Mike Odell has written many non-fiction articles over the course of his life. Brother Mine, available in late summer 2005, will be his first book. Odell and his wife Cindy have recently returned to Pennsylvannia where he will pursue writing and other ventures.

Brother Mine is a nonfiction account of your life with your brother. Why did you want to write this book?

Al and I had shared many good times and tackled some interesting activities together, and I wanted to share them with our family and anyone else who might be interested. We met some unique challenges as kids and learned some lessons that have paid off throughout our lives. The more time I spent recalling the lives we lived and the things we did, the more I thought such stories might be of interest to others. Given today’s complex and contentious world, these simpler times seemed worth remembering.

In addition, Al enjoyed kids, and was really looking forward to having a grandchild. His grandson Alan Kent, born just a few months after Al died, would have been his first grandchild. I decided it would be a rather unique family gift, and one that only I could provide, if I could help young Alan Kent understand the grandfather he would unfortunately never know. Through such a book I could perhaps relate some of the stories his own grandfather might have shared with him, had he been afforded that chance.

Were the two of you similar in personality?

We were similar in many ways although quite different in others. Perhaps one of our most similar traits was our sense of humor, and an easy ability to laugh. We also shared a genuine sense of decency, caring about others, willingness to help others, and going about it in a quiet and unassuming manner.

We ended up leading separate and very different lives, often involving fairly different life styles, but always remained close as brothers. Regardless of differences, I believe we both were very normal guys, good husbands, loving fathers, hard workers, and genuinely honest and decent people. Our personalities and the lives we led had definitely benefited from the good upbringing we had shared.

It seems both you and your brother liked anything mechanical, especially cars. Tell me about that.

As kids we tended to do things for ourselves and didn’t mind getting our hands dirty, but neither of us could be considered all that handy. However, we did manage to get things done, like building our backyard hut from scratch. Both of us always liked cars, or for that matter anything with a motor and wheels, and really enjoyed driving cars, even before we were old enough. We also liked to modify our cars making them uniquely ours, but neither of us turned into viable auto mechanics.

Where did the two of you grow up?

We were born and raised in Elgin, Illinois, a medium-sized town in the Midwest, just outside Chicago. After moving across town when I was six, our family of five lived in a two-story frame house on a busy street, but in a typical and pleasant working class neighborhood. Al and I were exposed to the normal childhood activities of those times, like swimming at the YMCA, playing Little League baseball and being Boy Scouts. We attended public schools at the grade school, junior high and senior high levels, and participated in normal school-related activities like playing in the band and belonging to school clubs. Our whole family was very actively involved in our neighborhood Methodist church.

I never lived in Elgin fulltime after I went off to college, while Al lived there his entire life.

How were the times different from the present culture?

Times were much simpler back in the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s when we were growing up. Things seemed less complicated and more straightforward back then; people were friendlier, families were closer, neighborhoods were safer, kids were less competitive, life was slower and simpler, parents were more involved, and society in general was more decent and responsible. For me, those times were indeed the ‘good old days.’

When did you start writing this book?

I started building my list of memories after Al’s first bout with cancer in 1994, set it aside when he overcame each bout, and then enhanced it some more every time his cancer returned. Since I couldn’t get Al to reminisce about the memories before he died in early 1997, I ended up formalizing the list and placing it in a dual frame with some pictures of the two of us. For several years after Al’s death I would re-read the list, and recall the situations and stories behind all of the memories. I was fondly remembering not only our brotherly activities and incidents, but also the generally simpler times in which they occurred.

I never found the time to do anything further with the list until I lost my job as a VP/CIO in 2002, and decided not to return to the executive treadmill. Suddenly, I had the time to expand my list into the full stories I had been remembering and thinking more and more about. I started to document the stories more thoroughly by 2003. As my recollections developed into these stories, I felt that others might find them interesting as well, and perhaps even useful. Thus the idea of the ‘book’ emerged.

When did you start writing, period?

