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| News & Scoreboards |
Novelizing Your Family Stories
12/01/2003
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You may have commissioned a portrait of your family to have a visual record for the future, but with the advent of computers and deletable documents, the written family legacies previously found in journals and letters could become a relic of the past.
Enter Kirk Martin, the author of Shade of the Maple and The Gravel Drive, novels that capture the sentimental side of life. Martin will write a biography or nonfiction novel for an individual, putting a legacy in writing. The personalized books, from 75 to 200 pages, are based on interviews with the client and on secondary research, such as interviews with family and friends.
"I love words and the fact that words live forever. In previous generations, people hand wrote a lot of letters, and you could piece them together," says Martin, citing President John Adams as an example. But letter writing is becoming a lost art.
The idea for the novels was generated when Martin’s father fell ill. He had gone through the Depression, World War II, and the Korean War, but had no written history to pass down to his grandchildren. Martin also looked at his brother’s business—restoring artwork such as family portraits—and decided there was a niche market in putting down a history in words.
The commissioned novels take three to six months to complete, with the cost ranging from $10,000 to $50,000. Prose for Posterity, 413.218.4967.
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