Quite a number of UMUC alumni, staff, and faculty are published authors in a wide variety of fields. Following are several who have published recently or who have projects in the works.

Helen Campbell

European Division faculty member Helen Campbell was a first-time success as a writer. Her novel, Turnip Blues, was published in 1998 and promptly earned her a place in Barnes & Noble’s "Discover Great New Writers" program. It has also earned favorable reviews from other sources, including Susan Balee of The Philadelphia Inquirer. "The weird thing about this book is that, despite its soap-operatic litany of sadness and savagery, it’s nearly impossible to put down" Balee wrote. "I kept wanting to see what would happen next."

Turnip Blues is the story of two spunky 75-year-old widows, Mrs. Kuzo and Mrs. Lemack, who journey across Pennsylvania to indulge Lemack’s whim of visiting and tending the long-neglected grave of real-life ’30s blues singer Bessie Smith. Like Smith, both women have endured difficult lives, the details of which unfold during their trip.

Campbell’s writing skills are largely self-taught, and she later found her first drafts to be "really appalling and amateurish. I didn’t know what I was doing. I had no idea." She says that she began to improve simply by "doing it," which meant spending as many as seven hours a day at the keyboard. She also drew on her past as an avid reader and learned to write fiction with the same focus and conciseness she developed during her career as an attorney. Her husband, Ronald, a psychiatrist, helped develop the story’s characters and became Campbell’s first critic. Her schedule fell into a routine of dropping the children off at day care, writing the book, and teaching law courses for UMUC in Germany at Nürnberg and Kaiserslautern.

Campbell’s writing career took a serious turn when, while attending a writer’s workshop in Paris in 1995, her instructor said that her writing merited publication. Further encouragement came in 1997 when she received a $10,000 fiction fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts to continue writing her novel. The fellowship helped give Campbell more time to put the finishing touches on the book. Those "touches" ended up doubling the length of the original version.

"That was the lawyer in me," said Campbell, who realizes that people won’t read something they don’t feel is important. She now lives in Hütschenhausen, Germany, and is working on her second novel, which concerns an abandoned Texas child and explores what it means to be a mother.

You can read more about both Campbell and Turnip Blues by visiting www.realbooks.com/reviews/0816/turnipblues.htm.

Ann Jensen

Ann Jensen ’63 has been writing professionally for a number of years. Her latest book, Leonard Calvert and the Maryland Adventure, appeared in 1998. The book, written for young adults, focuses on the life of Calvert, who was the son of the first Lord Baltimore and served as Maryland’s first governor (1633–47). Jensen’s previous books include Chesapeake Bay Schooners (with Quentin Snediker), Anne Arundel County: Still Revolutionary, and The World Turned Upside Down: Children of 1776 (with Gayle Travis-Keene). The World Turned Upside Down, now used in schools throughout Maryland, is about members of Jensen’s family who lived in Annapolis, Maryland, during the Revolutionary War. Jensen still lives in the same house, which has been in her family since 1771.

Leonard Calvert and the Maryland Adventure came about through Jensen’s research, during which she found an interesting footnote about Calvert’s early days. Apparently, one of his schoolmates (in England) had referred to him as "a dunce and a blockhead." Jensen thought, "My goodness, this was our first governor!" This book is the story of the difficulties Calvert faced in setting up the new colony. He had no problems with American Indians, but dealing with the good people of Virginia was quite another matter, especially when it came to a land dispute involving Kent Island and Virginia’s William Claiborne, a trader who had established a post on the island and claimed it for Virginia. Calvert prevailed, and the island became a part of Maryland. Incidentally, the schoolmate who had referred to Calvert in such disparaging terms later ate his words when he saw how well Calvert had done as Maryland’s governor.

Jensen was once a full-time staff writer for Annapolitan magazine and has also contributed to American Heritage and Maryland magazines.

"I’m very interested in Annapolis, Anne Arundel County, and Maryland history," said Jensen. "It’s overlooked so many times. When I’ve done historical research, I’ve looked in general history books, and they never mention Maryland. It really bothered me."

Jensen has written yet another book, The History of the Colonial Players, which was published at the end of 1998 and focuses on a community theater group in Annapolis. She is now at work on a new book about Maryland’s horses.

