Finding a Different Path
An interview with author Karl von Loewe by his certified book coach Julie Artz.
Unraveling a family mystery can be such an intense process, both because you’re doing the work of meaning-making by unraveling your own backstory and because you’re often speaking truths that were intentionally not spoken in the past. And while that’s fascinating to storytellers, family histories also face challenges in terms of finding the right home in the competitive publishing landscape of narrative nonfiction. Being flexible and realistic about your story and its broader appeal can be difficult. But a book coach can help.
To celebrate the release of my client Karl von Loewe’s own family mystery, Lost Roots, we spoke about our journey together and about his publishing challenges, setbacks, and eventual success.
JULIE: Karl, you’ve had an incredibly long journey with this story. Not only did you have quite a family mystery to unravel over the years, but you spent quite a long time working toward publication as well. Can you tell us a little bit about how you came to realize you had a family mystery to investigate?
KARL: A cousin discovered a family photo album from my mother’s side of the family. He asked me about photos from my father’s side, and that reminded me of an old passport case I had; it was full of IDs, photos, letters, etc. As I sifted through the contents I realized that some things just didn’t fit with what I recall my father telling me as a child. There were German passports from 1923 and 1927, but other IDs indicated Polish ethnicity and nationality, and with a different surname.
JULIE: At what point did you decide that this needed to be a book?
KARL: I did the genealogical research in vital documents on microfilm and CDs, discovering my father’s birth surname and the names of his parents and siblings. Once I learned of a family reunion in Poland and reached out to the organizers, my inbox filled up as family members contacted me. A living first cousin in Poland and his daughter in the U.S., accelerated the pace and volume of information. The teasing trickle of the passport case became the firehose torrent of family memories. And the family reunion was quite an exciting and delightful experience.
JULIE: As a historian, you were uniquely positioned to write this story. But how was writing about your own family different from other types of historical research you’d done in the past?
KARL: My past research was in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, largely focused on law and the economy of eastern Europe and Russia. But I also taught the modern history of those areas at the college level. I had no idea at the time that modern Eastern Europe was where my father’s family came from. I travelled and studied in the Soviet Union, doing archival research. Writing about family was a much greater challenge in the sense that the historian’s usual detachment (and desired objectivity) flitted away from time to time. I was often staggered, even chilled by some of the information I found in family stories and public documents I discovered, especially from the era of World War II, even though I was very familiar with that time and place.
JULIE: When we connected in 2020, you’d already been querying for some time. Can you tell us about that part of the journey and why you decided to reach out to a book coach to help?
KARL: By the time I reached out to you, I had queried over 300 agents without much success. It eventually became apparent even to me (!) that I was in need of some substantial help. Since I am not an active academic nor a member of any writers’ group, up to that point my work had been read by only family members and friends.
JULIE: We spent quite a bit of time shoring up your proposal and working on the structure of the manuscript as a whole. But despite that hard work, querying still wasn’t yielding many results. Can you talk a little bit about the decision to shift from a Big-Five publisher to Atmosphere Press?
KARL: It was clear to agents that my book would not sell the requisite tens of thousands of copies that the Big-Five are looking for, and it wasn’t just because of my turgid prose. Polish history and politics don’t sell well. I really didn’t want to go the full-fledged self-publishing route or vanity presses. I had already reached out to some hybrid/indie presses when Julie suggested Atmosphere, where a colleague of hers had had a good experience. Although I was initially apprehensive and cautious about hybrid presses, I have been very pleased with Atmosphere’s editing and design.
JULIE: How did the research and writing of this book affect your extended family? I know it brought you in contact with some previously unknown relatives — what was that like?
KARL: It was quite extraordinary to meet extended family members, not only in Poland, but in the U.S. as well, and I have remained in touch with them. I continue to share with them discoveries I make with regard to our family. A close cousin in Chicago found and sent me letters his father had received from his mother in Germany from 1938 to 1972. Those letters helped to explain my parents’ behavior while I was young and my father in particular was coping with assisting family members in devastated Europe on both sides of the Iron Curtain. The correspondence revealed fresh perspectives with regard to life in post-war Germany.
JULIE: Now that Lost Roots is out in the world, what’s next for you?
KARL: I have finished a shorter piece (4600 words) that is looking for a home. It describes how the Metropolitan Building in Minneapolis, an iconic 1890 office building, was connected to and in turn connected families throughout the world even a half-century after it became a parking lot, an unnecessary sacrifice to urban renewal. There were thousands of families whose lives and stories intersected in the vertical village of a single building.
I have also begun a memoir which describes my experiences as a student in the Soviet Union during three research trips in the 1960s, from Leningrad to Tashkent and many places and people in-between.
JULIE: Congratulations on the release and best of luck with your new projects, Karl!
Learn more about Karl’s story on his Facebook page, YouTube channel, and website. You can purchase Lost Roots on Amazon.
Julie Artz (Author Accelerator certified book coach) spent her young life sneaking into wardrobes searching for Narnia. When people started thinking that was creepy, she had to find other ways to explore her passion for mystical adventures. Now she finds those long-sought doors to magical story worlds in her work as an author, developmental editor, and book coach. An active member of the writing community, she volunteers for SCBWI and Pitch Wars and is a member of EFA and AWP. Julie lives in an enchanted forest outside of Redmond, Washington, with her husband, two strong-willed teenagers, and a couple of naughty furry familiars.
Julie’s story “The Wending Way,” was published in December 2020 by Glimma Publishing in its anthology, Beyond the Latch and Lever. She can be found on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. For more stories about the ups and downs of the writer’s life, as well as tips on craft and creative inspiration, subscribe to her newsletter.
