed with me all these years. It was the spring of my internship, April, 1994, and the skies in Syracuse, New York were leaden and grey, doing nothing to improve my mood which had become dour with the long hours, lack of sleep and the never-ending scutwork. I was on Pediatric call for the weekend, meaning that the never-ending scutwork had now been multiplied by four, and I’d just