An Interview with Olexer J. Olexer

In 2002 Olexer started her own company, Joyous Publishing, and brought out her first four books in 2003, all authored by herself. Since then she has written and published six more books. Her most recent novels, all published in the fall of 2009, are Father to the Man, Criminal Justice, and Murder by Accident.

Interviewer: Tell me about Father to the Man.

Olexer: It’s the story of a father who has shirked some of his responsibilities as a man. When his daughter reaches her mid-teens, in order to help her, he must himself grow up. It’s a lot of fun but it’s a family story so there is some sadness and even tragedy, as there is in life.

Interviewer: Your novels seem to have at least a thread of comedy.

Olexer: They do. I often say I’m only in it for the fun, whatever it is. I love to laugh and also to make other people laugh.

Interviewer: Do you ever set out to make your audience cry?

Olexer: Not really, although it’s very satisfying when I do touch people that deeply. Once my son, who was thirteen or fourteen at the time, found me in tears as I was writing a scene and wanted to know why I was crying. I told him because the story was so sad. He was completely unsympathetic – he told me it was just dumb and stupid to cry over something that I made up. (laughs) Maybe so, but if what I write doesn’t touch me, I can’t expect it to touch anyone else.

Interviewer: Why did you set this book in Ashland, Oregon?

Olexer: Ashland is a lovely town and it was home to me for two years when I was growing up. I’ve never forgotten how happy I was there so when I needed a setting for this novel, Ashland came to mind. It is the perfect place for this story.

Interviewer: Where is Criminal Justice set?

Olexer: I don’t really know. A city. I didn’t want to burden any of the cities in Oregon with such a malignant bureaucracy as is portrayed in this book so I left it unnamed.

Interviewer: Malignant? What is the story about?

Olexer: It’s about a woman whose two small children are unjustly taken from her by the Bureau of Children’s Services. She and her husband have done nothing wrong, but their baby-sitter’s malicious accusations have disastrous results. Through a series of dreadful mistakes, the children are adopted out. When the stress tears her marriage apart and she loses her home and business, the mother sets out to exact revenge on the social worker who took her children.

Interviewer: It doesn’t sound as if there’s much comedy in this story.

Olexer: Actually, there’s none. I wrote this book to protest the power that the state has been allowed to assume over American families. It’s astonishingly easy to fall afoul of the bureaus that have been set up to protect our children. Children need to be protected but there is currently no due process in the way the bureaus operate. Social workers make all the decisions without reference to the actual law and sometimes without reference to their own guidelines.

Interviewer: It almost sounds as if you’re on a crusade.

Olexer: I don’t know about a crusade but I feel very strongly that children should not be removed from their parents unless there is a clear and present danger. If subsequent investigation reveals that the children would be safer away from their parents, the removal should be permanent. But if abuse is not found in the investigation, the children should be returned to their parents immediately. Too often there is no meaningful investigation. Too often children are removed from their parents only to be given into the care of abusive foster caretakers.

Interviewer: Let’s talk about your new mystery, Murder by Accident.

Olexer: This is the second in the series featuring Marge O’Connor. She is in her first year of teaching and has the upper four grades of the two-room school in a logging camp in the foothills of the Blue Mountains in Oregon. The year is 1950.

Interviewer: Why did you choose such a remote setting?

Olexer: Mostly because I lived there for five years when I was a girl and loved it so much. I went to sixth and seventh grades in that two-room school. I’ve issued a second printing of the first in the series, Death Takes a Flyer, because it sold out. I know that other people enjoyed the nostalgia of the story because it’s the only one of my books that ever did sell completely out. Also, I received quite a few letters and emails telling me so.

Interviewer: The title is intriguing, Murder by Accident. If it’s an accident, it isn’t murder. How did you happen to choose it?

Olexer: This accident was premeditated murder but the perpetrator hoped it would pass as an accident. I got the idea from a man who told me a story about the method. He had used it and it could very easily have resulted in a fatality.

Interviewer: Does Marge work with the local police detectives? Are there local police in the logging camp?

Olexer: (laughs) No to both questions. The nearest town is Kinzua, the company mill town, eleven miles away. The nearest police are in Fossil, the county seat, about thirty miles from Camp 5. When someone throws a Molotov cocktail at Marge one night, a deputy sheriff comes out to investigate but he’s only in camp a few hours. But the actual murder takes place on a horse ranch out of Bend. Again, the police are sheriff’s deputies, but Marge’s interaction with them is very slight. My mysteries are not actually about a detective, they are more like what Mary Roberts Rinehart called her “crime stories.” Marge solves the crimes but more through curiosity than detecting. Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple is another example of Marge’s type of sleuth; it’s her knowledge of human nature and her experience in small town life that leads her to solve murders.

Interviewer: Who is Barbara J. Olexer?

