By Shaya Rogers, Staff Reporter| Photo Courtesy Amazon.com
Disability Resource Center employee Wolfgang Michel said he spent eight years writing his newly published book, “Camp Anaconda,” and is proud to see it in print.
The book, available for purchase on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble, is a murder mystery filled with corruption and drug trafficking, he said.
“I’m proud of it, you know, that all this effort bares a little fruit so not all that time was wasted. I’m proud of it because I never thought that it would happen” he said.
This was Michel’s first attempt at writing a book, and even though English is his second language, he has always loved writing, and wanted a way to keep his mind active, he said.
“I heard that if you exercise your brain you may live a little longer than if you don’t exercise your brain. So, you know, this was one of the philosophies behind the book: to just keep my mind busy,” he said.
He reads often and his love for reading has been a constant inspiration in his efforts to produce a book, he said.
“I’m just a compulsive reader. One book’s finished and I grab the next one,” he said.
Reading many books throughout his life has helped him actualize his dream of writing one himself, he said. “It helped me and inspired me, after reading all those books. Why don’t I try myself, writing one,” he said.
Traveling all over the world and seeing many exotic places full of life and mystery has inspired his writing, he said.
“I have traveled extensively. I’ve been in all four corners of the planet and you know, there’s always something that sticks, that you can make a story out of,” he said.
His vivid imagination has been a great tool for coming up with plot lines and creating a complicated story that has many different angles, he said.
“I can compose a plot and make a big thing out of it, I can do it because I have the fantasy to go along with it,” he said.
Although he gets stuck with the occasional writer’s block, writing has been a fun and challenging experience for him, he said.
“It’s a lot of fun to come up with the plots that are involved in the story and then put this whole plot into words and make a good-sounding story out of it,” he said.
Michel still cannot believe that his book was published and is available for sale, he said.
“In a way, I’m still in a state of denial that it finally happened and I’m very happy that it happened. I’m really happy.”
