Meet Max Willi Fischer

We recently connected with Max Willi Fischer and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Max Willi, thank you so much for making time for us today. Let’s jump right into a question so many in our community are looking for answers to – how to overcome creativity blocks, writer’s block, etc. We’d love to hear your thoughts or any advice you might have.

Standing in the grocery store’s check-out line with my wife three orders from the cashier, my mind drifted back into the western Pennsylvania frontier in the middle of the eighteenth-century. I was writing my first book, and for days I’d struggled to make a breakthrough in my plot. In a series of innocent mistakes, my young protagonist had traveled in a time warp and was about to witness Braddock’s defeat at the hands of the French and Indians in 1755. I was in need of a character who might have invented the world’s first time machine, but I couldn’t develop a realistic subplot . . . until that extended delay in the checkout line.

Then it germinated in my mind–twin French brothers, born of a native mother before returning to their scientist father in France during the French Revolution, developed the world’s first time machine. It looked somewhat like Santa’s sleigh. It transported them out of harm’s way into the twenty-first century, where one of the brothers stayed to perfect time travel while the other returned to his mother’s people. This second brother, Crescent Moon, vowed to help native people by altering America’s history. At the Battle of the Monongahela, Crescent Moon promised to make sure George Washington would not survive, therefore destroying the birth of the United States and saving native lands. Unfortunately for Crescent Moon, the course of history could not be so easily altered.

“Max, wake up,” my wife called out as she waited for me to unload items from our cart. “You’ll have to excuse my husband,” she told the cashier. “He has a tendency to zone out at times.”

“Don’t they all?” The cashier chuckled.

In my youth, I read an interview with an author, who said his characters followed him around . . . that he actually lived in two worlds–the present reality and the setting of his story. The same has become true for me. The aforementioned supermarket episode was one of my earlier episodes of writer’s block. Some dozen years later, I still have them from time to time, but I don’t fret over them like I used to. I’ve learned that through my preparatory research and creativity, ideas blossom with time, sometimes immediately, others on a more prolonged schedule.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I believe an abiding interest in history, especially American history, has always been in my blood. I had two grandfathers killed in World War I–my mother’s father, fighting for the Austro-Hungarian emperor, and my father’s father, fighting for Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany. World War II dominated my parent’s lives as my mother survived the aerial bombardment of the Berlin-bound train on which she traveled while most of her fellow passengers were killed. My father, a master sergeant in the German army endured the Russian front, including the outskirts of Stalingrad as well as living through the bombing of Dresden in February of 1945. My father fulfilled a life-long dream when he emigrated with his young family to America in 1951.

Sharing stories has been one of the oldest forms of human entertainment. I am no different, and one of my fondest desires had always been to create historical fiction for teens. I relish getting readers involved with my characters and the historical era in which they live.

Upon my retirement over a decade ago, I embarked on fulfilling that goal with my first published novel, “The Corkscrew App”. A sci-fi/historical fiction mix, the fourteen-year-old protagonist is transported back to Fort Necessity to meet up with a young George Washington through a top-secret cell phone portal developed by the CIA. That got the ball rolling, and it’s still moving forward at a steady clip.

“American Brush-Off” details the trials of a Cleveland family with German roots, who’s interned in an internment camp in the Texas desert during World War II under FDR’s implementation of the rarely used Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Ironically, “Revelations from the Dead: Chronicles of the Night Waster” was written two years before the start of the covid pandemic. It describes the lengths a New England family went through in the 1830’s to ward off an epidemic of consumption (tuberculosis) within their family/community. Another bizarre sci-fi/historical fiction hybrid –“The Reformation of Nate Adare”–is a novella which tells the story of a troubled teen who’s grown up without his father. A series of concussions leaves him reliving the horrid accusations of witchcraft hurled against one of his seventeenth-century ancestors.

My most recent paperback release (Historium Press/June, 2024) of “Hobbadehoy Rising” parallels contemporary American society by a look back to another era. Yes, there are deep divisions in America today, but none deeper that what beset the nation in the 1850’s. Orphan Peter Wagner, aka Pencil, is a Manhattan street rat, who survives the notorious Five Points District as a lieutenant of a juvenile crime ring overseen by a grizzled mentor. Betrayed, Pencil’s shipped off to Ohio on one of the first orphan trains before alighting for Cleveland. Through it all, he’s driven by a deep sense of justice amidst a society deeply divided on the issue of slavery.

Currently, I’m putting the final touches on my next novel, “Working the Angles”, which I hope to have released in early 2026. This much I can tell you: it’s set in the late 1930’s among the rubber mills of Akron, Ohio and deals with how fascism, nationalism, and communism jockey for favor in the Depression-ridden heartland.

