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| Steve Burt |
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FreeK Camp Receives Book Award |
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Burt's latest novel, FreeK Camp: Psychic Teens in a Paranormal Thriller, has just won the 2010 Best Teen Beach Book Award at the New York Beach Book Festival. The book is about a rustic Maine church camp that has become a special camp where "different" kids can discover or develop their unique "gifts." Problem is, the first vanload of teens is carjacked by a madman, while the second van arrives safely. The cops are stymied, so the two groups of kids must solve the mystery in this thriller. |
by Drew Page
LYME (06/09/2010) -- How does a UCC minister become an award winning horror fiction author? It sounds like an odd combination. Yet, the unusual is the norm for the Reverend Steve Burt, at least as far as his dark tales go. I learned the story of Reverend Burt’s writing career when I interviewed him. His is an inspirational story, and a tale that really puts one’s aspirations for success in perspective.
Steve Burt began his clergy career as a Methodist pastor in 1979 and joined the UCC in 1989. During his early ministry, he worked as a director for Skye Farm, a Methodist summer camp. Pastor Steve was the guy who told campfire stories. At first he told the classics, but later he made up his own tales.
Burt always enjoyed strange tales like those in Outer Limits and Weird Tales. His favorite stories were those he watched on The Twilight Zone. He remembers one episode showing a woman having bandages removed from her face. Her unseen surgeons explain how they made her look more “normal.” She is finally revealed, and we see that “normal” is not a human face, but something as monstrous as the surgeons we finally view.
Rev. Burt started writing his own stories when he was 16 years old. He submitted tales to The New Yorker, Family Circle, and other large American publications. Through thousands of rejections letters, he learned some valuable lessons about the writing industry. He started reading guides to fiction and writing, and how-to books on self-publishing.
His earliest publishing success was in faith-based literature. In 1992, Alban Institute published Burt’s Raising Small Church Self-Esteem which was later released by Judson Press as The Little Church That Could (2000). Steve Burt’s real achievements came when he began self-publishing collections of his fiction.
During Advent, Rev. Burt enjoyed reading his Christmas stories at churches. People would ask him if they could get a copy to give as gifts. Then Pastor Steve realized he could put the stories together in book form: his first self-published book, A Christmas Dozen, sold 4000 copies in the first 55 days.
From 2001 to 2004, Rev. Burt left the ministry to become a full-time author and marketer of books. He focused on his fiction books, tales of horror and suspense, the stories Burt says are his favorites to write. His tales, a genre he calls “soft horror”, appeal to teenagers. They are not the splatter, blood and gore of special effect driven horror films. The stories rely on “atmospheric tension.” They are character stories that appeal to the imagination and fears of teenagers, much the way the bizarre tales of the Twilight Zone stirred Reverend Burt.
Steve Burt was making a living as a full-time writer. Burt’s website portrays a very successful author. In addition to being known as an expert in self-publishing, Burt has been recognized for the quality of his work. He has won the Ray Bradbury award for short fiction, a Benjamin Franklin Award, two Writer’s Digest honors, and nearly a dozen other awards and honors for his fiction and inspirational stories. In 2003, Burt was runner up to JK Rowling for the Bram Stoker Award in Works for Young Reader – the most celebrated award in horror/suspense fiction. The next year, Steve Burt won the award, tying with Clive Barker and beating Dean Koontz for the prestigious title.
The honors are satisfying, according to Burt, and frustrating at the same time. Though he shares many accolades with his contemporaries, Rowling, Barker and Koontz are bestselling authors with big publishing companies. Their books are sold by the millions, and the publishers do all the marketing for them.
Perhaps the turning point in Reverend Burt’s writing career was when he realized that he missed being a part of the church and the faith community. Burt returned to the call in 2005 and is now the pastor of the First Congregational Church of Lyme, UCC.
He still writes; after all, he is a story teller. His campfire is now the pulpit where his stories are more biblical, though in some cases, he points out, no less scary. Burt is content with his writing career, but not finished with it. More important, he says the act of writing is satisfying.
He tells the story of how he wrote a story for his young granddaughter. He cut pictures from magazines and taped them in the book as illustrations. It took a couple of months and he only produced the one copy. “I had a great time writing it, and she loves the book,” says Burt. The book made no money -- it “sold” only one copy -- but it was fulfilling enough for Burt to share the anecdote as an example of why he writes in the first place.
Drew Page is Media Assistant for the Connecticut Conference, UCC.
