LoginNovember 2022 Notable Author: Hulbert Footner
"Every man must chop his own trail." - Hulbert Footner
Hulbert Footner (April 2, 1879 – November 17, 1944) was a Canadian born, American writer who was predominantly self-educated and wrote both adventure stories and detective fiction. He loved to live outdoors and canoe, and a trip gone bad made him a Maryland fan. On a trip to paddle the Chesapeake Bay in 1910, he encountered bad weather at Baltimore and ended up taking a steamboat to Solomons, Maryland and was hooked. He married a local lady, Ms. Gladius March, and in 1915 bought Preston on the Patuxent, in Lusby, MD, which he renamed Charles Gift and where he lived until he died in 1944.
He wrote his first novel, Two on the Trail, at Solomons in 1911. It’s a fictional adventure based upon the 3,000-mile canoe trip he made alone through Northern Alberta in 1906. Immediately afterwards, he made another canoe trip through the Northwest Territory going from Portrait by Mabel Welch British Columbia Through Alberta and into the Territory of MacKenzie from which he wrote, Jack Chanty.
A friend, Christopher Morley, suggested Footner shift to crime fiction. As Footner recalled, “Morley steered me past an overdose of northwestern stories into crime stories, adventure and romance.” Footner’s Madame Rozika Storey and her plain assistant, set in the flapper era of the 1920’s, became his most successful detective character. His first romantic novel, Country Love, is set on board Adams Floating Theater, which sailed the Chesapeake Bay bringing plays and vaudeville acts to the isolated villages including Solomons, Maryland during the years after World War I. In 1930, Footner introduced a new detective, Amos Lee Mappin, whose crimes tend to occur in New York's cafe society.
He wrote, Maryland Main and the Eastern Shore, (illustrated by Louis Ruyl), a chapter by chapter study of Maryland through his eyes and impressions as an outsider, as he was dying. Critics consider it an accurate capture of the essence of Maryland. Footner is buried at Middleham Chapel, Lusby, MD.
Genre: Adventure
Fiction that features stories of adventure, such as world travel, difficult quests, voyages of discovery, and other journeys that might involve a search for a secret place or object, or test ones mettle, or is taken in order to save someone else. The adventure can be purposeful like taking a long canoe trip or occur by chance like having to stay alive after a car wreck in a blinding blizzard.
Sample Reading List: Two on the Trail, Jack Chanty, Madame Storey, The Velvet Hand, The Mystery of the Folded Paper, Maryland Main and the Eastern Shore, Rivers of the Eastern Shore.
Writer's Prompt - Fun With Words
Fun With Words - Maryland Writers’ Association (MWA) invites you to have fun writing an adventure like Hulbert Footner. Using only 100 words place a character in an eerie or frightening atmosphere at night or on the bleakest, foulest day of the year. Title your work and submit to: https://marylandwriters.org/Notable_Maryland_Authors by the 22nd of the month to receive an MWA Fun With Words submission certificate. Selected responses to be published with next month’s article as well as posted on the MWA website.
Submit Your FUN WITH WORDS Prompt
The MWA is a 33-year-old state-wide association (501c3) dedicated to encouraging and mentoring Maryland writers, poets, playwrights, and authors. Go to: www.MarylandWriters.org for more info.
Mackenzie Tate
Dec. 3, 2022Train Ride - I was riding on the train, The morning sun was just coming in. I had just woken up. There was no one left on the train. I was alone. All you could hear was the way the train hit the tracks. I get up and walk around, everyone's stuff is still here, but no one is here. I hear a big bang in the other car. I curiously went to see what that noise was. As I walk over to car door I see a man, he’s sitting with his back toward me. He whispers and cries inaudible, mysterious words.
Beth Smith
Dec. 3, 2022Thankful - The snow was blinding. Josie wished she had stayed in her apartment for Thanksgiving. The road was icy. Without warning, she felt the wheels of her car slipping and then a crash. Her head was spinning. Blood trickled from her forehead. Suddenly someone pulled and lifted her. She was carried into a warm place. Although dazed, she could see a table set for the holiday. Someone yelled, “Call an ambulance.” A little girl approached. She looked very serious. “I know what you are thankful for today,” she said. “You are thankful not to be dead.” “Amen,” whispered Josie.
