Strange Maine Author Profiled
Posted by: Loren Coleman on June 28th, 2010
The Maine Sunday Telegram, published an interview with Michelle Souliere. For those that would like to meet the author, she is making appearances around Maine. For example,
MEET THE AUTHOR
BROWN BAG LECTURE. Portland Public Library, noon to 1 p.m. Wednesday. Call 871-1700 or visit here.
BOOKS IN BOOTHBAY. Souliere will be one of 40 authors appearing at various locations from 12:30 to 3:30 p.m. July 10. Visit here.
Here’s part of the interview…
If it’s oddball or eerie, you just might read about it in Michelle Souliere’s newly published ‘Strange Maine.’
Michelle Souliere pursues her hobbies with passion. And when some readings got her interested in unusual places and happenings in Maine, she started a blog about them and then the printed “Strange Maine Gazette.”
With that experience, she was approached by History Press in Charleston, S.C., to write a book. The result is “Strange Maine: True Tales from the Pine Tree State,” a paperback of 126 pages crammed with everything from Maine monsters and true crime to a piece on a hubcap haven and a recycle zoo.
She owns and operates The Green Hand, a used bookstore and more at 661 Congress St. that has the advantage of being located in front of the Maine Cryptology Museum [actually, it’s called the International Cryptozoology Museum], run by Loren Coleman.
Souliere was born in Maryland and moved to Maine when she was 3 or 4. She has lived here since, mostly in Portland.
Q: So, with the publishing industry in the state it is in, how did you get this book published by a national company?
A: Shortly after I set up shop last fall I was approached by History Press, so I never had to shop my book around myself. They had seen my blog and “The Gazette,” so they wanted me to do it.
Q: How much time did you have to write it?
A: They came up with the proposal last fall, and they wanted it for this summer’s tourist season, so it came up pretty quick. The deadline was in March.
Some of it I had done research on, for the blog or Gazette, but I had to flesh it out and fact-check. I probably had about a third of it done.
I originally thought that, since we were coming up to winter, I could get work done during the slow times at the shop. But I didn’t know that even during the slow times there was so much to do. It ended up being a lot of nights and weekends.
Q: What turned you to the idea of writing about strange things?
A: I had been reading Loren Coleman’s “Mysterious America” and William Robinson’s “Abandoned New England: Its Ruins and Where to Find Them,” and it got my curiosity going. There is just so much cool stuff around Maine and no one doing much with it, so I started the website.
See the rest of Tom Atwell’s article, Books Q&A: In quite a state, for more.
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
Quote:
“Q: What turned you to the idea of writing about strange things?
A: I had been reading Loren Coleman’s “Mysterious America” and William Robinson’s “Abandoned New England: Its Ruins and Where to Find Them,” and it got my curiosity going.”
Encouraging curiosity is just one of the positive effects the field of cryptozoology brings to the general public. Awareness is another, and to some degree, as this interview demonstrates, it makes you want to examine your own community in the hope of uncovering that certain intriguing story that fuels further excitement.
I stopped by the store today and it’s closed on Mondays 🙁