Exploring Creativity, Community, and Resilience: An Interview with Author Mark Newhouse

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Exploring Creativity, Community, & Resilience: Interview with Author Mark Newhouse

In this episode of the Open Forum in The Villages, Florida podcast, host Mike Roth introduces the season and encourages listener support. Mike welcomes guest Mark Newhouse, an author with a passion for writing children's books, including the award-winning 'Monsters of Monstrovia' series. Mark shares his experiences transforming classroom plays into mystery books for kids, discussing their success and his venture into podcasting. He recounts personal encounters with readers and his brush with Hollywood. Mark opens up about his teaching career, challenging childhood, and the inspiration behind his writing. He explains his commitment to promoting kindness, solving problems without violence, and the value of perseverance. The episode concludes with a look at Mark's new book on the Holocaust for middle graders. Listeners are encouraged to support the podcast and participate in upcoming episodes.

00:00 Introduction to the Open Forum Podcast

01:08 Support the Podcast: How You Can Help

01:57 Interview with Author Mark Newhouse

05:24 Discussing Alzheimer's with Dr. Craig Curtis

06:44 Mark Newhouse on Writing and Personal Experiences

19:47 Mark Newhouse's Future Projects and Final Thoughts

20:53 Closing Remarks and Supporter Shoutouts

Transcript

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Mark Newhouse on Creative Storytelling & Publishing

[00:00:08] Donna: Welcome to the Open Forum in The Villages, Florida podcast. In this show, we talk to leaders in the community, leaders of clubs, and interesting folks who live here in The Villages to get perspectives of what is happening here in The Villages, Florida. We are a listener supported podcast. There will be shout outs for supporters in episodes.

In Season 6, we will continue making substantial improvements to the podcast. 

[00:00:34] Mike Roth: This is Mike Roth. And, listeners, I'm thrilled to share with you this podcast, which is my passion project for you. This podcast brings me joy, brings you knowledge, and Inspiration and a lot of things that people need to know about The Villages and the people living here.

Be sure to hit the follow button to get the newest episode each week. Creating this podcast is a labor of love, even though it demands more time than I can easily spare. Now, here's where you come in. You can help us keep the podcast alive and thriving. How? By becoming a supporter, the easy way for you to support us is to visit our podcast web page, openforuminthevillagesflorida. com, and click on the supporter button at the top of the page, or the purple supporter box on the right side of the page. Even a small donation of three to ten dollars a month is appreciated. Makes a big difference. And guess what? You can cancel your subscription at any time. No strings attached. Your support means the world to us.

Stay curious, stay inspired, and keep those headphones on. I hope everyone enjoys today's show.

This is Mike Roth on Open Forum in The Villages, Florida. I'm here today again with Mark Newhouse. Mark, you've got another book taking a very positive turn for children, Monsters of Monstrovia. How long ago did you write that? 

[00:02:09] Mark Newhouse AI: It actually began as a play for my underachieving sixth grade students, and I wrote them with them with the idea that they would present them to the senior center.

And we used to go to the senior center every year, at least twice or three times. And of course, I never thought I'd be a senior someday. But we used to perform it the different plays for them. And then when I retired, I said, you know what? I just love this series. So I'm going to turn it into a mystery series for kids.

And it's, I call it a Perry Mason for kids today. Because when I was about 10 years old, I was absolutely addicted to Raymond Burr as Perry Mason. 

[00:02:52] Mike Roth: I think we all were. 

[00:02:53] Mark Newhouse AI: I'll tell you what. 

[00:02:54] Mike Roth: How long ago did you finish writing the book? 

[00:02:56] Mark Newhouse AI: The first one? 

[00:02:57] Mike Roth: The first one, yes. 

[00:02:58] Mark Newhouse AI: Probably about ten years ago. 

[00:03:00] Mike Roth: And it's available on Amazon and Audible? 

[00:03:04] Mark Newhouse AI: The books are available on Amazon. They're available anywhere. You can, you can order e books. But they've also got three sequels, and all of them have won awards. And they're all different cases, and I just love writing them. They're probably the easiest thing I have to write.

