Steve Cuden: On today’s StoryBeat…

Martha Bolton: Never give up because from day to day, you could have good news, you could have bad news, you could have good news, you could have bad. And don’t let any one thing talk you out of going for it. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Listen and learn and never give up. Just like Martha said, never give up. 

Announcer: This is StoryBeat with Steve Cuden, a podcast for the creative mind. StoryBeat explores how masters of creativity develop and produce brilliant works that people everywhere love and admire. So join us as we discover how talented creators find success in the worlds of imagination and entertainment. Here now is your host, Steve Cuden.

Steve Cuden: Thanks for joining us on StoryBeat. We’re coming to you from the Steel City, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My guests today are two extraordinary writers. New York Times bestselling and multi award-winning author. Wanda E Brunstetter is considered one of the founders of the Amish fiction genre. Wanda’s written more than 100 books with over 12 million copies sold, and her work has been translated into four languages.

Wanda’s stories consistently earn spots on the nation’s most prestigious bestseller lists. Wanda’s ancestors were part of the Anabaptist faith, and her novels are based on personal research intended to accurately portray the Amish way of life. Her books are read and trusted by many Amish people who credit her for giving readers a deeper understanding of the Amish and their customs.

Martha Bolton is a prolific author of 89 Books, A Nominee for an Emmy Writer’s Guild Award. Dove Award and a co-author of three New York Times bestselling books. She was also Bob Hope’s first full-time female staff writer and wrote for his primetime TV specials as well as during 15 years of his personal appearances and special events, penning lines for a virtual.

Who’s who in entertainment, sports, and politics. She also co-authored the Award-Winning Dear Bob, Bob Hope’s wartime correspondence with the GIS of World War II. Martha’s stage work includes writing the script for the musical, the confession, based on Beverly Lewis’s best-selling confession trilogy. She also co-wrote Half Stitched with Director Composer Wally Nason, which is based on Wanda’s bestselling book.

The half Stitched Amish quilting Club. Martha also wrote the shows Josiah for President and The Home Game for Blue Gate Musicals, both of which have accompanying novels written by Martha. Wanda and Martha collaborated on their recently released book, the Rise and Fall of Miss Fannie’s Biscuits, A Cozy Amish Mystery, which I’ve had the pleasure to read and can tell you it’s an absolute gem of a mystery novel. If you like clever stories set in a world that I think most folks don’t know in detail, then I highly recommend Miss Fannie’s Biscuits to you. Of note, the Rise and Fall of Miss Fannie’s Biscuits has also been adapted into a stage musical.

So for all those reasons and many more, it’s a great honor for me to welcome the outstanding authors, Wanda E Brunstetter, and Martha Bolton to StoryBeat today. Wanda and Martha, thank you so much for joining me. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: My pleasure. 

Steve Cuden: So let me start at the very beginning, which is to go to the past. What were your earliest inspirations and influences?

How did you start to become a writer in the first place? We’ll start with Wanda. Where did all this writing come from? Where did it begin? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Uh, it began when I was in the second grade and I wrote a poem about a moth and my, I wasn’t supposed to, I was supposed to draw a picture of a moth. And I, I did my best.

But then I added the poem hoping it might get me a better grade. And my teacher called me to the her desk after school and said, you know, I think you could be an author someday. This is an awesome poem. And I didn’t get much encouragement at home, so her words just stuck in my brain. Mm-hmm. And I never let go.

And, 

Steve Cuden: and you’ve just, from that point forward, you’ve just been writing and writing and writing. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Well, I started writing poems, of course, on my own and short stories, not for publication. I was just a kid. But when I became a teenager, I did some plays for some of our church programs, and the people loved them and they kept saying, you need to get these published.

I didn’t know how. And so I kind of set all that behind me. I got a job as a clerk typist, and, um. You know, I still played around a little bit with writing, but I didn’t do anything serious till I had two children and they were in school. And then I took, uh, my first writing course, and then from that point on, I started selling short stories, articles, poems, puppet plays.

Then one day I, I said, you know, this isn’t really. The road I wanna go down, I really wanna write novels. So I took another writing course, and then I submitted my very first story to Barbara Publishing. It got accepted. And the rest is pretty much history. I’ve been with them for almost 30 years now. 

Steve Cuden: Well, it’s amazing and you are prolific.

You know, both of, you’re prolific almost beyond imagination. A hundred plus books for you, uh, Wanda, and 89 Books for Martha. Those, that’s a huge number. Martha, how did you get started as a writer? How early was it in your life when you started looking at words and thinking, this is for me, this is something I want to do 

Martha Bolton: at nine years old is when I.

Started a little book and I wrote it in one of those composition books and it was called No Fun Being Young. And it was about being the youngest of five kids and trying to get attention, that kind of thing, you know, and in in the family, within the family and, and my thing was always to. Put a funny spin on it and I would, I would write little funny stories.

I, I also collected jokes. I had a little box, like a three by five cards, and I, any funny joke that I heard that I liked, I, I wrote it down on a card and kept it in this little box. I, I collected comic books. And, uh, was a big fan. It was kind of funny, but I even collected, uh, Bob Hope had a comic book and a lot of people don’t know that, but I collected them and, uh, had his comic books and all the other ones.

And I just, I loved writing. I loved, I loved words and I loved to play around with words and would write little stories. I wrote poetry and hung the poems on my wall next to my bed, and I had about 30, 35 of them up there. And 

Steve Cuden: Wow. 

Martha Bolton: Uh, my cousin would come over and spend the night and she’d always look for the new poems.

So it, it started at nine. 

Steve Cuden: I imagine that one of the reasons why you did write a lot of comedy is because you needed to stand out being the youngest of five. Is that right? 

Martha Bolton: Yes. Yes. Yeah. And, and I, I have a quirky sense of humor. I, I always, any situation things are coming into my head that, that are, well, if this happened, that would really be funny.

