Featured Interview With Alex Bugaeff
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born and raised in northern New Jersey at a time when you could ride your bike all over the territory, and I did. My father was a Russian and my mother was a Pilgrim. Their marriage lasted only long enough to have me. Then, my grandparents took us in and I found that the best way for me to get along was to fend for myself. I had my first job at eleven, delivering milk on a milk truck for a dollar a day.
I have gone from research to anti-poverty programs to university professor to business owner to software project manager and to writing in search of meaning. I have found it in the writing. I imagine my characters (contemporary and historical) being themselves in their surroundings. I see them moving; I hear them talking and I just let it out on the page.
My wife and I have been happily married for over 50 years. We have two children and two grandchildren, all of whom are successful as people and in their careers. I have a Bachelor’s (Political Science) and Master’s (Public Administration) from the University of California at Berkeley. I grow roses, play golf when I can and try to keep up with current events. We have lived in New Jersey, California, Florida, and now in Connecticut.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
• I didn’t read much until high school and didn’t write until college – I was too busy trying to stay away from the house for as long as possible each day.
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• I was in a hot rod club from the age of 13 and I read and reread every issue of Hot Rod magazine and as many other car publications as I could get my hands on. That was all the reading I cared about at the time.
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• In freshman English, my prof returned my first essay with a big F and covered in red. The one saving grace was his rule that I could rewrite it as many times as I wanted. While doing everything else, I kept rewriting it right to the end of the semester and it came back with an A. That seemed to do it, although until recently, I wrote mainly as a means to a business end.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Robert B. Parker comes first, believe it or not. I write early American history – all in dialogue. In my books a grandfather tells his grandchildren the history of the colonial period in a series of story times. The simplicity of Parker’s dialogue has taught me to pare down the conversation.
Milton Erickson helped me to understand better how human emotions work. I am after feelings, as much as the transmission of history. By the middle grades, grandchildren have started to turn their attention away from their grandparents, and parents, for that matter. I aim to provide the means by which grandparents and parents can strengthen the bonds.
David McCullough and Ron Chernow are historians who have modeled good story telling for me. They weave thoroughly researched events into tableaus that speak to the human spirit. And, they provide as neutral a treatment of the times as any, without trying to promote some agenda.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
I wrote American Amazons: Colonial Women Who Changed History because women achieved great things during the Colonial American period but weren’t being recognized. In researching my last book, Pilgrims To Patriots, I came upon stories of such women and I included some of those in that book. But, there were others and, the more I researched, the more I found. I had to tell their stories.
Some of these women are familiar to us, including Martha Washington and Abigail Adams, but there are far more who rarely get recognition outside of the small circle of women’s historians, and not even then with several. Did you know that Deborah Sampson fought in the Continental Army on the front lines…for three years? Abigail Minis? A businesswoman. Mary Crouch? A newspaper publisher. Elizabeth Key? A slave who sued for her freedom and … (I’ll let you see for yourself). They’re not exactly household names, but their stories all deserved to be told. To me, they’re all American Amazons.
Although some of the research for American Amazons came out of Pilgrims To Patriots, the bulk of it took another year. The first draft took four months to write, then another eight months to rewrite, rewrite again from my editor’s comments, polish up from my Beta readers’ comments, print, and proof. So, altogether two years. It was a labor of love.
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