Tim Davis: Well, it’s time to interview each other. Why don’t we do it at the same time?
Pam Zollman: We can do that. So, Tim, tell me about yourself. You’re primarily an illustrator, so when did you start writing?
Tim: I was working as a staff illustrator for Bob Jones University Press when the other illustrators elected me to talk to the BJU staff writers about the problem of not enough action in their stories. I talked to Becky, who was a good friend at the time, and told her, “We’re having trouble with the stories you’re giving us. We need more action so that we can make better illustrations.” In a bit of a huff, she replied, “If you think can do better, then do it yourself.” Well, I’m always up for a challenge, so I wrote my first story, “The Great Electric Eel”. It was published in the 3rd grade reading curriculum and I also got to illustrate it. Becky was so impressed that she had me over for spaghetti dinner (like the character in my story) and eventually married me. So, Pam, what got you started?
Pam: I love that story! I wrote my first poem when I was seven and my family loved it. I think I rhymed me and tree and bee, but they thought it was wonderful and encouraged me to keep writing. I won a silver dollar in elementary school for a poem I’d written. My teachers kept encouraging me with my writing and I wound up with a BA in English/Creative Writing from the University of Houston. After graduation, I researched material for things like the impact of hurricanes and subsidence for the Houston Chamber of Commerce, edited the Newcomers Guide for Clear Lake City, worked as a reporter for a local daily newspaper (where I had articles published, but without a byline), and freelance edited the employee handbook for a Houston hospital.
During this time, I’d started showing English Springer Spaniels and had queried The Springer Review (a quarterly magazine for people who breed and show Springers), asking if they used freelance writers. The editor wrote back and said she’d love to see an article from me. So I wrote one about training puppies to walk on a leash. When it was published, I’d been working at Boeing Aerospace Company as a secretary for about three months. This was my first published article with my name on it and I was very excited about it. I took it to work and showed it around. The engineers in my section were always running jokes through our routing system. They teased me about my article and suggested I put a routing slip on it. So I took them up on that challenge and did it. And I wound up being called into the Personnel office about it. I thought they were going to chew me out about misusing the routing system. Instead, they said they didn’t realize I was a writer and was I interested in becoming the Lead Librarian? I said, “Yes!” So I was promoted to the library, where there wasn’t a single hardcover book; all we had were NASA documents and microfiche and microfilm.
About a month or so later, Boeing brought in a technical editor from Seattle (their headquarters) to edit a major proposal to NASA. It was massive and she needed help, so Boeing decided that it would be more cost-effective to use me instead of flying in another editor from Seattle. She gave me a small portion to see if I could do it, and I passed with flying colors. So after awhile, she told Boeing/Houston that they didn’t need her any more, that they could use me, and that she was going back to Seattle. That was when I was promoted to Technical Editor at Boeing, and everything – and I mean everything – that went out had to first go through me. I loved that job!
Okay, I’m being long-winded as usual, so let’s get back to Tim. Tell me more about your publishing history.
Tim: I had several more stories published with BJU Press, maybe 10. But I was best known for my “Mort and the Sour Scheme” story. I got lots of letters from kids and a taste of “fame”.
One day at work, as I was laying out an early chapter book by someone else, I saw how the author had written it, the structure used, and I thought that I could do it too. Subsequently, while hosting at a conference that lasted a week, and I had a lot of free time sitting at a desk. So, while I was there, I wrote the first draft of Mice of the Herring Bone. I submitted it to BJU Press, but it was rejected.
Five years later, BJU Press wrote back to me and said they now wanted the story. Soon it became their #1 title. I was freelancing as an illustrator and living in Indiana when this happened. My pastor’s wife was a teacher and wanted me to present it to all of the 2nd grade classes at her school. They liked it and kept talking about what happens next. Should there be a sequel? I wrote the second book, Mice of the Nine Lives, and dedicated it to those kids. I just kept writing the series about Charles and Oliver. The last two books are actually one story. When I wrote it, I forgot to double space and had to split the manuscript in half, and it became Mice of the Westing Wind, Book 1, and Mice of the Westing Wind, Book 2. Later BJU Press asked me to work on a video of Mice of the Herring Bone. That came out in 2007.