Or if this was said, that would really be funny. And all my life I’ve been that way and just had the funny thoughts. Either I would whisper ’em to the person sitting next to me, or I’d write, jot ’em down on a piece of paper. And I don’t throw anything away. So any thought that comes into my head, I, I write it down and keep it someplace and then find it later.

But it’s just in my makeup. Um, like Wanda, I mean, it’s just, it’s in there. That’s who I never thought it would be a career though. It was always a hobby. And never even thought about being an author officially. I just wanted, I loved to write. 

Steve Cuden: W when did you think to yourself, I can do something to make a living as a writer?

What was that moment? 

Martha Bolton: Well, the mo there were two moments. I, I used to be a church secretary and in that regard I would do a lot of plays. So when I started doing the plays and writing, you know, different comedies or, uh, we would roast the pastor, I would write like a Friars Club roast and we’d roast the pastor.

And I started seeing how the audience was responding and thinking, you know, maybe I could do something so. I got the courage to start sending my material out to comedians, and then that was when the light went off. I just dropped it in the mail, but when I got the first letter back with, with a check and a contract.

That did it. I thought, man, I guess you can make a living at this so 

Steve Cuden: you can make money with it. 

Martha Bolton: Yeah. 

Steve Cuden: You know, it’s a lot. It’s a lot harder to make it by roasting pastors. Wanda, what was the first time when you knew that you could actually turn this into something where you could make money and have a living at it?

Wanda E. Brunstetter: I think it was when I sold my very first story. Mm-hmm. It was to a Mennonite publication and I think I earned like $15 for it. But I thought, wow, somebody thinks what I wrote is worth publishing and even wanna pay me for it. So that was the first big spark that made me realize I must have some kind of ability, you know?

And when I got accepted to write for Barber Publishing. Somebody asked me, how do you, how do you feel? I said, I feel like I’m on a toboggan and I don’t have any way to steer myself and I’m just going down the hill. And, but it was an exciting feeling. I really felt like exhilarated. 

Steve Cuden: Did you feel like you weren’t able to control the writing?

Is that what you mean? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Well, kind of, because it just happened so fast. It was like overnight success when my first novel. The biggest full length novel. I had written some shorter novels, but this was full length, a hundred thousand words. It was about the kidnapping of an Amish child. It was called the Storekeeper’s Daughter.

And when it came out the first month, it hit the bestseller list, the New York Times list, and I was like. Blown out of the water. I just like, wow, I can’t believe this. 

Steve Cuden: Well, that would blow anybody out of the water. If your first book gets on the New York Times bestseller list, correct me if I’m wrong, the Anabaptist Faith is a combination of the Amish and the Mennonites.

Is that correct? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: And several others. Uh, there was break offs when the Anabaptist faith began. There was the Mennonites and the Amish, the Church of the Brethren, the Dunkers, and a couple others. And my relatives were part of the dunkers, but I didn’t know this until much later. I was already writing Amish fiction, but my husband grew up in a Mennonite church and that’s what really got me.

Sucked into being able to get to know them. Um, one of his Amish friends, or Mennonite friends, excuse me, knew an Amish couple who he, he actually worked for them and he took us to their Amish farm in Lancaster. And when I got to know the Amish, I realized people need to understand them because. Some people think they’re an oddity and they don’t really understand them.

They’re not really that different from us. Their lifestyle is yes, but as people, they’re really not. And so we have, we have so many friends now, Amish friends, when we go into Amish country, we can hardly get around to see them all. 

Steve Cuden: Correct me if I’m wrong, it’s mainly because they don’t really deal very well with technology or communications the way that we do today with phones and computers and so on.

They, they stay away from that, correct? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Well, for the most part, and there was a time when they all stayed away, but, but there’s more, um, what I would call progressive Amish now, and if they have. A business, they will often have a computer in the business, not in the home. That’s a no-no. But, uh, they also will have cell phones sometimes.

In the more progressive groups. 

Steve Cuden: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, uh, let’s talk for a while about the rise and fall of Miss Fannie’s biscuits, which I have to tell you, when I received that book, I laughed. The title alone made me laugh. That’s one of the funniest, best titles I’ve ever heard of. Any book ever. Did you know when you came up with that title that it was gonna put a smile on people’s faces?

Wanda E. Brunstetter: That’s a question for Martha, ’cause she came up with the talk. 

Steve Cuden: Martha, did you know it was gonna make people smile or maybe laugh a little? 

Martha Bolton: That is one thing that people have said is, is one of my specialties is coming up with funny titles. So I’ve done it for other writers and, and tried to do it for myself.

So you play around with titles until that one clicks and you just go, oh my goodness. That’s it, you know? And it just, it just works. 

Steve Cuden: It’s a completely clean title, but it has a little bit of a body in, you know, fe feeling to it, even though it’s not body at all. And that’s what makes you laugh, because it just sounds like this is hilarious and this is gonna be a f.

Fun, funny book, which is what it is. Uh, I don’t think of it as a comedy book, but it’s got a lot of humor in it. I laughed out loud a number of times. So, Wanda, tell us, pitch us the story of what the rise and fall of Miss Fannie’s biscuits is, so the listeners know what they’re, uh, looking for when they’re looking for the book.

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Well, I mean, they’re calling it a cozy mystery. 

Steve Cuden: Well, explain that. Explain that. By the way, what is a cozy mystery? I had never heard that term before this, so explain that to, to the listeners. Please. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: You know, I’m not really a hundred percent sure myself because I’ve written several mysteries and they weren’t cozy.

They were more gut wrenching. I’m kind of known for writing things that are really emotionally gripping, and so, uh, I always add some humor here and there, but not, not like Martha does, and Martha can just write a whole, everything in its humorous. It’s just so funny, but, so, I don’t know. Martha can use, explain exactly what cozy mystery.

Martha Bolton: Well, it, I mean, I think there are, there are rules for cozy that we got close to, so some people have called it a cozy and, and some people have said it’s not quite a cozy, but there’s a lot more humor in it than I think a typical cozy has. But people are, are loving it. And it’s shorter, I believe, as, uh, than a, a regular novel, but fast moving and, and I’m, they just call it a cozy because I think, number one, I think it’s, it’s just a fun time.