I have always enjoyed doing some kind of writing throughout my life. I still cherish my kid’s short story about Squeeky, the mouse who helped me save the day for our family. I have often expressed myself through poetry, even if it was the rhyming style usually seen in the Burma Shave signs along the highway. I also started writing a book after my 1970 discharge from the Army (730 days as US54836043), but never found the time to follow through on it. I’ve always had the inclination to write more – just never got around to doing very much, except for several magazine articles.

I did a lot of ‘business’ writing throughout my consulting and information management career, including proposals and training materials plus several articles for industry magazines. I have also contributed, and continue to develop, magazine articles regarding my lifelong hobby of road racing. My first articles got published in 1978, with a dozen or so since then, split between work and hobby-related topics and publications. My most recent sidebar article, about vintage friends, was just published in the October issue of Victory Lane magazine.

What other things have kept you busy?

After my BS and MBA years at the University of Illinois, followed by two years in the Army, I enjoyed a successful thirty-year career addressing the management of information systems in healthcare organizations, first as a consultant and then in management. For over forty years my avocation of road racing has been squeezed into several long weekends a year, always as a spectator, usually as a photographer, sometimes as a safety worker or crew, and with two stints as an owner/driver.

I may never have worked with a more organized writer. How did you organize? This may seem an odd question, but a college professor once showed me a film on writing. It tracked several known authors and demonstrated their organization of the materials (something we usually don't think about). It was very interesting and was driven by personality, skill, subject, etc. etc., but the surprise was that all were highly successful, but worked very differently.

I have always been a thorough and organized person with perfectionist tendencies (a place for everything and everything in its place), and have always tried to plan ahead. I simply don’t like to be caught unprepared, and being prepared has usually paid off for me. While these traits come somewhat naturally, they probably also relate to my being an engineer by education and an analyst by trade.

For the book, I started by taking my final list of twenty-five memories (fine-tuned over three years) and grouped them into categories that could become chapter topics. For each chapter I then outlined the basics, and simply added more and more details as I progressed from there.

What did you see as the obstacles?

Actually telling the stories was never a problem, as I am a natural storyteller and a talker. Perhaps my biggest obstacles involved my writing style and my tendency to repeat myself. Throughout my career I had developed a rather dry business writing style, where it is often boilerplate, just the facts, lots of repetition, and to be honest, often rather boring. My (casual reader) wife, Cindy, and my editor, Doris, helped me revise my writing into a more casual and descriptive style so that my stories would actually be more readable. I could always do the tree trunks and the branches, but under their guidance I learned to also provide the leaves, thus painting much better word pictures for the casual readers I hope to attract and entertain.

What surprises were in store?

Once I had the time to fully recollect the life and times Al and I shared as brothers, I was amazed at how easily the details came back to me. If these stories, not only about my brother but also my family and friends, never saw the light of day in a bookstore, the experience would have been well worth the time and effort, regardless. Recalling and documenting such fond memories was quite invigorating and has been a truly satisfying personal experience.

What advice would you give to a writer who wants to combine human interest and technical interests?

That’s a tough one for this first-time book-writer. Virtually all of my writing has been based on first-hand experiences and my personal knowledge, so the story content always came naturally. A couple of my racing articles did involve researching the topic and doing a few interviews, but still were within my areas of interest and knowledge. So at least for me it just kind of happened. I therefore have no special advice for other writers. Early in my career I learned, the hard way, that the best presentations are made from a basis of knowledge, and writing has worked out the same way.

Do you have another project in the works? Nonfiction, or fiction?

Not right now, but who knows? I had no designs on ‘becoming a writer’ when I started this project, I just wanted to tell our story. However, if people like this book and enjoy my style of storytelling, I would certainly enjoy doing it again, provided I could find the right topic.

Even though I like being creative, I’m not sure I could entirely make up a fictional storyline. I have always been honest and straightforward, usually 'telling it like it is,' often regardless of the consequences. Probably a result of my upbringing, I still tend to blush or stammer when I stretch the truth, so I usually don’t. However, . . .