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By Thaya Gilmore
St. George author Russell Estlack pursues what many students dread: research.
It’s where such books as “The Legend of Oofty Goofty and Other Strange Tales” come from.
“I started writing a little differently than most people,” Estlack said. “What really got me started with doing extensive research and then writing about what I found is that I took a nonfiction (how to write magazine articles) correspondence writing course seven years ago. Some of the assignments were to do research. When I submitted my assignments, the instructor said I should publish them. So I submitted the articles I had written for the course.”
His first article published was “Memory Lane,” which appeared in Southwest Senior, published in LaCruces, N.M, in December 2001.
Another article, “Christmas Memories,” a Christmas story about his family during World War II, was published in the Good Old Days Magazine, in December 2003. “Montezuma’s Gold,” about a haunted lake in Kanab, a story that had never been told, was published in the Gold Prospector Magazine in July 2007.
“When I first thought about sending an article to a publisher, I did so with hesitancy, mainly because I wasn’t sure if my work was any good. I knew rejection would be hard to take. But as writers, we all have a lot of rejections. You have to have a thick skin. I used to keep all the rejections I got, but after I got so many of them, I decided to throw them away,” admitted Estlack. “Now I have the attitude, if they don’t like it, I’ll just send it to someone else. That has happened several times. Someone else bought it after it was rejected.”
In his research, Estlack looks for unique situations to write about. “I look to see if this person was the first one to do it or the only one who has done it. That’s the kind of stories I do,” he said.
Estlack does a lot of research to find something that interests him and, he hopes, will interest his readers. He said he really has to dig to get information sometimes because there isn’t much information published about a topic. Another problem he encounters, he said, is finding conflicting facts or versions of events.
“Sometimes I’ve found 12 different stories on the same person. But I take the best of each one. In those cases, sometimes you just have to take some literary license,” he said.
Once his research is done, he compiles his short nonfiction stories into books.
It took Estlack one year to write his first book, “Please General Custer, I Don’t Want To Go,” published in 2003.
His second book, “The Legend of Oofty Goofty and other Strange Tales,” published in 2006, took eight months to write. He has been working on his third book for three years.
“All the characters I write about are true, real people and situations. Each chapter is one story. I have a theme basically for all of my stories,” Estlack said. “What makes these stories unique for me is that these people have done something out of the ordinary.”
A common thread runs through the stories, which ties them together into a book.
“What makes it fun for me when I write about these people, I get close to my characters,” Estlack said. “I can visualize what they’re going through and how they’re feeling.”
After his books were published, Estlack submitted several stories from them to writing contests sponsored by Writer’s Digest magazine. Estlack was excited to find his stories chosen among the top 100 among more than 19,000 entries and received Honorable Mention in 2006 and 2007 in the Feature Article category.
He has sent copies of his books to President and Mrs. Bush, and he received a thank you note to him signed by President Bush and Barbara.
When it comes to Estlack’s writing schedule, he doesn’t really have one.
“I have no set time to do my writing,” he said. “I write when the mood hits me. I could be working on something my wife wants me to do, and if I get an idea and what I am doing at the moment is really pressing, I’ll write the idea down until I can get to it. While other times, I will leave the project to work on my idea.”
He also does things differently than what most writing gurus suggest.
“The experts say when you write, let it set for a while and revise it later. My problem is I can’t do that. If it doesn’t sound right to me at the time that I’m writing, then I can’t leave it to redo it,” Estlack said. “I have to rework it then until it sounds right to me. In doing that, the advantage for me is that I have very little rewriting.”
Estlack has received many letters from readers complimenting him on his books and thanking him, and he answers all the letters he receives.
“People have to remember that writers don’t make a lot of money. You do it because you enjoy doing it. The reason I write is to leave the stories for my grandchildren. It is my legacy, which is more important than money to me,” said Estlack, who has three children and eight grandchildren.
About a year ago, Estlack took one of the stories in his first book and wrote a screenplay, “The Lieutenant Was A Lady.” He has an agent trying to sell the screenplay.
“Writing a screenplay is a different way to tell the story through action and dialogue. A book is not that way. I took a screenwriting course because I wanted to know how to do it. I felt my material is good enough for a movie.”
Estlack was born in Camden, N.J. At age 17 he joined the Air Force, at the end of the Korean War. During his time in the Air Force, he was stationed in El Paso, Texas and found he preferred the Southwest to the East.
As a civilian a few years later, he was assigned to remote locations in Alaska, Newfoundland, and Bermuda to gather intelligence data on Soviet submarines and underwater nuclear explosions. He met his wife, Luisa, who was from the Philippines, while she was vacationing in Bermuda, and they married in 1974.
Russell and Luisa Estlack lived in Las Cruces, N.M. for many years before retiring to St. George six years ago.
“We had been looking for a place to retire for five years,” he said. “We wanted to live in a place that had great people and wonderful scenery. We were looking for a certain feeling. When we drove through St. George, we fell in love with the place. St. George had that feeling that just drew us in.”
Russell Estlack’s books can be purchased at The Book Cellar, 652-0227; Shiloh Books, 688-2866; or from the author, 656-1125, or e-mail baron1899@yahoo.com.

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