There’s not. There’s nothing offensive there. There’s rules to a cozy that we would’ve adhered to anyway, but it, 

Steve Cuden: it’s not, it’s not scary or gory or bloody or any of those things that you can sometimes get. 

Martha Bolton: It’s a mystery, but a more gentle one. 

Steve Cuden: It’s gentle. That’s what I was gonna say is that it has a gentle tone to it.

Yeah. What led you to write a book? About a bake off a bakery contest. I know that Wanda has, has published books about food, uh, and how to make food. Is that what led you to write this? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Martha came up with the, the theme and the idea. I went along with it because I have recipes. All over the place from the Amish and, and my family members and everything.

Matter of fact, the, the recipe we included at the end, the biscuit recipe was, um, my, my aunt, it was her recipe and she had learned to bake wonderful biscuits when she lived in, um, down south. And so I’d asked Martha, is that okay? Can we use that? Because it’s just one of my all time favorites. 

Steve Cuden: I know that I, as I was reading the book, it kept making me hungry.

Wanda E. Brunstetter: People say that a lot. We did our job, all my books, 

Steve Cuden: and I know as soon as you had Foster in the Foster Bates, the detective in any scene, you, you immediately knew food was coming along shortly thereafter. ’cause he likes to eat, uh, and he likes Miss Fannie’s biscuits, which is. Kind of funny to say. Um, so the book is extremely well paced and the tone of it is very well established and clear throughout.

Did you have a conversation between the two of you and your partnership before you started to write as to how you were going to make this book feel a certain way in, I guess, this cozy way? Did you have that conversation in depth as to how to make that work? 

Martha Bolton: Well, when, when we first started, you know, we started with the, the, the story idea and, and the characters and, and we added more of course, and we just, it was mainly the discussion was how, how are we gonna do it, the process.

And we’re both prolific as far as, you know, meeting a deadline. We know how to do that. We, it was just we wanted to know the process of how are we gonna write together? ’cause she lives in one part of the country and I live in the other, but we just started writing. We decided on who would take which chapters that covered which items we knew where the chapter, what we wanted to cover in each chapter.

And then, you know, she would pick some and then I would pick some and we’d go back and forth and she’d, you know, touch up mine and I’d touch up whatever we add to it and, and just kept building and building and building. And then we would go back. When they would send us, uh, certain edited versions and we’d go back and the same thing.

We’d both pick which ones do you wanna work on and which ones? And, and then we had input on whatever either one of us did. We continued to have feedback on, on it all. So it worked out. I, I think it worked out really good. We had fun. 

Steve Cuden: Yeah. Well, clearly, clearly it worked out. ’cause I can’t tell that it’s two people writing.

It’s one voice. And that’s a trick all by itself, isn’t it? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Yeah, we, we communicated well, sometimes by phone, sometimes by text, a lot by email. But sometimes if we really wanted to clarify something, we would talk to each other on the phone. 

Steve Cuden: So Wanda, were you sending material back and forth frequently? Or how often were you corresponding with one another?

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Pretty frequent. ’cause as soon as we would finish a chapter, like let’s say that Martha did her part of the chapter, she’d send it to me right away. And then I would add to it and I’d send it back right away. So it, it was going, it was flowing pretty fast, I think. How 

Steve Cuden: long did it take you overall to, to write the book, including coming up with the concept and the plot and so on?

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Well, we had, I think we were given six months to finish it. Wow. But I think we, I think we were done with it sooner than our six months, but then we’d had to polish so. It probably came in right around six by the time we did all the polishing. But the first draft was done way before that. 

Steve Cuden: Martha. Was there ever a time where you were concerned that you weren’t on the same page, or was it always working all the way through?

Martha Bolton: Oh, no, we, I, I think it worked, uh, beautifully. It. You know, she would have ideas that would get me out of a spot that I was in, and I’d have ideas that if, you know, if there was a corner that she had written it into and we’d say, oh, okay, well this’ll work and this’ll work. And sometimes, you know, we had to, we filled in a blank that we had for, didn’t realize that it needed it.

And then we’d go, oh, well, you know, we could do this and let’s add this and let’s add this scene. And that’ll explain that. And this, uh, motive. So it was a lot of discussion, but we were on a tight deadline. Uh, so we no grasp were under our feet. We had to, we had to keep plugging along and, and getting it done.

But it it, the process itself as the story built. I think we started getting more and more confident that we were building something that was gonna be fun and going to be meaningful, and, and, and had all the right elements. So it, the more we got toward the end, it seemed to move faster because there was that excitement of where we were going and we knew that all the pieces were gonna fall together.

Steve Cuden: So, so now Wanda, you’ve, you’ve written so much about the Amish. Mm-hmm. Uh, and obviously this takes place in the Amish community as well. I’m just wondering, the book is not in the least bit what I would call educational. In other words, it doesn’t feel like it’s an academic book, but yet I learned a whole lot about the Amish, is that your purpose is to educate people about the Amish in their life.

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Well, I mean, yes and no. I mean, I want to do that in the process of writing a good, uh, story. Something that, that people will take away something more than just learning about the Amish. I do think a lot of people who have come to my book signings or emailed me or anything, they say, oh wow. I never knew so much about the Amish till I read the books.

Sure. But they’ve also come to me and said. Oh my goodness. Your storyline really helped me through a difficult time in my life, and that is so meaningful to me as an author. Mm-hmm. I really, I really feel blessed when they tell me that. 

Steve Cuden: Well, I, I think that that’s an incredible thing when you can get people to, to when you can solve their problems in their lives.

And I do think that entertainment at large can do that. Doesn’t always, but it certainly can do that. And I certainly think of novels and. Certainly mystery novels in particular as being very entertaining. And this book is entertaining. It’s entertaining on two levels, both as a mystery and as a lighthearted entertainment.

