Welcome to BookView Interview, a conversation series where BookView talks to authors.
Recently, we talked to Glenn Porter & Steven W Porter about their writing and their recently released, Porter Brothers’ Tragedy: The Untold Story, an intriguing memoir based on their real-life story. (Read the review here.)
In a desperate attempt to escape poverty after having their lives destroyed by the Marchands the Porter brothers decided to write a book of their true-life wrecking story hoping that their book would sell well.The Porters did not know how to operate a computer. With only pen and paper to work with, the Porters went to work writing their story.
Two years later after hundreds of hours writing their manuscript the Porters found a consignment publisher in NYC to publish their book. Steven had to sell his car and the Porters sold other possessions to raise the money to pay the publishing fee. The Porters got their book published.
The Porters submitted their book to Reader’s Favorite for a multi-pack book review and scored two five-star book reviews.
The Porters called 1,000 bookstores in the countries of USA, Canada, England and Wales and told these bookstores of their double five-star book.These bookstores had a tremendous positive reaction to their true life wrecking story five-star book, but there was no free shipping offered on their book.
The Porters decided to change publishers. They did not have the money to pay for another publishing fee. Five years later the US government gave money to US citizens during the corona virus outbreak.The Porters used this money to pay a publishing fee to their current publisher Austin Macauley.
As brothers, Glenn and Steven Porter rent a small house together in Maine. They have two cats, Junior and Nina. Nina is Junior’s girlfriend. The Porter Brothers Tragedy: The Untold Story is Glenn and Stevens first book.
Author Website https://porterbrothers.co
Who and what ultimately inspired you to become an author?
We wrote our book because it was the only chance that we had to get out of poverty.
Have you been to writers school?
No. Our book is a true story. We just used pen and paper and wrote the events as they happened.
How long on average does it take you to write a book?
It took us 16 months to write our manuscript, working many hours each day. Our original manuscript was 930 pages. We decided to shorten our manuscript to make it more attractive to a publisher. Less pages would cost less paper and ink to print our book.It took us another 8 months to shorten our manuscript to 870 pages.We also changed the names of all of the peoples names in our book except for our names. We also changed the names of most of the cities, towns, businesses ,etc.
Would you rather read a book or watch television?
We do not read books. We would rather watch television.
What other interests do you have other than writing books?
We like to hunt and fish. We are Boston Red Sox and New England Patriots fans. We watch every NFL football game that we can watch.We work on projects in the woods to help animals have more food. We spend about 50 % of our time helping our mother. We mow her lawn, bush hog her fields, help her plant and weed her garden, shovel her out during the winter, etc.
Are any of your characters based on real people?
Yes. All of the characters in our book are real people. We just changed their names. Our book is a true story. Nothing in our book is fictionalized
What do you hope that readers will take away from this story?
Money isn’t everything..Also, maybe some young girls will decide not to make the same mistake that Kerry Marchand did. If a young girl has sex with some guy before she is married, she might break up with that guy. She might meet another guy later on that she decides to marry. That guy may think more of that girl if she is a virgin when he meets or marries her.
How did you get the idea for your book cover?
Our book cover is a real place.We had planted crimson clover in a field to help feed the deer. We were in the process of having our manuscript published. We needed a cover for our book. Steven came up with the idea of putting a posted sign on a wooden post and then driving the pole into the middle of the crimson clover.We took some pictures of this and then sent these pictures to our publisher.Our book cover was created based on these pictures.
What’s next for you?
We have another manuscript that we have already written that is based on a letter that we wrote. When we lived in Watertown, Maine .We had an argument with our landlord. He accused us of causing good tenants to move out of his apartment house. We wrote a letter to Watertown Housing about this argument and in our opinion all of these tenants were terrible people. After these tenants had moved into that apartment house they were paid by Sally and Kerry Marchand to harass us to make our lives so miserable that we would marry them on their terms to get away from that apartment house.We never sent that letter to Watertown Housing. We figured that the Marchands would make copies of that letter to sell and not give us any of the money.We are waiting to get our first book selling well before we have this manuscript published.
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