Pump Up Your Book Chats with T.H.E. Hill: ‘Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary’

T.H.E. Hill (center left), the author of Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary, served with the U.S. Army Security Agency at Field Station Berlin in the mid-1970s, after a tour at Herzo Base in the late 1960s. He is a three-time graduate of the Defense Language Institute (DLIWC) in Monterey, California, the alumni of which are called “Monterey Marys”. The Army taught him to speak Russian, Polish, and Czech; three tours in Germany taught him to speak German, and his wife taught him to speak Dutch. He has been a writer his entire adult life, but now retired from Federal Service, he writes what he wants, instead of the things that others tasked him to write while he was still working.

You can learn more about T.H.E. Hill and his books at: www.VoicesUnderBerlin.com

Thank you for this interview, Tom.  Do you remember writing stories as a child or did the writing bug come later?  Do you remember your first published piece?

No, I didn’t write stories as a child. I started writing when I was in the Army, and I’ve written ever since. Somebody sat me down in front of a stack of files, said “read all this stuff, and then write me a report about it.” They apparently liked what I was doing, because they kept asking me to write reports. So I wrote more and more and more reports, and discovered that it was addictive. I’ve been writing since I was about 20, which is longer ago than I care to think about some days. During the time that I was being paid to write on a daily basis, the clarity of your prose and the correctness of your analysis were the gauges by which a writer’s product was judged.

I would ask that those who look askance at novelists with this kind of writing background to recall that Hemingway was a journalist, who started out writing for his high school newspaper, became a cub reporter for the Kansas City Star, later was a correspondent for the Toronto Star, then wrote dispatches from the Spanish Civil War and covered World War II. Mark Twain worked as a journalist for twenty years before he wrote his first novel. Shelley Fisher Fishkin’s From Fact to Fiction: Journalism & Imaginative Writing in America (1985) provides an exhaustive account of the impact that journalism has had on American literature.

The fiction writing bug came later. I wanted to write something a bit different than I normally did, and turned to fairy tales. The first story that I ever published was a tale about a sorcerer’s apprentice who couldn’t understand computers. He could recite endless incantations in Latin, Greek and Arabic, but he couldn’t remember the keyboard short-cuts on the computer that ran the guided tour to his wizard’s haunted castle. No matter what he did, the computer just “went nuts.” The wizard didn’t want to get rid of his apprentice, because apprentices who can read Greek and Latin don’t grow on trees, so the wizard installed a logging printer on the computer, and when the guests inevitably didn’t show up at the exit at the appointed time, he could go find out what they had been turned into and where, and go turn them back into guests. These kinds of surprises were just what the touring public had been looking for, so the wizard was making more money than the last time he had had an alchemist in the basement making gold. The story was pretty profitable for me too. I sold it to a computer magazine. That was my first published piece of fiction.

What do you consider as the most frustrating side of becoming a published author and what has been the most rewarding?

The most frustrating thing about getting published is all the rejection letters. You have to have your self-esteem screwed on pretty tight to put up with that. I had the typical series of rejection letters. The final count was 47. At first each one seems like a personal insult, but then you come to realize that we are living in a time when not just your books, but everybody’s books are finding it increasingly hard to get picked up by a publisher. The only people who get an agent or book contract on their first try have names like Madonna, Sharon Osbourne, or Sarah Palin, but aspiring authors cannot let that discourage them.

The agents and acquisition editors of today are not infallible. They are making acquisition decisions based on their own subjective tastes, and market analysis, which is another way of saying “a knowledge of what the market was buying yesterday”. To put a smile on your face, just imagine how the 12 publishers who rejected J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series must feel in the light of its run-away best-seller status, followed by a string of movies!

That was the core of the problem with getting Voices Under Berlin published. It is a different kind of spy novel. It is the kind of thing that has not been done before. One reviewer called it “A Spy Novel that Breaks all the Molds.” With a novel like that, publishers and agents who are looking for what was selling last week will not be interested.

The most rewarding thing has been proving all 47 of the agents and acquisition editors who rejected Voices Under Berlin wrong, not just by getting it into print, but also by winning a number of book awards. The current count is five, but there are prospects of more to come. Each one makes my smile broader and broader. And since one of those awards was at the Hollywood Book Festival, there is always the hope of a movie deal.

