Compass Communications

By Lisa Rowell

With three decades of work as a public library administrator, multiple writing awards, hundreds of published pieces, including poetry and a boatload of published fiction titles, and a curriculum vitae that goes on for days, local author Jeff Salter’s credentials show he has learned more than a thing or two about writing and publishing.  

I am just a meager writer who mostly pens pieces for fun. How could I possibly swim through the rivers of information and minute details that could fill these pages ten times over, and tell a story of this man’s work as an author in 1,000 words or less without disappointing? I am not going to even attempt to highlight all of Jeff’s accomplishments or his colorful career. What I would like to do is illustrate what can be accomplished with the right amount of determination, passion, faith, and perhaps even a touch of angst to fuel the creativity.  

Uprooting to reroot

We all have our ways of coping with inner stress and anxiety. For Jeff, that would manifest as a creative burst in the space between living and working in Louisiana, and retiring and moving to Kentucky in 2006. 

Jeff said he felt a divine instruction in 2005 to move from Louisiana to Kentucky so his wife, Denise, could spend time with her elderly parents. Anyone who has uprooted a career and household and moved to another state will understand this would be a lot easier said than done for Jeff and his family. He took an early retirement from his 30-year career and while juggling the logistics of such a move, stayed behind for several months to work on and sell their house, while Denise and his mother moved to Kentucky to wait for him. 

A certain uncertainty

“I was stressed about leaving my career of 30 years and moving to a place where I knew nobody except my in-laws,” Jeff recalled. “I began having cold feet about those two largest issues – retiring early and relocating  – and began to doubt whether the instruction I believed had come from the Lord would, in fact, turn out to be a massive misunderstanding.” 

Despite the pressures and stresses, Jeff said, “I kept reminding myself that I must be obedient to that CALL… even if I couldn’t see beyond those first few steps.”

It was during this brief time that Jeff wrote 175 poems.  “It was the biggest burst of creativity I’ve had in my entire life,” he said.  

“I sometimes think about, ‘what is the wellspring of creativity?’ and I think a lot of it comes from stress,” Jeff said with a knowing, nervous laugh. 

As any creative will tell you, trying to silence the inspiration urging you to CREATE, is to risk it permanently leaving you. As a creative, that’s a risk often not worth taking so we’ll spend sleepless nights at the keyboard, or with a paintbrush or pen in hand. What flows is something that defies any credentials or formal education or boundaries we imagine define us. Whether we deem our creation worthy of sharing or not, we’ve allowed ourselves to release that energy and perhaps in the process, solved a problem, learned a little more about our inner selves, or felt a stronger connection to God. It’s not always an easy concept to convey through words. 

Heeding the inner call

For Jeff, he thought he’d be staying in the local library arena once he’d moved to Kentucky. His background afforded him opportunities for writing book reviews and he had connections. “Part of me was screaming to tell long fiction stories,” Jeff said, even though most of his work had been through poetry. So, in his first year of living in Kentucky, he did just that, writing the better part of three novels. He said he wrote and rewrote the first one several times and it has yet to “see the light of day.” The second and third were eventually published, however, it was the seventh one he had written that would be his first to be published. 

“I spent two years combing the writing scene for an agent,” Jeff said, of the quest to get published.

In 2006-07, opportunities like Amazon self-publishing were not mainstream yet. If writers were to ever see their books in print or in bookstores, they required an agent. After two years of trying to find a reliable agent, many small presses had opened, eliminating the “gate keepers.” Only a fraction of a percent of manuscripts get accepted by agents, and even less of those actually get published by a recognizable imprint. 

In the meantime, Jeff spent time submitting his writing to various contests which proved futile with conflicting judges’ comments which Jeff found to be subjective at best. The months of waiting added to the futility. 

Jeff joined many writing organizations and made many contacts before being led to a small independent digital press called Astraea (which is now Clean Reads). Formed in 2010, and making many dreams come true for writers struggling to become published, Astraea — after many edits — would eventually publish the seventh novel Jeff had written. 

“Going through that cycle of content edits, line edits, proofing with three different members of the editorial team — which could take weeks to get back to you without a single word — you had to just sit on tenderhooks, not knowing when the thing was going to come back and with what kinds of red lines or track changes.” 

Jeff said writers really need to trust their editors. He recalled one who recommended he cut 20,000 words from a piece. Although it felt painful at the time, In the long run, he said he didn’t even remember what those cuts pertained to. 

Astraea encouraged Jeff to have more than one novel out and he said within six to eight weeks, they quickly ran out his second published novel. Then his third. Jeff said his biggest sales have come through that imprint. The novel most dear to his heart is “Called to Arms Again — A Tribute to the Greatest Generation” which is that seventh novel he wrote just after coming to Kentucky, and the first to be published. 

It goes to show how steadfast determination can pay off. 

Jeff has 23 published fiction titles and several nonfiction books. He’s on his third publisher. You can purchase his books through Amazon by searching J.L. Salter or visit http://tinyurl.com/AuthorJeff