BOOKS BY MY FRIENDS
Please welcome NANCY TAYLOR ROBSON
Welcome, Nancy, to BOOKS BY MY FRIENDS! A pleasure to have you on board to tell us about your book Course of the Waterman. Let’s dive in!
JH: What’s the blurb for your book Course of the Waterman?
NTR: Here is a review of the book.
Lest you lose interest in this review before I get to the point, I'll make it now: get a copy of this book and read it. It won't take you long. You can finish the book in one evening and then, I'll bet you anything, it will stand out in your memory as one of the most impressive reading experiences you've ever had, sticking with you as only the rarest of good books or stories can do.—Debra Hamel -- author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece (Yale University Press, 2003)
JH: What inspired you to write Course of the Waterman?
NTR: I worked on coastal tugboats alongside a lot of men who had grown up with watermen in their families, but it was the young man who mowed our lawn who triggered the book. One day after he'd mowed, he came to my office door to visit. Knowing he'd grown up the son, grandson and great-grandson of watermen, I asked why he was mowing lawns and painting houses for a living. "I always assumed I'd be a waterman, but I was working with my dad and one day when I was in high school and coming up the river he said to me: "I don't want you to become a waterman because you can't earn a living out here anymore." I started writing the book that day.
JH: What one thing do you love most about writing?
NTR: I love honing the work, distilling the original draft, questioning everything I've written to see if I believe it, will own it, feel it, and getting the piece, whatever it is, whether it's an essay, or a feature story for a magazine or a book, into the kind of shape I think it should have and one that will speak to readers.
JH: What’s next for you in the way of writing/publishing?
NTR: I'm working on a collection of garden essays that I've written over the course of many years for a number of regional, national, and international magazines and newspapers. The book is intended to be both a way to illustrate the growth and progress of an individual gardener who also views gardening as a metaphor for life and, I hope, as inspiration for the next generations who steward the earth and take deep and abiding pleasure in its gifts.
JH: How can readers contact you?
NTR:
https://www.headtowindpublishing.com
BIO:
Nancy Taylor Robson is one of the first women in the country to earn a US Coast Guard license to run coastal tugboats. She came to the water naturally. She grew up sailing and building boats with her father on the Chesapeake Bay. She worked as a housepainter, desk clerk and yacht maintenance person while in college. After earning a degree in history from University of Maryland, she married and went to work alongside her husband as cook/deckhand on an 85-foot tugboat built during WWII. She earned her license while running tugs and barges the length of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, including one two-month stretch on a supply boat in the Gulf of Mexico's Campeche oil fields. Her first book, Woman in The Wheelhouse (Tidewater Publishers) is a memoir of the six years she worked at sea until the birth of her first child. Her second book, Course of the Waterman (River City Publishing), the novel of a young Eastern Shore waterman, won the Fred Bonnie award in 2003 and a bronze award from ForeWord for Novel of The Year in 2004. Her third book, second novel, A Love Like No Other: Abigail and John Adams, A Modern Love Story, (Head to Wind Publishing) takes readers into the lives of the new nation's strong-willed second First Lady and her stubborn, irascible, often-absent and adored husband. Her fourth book, OK Now What? A Caregiver’s Guide to What Matters (Head to Wind Publishing) was written in collaboration with Sue Collins, RN, and longtime hospice nurse. In addition to the books, Robson has been a freelance writer for many years. She has written personal essays, features, maritime reporting and analysis, travel, garden and more for such places as The Washington Post, Yachting, House Beautiful, The Baltimore Sun, the Christian Science Monitor, Southern Living, Sailing, Woodenboat and more. For three years, she was the senior editor of The Chestertown Spy, for which she also wrote weekly garden and food columns. She is also a University of Maryland Master Gardener, who grows and cans the family's fruits and vegetables and blogs occasionally for the university’s Grow It Eat It blog. She writes, sails, races sailboats (occasionally), walks the German Shepherd, and cooks for family and friends.
JH: Thanks for visiting BBMF today, Nancy. What an interesting background you have and love how you’ve woven personal experience into your work. Please come back soon.
All good things,
Joy
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