Because basically, what you're doing is creating a fantasy case in a place where humans are rare. Monsters are plentiful and you let your imagination run wild and I love it. 

[00:03:34] Mike Roth: And I understand it's been turned it you turned it into a podcast 

[00:03:38] Mark Newhouse AI: What we did was we created a podcast called defenders of Monstrovia 

But we had some artistic differences with the producers now These are the same producers who produce R.

L. Stine's podcasts. R. L. Stine is famous for Goosebumps and Fear Street. Okay. And so this was a huge positive reason why I wanted to get involved with this. So when we created the podcast, they wanted to do some things I didn't agree with. So I ended up creating a whole new series of books to go into this podcast, and I changed the main character from a boy named Brody to a girl named Kara, who is named after my granddaughter.

[00:04:26] Mike Roth: And how many episodes did they produce? 

[00:04:28] Mark Newhouse AI: They've actually produced 14, and they've contacted me that they want a second season, and now they're working with a producer to possibly create an animation series or a movie. 

[00:04:41] Mike Roth: Yeah, it might be live action. I think it'll really sell for you. 

[00:04:46] Mark Newhouse AI: I don't know if you can do all the characters in live action. Maybe a combination. 

[00:04:50] Mike Roth: They did spider man and superman. 

[00:04:52] Mark Newhouse AI: Yeah, but this is I don't know. I don't know how they would do it. It's just such a wild kind of thing. They have a flying groundhog. Who is the assistant to the lawyer for Mythical Monsters and Fictional Folk.

[00:05:05] Mike Roth: Look, in going back to 1939, in somewhere over the rainbow, they had flying monkeys. 

[00:05:11] Mark Newhouse AI: They did. 

[00:05:12] Mike Roth: So making a groundhog fly doesn't seem like a big challenge. 

[00:05:16] Mark Newhouse AI: I know, we've come so far. I don't know where this is gonna go. I never thought I'd be doing something like this in retirement. It's a lot of fun.

[00:05:24] Mike Roth: This is Mike Roth and Dr. Craig Curtis speaking about Alzheimer's disease.

Dr. Curtis, what can someone do if they know that they have Alzheimer's that runs in their family? , 

[00:05:34] Dr. Craig Curtis: There's a lot that they can do. Published actually in the Journal of the American Medical Association in February of 2024, , this was a study done primarily at Rush University in Chicago, looking at those with brain amyloid. So those people that already have amyloid, can a healthy lifestyle protect them from developing dementia? And the answer was yes, by following these five healthy habits that were tracked. And those where they did not smoke, They did moderate exercise for at least 150 minutes a week. They kept their alcohol consumptive diet.

And they used autopsies. They actually used approximately 530 autopsies to prove that those that followed those healthy lifestyle habits or had those healthy lifestyle habits were healthy people. Actually had less amyloid. It correlated those had less amyloid in their brain. 

[00:06:28] Warren: With over 20 years of experience studying brain health, Dr.

Curtis's goal is to educate the village's community on how to live a longer, healthier life. To learn more, visit his website, craig curtis md.com, or call 3 5 2 5 0 0 5 2 5 2 to attend a free seminar.

[00:06:44] Mark Newhouse AI: Mark, what is your biggest passion? I don't know. 

My biggest passion, I love writing for kids, and I love meeting the kids or hearing from kids who have read my books. I had one experience that just blew my mind. I was at a book signing. And a woman came over to me, and she said to me, Are you Mark Newhouse?

And did you write a book called The Midnight Diet Club? And I said, Yes, why? And she said, My granddaughter has been bullied for years, and your book taught her how to deal with the bullies. And she had tears in her eyes. And I think that, to me, was like one of the most meaningful, encounters I ever had. I had another book signing where a gentleman came over to me and his son had bought my Rockhound Science Mysteries.

Which were my first published books and they were published by a national educational publisher and He said to me he wanted me to call him and he gave me his business card. And Like many authors, I'm shy so I didn't call him. 

[00:07:51] Mike Roth: No, not you No,

[00:07:52] Mark Newhouse AI: I really am people don't believe that about me, but I am 

[00:07:56] Mike Roth: Most outspoken shy guy I know, 

[00:07:58] Mark Newhouse AI: You have to change you have to force yourself, right?