Are you married or single and how do you combine the writing life with home life?  Do you have support?

I am happily married. It will be 30 years at the end of May.

The agreement at home is that, if the door to my office is open, it is “safe” to come in and ask questions. If it is closed, then I only expect to be disturbed in the event of fire, flood, or earthquake.

Yes, my wife encourages my writing projects, and not only by providing moral support. She is my first-line editor. She is not a native speaker of English, but her written English is better than many a native speaker that I know. This is because she had to learn all the spelling and grammar rules, which is something that not all native speakers do when they go through school. When she questions a phrase, or the choice of a word, there is always the slim possibility that I am using a construction, or some vocabulary that is not known to her, but that is not often the case. If she says “I don’t understand,” then I know that I need to go look up the word to make sure that I used it correctly, or to reedit the sentence to make sure that it is as clear as it can be. She won’t let me get away with anything, and that’s good.

What do you like to do for fun when you’re not writing?  Where do you like to vacation?  Can you tell us briefly about this?

There are two things that I like to do for fun when I’m not writing. The first is to walk. When we retired, we selected a house within walking distance of the campus of Indiana University. I walk into campus every day, if for nothing else, to pick up a copy of the Indiana Daily Student to see what is happening on campus and what topics are engaging the student mind. Just walking around on campus reminds you of what it was like to be that age, and helps keep you young at heart. It’s a great tonic.

The second is to watch movies. I’m a classic movie buff. We just got through watching The Big Street (1942). It is based on a story by Damon Runyon, the man who also gave us Guys and Dolls (1955). Both of these movies have a character named “Nicely-Nicely Johnson,” played in The Big Street by Eugene Pallette, and in Guys and Dolls by Stubby Kaye. The Big Street stars Lucille Ball in what is undoubtedly her most dramatic role, a major change of pace for those who are only familiar with her work from the I Love Lucy TV series. Lucy was a real femme fatale in the 1940s, before I Love Lucy. The Big Street also stars a very young Henry Fonda, who gives a sterling portrayal of Runyon’s Augustus ‘Little Pinks’ Pinkerton, II, the best busboy in the world, and Lucy’s guardian angel who is hopelessly in love with her character, Gloria Lyons.

Even if I had all the money I wanted, the first place on my vacation list would be Disneyworld in the winter when the crowds are at their lowest. I would stay at the Polynesian Resort Hotel, and take the monorail to the Magic Kingdom, where I can indulge the kid who never grew up in me with the wonder and magic of the happiest place on earth. It’s like Frank Sinatra sings, “For as rich as you are, it is better by far to be young at heart.”

If you could be anywhere in the world for one hour right now, where would that place be and why?

Berlin, in the Abteilung Südsee, in the Dahlem Museum, where the Oceanic art and artifacts exhibits are. I spent a lot of very pleasant time there. I’d be satisfied with an hour visit there. You need more time to visit Disneyworld.

Who is your biggest fan?

That’s a toss-up. I’m not sure if it is my wife or our daughter.

Where’s your favorite place to write at home?

My favorite place to write is my office. It is a quiet and cozy small room, at the back of the house. Two of the walls are lined with books, floor to ceiling. The other two walls are lined with South-Sea Island masks, a taste that I picked up during my tour in Berlin. It’s not for nothing that Kevin and Gabbie meet in the Dahlem Museum in Voices Under Berlin. Like I said, some very pleasant memories from the Oceanic art and artifacts exhibits there.

Do you have any pets?

Only a six-foot, three-and-one-half-inch tall rabbit named “Harvey”. He would like to say “Hello!” to Elwood P. Dowd, if Mr. Dowd happens to be one of your readers. ;-)

Tell us a secret no one else knows.

If I told you, I’d have to shoot you. That’s the cliché that most Secret Cold War veterans use when their children ask “What did you do in the Cold War?”. One of the reasons that I wrote Voices Under Berlin, is because I wanted to give them something else to say. I wanted Secret Cold War vets to be able to answer their children and grandchildren with: “I can’t tell you exactly, but why don’t you read Voices Under Berlin?” A number of secret Cold War veterans have done just that.

