OXFORD – After years of being known as a high school math teacher, volleyball coach, fly-fisherman, husband and father, long-time Oxford resident and retired teacher Jim Mortensen has added yet another title: novelist.
Mortensen’s first novel, “Minimum Competency: A novel about education, testing, life and death in upstate New York,” hit bookstore and online bookseller shelves last month.
“I’ve always written,” the retired teacher said. Until now, however, much of that writing has been of the non-fiction variety. Throughout much of his teaching career, he wrote a regular column for Freshwater and Marine Aquarium magazine. He also published two non-fiction books, the first in 1979 on fly fishing and a second in the 1980s on tropical fish.
According to Mortensen, his first foray into fiction was inspired by an article he read about a school principal being investigated for tampering with standardized test scores.
“What if you wanted to cheat,” Mortensen said he asked himself, “how would you do it?”
The result of his creative effort is a Carl Hiaasen-esque murder mystery with a healthy dose of commentary on New York’s education system and life in upstate New York, both of which Mortensen says he has strong opinions on.
Things start to heat up in Snyder’s Corner, a fictional town in the Catskills, when the town drunk stumbles upon the dead body of a State Education Department employee who just happens to be the nephew of a former mob boss. Amid budget cuts and investigating traffic accidents, the county’s bumbling sheriff tries to run to ground the one clue found at the crime scene: a bit of paint off an ATV which may or may not have been used to dump the body. Not much progress is made, until a substitute teacher at Kaaterskill Central School stumbles upon suspicious documents left in a desk drawer by the eight grade teacher she is filling in for. Then the pieces of an elaborate plot devised by the district’s crooked superintendent start falling into place.
Despite the similarities readers may find between characters in the book and real life individuals in and around Chenango County, Mortensen maintains that it is in fact “a work of pure fiction.” Those characters, events and even the fictional Palatine County he has created, are composites, he explained, drawn from his nearly 35 years in education and a lifetime living in upstate New York.
While “Minimum Competency” is Mortensen’s first work of fiction, it will not be his last. He has already completed a second novel in the Palatine County series titled “Railroad (Double) Crossing,” which will be published through iUniverse in January.
He has also completed a non-fiction work, “Catherine’s Diary,” based on a diary his mother, Catharine Snyder Mortensen, kept at the age of 10.
On Sunday, Mortensen will be one of eight authors, some local and some from further afield, who will be signing copies of their books at Colorscape’s Literary Arts booth.
According to Richard Bernstein, who helped organize the event, Saturday’s lineup will include children’s authors Suzanne Bloom, William Guiffre, Sr. and Dustin Warburton as well as poet Emily Vogel. Guiffre and Warburton will return on Sunday as well, when they will be joined by biographer Joann Smith Bartlett and children’s authors Christine Simpson and Elizabeth Stiles. Mortensen will make his appearance at 11 a.m. on Sunday.
Book signings aren’t the only things in store at the Litarary Arts booth, however. A number of creative writing activities and games will take place throughout the weekend, including the ever popular Bad-Poem-Throwing Contest, Clothesline Poet-Tees and Poet-Trees.
At 7 p.m. on Saturday night, Colorscape will host its 8th Annual Performance Poetry Slam Competition at the Blarney Stone Pub, 26 South Broad St.. The event, which is free and open to the public, will feature both local and nationally known poets including past National and International Slam Poetry Champion Gayle Danley.
For more information, visit the Colorscape Literary Arts Booth in West Park.