So I, I congratulate you both on getting there. I, I am curious between the two of you, how did you figure out how to make this complex mystery? Out something as simple and gentle as a baking competition. 

Martha Bolton: Well, that was, that was the fun of it all is to, is to take this, uh, very innocent, fun day. That is normally, you know, nothing happens in it.

And then everything goes wrong. And we had already established the detective and, and they’d already worked together before. So we had a, a good relationship between the two of them that we could just play with. And I love the fact that she’s so into the. Detective and, and trying to be a, you know, she thinks she’s an in investigator and she keeps dragging him, uh, foster back into cases when he wants to just retire and sit locked in his office and leave me alone.

So the fun of them together and then to watch their. Friendship grow, and there’s a little bit of, you know, uh, you wonder if they’re becoming a little more than friends, but the, you know, there’s a line, there’s boundaries that we had to play with and stay within and, and have fun with. But, um, that was the fun of it.

So when you started getting into those scenes and you go, oh, this would be funny if she does this or this would be funny if he does that. And it just, it just keeps building. You have the framework. But then, then we kept adding. Chapters within that. You know, we had taken one pass pretty close to the end, but then we would be dropping in different chapters in, in the middle that it needed and that it helped the story keep flowing.

Steve Cuden: You have to do that sometimes in order to have understanding of what’s happening. If you go have to go back and realize, wait a minute, there’s a piece missing, you’ve gotta fill that in. I’m curious, Wanda, uh. Martha just said that, uh, you had these two characters, Fannie Miller and Foster Bates, prior to writing this novel, where did they come from for you?

When did you start working with those characters? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: The Storekeeper’s daughter that I told you about. Yes. With the kidnapping In the second book, I introduced Fannie Miller for the very first time. She, she owned her own quilt shop, so, uh, the Blue Gate musicals did a musical based on my three books. But they wanted to add a detective in there because they wanted the audience to have that feeling of, we need to try to help solve this mystery because somebody had taken the child well in the book, the reader knows who took the child, but the characters in the book do not.

So in order to have a play, the audience needs to be the ones who don’t know. And, and the, of course the characters as well, but we wanted the audience to play the little guessing game, who they think was responsible. And so anyway, they brought in Foster Bates. And he was not in the book, but he was in the play.

And his personality is amazing. I mean, he’s got such a dry sense of humor and he’s just funny and he is not even trying to be, but the connection that he had with Fanny in that play was amazing. I mean, afterwards, I was singing their songs that they sang together as a. Couple, if you will. Um, so that connection is still there in this fan biscuit story.

And if we ever do anymore, it will still be there. I think they’re just, they’re just, um, like the odd couple, you know, 

Steve Cuden: they’re from two totally different worlds. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Yeah, exactly. 

Steve Cuden: And, and Foster is, you know, he clearly knows what he’s doing, but he may be the laziest detective who’s ever lived. That’s true. But he continues to help Fannie figure things out.

And she’s a very astute detective. There’s no reason why she should be. I mean, you know, she doesn’t come from that world at all. Right? But yet she has intuitions that are very, very clear. Uh, I’m just wondering what, for you, Martha makes these two characters fascinating for you, that made them fun to write?

Martha Bolton: What made it the most fun was his irritation with her where, where she is so bubbly and so. Ready to go and let’s do it, and dragging him into the problem or whatever it was, and, and that was always fun to play with because she never gave up. On dragging him in, and he only wanted to be left alone, but he liked her.

So they had this, he respected her intuition and, and had a lot of fun with the, uh, lie detector scene where he, you know, thinks she’s a, you know. It was really fun for when she becomes a suspect in his eyes, although he doesn’t really believe that she did it, but he has to rule her out. So, uh, but to play with those kind of scenes where they get on each other’s nerves, but they work well together, they’re a great pair.

They solve the case. 

Steve Cuden: Well, he’s got a soft spot for her, for her baked goods. Yes. So he, he wants what he’s making. So it’s an instant way, as you know, straight to his stomach is to his hearts, through his stomach, I guess. Um, yeah. Do either of you know people like these two characters or are they just totally whole cloth made up and you don’t know anyone like them at all?

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Well, when I created Fannie in the quilter’s daughter, well, she wasn’t into detective work at all, but she was very, uh, sweet and very helpful and um, very likable. And I think we were able to keep that part of her still alive, even though she’s now into of detective wannabe. I mean, she’s very approachable and she, she cares about people and people are drawn to her.

Steve Cuden: How did you develop her? Did you sit down and and draft out pages of biography, or how do you develop characters? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: I always do character sketches. I never have written a book without detailed character sketches, so I need to know them inside and out before I start writing personality quirks and disorders and anything like that should always be included.

Steve Cuden: Mm-hmm. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: And then I usually also do, uh, what I call an a chapter by chapter outline, so I know. Just even if it’s a vague idea of what scenes are gonna go where and when, and that’s really helpful. When you’re writing and you, especially if you suddenly get writer’s block, you can look at your outline and say, oh wait, I didn’t include this yet.

Steve Cuden: Well, don’t you think even more important in a mystery where you need to know where you’re going. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Yeah, for sure. 

Steve Cuden: You know, if you’re, if you’re writing something that’s, uh, let’s just call it good old fashioned literature, maybe you can start at the beginning and go and find the road as you’re writing. But I think in a mystery, if you don’t know where you’re going, you’re gonna be down a lot of dead end alley after a short time.

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Yeah. You, you need to know how, how does this all play out? 

Steve Cuden: So I, I must talk to you for a moment about the three sisters. They just cracked me up. You have, you know these wonderful names, faith, hope, and Charity is the three Bealer Sisters. Those are both amazing and amusing names. But they purposely, I guess you tell me if I’m wrong, they aren’t in life what their names imply.

Is that correct? 

Martha Bolton: Yes. Which is the fun of it because when they open their mouth, they’re nothing like their name. 

