Guest author has Bucyrus roots

BUCYRUS - Former Crawford County resident Sandi Latimer, who began her journalistic career in Bucyrus, will be a guest author May 7 at the Bucyrus Public Library.

Latimer, who worked at both the Telegraph-Forum and WBCO, will share stories and sign copies of her two books, “Poodle Mistress” and “Newsroom Buddies.” She will meet with area residents at the library between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.

“Poodle Mistress,” her first endeavor at creative writing, was published in 2011. In it, she relates stories of her and her husband, Red, raising nine toy poodles in their first 27 years of marriage.

Not long after that book was published, she was challenged to write a story on male friendships. She and John Kady, her boss during the 22-plus years she worked at United Press International, collaborated on “Newsroom Buddies.” They walk the reader through a newsroom, showing how news gets from the point of happening to the reader, the listener or the viewer. Much of this book deals with major stories from the late 1960s to mid 1980s and includes personal stories of the downfall of a once-great worldwide news agency.

Both books were published by iUniverse in Bloomington, Indiana, and both earned the distinction of Editor’s Choice for quality of writing.

The former Sandi Gould always had been interested in writing. At the age of 12, she wanted to be a baseball announcer. Her father told her if she wanted to be a baseball announcer, she had to learn journalism.

Shortly after her 13th birthday, she accepted the position of area correspondent at the Telegraph-Forum, a position she held until she went to Kent State University to major in broadcast journalism and “learn about what I had been doing for the past five years.”

She did her internship at WBCO in the summer of 1964 and returned there after graduation in June 1965. She also worked as news director at WDLR Radio in Delaware before accepting a job at UPI in Columbus in March 1968.

She also worked in medical communications at The Ohio State University Medical Center, in state government reporting for Hannah News Service, as a sports clerk for The Columbus Dispatch, as volunteer coordinator for Green Lawn Cemetery, and for the past 15 years as a staff writer for the Columbus Messenger.

She embarked on creative writing when she discovered the Ohio Writers Guild when assigned to do a story for the Messenger.

“I went to check it out and, as they say in ‘Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,’ I ‘came for the party and stayed for the trial,’” she said.

She was hoping to learn how to plot fiction, but when she learned a couple of women in the group were writing memoirs, she decided that “if they can do it, so can I.”

She started to put dog stories on paper while they were fresh in her mind.

“That took about two and a half years,” she said.

After accepting the challenge for what became the second book, she’d put her laptop computer in the bag and drive a few miles to Kady’s home and write his chapters, then come home and write her stories around his offerings.

This took another couple of years. She was editing the book and was about two weeks away from sending it to the publisher when Kady died.

“I waited until after his memorial service and wrote a final chapter dedicated to him,” she said.

The book came out in mid May 2014 just three weeks before Latimer’s husband of 40 years died.

“Newsroom Buddies” took Best of Show honors in the 2015 Creative Arts Event sponsored by the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department. She was a featured author for Author Solutions at the 2016 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books.

Both books are available through the publisher by going to iUiverse.com or through amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com. Latimer also has a website at poodlemistress.com.