Shirley Novack – blending fact and fiction

My father and his 9 year old brother used to

live in the care of a grotto . When you write , you become part of your characters . They become part of you and their family . I mean , a lot of people want to write a book but they're afraid to sit down and start and my advice is to just do it .

We'll explore their childhood experiences of the arts , discuss how they came to the artistic practices they now love and consider the barriers they may have experienced between the two . We'll also explore what it is that people value and gain from their new found artistic pursuits and how their creative lives enrich their practical , necessary everyday lives .

This time I'm speaking with Shirley Novak , who loves the story and tells a few in this episode , from putting herself through college and selling sweets to Cindy Lauper to being questioned by the US Secret Service and having the bomb squad called on her .

You'll have to listen right to the end to hear them all , but it wasn't until her father died that she came across the story she wanted to actually write down . Hi , shirley , how are you Good ? Claire , how are you Very well ? Thank you , nice to see you again .

Thank you , and you , and to hear you Start by telling me how you have started to express yourself creatively .

So it's a wonderful feeling to be able to sit down and put down on paper just things that are going on in your head . It's bizarre as it may be .

From the time I think I was 10 years old , I always worked , either at babysitting or when I was old enough to get a real job . I worked after school , I worked weekends and I put myself through college because that's what I wanted and my parents weren't going to pay for it .

So when we were poor , we didn't have a lot of money in the house , so I put myself through school . I could only afford two years , but I got a degree in laboratory science in two years and ended up working for the pioneers in fetal surgery . We were the first people to operate on the unborn .

They really wanted somebody with a master's degree and I only had an associate's degree , but they said that my enthusiasm was so overwhelming that they had to hire me . And then they sent me to the University of Rochester where I took a crash

course and I became their hematologist and it was the most incredible job anyone could ever hope for . However , my parents kept telling me you'll never get it . You'll never get it , just meet a nice guy and get married . Yeah , but I got it .

I lived in Boston , I was brought up in Boston and at the time you had to decide when you were 14 years old whether you wanted to go to college or not , because if you were going to college , you couldn't take shorthand in typing . If you weren't going to go to college , you could .

You could take a business course , but you had to decide early on and with my parents saying , no , you're not going to go to college , I had to take the business course . So , having the business course , I didn't have enough math credits to go to a four year college . Anyway , I did not want to become a secretary and I happened to be a klutz .

And one day in the guidance office I knocked into a table and a brochure fell on the floor that Fisher College in Boston was offering a two year program in laboratory science . And because all the boys in my high school were in science courses , I had enough science credits to apply to this school and I got in and yeah , I couldn't live away from home .

I had to live at home and I wanted to live at school , but I couldn't .

We would give the fetus a disease , some kind of a problem , and then we would go in and repair it before they were born and then we would watch their growth , wow . And then we finally did it on a person no-transcript .

And a school opened in Boston called the Breiman School and it was a paramedical training school for medical assistants and dental assistants . And because of my experience and background they hired me as a teacher . So I left the research group and I started teaching anatomy and physiology to the whole school and the medical assisting program .

And I think being a teacher was my first love , because my students were between 18 and 50 years old . You know they were children . I loved it , I loved it , and then I got pregnant so I made that part of the part of the syllabus Out of the course . I would bring in the photometer from my doctor's office and let the students hear the baby's heartbeat .

And I did that for a while . And then I had my third child and they called me from school and said if we create an evening school , will you teach ? And I did and I went back to teaching again . But having three kids , I just wanted to be home . But I loved , loved , loved teaching . Yeah , so I was lucky . I just kind of fell into these things .

I took a part-time job with them and I worked for them for three years until one day one of the disgruntled clients came in with a gun because they were they were cooking the books a little bit Right . So I quit . I said no , christ , christ , cry , kay , yeah , yeah . But I had a following .

So I said well , if I'm going to do this , I'm going to do it right . And I went back to school . I took one course , one course , a semester for nine years and I got my degree in design . But by the time I graduated I was already an established designer in Boston . So I did it for me to give me credibility to what I was doing .

We were strong people and the funny thing is is that my mother was clinically depressed in and out of institutions and I was sent to live with various relatives at times . Yet the three of us are so incredibly well adjusted and happy people and it's like amazing that it worked that way .

We talk about it because , you know , we always see the bright side of life , where my mother was just the opposite and she lived to 105 . Wow , I know , yeah , so I don't think there's anything .

Well , I can't try , I can't succeed at everything , but I think that as long as there's a breath in your body , there's nothing that you can't do if you put your mind to it and you want to do it .