Steve Cuden: No, no. They seem quite greedy and self-centered in their own gentle way, but they’re not faith, hope, and charity. 

Martha Bolton: Yeah. Yeah. We had fun with that. And on, on the foster question, uh, my husband was A-L-A-P-D sergeant for over 25 years I believe.

So I, wow, okay. I got a lot of that from it, from that life. So I, I had a, had a lot of fun with that. So 

Steve Cuden: how much research do you do for each of your books? What is your research protocol like? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: It depends of course, on the theme of the book. Um, I don’t do a lot as far as the Amish way of life, because we know the Amish so well.

Mm-hmm. Spent a lot of time with them. Mm-hmm. But occasionally I’ll have a question, and if I do, I’ll just call one of them up. That’s very, very key to, to my research, but sometimes, depending on what the book is about, the theme of the book, I may have to research some things like maybe job description for someone, or maybe I’m setting it somewhere I haven’t been yet.

I try to set everything. In a place I’ve been or I’m going to. 

Steve Cuden: Mm-hmm. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: So that I know it well. 

Steve Cuden: Well, okay, so for instance, this book is set in Tuscarawas County in Ohio. Is that correct? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Mm-hmm. Yep. 

Steve Cuden: Have you spent a lot of time there? Do you know it well? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: I know Ohio really well. Because, well, for one thing, my publisher’s in Yorkville, Ohio, uh, Holmes County, I’ve been to numerous times, done lots of book signings in Quero as well.

So I’ve signed at the library there in a Christian bookstore in Sugar Creek, and we have Amish friends in the area. So I’ve been there many, many times over the years. 

Steve Cuden: So you didn’t need to then go back in order to research for this book? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: No, I did not. Mm-hmm. 

Steve Cuden: I’ve never been there, but I had a real sense of it from reading the book, which is 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: mm-hmm.

Steve Cuden: What’s always good for me when I get a feeling that I now know a place a little bit, I mean, obviously you don’t know it till you’re there, but you get a sense of it in a pretty significant way from the book. Okay. So let’s talk about how you plotted the book between the two of you. How did you figure out the plotting of the book?

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Well, Martha already kind of had a, a generalized plot when she contacted me and asked if I would co-author it with her. 

Steve Cuden: Mm-hmm. And 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: we knew ahead that it was going to be a musical play. They would develop that and, um, Martha would have her hand in that because she’s the playwright. And I think that she and I did a great job of creating something that could be a play.

And she did a tremendous job as a playwright. Uh, I saw the play when it opened in Pennsylvania in April, and I was amazed. I mean, it just flowed so well, and it was so written so well. And everything. I mean, pretty much everything we had in the book was there, but we couldn’t do it all. Obviously a two and a half hour play is not the same as an 80,000 word book.

Steve Cuden: That’s the secret. And the trick to adaptation is taking what you need to tell the story and mm-hmm. Move the characters forward in the plotting of the story. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Mm-hmm. 

Steve Cuden: Without using every single little bit. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Yep. Exactly. 

Steve Cuden: It’s, that’s a very tricky thing. I’ve adapted a few things in my life and it’s, you know, it’s a trick.

Um, so where did you begin with the beginning of it? Did you start with the plot or did you already know what characters you were going to use? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Well, we knew some. I mean, we knew for sure that we would have Fanny and Foster. Some of the other characters came in after the fact. 

Steve Cuden: You both sat down and created a very detailed outline for this book.

I assume, since you already alluded to the fact that you like outlining. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Yeah, I think Martha’s more a seat of your pants kind of writer as they call them. ’cause she can just, you know. Carry on. I, I am more detailed. And so I needed that. And I told her that upfront. I said, I need character sketches, I need all of this.

It’s just me. Uh, and I think she’s more, it just flows, whatever. And, and, but together we were able to combine. Her spontaneity with my detailedness. And you know, I’ll have to admit when I’m writing, I’m not, I don’t stick Just detail, detail, detail. Uh, just the other day, I’m currently writing prequel to the half stitched Amish quilting Club.

So we get to see what Emma was like back when she was a young woman. And I’m like. All of a sudden the characters are doing something. I had no idea. It was not on my outline. It just happened, and I’m thinking, okay, go for it. Characters do your thing. 

Steve Cuden: Do you get into a zone where the characters are just talking to you, that you’re, you’re, they’re working through you.

Wanda E. Brunstetter: I mean, it’s almost like I become whatever character’s point of view I’m writing about, I’m like there in the room and I’m almost, I’m in their head. It’s hard to explain because people think authors are weird sometimes. When you say, I’ve been an author for a 

Steve Cuden: long time and I know exactly what you’re talking about.

I, when I’m writing a screenplay, I’m seeing the movie playing out and I feel like I’m a reporter or a journalist. Yeah, 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: yeah, yeah. Writing 

Steve Cuden: down what I’m seeing 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: exactly. And then when that happens though, that’s when things really happen. You know what I mean? It flows. Yes. Uh, yes. You can’t, you can’t hold a rain on your characters.

You can’t just say, okay, well wait a minute. This is in the outline. I can’t go this way. If it feels right, you do it. 

Steve Cuden: Do you get into a, what I call the zone where time stops for you and Oh yeah. You’re just working. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Oh yeah, I’ve worked late at night because of it. Or all of a sudden I’ll look at the clock and say, it’s seven o’clock.

I haven’t fixed anything for supper yet. My poor husband, 

Steve Cuden: I get to fix my own. So that’s a very, very big difference. Um, would you say your development of the story in Miss Fannie’s biscuits. Other than the fact that you were collaborating was very similar to the way you normally work, or was it a bit of a challenge in any way because you were doing it differently or was it really close to the way you do things?

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Hmm. A little of both, I guess. There were parts of it that felt like what I normally do, in other parts not as much. And that’s kind of how it is when you co-author. It depends though on who you’re co-authoring with. And you know, Martha already had a good sense of. How the story was gonna play out so we didn’t have to sit down and like split hairs or a fine tooth comb on things.