Viola Robinson-Boone
Dec. 3, 2022Senior Driving In Philadelphia - He looked at the delicate woman sitting behind the wheel of his Audi. Their weekly drives have renewed his admiration for her. She suffers in silence -grief, chronic arthritis, and loneliness. Relearning her to drive after years of dormancy has not been easy. She’s had her good and bad days during the outings. There were times when he had to take over immediately when her rheumatoid arthritis reared its ugly head. The condition frustrates her! Their drives throughout the Philadelphia region have been amazing, though. This morning the car skidded, then landed upside down on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Lawrence McGuire
Dec. 3, 2022HIGH SIDE - Blood pasted Lorcan Mallory's eyes shut. He groaned. Maryland clay sloped downward, fractured pebbles stabbing through his scuffed leather motorcycle jacket. Wrecked, his crotch rocket crackled and smoked nearby. He patted his jacket pocket for his cellphone, but the pocket was now a ragged hole, his phone lost. He lacked strength to stand. If it took all night, blinded, he would claw his way up to Snake Turn Road. Up the slope he would crawl. Lorcan rolled onto his stomach, gagged. When the pain settled, he laughed. Tonight every ascending inch would seem a foot, every foot an endless mile.
Jon Ketzner
Dec. 3, 2022“Bad Consequence For You” - Green light. The Escalade didn’t move. “C’mon,” Quinn Clark punched her horn. The Escalade’s driver door opened and a blocky, linebacker-type lumbered up. “Now what?” Clark sighed. The linebacker’s head exploded like a melon jammed with a cherry bomb. A black Lincoln pulled aside the Escalade, two more linebackers hopped out, pulled open the Cadillac’s passenger door and grabbed a screaming kid. They all piled into the Lincoln and took off. Clark peeled after them and called 911. “Do you have an emergency?” “You can’t trace this call. You don’t want to know who I am. Kidnapping at Clinton and Pine. A kid, literally. In pursuit. Call NSA. Say Bad Consequence called. I’ll call back in ten. Do it now.” Click.
Ruth Ticktin
Dec. 3, 2022Bayfront Path - Can I stand with you at the bay front path? He noticed she chose to stop at road’s end, a perfect spot. Sure. I miss lotsa sunrises? Na been gray, but cool high tides, weird cloud shapes you’d a liked. Luckily our shore’s magic, not overtaken by excess. Space by bay side’s open to you’n me. There’s rockfish, crab and oysters to eat. Osprey, herons, and eagles to see. Beware, dangerous deer and squirrels running, dying. Folks are friendly, not too judgy. There’re right wingers, scared like us all.
Doris Brady
Dec. 3, 2022GREEN SKIES - I was on my way to Ocean City for a much-needed vacation. Traveling along Rt. 50 with windows down, I had been enjoying the perfect weather – until, unexpectedly, it wasn’t. Looking ahead, I noticed the sky was turning a weird green color, the wind was picking up and I felt a frisson of electricity snapping in the air. Intuitively, I knew what was coming. Here I was, in a vehicle, driving on the flattest landscape in Maryland. Miraculously, I spotted what I needed. Stopping, I wrenched open the car door and threw myself into a ditch as the tornado roared overhead.
Ellen Coffey
Dec. 3, 2022Buried - Ava heard it coming - a thunderous roar. She turned to see an avalanche of snow careening toward her. She willed herself to stay calm, skiing diagonally to get to the edge of the slide, but it had no end. She spotted a boulder and raced to reach it hoping it would keep her from being buried too deeply. At the last moment, Ava remembered to raise her arm above her head as the snow slammed into her like a freight train, encasing her in ice. With luck, rescuers would see the tip of her red glove. And then she waited.
Steve Baker
Dec. 3, 2022Two Wheels Keep on Turnin' - Bob-From-Accounting was in pain, but it was a good pain. He had just returned from a three-month bicycle trek around the country. As the song says, Bob-From-Accounting "had seen a lot of things that he may never see again." But now, alone in his house, he opened up a cell phone. It was lit up with alerts, messages and notifications. Bob-From-Accounting was about to go from adventure, freedom, and depending-on-the-kindness-of-strangers to spreadsheets, e-mails, and suffering-under-the-burden-of-demands. With that, Bob-From-Accounting slipped his cell phone into a junk drawer, got back on his bicycle...and just kept on going