Olexer: I’m a mother, grandmother, wife, writer, and publisher. My first marriage ended in divorce after fifteen years but we are again good friends. My second husband and I have returned to Oregon in our retirement after living in Maryland for nineteen years. My first husband and I had been married six months when our foster son came to live with us. We were 22 and he was 16. It was a wonderful experience for all of us. Two years later my daughter was born and two years after that, my second son. Motherhood has been the defining experience of my life. I am extremely pleased with all three of my children and very proud of them.

Interviewer: Why did you start your own publishing company?

Olexer: The major publishers today will only accept manuscripts from recognized agents. I have been unsuccessful in signing with an agent so that left three alternatives: giving up, vanity publishing, or self-publishing.

Interviewer: How many books have you written?

Olexer: More than twenty. Most of them began as screenplays and some have not yet undergone novelization.

Interviewer: How many of your books have you published?

Olexer: Ten. Besides the four we have discussed, there are What Astrology Means to You, which is a handbook of astrological lore; The Enslavement of the American Indian in Colonial Times, a nonfiction account of Indian slavery in the east; Presidential Education: Prelude to Power, which describes how each of the first forty-three presidents was educated; and Fossil Rocks, which is a novel about a country singing star and a woman who owns and operates a mercury mine. It’s set in Fossil, Oregon, in the present. I wrote it because I wanted to see if I could make a happy marriage believable.

Interviewer: That sounds pretty cynical. Did you succeed?

Olexer: I think so. I wrote it shortly after my divorce so I was feeling cynical about marriage. I wanted to portray a marriage in which conflict was resolved without husband and wife tearing each other to pieces. I think Wesley and Yelisa, the co-protagonists, are believable and the way they solve their problems is plausible.

Interviewer: Why did you abandon screenwriting and turn to novels?

Olexer: It is monstrously hard to break into screenwriting. It entailed more rejection than I cared to deal with.

Interviewer: Print media is also very hard to break into.

Olexer: Ah, but there is a big difference. A person can become an independent film-maker and use his or her own scripts but it takes what to me are massive amounts of money. That would mean convincing lenders that I have the expertise to make a successful film. And I don’t. I can write a great script but I have no idea how to set about turning it into film. Print, on the other hand, is very easy and relatively inexpensive. For about a hundred dollars, anyone can become a publisher. The trick then is to become a successful salesperson. It’s easy to publish, the hard work is in marketing.

Interviewer: There is a strong spiritual or mystical dimension to much of your work. Why is that?

Olexer: One of the reasons I write is to share the spiritual ideas and ideals I hold. I believe the spiritual dimension of life should be integrated into every facet of living and I try to show that in my work. Without, let me add, being at all preachy or prissy. I hope.

Interviewer: Is there an overarching theme in your work?

Olexer: Respect. I try to depict people showing respect to one another, to our fellow creatures, to the Earth. Respect, in my view, is the most essential feeling to living a good life. Respect gives us a basis for understanding and negotiation. It’s when we deal with one another without respect that we get into trouble.

Interviewer: Indians and Indian history often appear in your work. Why is that?  Are you Indian?

Olexer: My ancestry includes Indian blood on the maternal side. I’ve always been sorry that the tribal affiliation has been lost. But until my generation, my family was ashamed of our Indian blood, which was pretty typical for those of us who are at least nominally White. That side of my family also includes English, Scotch, Irish, Dutch, and French immigrants. On the paternal side, I am Russian and Polish. When I first began to learn about Indian history, I was struck by the terrible injustice done the tribes over the past five hundred years. It is time that we take the treaties we made with the tribes seriously and see that justice is done as best we can at this late date.

Interviewer: Have you been influenced by any one writer in particular?

Olexer: Not one, but two. L.M. Montgomery and Agatha Christie. What amazing writers they were. L.M. Montgomery wrote about the simple things in life – home and family, friends and neighbors. Agatha Christie wrote mostly murder mysteries but her books aren’t really about murder, they’re about the most complex things in life – home and family, friends and neighbors.

Interviewer: Who is your favorite author?

Olexer: Oh, my gosh, I couldn’t possibly narrow it down to just one. Besides Montgomery and Christie - Mark Twain, P.G. Wodehouse, Dorothy L. Sayers, Owen Wister.

Interviewer: These are all retro, some very retro. Don’t you read contemporary authors?

Olexer: Not very often. I like Bill Watterson and Lawrence Block’s burglar series. But I find too much of new fiction either too ugly to be pleasant to read or too silly. I don’t want to immerse myself in garbage or nastiness. It’s important to write about incest, rape, and other horrifying human actions, but it needn’t be done with gleeful voyeurism. Silliness can be entertaining but it’s best used as seasoning, not as the main ingredient. I do read current nonfiction. Archaeologists have made some stunning discoveries lately – for instance, Mayan hieroglyphs have been translated and shown to be a phonetic language. Geologists and geophysicists have also made some fascinating discoveries recently.

Interviewer: Do you publish only your own work?

Olexer: So far my plans call for publishing only my own work. I would like to branch out but right now Joyous Publishing doesn’t have the resources to do justice to other writers.

Interviewer: Why do you publish your novels in large print? 