You Anyway, he came back a month later with his son and he asked me, he said, why didn't you call me? And next thing I know, I had a contract for a television series for the Rock Hunt Science Mysteries. It failed after six years. It was still an amazing experience. 

[00:08:18] Mike Roth: So it was produced on TV for six years?

[00:08:20] Mark Newhouse AI: It was going to be, but no, they never got to that stage. They had problems with the company. And that's one thing I've learned, which is that you can't. pin your hopes on some, on Hollywood. Okay. Sometimes deals fall through. And when that happens, you just have to go on to the next step. And I've learned that sometimes you face a lot of disappointments, but if you have your head on straight and your goal is not to necessarily make a fortune with your books, but to share something as a legacy to your family, as therapy for yourself.

Then, it's the most wonderful experience when you have that book in your hands. 

[00:09:03] Mike Roth: We had a episode last year with a Hollywood screenwriter, producer, director, who wrote a script called The Bad Senator. And he produced it himself, finally using his own money. He shot most of it up at Del Webb's Spruce Creek a little bit here in The Villages.

He released the movie He signed a contract with a distributor to release the movie. They came up with a bunch of places to release it. And I guess they decided not to let it go public. Very big public release until after the election cycle. 

[00:09:37] Mark Newhouse AI: You see a lot of independently produced movies.

[00:09:40] Mike Roth: And this movie had some very strong emotional points in it. It was well done. You never would have known it was done on a really shoestring budget. But it was produced, created, and I think his mistake was not going far enough in handling the distribution of the film himself. He turned that out to others, and they've let him down.

Because I think it's been deserved a much broader audience than it's gotten. 

[00:10:07] Mark Newhouse AI: My passion is to someday have a television series or movie based on The Devil's Bookkeepers, which is a love story with tremendous suspense, with the Holocaust as its background. 

[00:10:19] Mike Roth: If you haven't listened to that episode, go backwards in the list of episodes for Open Forum in The Villages, and you will find that episode.

[00:10:28] Mark Newhouse AI: And I think the Monstrovia series, as a podcast, and now they're looking around for the possibility of creating an animation series, would be a stepping stone. If I can do that, I think it would be a stepping stone towards producing. This passion project. 

[00:10:46] Mike Roth AI 9-11-24: Mark, you said most writers are really very shy, making them introverts.

Would you say you're an introvert or an extrovert? 

[00:10:54] Mark Newhouse AI: Definitely an introvert. However, at one point, I said to myself, I'm not gonna get anywhere unless I am able to Open myself up to rejection and believe me I have a wall full of rejection letters The thing that changed my life 

[00:11:12] Mike Roth: Actually post them on a wall 

[00:11:14] Mark Newhouse AI: No, but I do have them in my heart Okay, rejection still hurts, but I've learned to work with rejection but the thing that changed my idea of what an author should be doing Is I had the privilege of sitting next to a very famous author at a conference and he asked me what I didn't like about writing and I said, I don't like promoting myself and promoting my books.

And he said, you're thinking about this the wrong way. He said, when you write, you do it with a purpose, which is to help people. You are either entertaining, educating, or inspiring people. And that's what your books are. And if you think of it that way, you're performing a service. So that changed my approach.

[00:12:00] Mike Roth: And 

[00:12:01] Mark Newhouse AI: I teach that to people all the time now. 

[00:12:04] Mike Roth: I had a sales trainer. Rejection was something that, Most salespeople face every day and 

[00:12:10] Mark Newhouse AI: You just have to roll with the punches. 

[00:12:12] Mike Roth: No, you have to think about it differently I said to him that's loss their loss. 

[00:12:17] Mark Newhouse AI: That's true, too 

[00:12:18] Mike Roth: We're not hearing you out or using your product or service.

[00:12:21] Mark Newhouse AI: I agree. 

[00:12:22] Mike Roth: So mark If you can have one superpower Because you wrote a book with monsters and superpowers. What would the superpower be that you would give yourself? 