And there is a marketplace inside this resort where there were 24 little boutiques and they were only open from Memorial Day to Labor Day , but there was no candy store . Now , how do you have a marketplace with no candy store ? So I volunteered to open one the next summer , which meant I had to stay there , right , and my kids were guaranteed summer jobs .

They were the most popular kids there because they owned a candy store . Well , it turned out to be very successful and we had a celebrity clientele . I can't even made it over to David Letterman's show because Cindy Lauper was a neighbor . It turned out to be amazing and I did it for seven summers .

Then my kids were getting too old to spend the summers there and they had a life , so we gave it up .

Yeah , and it gave me a reason to be on Cape Cod for the summer . Yeah , I was in an unhappy marriage , so for me it was really great to be away . So , yeah , you know if it's not in front of you create it .

It turned out and we did it for about seven years . It was so pretty . No , oh , that's fun . It was really lovely and it helped make really good friends , because when you're in a show together and you have to do stupid things , you very quickly get much closer and you get to know people . When you have to be stupid together or make mistakes .

Which is the most important part , I think , of any business is listening to what the client wants , instead of you telling them what they should be doing .

It was amazing how many of my clients came from people that were disenchanted with their previous designers , because their designers would come in and say this is what we're going to do , not what would you like . In fact , I'm really retired from design right now , but I kept three clients .

Each one of them has been with me over 20 years , consistently in various forms , and I don't do aggravation anymore . So if somebody calls me and says you're taking on new clients , I just say I'm only those who don't aggravate me . But I don't . I'm not taking .

I've been doing it too long and it can be a demanding business , but the clients that I did keep they're like family and it's fun to be with them and they allow me to create . They just tell me to do what I want . They tell me to do what I want because they've been with them so long . I know what they want .

So I'm keeping my hand in it a bit , but writing is my top priority right now .

Well , my father died suddenly in 1984 , so it was a long time ago and after he passed away , a lot of stories came out about his youth that I never knew and they were pretty tragic and I felt there was a story there and I wanted to tell it . I had a different relationship with my father than my brothers did .

Like my brothers read my book and they say this isn't the dad I knew . I was the youngest , I was a girl and I was the light of his life . He treated me differently , he adored me and then all of a sudden he dropped dead one day and then I found out this horrible story about his childhood and I felt it needed to be told and I just started to write .

I did a little bit of research

. I went to Ellis Island and I found his papers there . I found the ship he had come in on and all this other information . My brother , being a historian , insisted that if you're going to write a book , it has to be nonfiction and I said well , my mind doesn't work that way . I want it to be a bestseller . I want people to want to read it .

You know , really not just historians . So the beginning of the book is true and from quarter of the way in to the end is fiction . But my dad , who was born in 1904 , koretz , poland , had a father who was an absolute evil tyrant . I got to know him . I could not exaggerate his meanness . It was terrible .

So when my dad was 12 years old , his sweet mother died and she was just a wonderful person , and his father said I'm going to go to America and I will send for you boys . My father was 12 , his brother was nine and in the meantime you're going to be living at a certain place .

Well , the place was a brothel and he , at 12 years old and nine years old , my father and his nine-year-old brother went to live in the care of a brothel . He was there for three years before his father sent for him and by the time his father sent for him he had been raped by a Polish soldier . So this is all true .

Then he comes to America , he's just turning 16 years old , and his father says you're old enough to get out and be on your own . So here's my father 16 years old , can't speak a word of English and he's tossed out on his own .

In a country that he doesn't know , can't speak English , and fortunately at that time there were so many immigrants coming over and they all helped each other and my father rose above it . This was a story I wanted to tell . So what do I do from here ?

Now he's in America , so I brought the Polish soldier back into my father's life in America , and then there's revenge and there's kidnapping , and there's murder and mayhem . There's love found and love lost . It's got everything , yeah .

And then I had to learn what a query letter was and I sent out one query letter and I sent my manuscript to one publishing house , which was a hybrid publishing house , and they took it right away . And what hybrid publishing is ?

You put up a certain amount of money up front , which I considered to be very small , and then they do everything , from soup to nuts , they do the whole entire project , like any publisher would do , and then at the end they don't take any money until you've made back your initial investment .

And I contacted them and they took the manuscript and they said we'll get back to you in a few weeks . And they called me in three days and said we'd like to sign you . And that's how easy it was for me . Like it , just it just . I picked the right place at the right time and they did it . And because of the pandemic , the supply chain was very slow .

It was supposed to come out in November of 21 and it didn't come out until , like March , february , march of 22 .

But when you write , you become part of your characters , they become part of you and their family . I mean , a lot of people want to write a book , but they're afraid to sit down and start and my advice is to just do it , and it doesn't matter whether it's good , bad or otherwise . Be honest . Just be honest in it and write for you , write for yourself .