Voices Under Berlin may not be exactly the story that each and every one of the countless veterans of the Secret Cold War would like to tell, but it is close enough so that people who fought it in places other than Berlin say that they felt right at home while reading it. This is, perhaps, best illustrated by a post on the Military.com Discussion Boards, in which a soldier who is currently fighting the Secret War in the mid-East said “I thought it was hilarious how some of the SIGINT/linguist jokes and eccentricities have virtually remained unchanged in sixty years . . . I can assure you the same situations are being played out in Iraq and Afghanistan as I type this. :-) I encourage anyone currently in SIGINT to read up on this stuff. It will make you smile a bit knowing that people have been going through the same crap you did as a SIGINTer for the past 60 years!”

What’s on your to-do list today?

It is a very long and eclectic list. I will just give you the highlights.

• Finish this interview

• Work on my current novel project: The Day Before the Wall: Berlin August 1961. The plot is based on a “legend” that was still told on mids in Berlin when I was there in the Army in the mid-1970s. My story relates what happens to a young American sergeant in Military Intelligence who has a piece of information that the East Germans are prepared to kill for. He knows that construction of the Berlin Wall will begin at midnight on August the 13th, and that orders have been given to the East German engineer troops who will be building the wall to pull back if the Americans take an aggressive stance to stop construction. The Stasi, the East German secret police, are after him, but so are the West-Berlin municipal police and the U.S. Army MPs, because the Stasi have framed him for the murder of his postmistress. It’s August the 12th, and the clock is running almost as fast as my hero. The key question of the novel is: even if he is lucky enough to make it back across the border, will anybody in the West believe what he has to say and take action on it before it is too late? History says that he either didn’t make it, or they didn’t believe him. I’m not going to spoil the surprise of the ending by telling you now. You’ll have to buy a copy when it’s published to find out. It has turned out rather well, if I do say so myself.

• Do a custom T-shirt design for someone who served with the Army Security Agency in Berlin in the 1960s. You see, I am also a graphic artist. I have several shops at CafePress.com that specialize in these kinds of mementos. I invite your readers to take a look at my designs for Pre-Field-Station ASA in Berlin, Field Station Berlin, Field Station Herzo Base, Field Station Rothwesten, Field Station Augsburg, Field Station Bad Aibling, and ASA Baumholder. For the Twentieth Anniversary of the Fall of the Berlin Wall I created a sheet of Cinderella stamps entitled “Americans in Berlin” to commemorate the almost fifty years that American troops spent in Berlin in the cause of peace and freedom. I would be pleased if your readers took the time to stop by and take a look at my stamps.

• Bake pizza from scratch. I do a great seasoned whole-wheat crust.

• Plan next week’s menu. Did I mention that I can cook?

• Watch the next episode of the British comic drama about a general practitioner in Cornwall called Doc Martin, the hero of which has Asperger’s Syndrome, which makes him near and dear to my heart.

Now I’ve got a couple of fun questions for you.  If Tom Hanks, in the movie Cast Away, dug up a copy of your book, how would that help him find a way off the island?

“Dug up”!? Was that an intentional pun for a book about digging a tunnel? Perhaps a copy of Voices Under Berlin would suggest to him that he could dig a tunnel to the main land. Berlin was, after all, and “Island of Freedom” located 110 miles inside the Soviet Zone of occupied East Germany. And like Hanks would have trying to dig an undersea tunnel, the Berlin tunnel rats had trouble with ground water seepage. Unfortunately, I don’t think that Hanks would be able to get pumps to keep his tunnel dry the same way that the tunnel rats did in Berlin. They traded four bottles of whiskey and eight cartons of cigarettes for the pumps. In the first place, Tom Hanks didn’t have any booze or cigarettes to trade, and in the second, there was no one to trade with on his island. So even if the idea suggested itself to him, I don’t think he could have actually carried it out.

You have a chance to appear on the hit talent show for authors, American Book Idol, with judges Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson, Kara Dioguardi and the newest addition, Ellen DeGeneres, to determine whether your book will make it to Hollywood and become a big screenplay where you’d make millions of dollars.  What would impress them more – your book cover, an excerpt or your author photo – and why?

While I did the cover design, and am suitably proud of it, like the saying goes: “You should never judge a book by its cover.” My author photo falls in the same category. There is more going on in the little gray cells behind my eyes than can be captured in a photo. No, the thing that will put Voices Under Berlin on the Silver Screen will be the excerpt. That is the proof of the pudding for any book: what’s behind the cover. Awards made based on the other two indicators are just so much flummery.

