Leaving fact for fiction: Former journalist Melinda Wichmann releases first novel

WILLIAMSBURG — For 35 years, Melinda Wichmann gave her readers facts. Now she’s spinning tales of intrigue straight out of her creative mind.

The former editor of the Hometown Current newspaper retired in 2023 after 35 years as a journalist in Iowa County and released her first novel “How to Live with a Ghost” in 2024.

“Everybody wants to know how long it took,” said Wichmann, a Homestead resident, during a book signing at the Williamsburg Public Library last week.

She wrote the book over the course of about five years, she said. “It got picked up and put down a lot.”

Wichmann said she might have completed the novel in half the time if she’d taken a different approach, such as creating an outline first. “I did a lot of things wrong,” she said.

“I had an idea in my head for a long time,” said Wichmann. She wrote what she likes to read — mystery, a little romance, dogs and a haunted house.

“I had a great idea and a great first chapter, and that’s how it started,” Wichmann said. “I wrote off and on for a number of years.”

In 2020 when dog shows were canceled due to COVID, Wichmann started writing every day. It became a habit.

“I am not a linear writer,” said Wichmann. “I wrote chapter one, then I wrote chapter six, then I wrote chapter four.”

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Even if she’d had an outline, she’d have written that way, Wichmann said. If she had a picture of what the characters were doing in the middle of the book, that’s what she wrote that day.

“After you write maybe an hour a day for several years you get something that looks like a first draft,” said Wichmann. But she had a lot of rewrites and a lot of editing ahead of her.

“I wrote out a lot of things that I thought were wonderful,” said Wichmann, but later she decided they weren’t so wonderful.

If she reread the book today she would still find things she’d like to change, she said.

Finding a publisher

To publish through a major publishing company, an author has to have an agent, said Wichmann. “I tried for a number of months to get an agent.”

Agents are very selective, Wichmann said. They are looking for specific things and don’t seem interested if you haven’t been published before.

After receiving several rejections, Wichmann started looking at independent publishers. Pearl City Press of Muscatine agreed to publish her book.

Large publishing companies pay for everything, including design, said Wichmann. With independent publishers, “you get a little help, but you kind of have to meet them halfway,” she said. She paid for her own cover design.

Wichmann’s first draft was about 110,000 words. That’s not good for a first-time author trying to find a publisher, she said. Longer books cost more to print, and if the author isn’t known, publishers aren’t sure they’ll make a profit.

“I enjoyed writing. I enjoyed creating the scenes,” Wichmann said. But some of the scenes she wrote didn’t further the story, so she had to cut them. “Every sentence, every scene … needs to have a purpose to move the story forward,” she said.

“How to Live with a Ghost” was published at 89,000, said Wichmann. Most novels are 80,000 to 90,000.

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Smaller publishers don’t have as many editors, so they aren’t specialized by genre, Wichmann said. The editor Wichmann worked with was a retired submarine caption, and she’s sure he didn’t read romance novels.

Editors try to catch things that disrupt the flow of the story, said Wichmann. She once had her manuscript critiqued and was told to add a paragraph explaining what a township is because readers might not understand the reference.

But the editor at Pearl City Press told her to take the paragraph out — she’s not giving a geography lesson. He was very blunt, Wichmann said.

The novel also references knob and tube wiring, an obsolete electrical system used in homes before the 1950s.

“Well, the submarine captain didn’t like that either, but I kept it,” Wichmann said.

“I really like the freedom I had with the publisher I worked with. I got to have the last word,” Wichmann said.

“And I also like the fact that … working with Pearl City was much more relaxed.” Wichmann is retired. She didn’t want to work on the book full-time.

“I’m not trying to make a living like this,” Wichmann said. Though she’s trying not to lose money, she doesn’t want to go back to the days of having to meet deadlines.

The writing process

Though “How to Live with a Ghost” is set in a fictional place, readers may recognize references to real places, such as Iowa City or Cedar Rapids. Cat’s Back Road is named for Cat’s Back Hill, an area south of Highway 6 near South Amana which supposedly looks like a sleeping cat, Wichmann said.

Wichmann remembered a day she spent with the state archaeologist on a dig. “That’s when I found my first pioneer cemetery,” she said. It was spring, and bluebells were blooming. It made on impression on her and became the basis for the pioneer cemetery in the book.

People ask Wichmann if the characters in the novel are based on real people.

“The easiest way to build a fictional character is to draw from people I know,” said Wichmann. In 35 years in the newspaper business and 50 years showing dogs, she’s met a lot of people. It’s easy to use them to build characters, she said.

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“I truly think everybody has a book in them,” said Wichmann. Whatever story you have in your head, no one else can tell it, she said.

Write every day, said Wichmann, even if it’s just 20 minutes or one paragraph. “Don’t go back and edit while you’re writing. You’ll just get bogged down.”

Keep a notebook and write things down, Wichmann suggested. She writes ideas on sticky notes and posts them everywhere. If you have an idea and don’t write it down, you won’t remember it, she said.

Write the big scenes first, Wichmann said. Scenes that stitch the story together can come later.

“I’ve always been a creative person,” said Wichmann, but she’s not terribly gifted in drawing and painting. “My gift was with words, she said.

Wichmann wonders if her 35 years in journalism was just a way to avoid math. “That was not my calling. That wasn’t my comfort zone.”

The next novel

Wichmann said that people ask her what the hardest part of publishing the novel was.

“It was all of it,” Wichmann said. “Whatever I was working on that day was the hardest part of it.”

Yet she’s doing it again. Wichmann is working on a second novel. A woman who annoys everyone at a dog show is found dead, and everyone is a suspect.

Wichmann is approaching the book in a better way, she said, and hopes it won’t take as long as her debut project.