Novelist Brent Olson is chatting with me today about his alternative history, Between the Helpless and the Darkness.
Please share what you’ve done.
Back page columnist, “Living the Country Life” 2002 – 2016
Syndicated column, “Independently Speaking” 1996 – 2024
Author of four collections of essays, a memoir, and three novels.
2021 AAEA National Writing Awards Contest – Editorial Opinion – 1st, Humorous Column – 2nd
Winner, “Best Regular Column” American Agricultural Editors Association in 2010 and
2013, “Best Humorous Article” in 2012, “Master Writer” 2012
Novel “Between the Helpless and the Darkness,” nominated for Sideways Award, given for Best Alternative History
Merit Award, Best Regional Book, Midwest Independent Publishers Association 2001
In the past ten years I have filed stories from six continents
Bush Foundation Fellow, 2012
Keynote Speaker for National Association of Rural Mental Health Professionals, College Theological Convocation, Saskatchewan Pork Producers, and many others.
Big Stone County Commissioner for nineteen years
Chair, Pioneerland Library System Board
Chair, Prime West Health
First Board of Directors, New Life Primary School, Mizak, Haiti
First Board of Directors, Big Stone Wind
First Board of Directors, Northern Growers LLC
First Board of Directors, Big Stone County Pork Producers
Owner, Manager, Executive Chef, Head Waiter at The Inadvertent Café 2012 – 2017
Board of Ordained Ministry, ten years, United Methodist Church
Leader of five international work teams, United Methodist Church
Farmed in Big Stone County, 30 years
Eleven years as youth director, Ortonville United Methodist Church
Married for 49 years, three children with college educations, no student loans, and jobs
Please share a bit about who you are.
When someone offers me help my instinctive response is to say, “No, thanks, I can do anything.” It has gotten me in a lot of trouble over the years.
I still say it.
I once shot myself in the hand with a rifle while preparing for a Norwegian-Philippine-French Independence Day Celebration.
One of my books was in Pete Seeger’s bathroom.
I once took a group of other people’s children to stay in the ghetto of a developing nation where our body guard was a thirteen year old girl named Lauri.
I don’t own a wristwatch but I’m always on time.
I know all of “Silver Tongued Devil,” by Kris Kristofferson.
Of the ten most dangerous jobs in America I’ve dabbled in six.
I once harvested 235 acres of soybeans in 17 1/2 hours. It snowed that night and I had three cups of coffee the next morning before I put on my shoes.
I know what Henry the V probably really said at Agincourt was, “Let’s get ‘em boys,” but Shakespeare’s version always makes me cry.
I can castrate 30 pound pigs by myself, 40 seconds per pig.
I have an email on file from a person who drove three hundred miles to have coffee with me and said that meeting me had been on his bucket list.
I have a letter in my file cabinet that reads, in part, “I’ve completely lost all respect for you as an elected official and as a human being.”
I once drank all the whiskey with a world famous poet and told a story that my wife hates me to tell because she doesn’t like people to know what I’m capable of and when I was done the poet laughed and said, “That’s a poem.”
I’ve buried four dogs.
I love my family.
I can cope.
Please tell us about your current release.
I create a better world for most of us but changing the path of one arrow one inch 1,000 years ago.
What inspired you to write this book?
The working title was, “A Happy Ending for the World.” I looked at this world we live in, run mainly by ambitious white men for the most of history, and tried to figure out a way to derail all of that and create something better.
What exciting project are you working on next?
I have four more books that I need to write in this life. I’m 30,000 words into the sequel for Between the Helpless and the Darkness and I trying to tamp down the need to work on the sequel to ANGR, which is much the same as between The Helpless and the Darkness, but instead of starting 1,000 years ago, I start with where we are today.
When did you first consider yourself a writer?
All my life, although I did not get paid for it until I was forty.
Do you write full-time? If so, what’s your workday like? If not, what do you do other than write and how do you find time to write?
I have a weekly column, due every Tuesday morning at 8:00 a.m., which means I often spend Mondays in a state of mild despair. My fiction writing is a little more sporadic, although I’ve now built a writer’s office out of WiFi reach of the house, which is a huge benefit. I spent twenty years as a farmer, ten years as a farmer/writer, five years as a farmer/writer/county commissioner, fifteen years as a writer/county commissioner, and in another ten months I’ll be full time writer.
What would you say is your interesting writing quirk?
I write fast and can write on almost any topic. I have well over a million words in print but sometimes struggle with the feeling none of them have mattered
As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
I wanted to be a hero. I settled, perhaps transitioned, to being a good husband, father, grandfather, and citizen.
Anything additional you want to share with the readers?
If you read the Who I Am section of my bio you’ll know everything that matters.