We kind of knew it was just a matter of making it all happen. And sometimes when I’ve co-authored, it’s only been one of us who really had the story idea and the other one just adds to. Does that make sense? 

Steve Cuden: Yes, it certainly does. And, and then you just as you’re writing, I assume, then you start to go back and forth 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Yeah.

And 

Steve Cuden: revise one another’s work. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Exactly. 

Steve Cuden: How do you get to a finished product? What, who is the final say on the end product? Is it an editor or is it between the two of you? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: I think it’s between the two of us. We, we, we have to agree even if we disagree, we have to agree always. Mm-hmm. You know, so when we would get it to the point where we knew and we felt in our, in our psyche that this is it.

This is the ending and this is it. Let’s fine tune it and send it. And then of course it goes to a copy editor and they’ll do whatever they feel. Sometimes they cut. I haven’t seen them add as much as they might cut. If there’s words that they think aren’t necessary, maybe it’s too long, whatever. Uh, and from there, then it goes to proofers who proof for errors that may have slipped in.

Steve Cuden: So, but the copy editor, is that someone that you know and work with? Or is it someone that the publisher assigns to the work? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: It’s somebody that publisher assigns, but that being said, I’ve actually had the same copy editor for a good number of years. Mm-hmm. So she’s very familiar with my style and with what I write about, and so I haven’t really experienced any problems.

You know, once in a while she’ll work. She’ll like contact me and ask me a question. Um, but she doesn’t usually chop up my work. So that, that’s a good feeling. I always feel when I get the book to proof, we get to proof it one last time when they send the galley right before they publish it. And I’ve never felt like, wow, that’s not even my story anymore.

I’ve never felt that way. It’s always come through clear and and precise, and what I had was. That when I include it is still there. 

Steve Cuden: Do you know of authors who’ve had that experience where it comes back and they don’t recognize their own work? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: I’ve heard of it, yes. I have. 

Steve Cuden: That would be quite disturbing, I would think.

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Yeah. It would be. 

Steve Cuden: See now I happen to be used to it in the world of screenwriting, especially in TV writing, which I’ve done a lot of. Mm-hmm. Many people put their hands in the pie. Yeah. So you get used to it not being your exact work. You get used to it being a big amalgam of other authors having their mm-hmm.

Their mm-hmm. Say in it somehow. Yeah. And ultimately there might be a big chief boss that has the ultimate final say. Yep. So I’m used to that. But for a novel writer, that’s got to be a little bit disconcerting. Fortunately for you, that’s never happened. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Mm-hmm. 

Steve Cuden: So how many books a year are you churning out now?

You must be writing at least two a year. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Yeah, I’m under contract to write two a year. 

Steve Cuden: That’s amazing. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: But that being said, sometimes I squeeze in a third one, especially if I’m co-authoring with someone, or if I am in a collection of, um, say three or four novellas like, um. A year and a half ago I did that, um, with three of my family members.

So we wrote a book called The Sisters by the Sea. It set in Sarasota, Florida. And we all had a story, but they kind of had to blend ’cause it was about four sisters. So we, we worked with each other, but not, not in the same manner that you do when you’re co-authoring. Does that make sense? 

Steve Cuden: It does. Uh, do you find that you are constantly fighting time or how do you discipline yourself?

What do you do? Do you, do you set time out every single day? Do you have a certain time that you write? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: I don’t have a certain time. I works around my schedule, uh, appointments or whatever. I broke my arm last year and I’m still in physical therapy. So I’m 

Steve Cuden: sorry to hear that the 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: arm has healed, but my range of motion isn’t as back as far as I would like it to be.

So, you know, I have to work around my, uh, going to my appointments. If my husband has appointments I usually go with, and so I write when I’m available to be at my computer. 

Steve Cuden: How many hours a day when you’re writing do you typically write? Is it 4, 5, 6, 8, how? At least? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: At least. Sometimes it’s eight. It just depends.

If I’m on a tight deadline and I’ll write till midnight or even one o’clock in the morning if I have to. 

Steve Cuden: Wow. How, how important would you say deadlines are to making it all work? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: I think they are. I mean, I, I heard an author say once there’s a reason the word dead is in deadline. You feel like you’re pretty, pretty knocked out, but you know.

If we didn’t have a deadline, we’d be like more carefree and lax and we might not ever get the book done. 

Steve Cuden: Well that happens to people that don’t have deadlines. Is they? I know they never finish. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: I’ve heard people say, oh, I’ve been working on the same book for 10 years and I’m thinking 10 years. 

Steve Cuden: Well, there’s no way you could have possibly written a hundred plus books if you were taking 10 years to write a book.

Wanda E. Brunstetter: No, 

Steve Cuden: that’s not possible. No, I, 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: uh, it’s usually every six months, but sometimes I write ’em in three or four. Especially if I’m writing a third book. 

Steve Cuden: Do you read a lot as well? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: I don’t read as much as I used to because I’m writing so much, but 

Steve Cuden: mm-hmm. Yes. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: I’ve been an avid reader since I was a child. Always had my nose in a book, and when I would read, I would become the character in my head, and so that’s why it was easy for me to do that once I became an author, to become the character.

Steve Cuden: So then from a, a reader who becomes a writer’s perspective, what would you say are the common mistakes that novice writers, new writers make, and how can those mistakes be avoided? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Well, well, for one thing, I feel like everybody needs some training, whether it be taking a class like I did. I mean, it wasn’t just one class, it was a course over.

Six months to a year to complete. Mm-hmm. And you learn what you need to know to be an author and to put a, to construct a book in the correct way. And it covers all the topics, dialogue and point of view and all of that. And that’s really important. You can’t just sit down and just write. You need to know these things.

I’d say that’s the big thing is learning. And if you say you can’t, you can’t afford a writing class, you can’t afford to go to college or whatever. Well, there’s so many books published now definitely that you can get on on the craft and, and I have several that are like that. Break it down. This one here is on dialogue, another is on point of view in others, on characterization and.