Tom E. Jones

Tom E. Jones ’74 is the author of Breakaway Management: Overcoming Dysfunction in the Workplace, published in 1996. The book, which is the result of Jones’s more than 30 years as a business consultant, has a three-pronged purpose: to reinforce functional behaviors, to end dysfunctional practices, and to help those who are stuck in the middle make the right choices.

"Dysfunctional behavior is characterized by unstable relationships, harmful habits, poor organization, lack of confidence, and the inability to make good choices," writes Jones. "While such behavior is not new to the workplace, it is becoming more commonplace and thus increasingly difficult to handle." To Jones, many contemporary business-book authors make the mistake of assuming that the companies they’re addressing are functional; hence, the advice proffered in those books often misses the mark. "The underlying problem is managerial," he claims, "but the solution lies outside the scope of mainstream methods."

Jones is the founder of WORx, a management consulting firm based in Fresno, California. He is a specialist in organizational development who has worked with private businesses (including several Fortune 500 companies), public agencies, health care organizations, and educational institutions to better manage change. Jones works with differing personalities in complex situations, addressing such issues as transition management, strategic planning, leadership development, communications, decision making, goal setting, conflict resolution, problem solving, team building, and process improvement. He is a professional platform speaker who presents keynote addresses, lectures, and motivational speeches at conferences, conventions, and professional associations throughout the country. He also has a lengthy list of radio interviews and television appearances to his credit.

Jones is currently collaborating with author Ted Gaebler on Joining Forces: Bridging the Gap between Business and Government, a sequel to Gaebler’s 1992 book, Reinventing Government.

In January, Jones added If It’s Broken, You Can Fix It to the "Overcoming Dysfunction in the Workplace" series. More information about Jones’s books and WORx, his consulting firm, can be found at pma-online.org/list/2787.html.

Donna Leon

Donna Leon, a European Division faculty member, has become a best-selling author in several European countries. Leon’s gripping crime stories take place in Venice, Italy. Her novels, which were published between 1991 and 1998 and have been translated into French, Spanish, Japanese, Finnish, and Norwegian, include Death at La Fenice, The Anonymous Venetian, A Venetian Reckoning, Dressed for Death, Death in a Strange Country, The Death of Faith, Acqua Alta, Death and Judgment, and, most recently, Quietly in Their Sleep.

Leon was born in New Jersey but has lived overseas since 1966. She has spent the last 15 years in Venice, teaching English courses for UMUC at Vicenza and Aviano, and has recently added a seminar called "Writing the Mystery Novel" in which students produce a plot synopsis and the first 50 pages of a projected mystery novel. Before joining UMUC, Leon taught in Iran, Switzerland, China, and Saudi Arabia.

The origin of the books is something of a fluke, Leon says. She was in the dressing room of the opera house in Venice, where a Sicilian friend of hers was conducting. He started speaking badly of a German conductor that he disliked.

"We started jokingly thinking of ways to kill him," Leon says. "I went home that night and thought about what a great idea that would be for a murder mystery. The whole thing started as a joke and it continues to be the biggest joke. It’s not something that I will ever be able to take seriously."

Leon finished the book within six months but then, she said, it "sat in a drawer" for a year and a half, until a friend nagged her to send it to a writing contest in Japan. "I did and it won," she says, "so the whole thing started on this absolutely absurd note."

Leon has signed with a German production company that hopes to turn her books into a television series. Although she appreciates the producers’ interest, she is uncertain if she wants to be involved in the process, fully aware that what is on television is often a far cry from the written version.

"It’s all very flattering," she says, "but I’m not sure if it’s a very good idea. I may have to say no [to having a hand in the scriptwriting] because I don’t go to movies and I’ve never owned a television, so I couldn’t help much."

In spite of her blossoming writing career, Leon hopes to continue teaching for UMUC as long as she can. "I would like for there always to be time for Maryland," she says. "Maryland has been very good to me. I’ve enjoyed teaching and I like the students more than any students I’ve ever taught."

Leon’s books have made the best-selling lists of many online booksellers, including www.amazon.com and www.barnesandnoble.com; capsule and reader reviews of some of her books appear on these sites.

