PLATTSBURGH — Even since she could put a No. 2 pencil to paper, author Carol Hoenig has been a writer.
The Long Island resident grew up in Churubusco, and she returns to the North Country next week on a book tour for her latest release, “The Liberation of Jane Carter,” published by Sibylline Press.
Hoenig will be at the Plattsburgh Public Library, 19 Oak St., Wednesday, Sept. 23, at 5:30 p.m. and Wead Library, 64 Elm St., Malone on Thursday, Sept. 24, 6 p.m.
For both events, the author will donate a portion of her book sales to help pay the medical bills for Brenda Perrault, who is battling lung cancer. The Churubusco Volunteer Fire Department held a recent benefit for her.
BACKSTORY
Hoenig grew up in Churubusco and graduated from Northern Adirondack High School in 1973.
“I never really thought I could be a professional writer. I was like I’m from Churubusco, you know. I wasn’t confident enough until I moved to Long Island. I went to college. I took a lot of writing courses, and I started teaching writing. This is my fourth novel published, and I have had some nonfiction published and that kind of thing,” she said.
Hoenig concentrated on writing courses at Hofstra University and Nassau Community College.
“I always regretted not graduating from a particular college. Marianne Wiggins, I asked her about it and I said I’m feeling really bad that I didn’t get a degree. She said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘I want to write.’ She goes, ‘then write.’ So, that’s what I did,” she said.
Hoenig was a national events coordinator for Borders, Book & Music in Manhattan.
“So, I got to work with a lot of big-name people and schedule them. When Borders closed and was out of business, I started my own company, publishing consultant, where I help other writers navigate the industry, editing, publicity. I do all of that. Carol Hoenig Publishing Consultant Inc.”
Her published books are: “Of Little Faith,” “Without Grace,” “The Author’s Guide to Planning Book Events: Tips and Tools for Bookselling Success,” “Before She Was a Finley,” “The Greatest Reviews I’ve Ever Read” with Emmy-Award winner John Barbour, and “The Liberation of Jane Carter.”
“When I worked in the City, I got to work with a lot of editors and publishers. I never wanted to cross that line, and say, ‘Oh, would you read my stuff?’ I was having lunch with an editor, and we were talking personal lives. She said, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’re a writer?’ She said, ‘Let me see.’ She got me this high profile agent, and she loved it and she wanted to represent me. Here’s the problem, she was not hungry enough to represent me because she was too busy with others. I got kicked to the curb a lot of times,” she said.
After a year with no movement, Hoenig was booking events and through friends introduced to the CEO of iUniverse, a self-publisher.
“She sent it to an editor, and she said we want to publish it. I said, I’m not going to pay for it. She said we have a program, but you don’t pay a dime. So that’s how that was published,” she said.
“The Liberation of Jane Carter” is a historical fiction set in 1900s Lyon Mountain and Ellenburg. To save her from becoming a miner’s wife, Jane’s family marries her off to Amos, a farmer 10 years her senior, who wants her to keep giving birth to free farmhands.
“All she wanted was an education. She wanted to go to school. She wasn’t able to, but she fought for her children to go to school. Her oldest daughter opened up her eyes to what the world was beyond the little shack that she lived in. That’s basically what the book is about,” she said.
Hoenig was inspired by a grade school classmate and friend, whose father was killed in the mines.
“The students had to go to the wake. The bus took us all to the wake to walk by the casket. I was in grade school. I was young. Did they have to get the parents’ permission to let us do that? So that was one aspect of it, and then the second aspect of it was I remember sitting in my grandmother’s living room, and she was in the rocking chair. I think I was only 10 years old. She started crying to me about how her family had her married off to my grandfather. She said, ‘I was only 16, and he was 26.’ They were married for many, many years, and they seemed happy. That was news to me that she didn’t really have a choice. I was like, wow. Wow. Again, I was so young. I wished I was old enough to ask her questions and pick her brain. Even my grandfather, what was going on there?,” she said.
After she wrote, “Of Little Faith,” Hoenig pondered her next book’s subject matter.
“I was like I’m not going to write about upstate New York. I don’t if I felt like that was cutting a close to the bone or what,” she said.
When Calvin Castine and Gordie Little videotaped her about “Without Grace,” Little told her ‘You just got the sense of upstate New York so well.’ I don’t know. It’s in my blood. I guess that’s what it is. It’s there,” Hoenig said.
At Sibylline Press, she feels at home.
“It’s a women-owned publisher, and they only publish women that are 50 years and older. I love it. They are going to publish my next book next year. Then we’re going to redo the ‘Author’s Guide to Planning Book Events’ because that needs a lot of updating,” Hoenig said.