Those things really do help. 

Steve Cuden: So in all of your experiences, what would you say are things that you do that you think authors should do in order to secure a sale? I know that you’re under contract, but that you didn’t start out under contract, did you? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Well, no. I mean, my very first novel wasn’t under contract.

I, I had written it, but I had to submit it. I think the big thing, and I would encourage any author or wannabe author to do their research is crucial. It really, really is, and I, I like personal research best because it’s like if I ask an Amish friend or even an Amish, I don’t know. I’m getting the whole truth and nothing but the truth directly from them.

I’m not just going online and seeing what somebody else thinks. You know, I had somebody come to a book signing of mine once and they bought my book for their research. And I told him, I said, you know, I don’t think that’s the best approach. I said, I think you should just get out there and really get to know the Army if you’re gonna write about ’em.

Steve Cuden: So. Let me ask Martha then. Um, you know, most professional writing, especially for TV or for when you were working with Bob Hope all those years ago, it comes with a very, with various built-in pressures. We’re just talking to Wanda for a little while about deadlines and in TV or writing for Bob Hope you would’ve definitely had serious deadlines.

How do you deal with that pressure when pressure’s on you to deliver? Do you have any particular. A method or technique to, to handle the pressure? 

Martha Bolton: Well, in the beginning it was a huge amount of pressure because when you got the call, you know, he would give you topics of what he wanted jokes on, and then you had to stare at a blank piece of paper until it.

You, you came up with them and a lot of times it was a very short period of time that you had to work with. So after a while though, your muscles, your comedy, writing muscles start building up and instead of panicking and thinking, oh my goodness, I’ve gotta have 20, 30, 40 jokes written in the next, you know, in, in four hours, and you’re panicked.

Then it got to be where, oh, well I’ve got, I’ve got another hour, and you could go do something else and, and be thinking about it. So you just get confidence that the jokes are gonna come and, and you’re gonna make the deadline. And, and so that helped a lot. I have a funny story with, um, about that he had a, an engagement at a.

Psychiatry convention. That was the assignment. So you can imagine how much fun that was gonna be. So we wrote jokes, got ’em turned in, and he gets to the venue. And he is, he’s getting ready to go on stage in about 15 minutes and he discovers that it’s not a psychiatry convention, it’s a chiropractor’s convention.

Oh. So we had, he called us up and we had just about that much time before he walked onto stage to write all new material for chiropractors rather than psychiatrists. Wow. So that, that was probably the tightest. Uh, as far as a panic, we, I mean, we’ve had it to where they’re, uh, you know, taping the shows and you’ve gotta put a line in and put a line in there, you know, and go to, you know, those kind of things.

But that one where the audience is ready. He’s ready to walk on stage and it’s an entirely different group than he thought it was going to be. 

Steve Cuden: But I’ll, I, correct me if I’m wrong, I bet he was cool as a cucumber when he went out stage on 

Martha Bolton: stage. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, he just, he had a memory that was, had to have been photographic memory.

I, it was amazing that he could call just before he’s walking onto stage and say something happened in the news. So he wanted, he wanted jokes on it. You’d give it to him over the phone and I don’t even know if he wrote ’em down because he would just list it and go, oh, that’s a good one. That’s a, and then he’d walk out on stage and do ’em all.

I don’t know how he did it. 

Steve Cuden: Correct me if I’m wrong. Half of the act was, I wanna tell you. 

Martha Bolton: Yeah, he buys you a little bit of time. If you say, I wanna tell you, you know, that’s a little trick. You get you a little time there. But his, his memory. Was was incredible. And he could remember a joke that he said, you know, well, remember that joke you wrote for the such and such convention back in 19, you know, 89.

And, and he would be right. You’d look it up and there it was. And he, he knew it and he knew the convention that he said it at, and it’s pretty incredible. 

Steve Cuden: Well, that’s a gift. That’s a gift. Oh yeah. If you’re born with that kind of a memory where you can retain all of that, that’s not usual. 

Martha Bolton: And, and he loved jokes.

So Andy loved jokes. Yes, of course. He didn’t wanna lose them. He’d keep ’em all in his head. He, he just, he loved them. Loved to get new jokes. 

Steve Cuden: That’s amazing. Well, I’ve been having a very interesting and, and fun conversation for almost an hour now with Wanda Brunstad and Martha Bolton and of, of course, we unfortunately lost, uh, Martha technically for a little while.

But, uh, we’re gonna wind the show down right now. Now I’ll ask each of you the same couple of questions, which are the questions I love to ask every guest on this show. So. We’ll start with Wanda. Wanda, in all of your experiences are you able to share with us a story that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat strange, or just plain funny?

Wanda E. Brunstetter: I’m gonna classify this as just plain funny. Great. I might not have thought show at the moment, but I sure do now. Um, so I have spoken in many Amish schoolhouses to the children and the teachers, and this was a case where I had been invited to go to an Amish schoolhouse. And usually when I talk, I’ll open it up for questions and answers when I’m done.

And normally the Amish kids sit very quietly and they don’t. Really participate much. Once in a while I’ll get a question, but not very often. But this time soon, as I said, I’m opening it up for questions. Anybody have one? A young boy, his hand went straight up and so I called on him and he said, I have two questions.

I said, okay, what are they? And he said, well, I wanna know. How old you are and how much money do you make? I was just floored. And of course the teacher was, oh, she was embarrassed. I could tell, but I couldn’t help it. I laughed. I couldn’t help it. So I had to come, come up with an answer really quick. And I said, well, I’m old enough to write books and I make enough money to, uh, make a living.

Steve Cuden: Oh, smart. That’s how I 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: responded that, and he was happy with that. 

Steve Cuden: Same question for you, Martha. You’ve shared with us at least a couple stories here, especially with Bob Hope, but are you able to share with us a story that you’ve had in your experience that’s either weird, quirky, offbeat, or just plain funny?