[00:12:31] Mark Newhouse AI: Actually, in my books, the heroes don't have superpowers. And they don't use violence to solve problems. That's very important to me. They use their intelligence and their courage and their persistence.

[00:12:47] Mike Roth: So what superpower would you give yourself? 

[00:12:49] Mark Newhouse AI: I would like to be able to create peace in the entire world. 

[00:12:53] Mike Roth: Okay. That's a very admirable goal. What have you done to for foster that goal? 

[00:13:01] Mark Newhouse AI: As a classroom teacher, one of the things that I always prided myself on was teaching children the golden rule, which is be kind.

And if you think about it, you don't need a lot of rules in life if you always keep that one rule in mind. It explains every behavior that we want children to have. 

[00:13:24] Mike Roth: I made a friend here in The Villages named Yuri. A Japanese survivor of the Hiroshima attack. And one of his goals is to create peace in the world.

And I think I'm going to introduce you to him when he gets back from his last world cruise that he's been taking. 

[00:13:40] Mark Newhouse AI: I'd love to meet him. I will tell you that I do a lot of presentations for groups that want to learn about the Holocaust. And that want to talk about ways we can help children. And in fact I recently did a presentation for the Jewish Cultural and History Group.

Where I got to speak about the Lodz Ghetto and what my parents and so many people survived. And what amazes me is how situations today make the Holocaust so relevant. Because I hate seeing what's happening in the world today to too many children, too many people. 

[00:14:22] Mike Roth: That is terrible. And we have some terrible people in charge of it.

Dictatorship. Countries that are causing big problems. 

[00:14:29] Mark Newhouse AI: They've forgotten the lessons of war. 

[00:14:31] Mike Roth: Maybe they never learned them. Why don't you tell our listeners about what a significant turning point in your life was. Or the most significant turning point in your life. 

[00:14:40] Mark Newhouse AI: There have been so many wonderful turning points.

I think, maybe when I became a teacher. Alright? I didn't think much of myself as a child. I had a very troubled childhood. I had a very strict father who who didn't understand me. When I became a teacher, I had an outlet for my creativity. I had a, and I got the affection that I'd been starved for as a child.

[00:15:06] Mike Roth: How old were you when you became a teacher? 

[00:15:08] Mark Newhouse AI: 23. 

[00:15:10] Mike Roth: Sounds like almost right out of college. 

[00:15:12] Mark Newhouse AI: It was. It really was. It just changed my life. At first, I hated it. Really? I had 4th graders who outsmarted me on every turn. 

[00:15:20] Mike Roth: Jeff Foxworthy. Was that a 5th grader? 

[00:15:23] Mark Newhouse AI: I had these 4th graders that would just drive me nuts.

And then one day I said to myself, you know what? I'm smarter than they are. And I sat down and I thought about all the positive and negative things I could do to them. And then I went back to school on a Monday after crying all weekend. And I said, I am going to change the way I run this classroom. And guess what?

It didn't work. So the whole first year they had me defeated, but the second year I started on the very first day and I fell in love with teaching 

[00:15:56] Mike Roth: and 

[00:15:57] Mark Newhouse AI: I had a wonderful career. 

[00:15:59] Mike Roth: Do you have any regrets? 

[00:16:00] Mark Newhouse AI: Do I have any regrets? 

[00:16:02] Mike Roth: You stayed in teaching for a lot of years. 

[00:16:04] Mark Newhouse AI: I think I love teaching. In fact, I have a thousand of my former fifth and sixth grade students on Facebook with me.

I guess maybe everybody has regrets, but I've been very blessed because I don't think about those. As I said, I had a very difficult childhood. Maybe I would have liked a different father. That's about it. 

[00:16:25] Mike Roth: Okay. And as a writer, do you have a favorite quote from another writer? 

[00:16:29] Mark Newhouse AI: Yep. From another writer? 

[00:16:31] Mike Roth: Yeah, not your own quote.

[00:16:33] Mark Newhouse AI: Let me see. Probably from Stephen King. 

[00:16:36] Mike Roth: Stephen King? 