It's your truth , and if you write for yourself , it can't help . But being good , and if you have a publisher , they'll take care of the editing and the . Although I will say that I need it , I'm very proud of the fact I need a very little editing .

I love English , I love the language , I love the word , and then I started to do podcasting not guesting on podcasts and one of the people that was the host called me and said I just finished your book . I have a really good friend who's a publisher . Can I give him your information ?

And he did , and this person called me the next day and said I understand you're writing another book . We might be interested in publishing it . So I've been sending his editor chapters as I'm going through it and she's can't wait for the next chapter to come out . That's what she tells me .

But if the FBI ever takes over my computer , they're going to see all my research into human trafficking and , oh yeah , your search history , oh dear .

But it's certainly something that I always say as well as having started the podcast , it's the wonderful people that I've met , whether as guests or whether I'm out and about promoting it and networking stuff , and how much I really enjoy and benefit from meeting lots of people .

And the other thing that I found out about myself , not that many years ago , is that I have something called synesthesia , and that's when sensors in your brain are crossed so you may experience sensory of two entirely different things at the same time , like for me . Shapes , colors and numbers all come together as one .

So let's say , number six is soft , number six is blue to me , and that's what . When I see number six , I see it blue . When I see it round , and by the same token , seven would be sharp . Seven is green , and that's what I see . When I see number seven , I see a very sharp corners and green what number is orange ? aren't .

. What kind of plans or aspirations do you have for the future ? Near far .

I would like it to get more attention , because the marketing is where the publishing company did fall short . Unless you really get out there and push it yourself , it ain't going to happen , hopefully with my second book .

If this publishing company does actually publish the book , then it's a really good , legitimate publisher who will take over the entire thing and push it to be marketed .

But my father's was a little more unusual because of the brothel experience . But everyone has some kind of a story and what's really interesting is that my father became a furniture maker and some of the people that he came over with on his boat to Boston became involved in the textile industry . So they all helped each other , they all helped each other .

They were there for each other till the day they died , actually , and a couple of the people became extremely successful textile manufacturers that are known all over the world , and they were my father's friends . My father stayed poor , but he stayed very humble and talented and he always undersold himself .

I grew up in an area where everybody was the same , so we didn't know . We didn't know we were poor . We just knew that if we wanted a good time we had to create it . The people in my neighborhood grew up to either be hardened criminals or very , very successful . There was nothing in the middle . It was either in prison or successful .

Yeah , fortunately no one in my family became a criminal . Good , so although I have been accused of being a terrorist a couple of times , what , yes , why ? I had to go pick up a cocktail table . It was coming in on a plane at the airport in the cargo area , and I had no idea where the cargo area was .

So I finally get to the cargo area , the plane comes in , the table is not on the plane and the man says to me it's coming on the next plane . So I said , okay , I'll go over to the terminal and have dinner and come back . And as I'm leaving the cargo area , there's a whole motorcade going by Of limousines and secret service and the American flag .

And I say , well , I don't know where I am , I don't know how to get out of here , I'll just follow them . So now I'm in a van with tinted windows and suddenly they all stop and I'm at the end of a private runway . Air Force two is on the runway and I'm surrounded by secret service and state troopers .

I'm trying to tell them let me leave , I'm leaving and I go to back up and I can't . I can't back up . My car stalls Now they won't talk to me . They're calling in my license plate , but no one will talk to me . I can't leave . So the plane takes off and they all go into a building and I'm stuck Right . No , my car backs up .

So I pulled into the service station at the airport and the man checks out my car top to bottom , and I happen to have a phone at the time hardwired into my car .

And the man says to me I bet your phones did and it was Because the secret service had a device where if you're in motion they can't stop you , but if you're in a stop position they can prevent you from leaving . And that's what they did . Oh , no . So I came home that night . Oh , and the table was not on the next plane .

So I come home that night and I go , wow , what a story I've got . You know it's like , hey , I'll do anything for a story . You know , if you get a good story , I didn't have the brains to be frightened , I just wanted a good story .

And then I got stopped at the airport again for they thought I had a bomb in my bag and I do . I look like a terrorist .

Well , my website is really my business website , but it's surely at snovaknovaccom , so it's novacknndassociatescom or sobuno-s-o-b-o-n-o-e , at aolcom , on LinkedIn , facebook , amazon books , but I'm pretty visible around . Brilliant , I'm happy to hear from people all the time .

Lovely , brilliant , yes , and I'm so happy to meet you and talk to you , even though it took a while .

And finally , don't forget to check out creativityfoundcouk , the website connecting adults who want to find a creative outlet with the artists and crafters who can help them tap into their creativity .