I also have two other books, Tales from Dust River Gulch and More Tales from Dust River Gulch. In July 2007, the Electric City Playhouse in Anderson performed an adaptation of these two books. It was a little surreal seeing my work on stage.
And what about you, Pam? How did you get started writing for children?
Pam: After I started writing for The Springer Quarterly, my articles were reprinted by other breed magazines. I decided to try my hand at freelancing and sold articles to newspapers and magazines. After I left Boeing, I became a full-time stay-at-home mom and wrote while my two boys took naps. I enjoyed writing nonfiction, but I love fiction. I played around with writing romance novels, even winning some contests and selling a novel that never got published, but the main thing people seemed to love about my stories were the kids in them. Not my hero or heroine, but the kids I kept putting in the story. So, I finally took the hint and decided that I’d try my hand at writing children’s stories.
My first stories were rejected, so I decided to try to sell some connect-the-dot pictures I’d illustrated. I sold a number of them to a Houston-area family magazine that had a kid’s section. So my first sales in the children’s market were as an illustrator and not as a writer.
Tim: So you’re an artist, too?
Pam: My grandmother had been an artist and she taught me to draw and gave me art lessons, but she also encouraged me to write. The editor of that local magazine asked me to illustrate a series of children’s stories that she’d assigned to another writer. Then I had an operation on my right arm to remove cancer (fibrosarcoma, a cancer of the connective tissue) and my doctor warned me that I might lose the use of the fingers on my right hand. I didn’t, but ever since, I’ve had a harder time writing or drawing. I can still type, but writing with a pen or drawing tends to be uncomfortable for me. So I gave up my “career” as an illustrator.
I sold my first children’s story to Humpty Dumpty Magazine and it came out in 1990. My editor was Christine French Clark, who is now the editor at Highlights for Children Magazine. I began to sell on a regular basis to children’s magazines. In 1991, I attended Highlight’s writing conference at Chautauqua and it changed my life. The people I met there encouraged me and Patti Gauch, editor at Philomel, took me under her wing. Although I never sold anything to her, she’s the one who told me that I have a “middle-grade” voice and to write middle-grade novels. So I did.
Okay, back to Tim. How did you get connected with Highlights?
Tim: While I was living in Indiana, I submitted some art samples to Highlights. Jody Taylor, an art director there, called and said that Highlights really needed more Hidden Pictures illustrations. Hidden Pictures have been a feature in Highlights since its first issue, and children have to find pictures of objects hidden within the illustration. My first one was a complete failure. Jody coached me through the next one. I’ve done 350 Hidden Pictures since then. So that puts me in the top 10 of all Hidden Picture artists of all time. It’s nice to be in the top ten in something. Through my work with Hidden Pictures, I got invited to the annual Illustrators’ Party that Highlights hosts each October in Honesdale, PA, their editorial headquarters. The first one I attended was in 1996. It was at an Illustrators’ Party in 2003 that I met Pam.
So, Pam, how did you wind up working as an editor for Highlights?
Pam: Well, Chris Clark was my first editor, and I’d met Kent Brown first at Chautauqua and later at various writers’ conferences. Then I won the annual Highlights Fiction Contest in 1996 (“Millie’s Garden” was published in 1997). By this time I’d taken over compiling the national SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) Magazine Market Guide and was speaking at the annual conference in Los Angeles, as well as at other conferences. I’d also sold my first book, Don’t Bug Me (Holiday House, 2001), at a SCBWI conference and had been writing and editing state tests, teacher guides, short stories, and books for educational publishers. In 2001 Kent Brown was one of the speakers at the Houston SCBWI fall conference. He asked me if I’d be interested in an editorial position with Highlights. Oh my goodness! Of course I said “yes!” By the time I started working for Highlights, I had seven books published (Holiday House, Steck-Vaughn, and Rigby). I edited young nonfiction and the crafts page and was the backup editor for fiction, science articles, and the rebuses.