Olexer: Most of the books in the large print section of my local library are vintage reprints: Zane Grey, Grace Livingston Hill, Rex Stout. And many of the newer titles are by authors I enjoy – Alexander McCall Smith and Tony Hillerman, for instance – so it seems that the people who read large print books are my audience.

Interviewer: Do you have a favorite among the characters you’ve created?

Olexer: It depends a lot on which book I’ve most recently been thinking about when you ask. I like them all, except for the outright villains. Wesley Callaghan in Fossil Rocks and the Kovacek twins and Lindsay from Father to the Man are among my favorites. Ntare and Niboyu, White Water Woman, and Richard Kawashima from They Lived Ever After are also among my favorites. And I adore Debbie and Dottie Miller from the Camp 5 mysteries. But I guess Wrin Veersil from If You Can’t Trust Your Uncle Sam is my very favorite. She’s smart and wise and funny and vulnerable.

Interviewer: Do you ever base characters on your children or other family members or friends?

Olexer: I’d like to say that I invent all my characters out of whole cloth but I don’t think that’s possible. The truth is that sometimes I do use characteristics from life to help my fiction along. For instance, Lindsay Kovacek has a lot of my daughter’s characteristics at the same age. Jeremy Callaghan shows some similarities with my younger son. Wesley Callaghan, after his marriage, is a lot like my older son.

Interviewer: How do your children feel about your writing?  Do they resent finding parts of themselves in your characters?

Olexer: I’m not sure they recognize themselves. If they do have any resentment, they’ve never said so. I’m not really sure how the boys feel about my writing. Indulgent, maybe. I think they kind of feel that it’s a good hobby and keeps me out of mischief. My daughter was totally supportive. She laughed and cried in all the right places.

Interviewer: Do you have a favorite among the books you’ve written?

Olexer: While I’m writing it, each one is my favorite. I think, overall, the one I like best is They Lived Ever After.

Interviewer: Why?

Olexer: Well, my astrological sign is Gemini and I like variety. They Lived Ever After is a little like a masquerade ball; the same three characters appear in six different lives. It was great fun to research and to write.

Interviewer: Many of your books are set in Oregon. Is that your home state?

Olexer: Yes, indeed. I’m fourth generation Oregonian. Oregon is a lovely place, both physically and spiritually. I lived in Maryland and worked in Washington, D.C. for many years but I was homesick every day. When I retired, I came home.

Interviewer: Why Maryland?  It’s about as far from Oregon as you can get and still be in the U.S.

Olexer: I went to Maryland because it’s where my second husband was living when we met. I was living in southern California, trying to break into screenwriting, and after that experience, Maryland looked pretty good. And it is a beautiful place. Especially in the fall, when the leaves turn.

Interviewer: Evidently, your penchant for variety leads you to move around a lot, too.

Olexer: Oh, yes. When I was younger, I craved stability and roots but the seven years I lived on the farm is the longest I’ve ever stayed in one place. In Oregon I’ve lived or gone to school in Malin, Ashland, Fossil, Camp 5, Kinzua, and Klamath Falls; in California I’ve lived or worked in San Francisco, San Diego, Burbank, North Hollywood, and Tulelake; in Maryland I’ve lived or worked in Randallstown, Columbia, Owings Mills, and Baltimore.

Interviewer: I know you worked in Washington, D.C.; was your job at one of the government agencies?

Olexer: No, I worked for NCATE, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education, an independent nonprofit. It’s the national accrediting body for colleges and universities that train classroom teachers.

Interviewer: What other jobs have you held?

Olexer: My first job, when I was 18, was dental assisting. In those days there were no legal requirements for training so I went to San Francisco one summer and took a three-month course. I worked for a couple of years then got married. I was a housewife and, in due time, a mother. That lasted fifteen years, then I got divorced. My first husband was a partner in a small lumber mill but we had bought a farm. We rented it out at first and later share-cropped. After the divorce, I tried to keep on farming but I didn’t have enough ground to make a living so I sold the farm and went back to work. Since dental assisting was the only thing on my résumé, I got a job in a dental office.  I had been writing screenplays and had actually been signed by a Hollywood agent. When she dropped me, I decided to go to southern California and find another agent. I worked for a couple of different title insurance companies there. When I first went to Maryland, I worked for the League of American Wheelmen, a bicycle advocacy association. I was with NCATE for fourteen years.

Interviewer: What was your favorite job?

Olexer: Writing. All the time I was doing all those other kinds of work, I was also writing. I loved living on the farm, raising a few chickens and a couple of pigs, raising a few acres of potatoes and alfalfa. But writing is what I’m passionate about.

Interviewer: What kind of book are you going to publish next?

Olexer: I’m working on a novel about a couple who undertake to dig up an ancient civilization they’ve been psychically guided to. It’s set in the Tulelake Basin, which lies partly in California and partly in Oregon. The geology and archaeology of the region are fascinating so I’m really enjoying the research.

Interviewer: Thank you, Barbara. I wish you luck with your new venture.

Olexer: Thank you, it’s been good talking with you. Good luck to you, too.

September 2009