Local author's first book mixes baseball with crime
and time travel
Local author Jeff Houlahan's first book, Long Train Home, came out this spring. The book mixes elements of baseball, time travel and crime.
Emma McPhee | Telegraph-Journal SAINT JOHN
During the work week, Jeff Houlahan is an ecologist and conservation biologist at the and conservation biologist at the University of New Brunswick. On Saturday mornings, he's an author of fiction.
Now, with about 12 manuscripts to his name, his first book Long Train Home is out, published by Level Best Books.
The genre-melding Long Train Home follows Ryan Spencer, a multi-talented rookie signed to the Montreal Expos with one condition: he won't set foot on an airplane, opting instead to travel to games by train.
But this isn't your straight-forward baseball story. Calling back to the mythos of the likes of Field of Dreams, Long Train Home unrolls into a time travel journey as Spencer rides the rails, travelling back in time to solve a decades- spanning murder mystery, all the
while grappling with the struggles he faces with his team in the present as they try to bring the Expos to the World Series.
Why the focus on baseball? For Houlahan, that's a simple answer: "I'm a big baseball fan."
"I guess I find the mythology of baseball kind of a bigger thing than most sports," he says. "I'm generally a sports fan, but there's this kind of mythology to baseball, you know? I think of movies like Field of Dreams and The Natural, there's a bit of a mystical thing to it. I just see it as kind of having this mythology that I really love."
Originally, Houlahan wanted to write a book about baseball and time travel. He built the crime element in once he realized the plot needed more tension.
"At this point, that is certainly the book for me, it's got all three of those things, but it could have been a book without the crime part," he said.
Houlahan's next book, coming out next spring as part of a three book deal with Level Best Books, is also a crime fiction, something Houlahan describes as fitting into the noir genre. He doesn't have plans to write any more crime fiction in the near future, though.
"I've probably got 12 manuscripts sitting electronically on my computer," he said. "They're very different."
Listing off a few of these manuscripts, Houlahan described books that fit into historical fiction, literary fiction and dystopian fiction. He even has a book set in Saint John 100 years ago.
Writing fiction is a relatively new undertaking for Houlahan, something he started about 12 years ago. Always a reader, Houlahan said he used to often wonder if he could be a writer, but it always seemed like this distant thing other people did. Although he would dabble, writing a short story here and there, it never really stuck.
"At some point about 12 years ago, or 13 years ago, I went, 'Look, you're either doing this or you're not at this point. Don't think you've got more time to decide to do this.' And so I just decided I'm getting up every morning, every Saturday morning I'm going to write for four hours."
The habit stuck. For the past 12 years Houlahan has gotten up every Saturday and writes for four hours. Able to put 2,000 words to page per week using this method, Houlahan will have a 100,000-word manuscript by the end of each year.
"Once I started, it just became this little island of time that I just love so much," Houlahan said. "Even when I was crazy busy at work, I would never let this go. And often when I was at my busiest, it felt like a refuge where I could go here and be in someone else's life for four or five hours."
As for how fiction writing differs from academic writing, Houlahan described it as "exercising different muscles."
"Writing scientifically, I had to learn how to be concise, and how to really make my arguments clearly," he said. "With fiction, there's still those elements of being concise and being clear. But you're also bringing in this creative part that is both creative with the use of words, and you're hoping maybe you can have a little poetry in what you're writing."
Houlahan is currently shopping his other manuscripts around to other publishers. He has no plans to stop writing.
"I've just been doing that now for 12 years, and it's just this little piece of my life that I love."
Long Train Home was published on March 29. A book launch celebrating its publication occurred Friday evening at Indigo East Point.
Published April 2022
Emma McPhee | Telegraph-Journal SAINT JOHN
During the work week, Jeff Houlahan is an ecologist and conservation biologist at the and conservation biologist at the University of New Brunswick. On Saturday mornings, he's an author of fiction.
Now, with about 12 manuscripts to his name, his first book Long Train Home is out, published by Level Best Books.
The genre-melding Long Train Home follows Ryan Spencer, a multi-talented rookie signed to the Montreal Expos with one condition: he won't set foot on an airplane, opting instead to travel to games by train.
But this isn't your straight-forward baseball story. Calling back to the mythos of the likes of Field of Dreams, Long Train Home unrolls into a time travel journey as Spencer rides the rails, travelling back in time to solve a decades- spanning murder mystery, all the
while grappling with the struggles he faces with his team in the present as they try to bring the Expos to the World Series.
Why the focus on baseball? For Houlahan, that's a simple answer: "I'm a big baseball fan."
"I guess I find the mythology of baseball kind of a bigger thing than most sports," he says. "I'm generally a sports fan, but there's this kind of mythology to baseball, you know? I think of movies like Field of Dreams and The Natural, there's a bit of a mystical thing to it. I just see it as kind of having this mythology that I really love."
Originally, Houlahan wanted to write a book about baseball and time travel. He built the crime element in once he realized the plot needed more tension.
"At this point, that is certainly the book for me, it's got all three of those things, but it could have been a book without the crime part," he said.
Houlahan's next book, coming out next spring as part of a three book deal with Level Best Books, is also a crime fiction, something Houlahan describes as fitting into the noir genre. He doesn't have plans to write any more crime fiction in the near future, though.
"I've probably got 12 manuscripts sitting electronically on my computer," he said. "They're very different."
Listing off a few of these manuscripts, Houlahan described books that fit into historical fiction, literary fiction and dystopian fiction. He even has a book set in Saint John 100 years ago.
Writing fiction is a relatively new undertaking for Houlahan, something he started about 12 years ago. Always a reader, Houlahan said he used to often wonder if he could be a writer, but it always seemed like this distant thing other people did. Although he would dabble, writing a short story here and there, it never really stuck.
"At some point about 12 years ago, or 13 years ago, I went, 'Look, you're either doing this or you're not at this point. Don't think you've got more time to decide to do this.' And so I just decided I'm getting up every morning, every Saturday morning I'm going to write for four hours."
The habit stuck. For the past 12 years Houlahan has gotten up every Saturday and writes for four hours. Able to put 2,000 words to page per week using this method, Houlahan will have a 100,000-word manuscript by the end of each year.
"Once I started, it just became this little island of time that I just love so much," Houlahan said. "Even when I was crazy busy at work, I would never let this go. And often when I was at my busiest, it felt like a refuge where I could go here and be in someone else's life for four or five hours."
As for how fiction writing differs from academic writing, Houlahan described it as "exercising different muscles."
"Writing scientifically, I had to learn how to be concise, and how to really make my arguments clearly," he said. "With fiction, there's still those elements of being concise and being clear. But you're also bringing in this creative part that is both creative with the use of words, and you're hoping maybe you can have a little poetry in what you're writing."
Houlahan is currently shopping his other manuscripts around to other publishers. He has no plans to stop writing.
"I've just been doing that now for 12 years, and it's just this little piece of my life that I love."
Long Train Home was published on March 29. A book launch celebrating its publication occurred Friday evening at Indigo East Point.
Published April 2022
