Currently viewing the tag: "James Rada"

Local Best-Selling Author Strikes Gold

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Blair Garrett

Storytelling is something humans have done since the beginnings of communication.

The ability to harness a whirlwind of ideas and narrow it down into a digestible story that pulls a reader’s mind into the author’s imagination is one of those rare-to-find skills.

An effective storyteller crafts and creates gripping content that engages readers in a way that keeps them looking for more.

James Rada Jr., 54, of Gettysburg, knows a thing or two about storytelling.

“I’ve always wanted to be a writer,” Rada said.

To date, Rada has published over 30 books, with three becoming bestsellers in 2020.

Rada’s journey to reach where he is has been a long one, but he’s picked up a lot of steam since his launch in the mid-90s.

“My first novel was published in ‘96,” Rada said. “I started working as an indie publisher in 2000, and I really liked that, so I stuck with it.”

Over the years, Rada has written about a variety of subjects. Anything from historical fiction to horror to young adult stories to the Civil War era history has caught his eye.

Rada first tasted success with his premier historical novel, titled Canawlers. Canawlers details the life of a family navigating the hardships of the Civil War on the C&O Canal. The C&O Canal ran between the Confederate and Union armies during a particularly volatile time.

During the inception of Canawlers, Rada’s focus relied on covering places he could visit and draw inspiration. Several of his books feature places about which he has intimate knowledge. Secrets of Catoctin Mountain, Secrets of the Gettysburg Battlefield, and Canawlers are all great examples of that first-person experience manifesting into an interesting and riveting story.

Great artists, creators, and storytellers often develop ideas for future work off of untold loose ends in their books, chord progressions that didn’t provide the right melody for a song, or projects where all of the pieces didn’t quite fit. Readers of Rada’s books would often ask what happened to characters outside of his story’s focus. That interest sparked creative fires that led to follow-up books.

“My goal was to tell the story of the canal,” Rada said. “Once I started doing the events, people would come up to me and say, ‘Well, what happened with George, and what happened with Alice and David, and did they get together?’” Rada continued. “I hadn’t really thought about that because that wasn’t the purpose of the story, so I had to start thinking about that, and that’s where the other canal books came in.”

These burning questions needed answers, and the pen hit the paper. Rada’s second and third iterations of some of his most popular stories are contoured to tell his complete story, beginning to end, even if it wasn’t the initial scope of the first volume.

Rada has made plenty of adjustments with his books, figuring out what works and what doesn’t work. With the increasing market for electronic books and the consumption of online media, Rada made a change that propelled his novels to the next dimension.

“Last year, I pivoted from what I was doing,” Rada said. “I started looking more at ebooks, marketing what I had, and I got a mentor.”

 Rada’s efforts to expand his work to the masses paid off, and it reflected with more sales, more visibility, and more confidence going forward.

“The first book I did after that was Strike the Fuse, which was the second book in a trilogy,” he said. “That one got up to number 81 in the free Kindle market, and the top 300 in the paid Kindle market, and number 1 in six different categories on Kindle.”     

The train didn’t stop there, though, as Rada’s Four Score & Seven Stories Ago: A Gettysburg Writers Brigade Anthology took off shortly after, reaching heights Rada hadn’t expected.

“An anthology from my writers group got into the top 10 in three categories after some marketing. I relaunched the canal books, and all of those made it into the top 10 in multiple categories, and the top 10,000 on Amazon. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but when you realize there are 33 million books on Amazon, it’s something,” Rada said.

There are big plans in the works for Gettysburg’s newest best-selling author, but he plans on sticking to what excites him the most to write about.

“I’ve always written stories that appealed to me,” Rada said. “If you’re not interested in what you’re writing about, then your reader is not going to be interested in it.”   

Whether it’s mystery that captivates you or history that fascinates you, Rada has something for just about everyone, and there is always more to come. “I’ve got a long way to go, but I feel like I’m really catching some traction now.”

Rada is a writer and contributing editor for The Catoctin Banner Newzine. He also contributes to multiple other publications. You can find his books and novels online in paperback and ebook format or visit jamesrada.com.

Jim Rada displays his dozens of short stories, novels, and thrillers that he has written over his career.

Is It The End or The Beginning of a New Decade? -The Decade Debate–

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James Rada, Jr. and Blair Garrett

Catoctin Banner Journalists, Jim and Blair, Face-off!

Does 2020 mark the beginning of a new decade, or is it actually the end of a decade? What do you think?

Let us know at www.thecatoctinbanner.com (Subject line: Decade Debate)

Jim’s Stance

In the debate over whether the decade is ending or still has another year, it’s a simple matter of counting to 10. Let’s count. We all learn to count early in life: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Now apply that to years. Year 1, 2, 3, etc. We don’t say there is a Year 0. There wasn’t.

When whoever started counting years, the first year was Year 1. That means at the end of Year 100, 100 years had passed, and thus ended the first century. At the end of Year 1000, the first millennium ended. At the end of 2020, the second decade of the second millennium ended.

If you want a simpler way to look at it, count out 10 pennies. Do you start by saying 0? No, you start with 1.

Part of the problem is that 0 is a unique number. While every other number represents something, 0 represents nothing. It is the point where nothing happens to something happening.

Yes, I know a big deal was made about the millennium ending on December 31, 1999, but think about it. The date tells you that only 1,999 years had passed under the way we keep time. Not 2,000 years. It may have looked aesthetically pleasing to say that when the 1 in 1999 changed to the 2 in 2000, a new decade started, but the numbers literally do not add up (in this case, to 2,000).

Stance: December 31, 2020, is actually the end of the decade.

Blair’s Stance

Well, Jim, let’s take another look at the numbers. Over the course of history, decades have always been chunked into groups of 10, as we can both agree, but you never hear people refer to the roaring 20s as 1921-1931, do you? We break them into the simplest and most accurate representation of what we’re referencing.

The problem in determining who is right and who is wrong and where the decade begins and ends is more of a philosophical one than a physical one. Yes, if we count from the very beginning of the Common Era, the 10-year cycle restarts on year 11, and all the way until modern times at 2021.

It’s true, there was no year 0. So, at some point, we needed to decide where to begin the FIRST decade. That decision was made long ago, likely in the very first decade of the new era.

Years 1-9 represent the very first decade, if for no other reason, because it makes everything fall on an easy, readable, flat number. Technicalities bog everyone down with what ifs and unnecessary questions. 

The start from this New Year 2020 (January 1, 2020) will be our baseline number for this experiment. Each year has 365 days in it. If we multiply that by 10, the number of years in a decade, we get an even 3,650 days in a full 10 years. Do you know where we end up with that? On a nice, flat and new decade. 

We have to ask ourselves this: Do we want to complicate the decades by including 364 full days from a new set of tens, or should we keep ringing in the new decades the same way we have for the last 2,000 years?

The answer is simple. For simplicity, and common sense really, there’s no need to shift the decade to include 2020 and 364 full days. 

Therefore, when the clock strikes midnight and transitions to the New Year, it must be the start of a brand new decade.

Let’s just agree to continue with January 1, 2020, for everyone’s sanity, shall we?

Stance: January 1, 2020, is actually the start of the decade.