Martha Bolton: Well, one of my favorite stories, and it goes back to Bob, but one of the things that was expected of us was that we would answer the phone at all hours of the day or night. It would be at all hours of the day or night that he was walking on stage someplace and he needed a joke. So there was this one writer who, um, his wife answered the phone when Bob called, and it was well past midnight, and he, the husband was sound asleep in bed next to her.

She had, you know, gotten, uh, frustrated with all the, you know, midnight, two o’clock in the morning, phone calls from Bob. And so she thought, well, when Bob said is, you know, is your husband there? And she said, well, no. He told me he was gonna be with you tonight. So Bob goes. Oh, yeah, here he comes now.

So that’s, that’s one of my favorite stories that go, that goes around. But, but that was life. Well, it’s 

Steve Cuden: nice that you, that Bob Hope would cover for his writers. 

Martha Bolton: Well, and the funny part is the wife had the last laugh, you know, because. You know, he is laying there next to her. So, but it was fun, especially when you’re working around comedians like that.

And, and they were all had worked for legendary shows and, and uh, and then when we would tape a show, they would all be, Bob had all of his old friends would come on. It was pretty amazing that those are the kind of stories that happened and, and just fun things in the dressing room. You’d, you’d walk in and he’d need a line change and he’d be sitting there in the makeup chair and they’re on the, the, a little sofa next to him and they’re all going over the script.

And you know, it’d be Lucille Ball and George Burns and Milton Burl. And you’re like, my goodness, for a comedy writer to be sitting in that room, 

Steve Cuden: it was like, it was like being with the Mount Rushmore of comedy. Oh 

Martha Bolton: yeah, absolutely. It was crazy. And you had to keep pinching yourself here, you’re like, is this for real?

You know? 

Steve Cuden: And they were then gonna say your words. Yeah. 

Martha Bolton: A and you had to come and they wanted a line and you had to come up with it with all of these legends sitting there, you know, 

Steve Cuden: that’s that. That would be nerve wracking. It was. That was 

Martha Bolton: pressure. That was pressure. Yeah, 

Steve Cuden: that is pressure. Alright, I’m gonna ask Martha the last question and then I’ll go to Wanda for the same thing.

Martha, I in, in your experience in working with young writers or people that come up to you and say, how do I. Get into a career or how do I do this? How do I write, et cetera. What kind of advice do you typically give those who are starting out in the business, or maybe they’re in a little bit trying to get to the next level.

Martha Bolton: Well, there’s two pieces of advice that I would give is, is one, never give up. Because from day to day, you could have good news, you could have bad news, you could have good news, you get bad. Uh, you could have a, a manuscript come back to you and the next day you have a check in the mail. So don’t let any one thing talk you out of going for it.

You know, it’s, it’s gonna fluctuate like that. And then don’t throw anything away. If it’s a good idea, even though the people around you right now aren’t the people that are gonna take that to a book or a stage or, or whatever, it may someday be some, another group of people that will do that. You know? So just, just keep it and.

You never know when it’s gonna see the light of day. The timing might, might not be right for it right now. Work on something else in the meantime, and then just keep writing. I mean, right now there’s still ideas and you never know when they’re gonna come to fruition. So don’t give up on ’em. Don’t give up on yourself, and don’t give up on your ideas.

Steve Cuden: I think that’s very wise advice because you know, the only way that you get forward as a writer is to continue to write. Mm-hmm. And you can hang onto your material. Uh, you don’t have to throw it away ever. It’s just part of who you are. And it, it can come out later as something revised, refreshed, new, whatever it might be.

So, same question for you, Wanda. What kind of advice do you give to those who are just starting out in the business? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: I always try to be encouraging to whoever, um, even shows the slightest interest in writing because I wasn’t encouraged as. As I told you, as matter of fact, my dad told me to get my head outta the clouds and come down to Earth, and I’m kind of glad that my head stayed in the clouds.

I wouldn’t be where I am now if I had had listened to him, but I love to be able to mentor people. I’ve mentored several people, and matter of fact, my granddaughter is one of them, and she’s just written her first book. I, I kind of helped her in places. I did the editing on it and things like that, but it comes out in October and I’m just so proud of her because she was willing to listen.

And that’s a big thing, listen and learn and never give up. Just like Martha said, never give up. Just keep pressing. 

Steve Cuden: I’m glad to hear that you concur. What’s, uh, what’s that book called? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: It’s called The Amish Ballerina. Very unusual title and a very unusual story. 

Steve Cuden: Mm-hmm. And, and what’s her name? 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Rochelle.

Rochelle Bruer. 

Steve Cuden: That’s, uh, that’s wonderful that you’ve not only got it in the family, but that you’re able to help at the same time. I think that’s really terrific. 

Wanda E. Brunstetter: Mm-hmm. It was fun. It was a fun, it’s a fun book and it’s, um, we’re just excited. We’re getting ready to start promoting it soon. 

Steve Cuden: Well, good. I think that that’s a really great thing that you’re able to carry the, the lineage forward, so to speak, as a writer.

Mm-hmm. I think that’s terrific. 

Martha Bolton: Mm-hmm. 

Steve Cuden: So Wanda Brunstetter and Martha Bolton, this has been an absolutely terrific hour plus on StoryBeat. And I, I really can’t thank you both enough for your time, your energy, and your wisdom. I’m sorry we had the little tech issue, Martha, but, uh, that happens occasionally in this world.

Uh, but I thank you both kindly for being on the show and, and spending some time with me. 

Martha Bolton: You’re very welcome. It was my pleasure to be here. Well, thank you for having us. 

Steve Cuden: And so we’ve come to the end of today’s StoryBeat. If you like this episode, won’t you please take a moment to give us a comment, rating, or review on whatever app or platform you are listening to.

Your support helps us bring more great StoryBeat episodes to you. StoryBeat is available on all major podcast apps and platforms, including Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, iHeartRadio, tune in and many others. Until next time, I’m Steve Cuden and may all your stories be unforgettable.