Joseph Seechack Interview Published on: 16, Apr 2024

I worked in Television for about thirty-five years. I was laid off from ABC TV. I then worked for NYC for eleven years before retiring. Being retired, I had fewer distractions, the time and the motivation and need to write more seriously, more productively.

That is a good question. I wish I had a better answer. But I don’t know where the idea actually came from. I wanted to express that “Love shows itself in sacrifices made for the ones we love.” I also wanted to write about “The triumph of the Individual” over whatever life throws at us; we are not powerless, unless powerlessness is the choice that we make. Grace was not alone. She had the help of wonderfully loving friends. We are not powerless and we are not alone.

I am forever grateful to Ms. Ruchi Acharaya of Wingless Dreamer. She saw some talent and potential in me and included my story in her short story anthology, “Writers of Tomorrow” which was published in 2021. That was tremendously encouraging and it gave me some validation and credibility in the marketplace. Thank you Ruchi.

Well, there’s a Helluva lot less research to do with fiction. I just have to research my own mind. It also has the fewest restrictions on a writer. The blank page is an entirely limitless universe before me. My mind is my own Starship Enterprise.

I like to write myself into a corner, if it helps the story. Then I have to figure out how to write myself out that corner to advance the plot and move the story along. I think it makes for a better experience for the reader as well as the writer. I believe that the more ways that you can look at a problem, the greater the number of solutions become visible.

Despite what you see on TV and in the movies, space is not the final frontier. People always have been, and always will be, the final frontier. Why do people do the things they do? “Tis a Puzzlement!”

I have been blessed the ability to see through more than just my own eyes. As a writer, I can see through the eyes of the characters that I write about so that I can better tell their stories. I like my characters to have to deal with Moral Dilemmas, and see what choices they make; and how those choices change them and their circumstances. Moral Dilemmas expose the inner workings of the characters, and maybe the reader as well, which may surprise them.

I really love humor. I believe that God has a Sense of Humor. That is where my Sense of Humor comes from. It may well be that God created Human Beings with their unpredictability and their humor, for his own amusement; as his own reality TV show.

I feel that my stories are much more entertaining for the reader when I add some unexpected humor in my stories, or at least some Snide Comments which they can relate to, because they have lived it too.

I do think that “A Love To Die For” would make for a wonderful timeless movie about life, the loss of true love, the feelings of powerlessness to change things, tortured struggle to find a way back to some kind of life. Grace has incredible loving friends who help to carry her along when she gives up hope and move her forward, their love is her hope.

Perhaps Oprah Winfrey could play whichever character she wants. Perhaps Steven Spielberg or Denzel Washington might be interested in producing and/or directing; maybe even Clint Eastwood who did such a masterful job on adapting “The Bridges of Madison County” to the screen.

“A Love To Die For” will grab the reader by the collar with two hands and pull them into the story. I want readers to connect and FEEL, really FEEL, and hopefully be changed, and find hope and energy from the story.

As readers, they cannot enter the story and help Grace. They can only struggle along with her and cheer her on, and cry with her in her tortured struggle over the Sudden Vacuum in her life when she loses, The One,” the one true love of her life, and their legendary marriage. If Love had a Mount Rushmore, Ron and Grace would be on it.

I write what I feel. I write about what I have learned in my life. Somehow, in that process, some life-lessons may be passed on to the reader. I believe that, regardless of source, “Wisdom is wherever you find it.” There are a number of different trails that you can take to reach the top of a mountain. Whatever trail you take to the top of the mountain, the view is pretty much the same. We all arrive at the same reality of how life works. Then we make our choices about what we do with that reality.

As a writer, I believe that a blank page is a canvas for a writer, an invitation to adventure, for the writer as well as for the reader. Writing is something to be respected, it demands real dedication, self-discipline and sacrifice if the writer wants to write something meaningful in pursuit of actual Art!

Writing won’t let me go to sleep, at least not with all these ideas in my head. When I can eventually sneak away and escape to sleep, writing wakes me up to write those ideas before I forget them. Sometime I think that writing is Insomnia’s secret identity.

I can’t remember when I first began writing. But I think there were only fourteen letters in the alphabet at that time, so books were shorter back then. In the fullness of time, I heard that twelve more letters were added at a later time. Well, time takes care of everything.

I wrote a lot of wonderful birthday, Christmas and anniversary cards when I was younger for family and friends. I wrote many other stories. But they were for only me to read. I was too insecure in my writing to share them with anyone else.

When Real Love found me, I wrote many loving things to the woman I was with because I felt the need to express my love to those special ladies, and show them what I had written, and they loved what I had written.

When I met my wife, my beloved Irene, love flowed through me and onto the pages, and creativity was unbound, and stories were born; which then led to a book, “A Love To Die For.”

I believe that my own personal mission from God, is for me to write something that will be very meaningful to a reader somewhere, so much so that it changes that person’s life. And that change, in that life, will be something very important, something that I may never know that I was the source of. But God will know.

I am more retired than a car with four new tires.

Yet I don’t have the time to watch a large collection of numerous movies and TV shows with my wife that I have been waiting to retire so that I would have the time to watch and enjoy ourselves. I may have to invent the thirty-six-hour day to do all I want to do, and need to do. This is all a result of the Velocity and the Complexity of life these days.

“A Love To Die For” was released on Valetine’s Day, February 14, 2024 by Koehler books. It is a great book that only a few people know about. It has received several FIVE STAR Reviews in the industry, but few know about it. Hopefully, that will be beginning to change, with your invaluable help.

In my case, I write because I have to write, to get ideas out of my own head and are now visible on paper, so that makes them real and not just a figment of my imagination.

Writing undresses a writer in what he has written. No fig leaf for modesty, more honest, more exposed than originally intended, but very real. Let us hope that the world, critics and readers will be kind. Light a candle! Make those two candles!

AllAuthor has been extraordinarily supportive, generous and helpful to me as an Emerging Writer. “A Love To Die For” is my debut novel. I am a Greenhorn Rookie in the world of publishing. I have so much to learn. Unfortunately, everything I know about computers, I learned from Fred Flintstone. Fred never said anything about Social Media. However, I do have a strong background in Rabbit Ear antennas and Rotary Phones.

AllAuthor has been my, “Yellow Brick Road” on getting my book out to more people in the industry as well as to the reading public. “A Love To Die For” is a great book, pardon my modesty, but people have to know that it exists and is available to read.