You just got word that your book has received the 2010 New York Times Bestselling Book Award and you have to attend the ceremony to give an acceptance speech.  Anyone who’s anyone will be there and it’s your shot for stardom.  What would you say and who would you thank?

Here’s the short speech I would deliver:

This is indeed a great honor. I am overwhelmed by it, but I would, nevertheless, like to express my thanks in this great public forum to the people who helped make it possible, because an achievement like this is unthinkable for a single individual alone.

First, I would like to thank all the readers who bought a copy of Voices Under Berlin, and propelled it to the top of the 2010 New York Times bestseller list. I am pleased and honored that you liked Voices Under Berlin enough to spend your hard-earned money on it in these difficult economic times.

Next, I would like to thank the people to whom the book is dedicated: the countless men and women, not just in Berlin, but around the world, who for over forty years fought the secret Cold War for one tour and then went home. Through their combined sacrifice of four years of each of their lives during this period they kept the Cold War from turning hot. I thank you all for your service to your country. This book is for you.

And last, but not least, I would like to repeat the names of the people who are mentioned in the acknowledgements to Voices Under Berlin. They have all, each in their own way, contributed to making this a better work of literature, but since I did not always take their advice, any shortcomings that it may still have remain those of my own invention.

Thanks to Kevin’s daughter; to Gary E. Ahern, an Army Security Agency Berlin veteran from the 1970s; to Jerry, an USAFSS veteran of almost everywhere; to Wolf, a veteran of two tours in Berlin; to James W. Dunning, a veteran of the real army in Germany in the 1970s; to Ray Wenzel, who experienced many of the same pranks in the Air Force Security Service; to Bruce Ford, an ASA German linguist at Field Station Berlin in the 1960s, and currently the webmaster of the Field Station Berlin Veterans Group website; and to Frank P. Galiani, the author of Cello Music; for reading drafts of the novel and making valuable comments on them.

Thanks also to all the members of the Writer’s On-line Workshops January 2007 iteration of the Writing the Novel Proposal course, who took the time to read and comment on the beginning of this novel: AnnNoE, Besu, Della, Edeana, Forda, Hannah, James, Jamie, Jay, Mo, and last, but hardly least, Instructor Alice.

Each of you should be proud of your contribution to this success.

I understand that you are touring with Pump Up Your Book Promotion in April via a Virtual Book Tour.  Can you tell us all why you chose a virtual book tour to promote your book online?

More and more people are getting the information they need to decide which books to buy online, while more and more traditional media outlets are cutting the number of book reviews and the amount of literary coverage that they carry. Recommendations from book bloggers, supplemented with reviews by ordinary readers on Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.com, GoodReads.com or Shelfari.com are taking the place of the traditional-media literary arbiters who used to be able to propel a book to bestsellerdom, or dash its author’s hopes with a single review. Diversity is king in the marketplace for books in the twenty-first century, due to the technological advances that have made it economically feasible to produce books for niche audiences, but this economic feasibility only works if these books are distributed online. Authors and publishers who ignore this paradigm shift in the publishing industry do so at their peril, because they are ignoring a growing segment of their potential market, which, by some estimates, accounts for 25-30% of the books sold each year in the USA. A Pump Up Your Book Virtual Book Tour will bring Voices Under Berlin to the attention of the multitude of people who buy books online every day. With the thousands of books being published each year in this new publishing climate, you have to work hard to make your book stand out from the pack. I believe firmly that F. Scott Fitzgerald’s oft quoted statement—”You don’t write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say”—applies to Voices Under Berlin, so by working with Pump Up Your Book via a Virtual Book Tour, I am trying to give Voices Under Berlin the best possible chance of reaching its audience. And by leaving the publicity heavy-lifting to them, I can spend more time writing.

Thank you for this interview, Tom. Good luck on your Virtual Book Tour!

You’re very welcome, Dorothy. Thank you for inviting me for the interview. I’ve got my fingers crossed for the Virtual Book Tour. It’s hard to type that way, but I want to give promoting Voices Under Berlin: The Tale of a Monterey Mary my best shot.

You can visit Tom’s official tour page here.

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