“The story of a mass shooting and an old summer love.” – Richard Fellinger

With an expected publishing date of June 2021, Richard Fellinger’s latest novel “Summer of ’85” sounds promising. The story follows a middle-aged man who watches the news and sees that one of his past lovers, with whom he’d since lost touch, was killed in a mass shooting. This realization prompts him to seek more perspective on his current life. 

Based on the multiple shooting incidents in the U.S. in the past few years, the idea as a whole is something that I and likely many others have never given much thought to. We have lived through plenty of mass shooting events, as unfortunate as that is, but how many of us stop to think about the effects of them afterwards? How many of us take the time to think about not just the victims and the shooters, but the bystanders and old friends as well? 

“I feel like it is the kind of story that happens to a lot of people after events like these — the Atlanta shootings… [for example] but we don’t realize how many people are affected by these shootings. These are such awful events, and they affect a lot of people,” fellow of the Writing Wing Fellinger said.

When dealing with such a heavy topic, research was bound to be a necessity. However, Fellinger focused more so on creating a believable setting and a steady theme rather than running statistics of shootings through a scanner. Afterall, the story is meant to give readers perspective on the issue from a personal, character-related standpoint, not a political news report. The research Fellinger did as he was writing played an integral part in making the setting relatable, real and resonant. 

“Even though I lived through 1985, I did some research about current events back then to tie in some of the real events of that summer… I did some research basically about what was going on in the news, popular culture in 1985 to refresh my memory. And I also read up on some essays about what people thought about the decade of the ‘80s, which was labeled a decade of optimism,” Fellinger said.

Beyond his trip down memory lane, his past as a political reporter also helped to cultivate the themes and characters found in “Summer of ’85.” Before teaching at Elizabethtown College, Fellinger wrote as a journalist for several newspapers in Pennsylvania, beginning at the South Philadelphia Review and Philadelphia Weekly. His time in journalism helped in many ways, from learning the importance of deadlines to giving him the inspirations needed to launch his stories. 

I asked Fellinger how his past experience plays into his own writing, relating it to the age-old writing advice “write what you know.” While he was all for that sage bit of wisdom, he also emphasized allowing room for the story to grow. 

“You may notice the protagonist of my last two novels was a journalist. I think it’s important to write what you know, but also go a step further and let the imagination flow,” he said. 

This method can be seen entwined in many of his works, where he takes inspiration from his own life but then takes the liberty of spinning a story. The main character and his wife from “Summer of ’85,” in fact, hold different political views, and this conflict helps further the subject of the novel. Where some of us may have trouble writing something like this, because of his background as a political reporter, he recounted writing their chemistry as “fairly easy.”

Coming from someone who can seemingly spout writing advice and quality works from their mouth instantly, it seems like balancing writing and teaching would come easily to Fellinger. However, balancing life is never easy, and his initial response to “How do you balance teaching and writing?” is the best evidence of that:  

“I’m not sure that I do,” he said. 

This gave us both a good laugh, but he did give some more notable advice afterwards. He referenced Isak Dinesen, a Danish author who advised everyone to “write a little every day, without hope, without despair.” Even with teaching classes, grading papers, and dealing with the craziness that is our new normal, he makes an effort to write at least a little bit every day. 

His efforts have certainly paid off. Now he is an award-winning author, with quite the list of written works (“Made to Break Your Heart” and “They Hover Over Us,” to name some previous examples). Editor in chief of Epiphany Willard Cook left a comment in his own review on how “…he brings to life the problems of the people who are struggling to get by.” 

With that shining review in mind, I wondered what his thought process was for it. How is he able to write such compelling stories? Well, when asked about what went on in his mind as he was writing, his answer was somehow both simple and complex: 

“We’re all human beings, we’re all complex people with our strengths and weaknesses, fears and thoughts. And there’s something about all of us that’s worth telling,” he said.