Tim: And that’s how our paths first crossed.
Pam: Yes, we met at that Illustrators Party in 2003 when I sat next to you and your family at dinner in the Fire Hall. I remember that you were just starting to teach and asked me for tips on teaching a writing class, since I’d taught writing classes in Houston at Tomball College and at the University of Marywood in Scranton. I gave you my notes, and look at you now! You’re teaching at Furman and Greenville Tech!
But, let’s back up for a moment. You had an award-winning article published in Highlights. Tell us about that.
Tim: Highlights had become a regular client for me. I’d done a Hidden Picture about the North Pole which had penguins and polar bears in the same picture. Jody Taylor called me and told me my error: Penguins are at the South Pole and polar bears are at the North Pole. Because of that error, I did more research and that led me to write the article, “Poles Apart,” about the differences between the North and South Poles. That article was named Article of the Month for May 2005 and I received a pewter platter award.
That year we moved to Greenville and I started working as an illustrator for Super Duper Publications, an educational publisher in the Upstate. I was influenced by some excellent fellow illustrators there, including Jack Vaughn, Ted Dawson, Bruce Ink, and Bill Golliher. Their expertise encouraged my transition to digital artwork as well as influencing my artistic style in general.
Pam, you moved to Greenville in 2007, right?
Pam: My younger son attended Furman University and after he graduated and got married, I realized that I wouldn’t be seeing him or my older son (who’d graduated from Rhode Island School of Design and was living in Phoenix) for long stretches of time. Plus the super cold weather in the Pocono Mountains was a little too much for this hot weather Houstonian. So I moved to Greenville where my younger son lives and started back writing educational books. I also started working for the YWCA of Greenville. I now have 40 books published (Holiday House, Steck-Vaughn, Rigby, Scholastic, Enslow, Pearson, Options). My first book, Don’t Bug Me, was named one of the Best Books of 2002 by Bank Street College of Education, was nominated for state awards, and was in the Florida Battle of the Books. Another one of my books, A Chick Grows Up, was a state honor book.
I’d forgotten that Tim lived in Greenville until I saw him again in the spring of 2007.
Tim: We met again in 2007 at Coffee Underground when Amy Thomas organized a smooze for the Greenville area SCBWI members. We both worked at the SCBWI Conference that year and got acquainted with Melinda Long at dinner afterward at the Augusta Grill. Then in 2008 I had you teach several writing classes with me. That was the beginning of the Pam and Tim show.
Pam: I remember that one of your students compared us to dogs. She said you were the laid-back hound dog and I was the yappy lap dog. I laugh every time I think of that description, because it’s so true!
Tim: And then this year I was laid off from Super Duper in January and you were laid-off from the YWCA at the end of February. It had been a few months since we’d seen each other, and then we met again at the Easter play at Lee Road Baptist Church where we were both visiting.
Pam: I had started teaching writing classes at the YWCA, but they changed their policy to only allowing nonprofit organizations to rent their rooms. So I started looking for another place to hold my classes. I mentioned this to you when we met again at Easter. You called me later and told me about your friend Jim Hargis who was opening a gallery (Hargis Art Services). We went to meet him and he agreed to let me rent the open area for my weekly classes. Afterwards we went to Chick-Fil-A for tea and to discuss it. You were also interested in holding classes there, since two of your classes had been cancelled at both Furman and Greenville Tech for not enough students. I mentioned that I heard Jim talk about wanting to rent out the studios and suggested that maybe we should do that and share the space.
Tim: And that’s when AnAuthor World was born! We wanted to do more than just teach classes in our new space, so we decided to host a writing and illustrating conference in August. We secured some excellent speakers. And we hope to keep it simple and inexpensive for everyone. Finally, there are more good things in the works, including our November illustrator event
Pam: It’s an exciting venture! Thanks for the joint interview, Tim.
Tim: Thank you, too!