Novelist Bonnie Hearn Hill talks latest thriller and Yosemite Writers Conference - By N.L. Belardes

There’s a Fresno, California writer who I bond with because we both wrote novels about Central Valley newspapers that include murder, deception, and an often unscrupulous style of presenting the news. Of course there's a reflection on reality: if a big story bleeds, that just might make for good front-page glory, I mean, novel fodder. Does such news still run rampant into the consciousness of our lovely cities and farmland of the San Joaquin? Sure, just go flip the pages of your local newspaper, and keep in mind, such dastardly media morsels do sometimes get tucked away into the pages of manuscripts.


Bonnie Hearn Hill, 'The Swami' and mysterious Queen Cat photo
(*rumor: Diva cat wears unknown Drag Queen crown)

In some of my recent emails to Bonnie Hearn Hill there was talk of me wanting to float in a giant bottle of frozen water to escape heat and power outages. Bonnie herself grumbled to me through an email about needing a power generator. Ahh, life in the Central Valley; a summer heat wave of humidity, sun and dust—I grumble too and pray my computer will continue to run.

You don’t know about the heat? Go sit in a Fresno or Bakersfield area grape vineyard. Even the rattlesnakes won’t bite if they can sit in the shade of your quickly evaporating body.

Meanwhile I imagine Bonnie Hearn Hill strangely empowered about power, storming into a store filled with generators of all kinds, and demanding, “My novels are not writing themselves. I need power!” And then with a simple gesture, not unlike a sophisticated California cowgirl, and with a twirl of a gun in and out of her holster, she gets what she wants—even a glass of cold water.


Pampered and well-read on Hearn Hill Thrillas...

But then, Bonnie is a woman all about empowerment—and that doesn’t mean just being in a strong literary position in her own life. She believes in empowerment for the writers around her. She believes in the strength and energy of the written word and the power of encouraging others to take their literary voice and perhaps become well-versed, meaningful, structured, and to contribute to society with such words.

Maybe all of the world to writers is an intimidating endless sea of books. So what? Those empowered can swim amongst such words and even contribute to the most popular seas of knowledge with storytelling of their own. Yes, you can. You just have to have good ideas, be able to write and strategize, and in the end, learn a good ‘elevator speech’ you can pitch to a potential literary agent.


A mysterious group of Fresno writers congregate...


Bonnie Hearn Hill, freaky Donny Osmond gloves and 'The Swami'

You know the type. You’ve seen them in the movies. So-and-so is stuck on an elevator with the big cheese kahuna president of the yo-yo company and has twelve seconds to sell the president toymaker on an idea for the coolest radio-controlled hairpiece for bald men ever invented.

Believe me. This is real world stuff, folks. It takes months or years to write books, and seconds to sell them.

Bonnie Hearn Hill spent 22 years paying bills as a newspaper editor. And she has credibility as a teacher and storyteller. Why? Because while editing news stories is a nice skill for a writer to have, Bonnie Hearn Hill also pursued the art of novel writing. She followed the hunt of the thriller like an exasperated journalist on three cups of coffee hunting for clues that could get the big story on page one.


Bonnie Hearn Hill and the mysterious Muscle Man of Fresno


Book one in Bonnie Hearn Hill's trilogy
has a mysterious taste of Central Valley news
Signing at Fresno Barnes & Noble: Sept 2, 2006

I’m tearing my way through her latest thriller to be released this September, If it Bleeds (Check out her website for other releases). Her writing is smack on the money, with a witty in-your-face style filled with engaging characters often reminiscent of Central Valley folks; some of them, media people…

Media people? Sound familiar?

If it Bleeds makes Central Valley news-making the top story; and brings real scandal into the picture that most people might simply gloss over as today’s entertaining news of corruption and scandal. She brings another dimension to Central Valley news and politics, one that is literary, but real. “Fiction is the lie that tells a truth,” Hill Hearn recently said in a phone conversation. “I can be more honest in fiction,” she added, meaning that sometimes we read the news and need our own resolution to the day’s top stories. Her works often do that for her.



If it Bleeds takes Central Valley scandal and fictionalizes by twisting in a plot of ‘white rights’ groups. That’s because, well, bigotry exists in the Central Valley. And don’t tell me it doesn’t or never did. Go read your history books and you’ll find the KKK actually did tar and feather people just outside of Bakersfield.

And more than that, If it Bleeds once reeked of even more Central Valley scandal. Originally, Bonnie Hill Hearn's novel was about Fresno’s scandalous ‘Operation Rezone’, where a millions-dollar building development industry survived off corruption and bribes with city officials and developers. It’s a scandal that journalists have written causing Fresno, like Bakersfield, to be perceived as a sad town that somehow has the power to draw people back into their midst. As a result of ‘Operation Rezone’, such scandal has caused the Central Valley to have a stigma. For Fresno itself as a Central Valley metropolis, one San Francisco newspaper wrote in 1999 that the city is “a cautionary tale of planning gone wrong and development gone wild”.



On Tuesday nights Bonnie Hearn Hill teaches a private writing class. Perhaps you think one would have to be in a rather stylish club, or one of the Lords of Fresno to be invited to such a literary soiree. No, her class is different; it's uplifting and for the select few who are just plain serious about their craft.

I imagine Bonnie on a Tuesday night—a ragtag group of writers in tow—and sometimes towing her; and she kicks off her shoes and stares into a crowd of onlookers—some close friends for years on end, and her having a say in how writers should shape their craft for success and not for some local content-sucking entity that wants readers and traffic—who won’t pay a dime.

Ahh to be on that peak with yaks and sherpa holding our pens along with a dictionary of great literary colloquialisms. After all, we all want to be so popular that we’re walking clichés, right?

Wrong. I think most writers just want to support themselves by writing. It's a dream after all.

In the Bonnie Hearn Hill classroom I imagine adventurers of the mind, of Central Valley thoughts, of newspapers gone mad, of lovers of life and grand travelers wearing big hats and lengthy winter coats—even in the 110 degree Central Valley summers—yes, the writers: the dreamers of society bold enough to put words to paper and explore social consciousness to the point that emboldens; because a writer can shape film, influence ads, influence popular consciousness, and bring tears just through stringing together words…



Oh yes, writers are such adventurers, and are bold—even the shitty ones who can’t string together sentences without greater-than-sliced-bread clichés. And I imagine Bonnie, even without her shoes on, does steer a Fresno ship. That ship rubs up against the Bakersfield skyline.

And she helps bring us the Yosemite Writers Conference, a minimal investment for potential success.

I said in our phone conversation, "Let’s talk about the Yosemite Writers Conference… what’s the big deal? Is this just a bunch of pretentious literary whiners getting together to have tea and crumpets? What’s really in it for the little guy like me—the writer who has been too afraid of his own shadow to send manuscripts out into the big kahuna literary game?"

Bonnie assured me that, believe it or not, down-to-earth-I’ve-been-there-too literary agent attitudes will be ready to meet writers and to help shape them. They want writers to pitch book ideas to them. And Bonnie, a successful thriller writer, wants to help true writers. She helps empower by assisting in bringing a conference that doesn’t just turn its back on creative folk.

If we are bad writers, we want to be told politely to slip into the sea of books and learn to swim. Then we can learn the doggy pen paddle if we have to. That’s always better than being told to walk the plank into a stormy sea without our Mickey Mouse floaties.

After all, who wants to be snubbed?

Buy Bonnie Hearn Hill Thrillers
Get in touch with 'The Swami'
Read my media-blaster novel

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Thursday, July 27, 2006. You can leave your response.