[00:16:37] Mark Newhouse AI: Stephen King. And it's not really a quote, but basically it's the way he writes. Every day he gets up and he writes about 2, 000 words. And then afterwards he goes back and edits them. And he spends hours, literally, on almost every word. And I've learned from that, because that's what I do.

Capture the beast first, and then refine it. 

[00:16:59] Mike Roth: That's a good idea. That's a really good idea. A tip for our writers and the listening audience. Have you ever had a mentor as a writer? 

[00:17:08] Mark Newhouse AI: You mean someone personally who was able to help me? No, actually when I started writing, my father really looked down on writing.

He thought it was something that It was a waste of time. And so I did most of my writing in secret and when I moved to The Villages, actually before I moved to The Villages, I had a group on Long Island that was so supportive and these guys were so much better writers than I was, but I learned from them.

And then when I moved to The Villages, I never thought I would have that kind of a group again, but I did. And the groups in The Villages have been a huge help to me. I can't tell you what patience they sat with when they sat through my entire first book of The Devil's Bookkeepers. And I owe them so much.

And then, of course, there's my own writing group, which is called Writers for Kids Plus. And that group has been going for I guess for about 17 years and I just love working with these people. We even went through COVID together. 

[00:18:16] Mike Roth: Do you have a life motto?

[00:18:17] Mark Newhouse AI: When you say a life model, my motto, a life motto. 

[00:18:21] Mike Roth: Yes. 

[00:18:22] Mark Newhouse AI: Never give up. 

[00:18:24] Mike Roth: That's a good expression. Yes. When we talked about mentors a second ago, in my own sales career, I had a lot of good mentors. Now, I didn't recognize all of them then as mentors, but they really were. They changed my life and my career for the better.

[00:18:41] Mark Newhouse AI: My mother would have been my role model, and I used her as the heroine in my book because she was so small. She was five feet tall. She was very petite, and she suffered horribly from asthma from the Holocaust. But she was Probably the first female liberationist I ever knew. My father didn't want her to drive, didn't want her to work, and when she got divorced, all her friends said, How are you going to survive?

But she ended up owning her own travel agency. At one time, she owned three homes, and she still raised my brother and myself. She was an amazing woman.

[00:19:23] Mike Roth: When people read your book, or children read your book, Monsters of Monstrovia, or listen to the podcast. What's the one message that you hope they take away from that? 

[00:19:33] Mark Newhouse AI: I hope that they learn that children can be problem solvers without magic, without violence, using their intelligence, using what they've learned, and their courage.

[00:19:46] Mike Roth: That's good. What's next for you, Mark? You've written a lot of books. 

[00:19:50] Mark Newhouse AI: Yeah I've actually just finished working on a book that is for middle graders and up. It's called, My Family's Secret, The Holocaust. And it takes the story of the Holocaust and turns it into a mystery. Because a young boy, Must learn what happened to his family 60 years earlier when his grandfather tries to reclaim property in Poland.

[00:20:17] Mike Roth: Really? 

[00:20:18] Mark Newhouse AI: It's based on what really happened to my stepfather when he did reclaim his property in Poland and found squatters living in it and how he hated them. And how hate became hope, and then even affection. And I think that's a very important idea in my books. That even in the worst times, there is hope.

And there is the search for love. Because to me, that's the most important thing. 

[00:20:47] Mike Roth: Thanks for being with us again today, Mark. 

[00:20:48] Mark Newhouse AI: It's always a pleasure, Mike. Thank you very much for helping to spread the word. 

[00:20:52] Mike Roth: Thanks. 

[00:20:53] Donna: Remember, our next episode will be released next Friday at 9 AM. Should you want to become a major supporter of the show or have questions, please contact us at mike at rothvoice dot com. This is a shout out for supporters Tweet Coleman, Ed Williams, Duane Roemmich, Paul Sorgen, Kathy Loving, and Dr. Craig Curtis at K2 in The Villages.

We will be hearing more from Dr. Curtis with short Alzheimer's tips each week. If you know someone who should be on the show, contact us at mike at rothvoice dot com. We thank everyone for listening to the show. The content of the show is copyrighted by Rothvoice 2024. All rights reserved.