Ann Mohin

Ann Mohin ’76 saw her first book, The Farm She Was, published in 1998. It is the story of 90-year-old Irene Leahy, who has devoted her entire life to one parcel of land in upstate New York. "Reeni," who was left to run her family’s sheep farm at the age of 17 following her father’s early death, is not about to leave her property simply because she’s grown old. As a young woman, she had taken to farm life with a vengeance and learned to breed prize rams. Fierce, capable, and independent, she was a force to be reckoned with as a farmer. Now, in her old age, friends want her to sell her land and move into a nursing home. In her journals, Irene responds by chronicling the details of her long, laborious life, from the rigors of lambing to the rhythms of the changing seasons.

Mohin, who received a B.A. from UMUC with a specialization in Radio, Television, and Film, has contributed poetry and short stories to literary magazines—her first was published when she was in the third grade—and has also written a number of travel articles and essays. A native of Baltimore, she and her husband moved from the Washington, D.C., area (where she edited in-house trade publications) to 200 acres in McDonough, a small town in upstate New York. They renovated an 1845 farmhouse and raised sheep until 1993, when her husband Bill took a consulting job that sent them to England, France, Italy, Holland, Malaysia, Singapore, Mexico, Canada, and all over the United States. Selling the livestock left her with time to concentrate on writing The Farm She Was.

"No agent would accept the book," she says. "It was, they told me, not commercially viable. I queried over 50 agents before searching for a publisher on my own." However, her perseverance clearly was warranted—besides appearing on several top-10 bestseller lists, the book is now also being made into a film and has been selected as the New York Times Book Review’s "Notable Book of 1998."

"We are back on the farm full-time now," says Mohin, "planning to get more sheep, some cows, horses, and chickens. We raise most of our own food and love our three dogs and cat. The 1845 post-and-beam farmhouse is fairly accurately described in the book, along with this area of upstate New York. At the moment we’re repairing one of the old barns."

Mohin has completed a second book, Tractorland, which is set in the same region of upstate New York. "Three or four more novels are lined up in my head," she says, "each demanding to be set loose."

An interview with Mohin can be read at www.prairieden.com/links/women.html (click on Mohin’s name in the alphabetical list provided).

Michael J. Varhola

Michael J. Varhola, an editor/writer in UMUC’s Office of Publications and editor-in-chief of The Achiever, is co-author of The Writer’s Complete Fantasy Reference, published in 1998, and author of Everyday Life During the Civil War: A Guide for Writers, Students and Historians, being published in 1999.

The Writer’s Complete Fantasy Reference offers would-be fantasy writers the facts they need to create "believable" fantasy. Each chapter focuses on creating a different facet of a believable fantasy world, including the anatomy of a castle; traditional and alternative fantasy cultures and societies; medieval classes and livelihoods; law and justice during the Middle Ages; medieval clothing; and arms, armor, and armies.

Everyday Life During the Civil War has been written as a guide to how soldiers and civilians alike lived day-to-day during the War Between the States.

"For more than 130 years, the Civil War has captivated the interest of people in the United States," Varhola says in explaining his motivation for writing the book. "One reason for this is the proximity of the war’s events to the everyday lives of so many of us."

"The greatest, most destructive war ever seen in North America was fought out on ground many Americans walk across every single day," he says. "People in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Washington, D.C., drive to work and the store on the same roads massive armies marched along more than 130 years ago. Boaters cruise the same inland waterways, coasts, and rivers that U.S. Navy ships guarded, that desperate blockade runners plied by night, and that armored gunboats patrolled. Inhabitants of the Mississippi River Valley live within hours of the savage raids and battles of the war in the West. Citizens of cities like Baltimore, Atlanta, and New Orleans live in areas that were under military occupation. This nearness helps explain why the Civil War is such a popular and persistent subject for novels, short stories, screenplays, stage plays, games, and many other media."

Before coming to UMUC, Varhola worked as a freelance writer, editor, and publisher for several years. As a senior editor, he has helped found or run several publications, including Living History and Renaissance magazines and SKIRMISHER! online gaming magazine. As a journalist, he writes news and feature articles on many subjects, especially those involving world cultures, military history, and the Middle East. A U.S. Army veteran, Varhola served with the 1st Infantry Division in Stuttgart, Germany, during the Cold War, and in the 3rd Armored Division during Desert Storm.

Varhola’s comments on his fantasy guide can be found at www.skirmisher.com; information about his Civil War book can be found at www.LivingHistoryOnline.com.

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