In writing historical fiction, I can immerse my readers (from reviews, apparently adults as well as teens) in a rich slice of life from a bygone era.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

As previously alluded to, I grew up in a bilingual, immigrant household. In a geographical twist of fate, we lived in a small town named by a boisterous ex-sailor in 1807 for an exotic seaport in northern Africa–Mogadore. You’ll only find two places named as such in the world. Perhaps the horrendous things previous generations of my family endured along with my hometown’s unique moniker embedded a deep love of history within me.

I had an exceptionally gifted high school English teacher, Vicki Falb Wilkinson, who did something in my junior and senior years of high school no teacher to that point had accomplished–she convinced me of my ability to write. I took it to college, and despite some rough patches there, kept practicing that skill. As computer technology infiltrated the teaching profession, email communication with parents became very important to me. It was a surefire means of avoiding “telephone tag” and allowed me a direct line to the parent. Half-way through my career, I relied on my writing skills to share instructional resource ideas with other teachers in the trade books I authored. In those very books, I often presented short prompts or stories that would become steppingstones to the novels I write today.

Finally, I believe I’ve always had a bit of a showman in me. It certainly was a quality that could keep a classroom engaged when needed. No, I’m not a social media star or “influencer”, but a quality writer is a showman through the world they portray with their words.

As a far as advice goes, if possible, everyone should follow their passion in life. If you’re spending three to four decades doing something, it makes sense to do something you love. I chose teaching as my career because Mavin Corbin, my sixth-grade teacher, opened my eyes to the wonders of learning in ways no other instructor had before. I loved how he taught and took some of him with me into the future. Now, I don’t write fantasy because my mind doesn’t envision fantasy very well. Hey, I grew up reading James Fenimore Cooper (Last of the Mohicans), not J.R. Tolkien (Lord of the Rings).

Second, no matter what path you choose to follow, get ready for rejection because you will be rejected in some form or another. Until I was an established teacher, I lost out on a few positions because administrators didn’t think highly enough of me or my abilities based upon one interview. As an author, I’ve literally endured hundreds of rejections. If you do get published, whether traditionally or self-published, reviewers can often plunge the dagger into your ego. In any journey, especially those navigating a career, get used to the calluses of negativity. It’s part of the process of becoming whatever you’re seeking, which leads me to my final admonition.

Never, never, never give up. Early in high school, I went out for the football team. My hometown was (and always will be) football crazy. Like so many other boys over the years, I viewed playing football as a rite of passage. It was more like a gauntlet. The upper classmen wasted no time in introducing me to forearm shivers into my face mask or the crown of their helmet into my helmet’s ear hole. I saw quite a few stars that first summer of practices, but I made it through learning one very important life-long lesson–when, inevitably, you get knocked down, you get yourself back up. As a young teacher, I made my share of mistakes. Humbling as they were, they became moments of learning. Writing isn’t physical, but it is intensely personal. Like I said, the gauntlet of rejection is part of it. One’s individual journey will certainly have potholes, detours, and other obstacles to overcome. One thing my generation didn’t have to cope with is the incessant bombardment of social media. Amid all that blather, the key is to learn from constructive criticism in order to grow and ignore the noise of uninformed naysayers.

What was the most impactful thing your parents did for you?

That’s simple. They had expectations.

The fifties and sixties were a different era. Most parents–at least the ones I knew–didn’t fawn over their children or try to be their best friend. On top of that, each of my parents grew up without a father as one was raised by a widowed mother and the other by her grandfather and widowed mother. My parents had the added burden of adjusting to a new language and culture when I was a small child.

A good author knows to use his/her words to “show” the reader what is happening and not just “telling” them. By the same token, my parents didn’t verbalize “love”, they expressed it in what they did for me. We were a working-class family, but I never lacked the necessities in life, ever. My father worked fifteen-hour days at his mechanics job as well as his own auto repair shop at night. My mother anchored the home and was always there for me. My father’s work ethic paved and paid the way for my brother and me to go to college. It remodeled and doubled the size of our modest house. It kept us from want.

Of course, there was the explicit message: to make it in this world, we expect the same work ethic from you in your schoolwork, which will prepare you for your adult pursuits.

It was with just a little bit of irony that, as a teacher, I noted how those students, who had the engine of parental expectations, performed to their maximum potential.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.maxwilli.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maxwilliauthor/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MWILLIFISCHER/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/max-fischer-5b650647/

Image Credits

Hobbadehoy Rising–White Rabbit Arts @ The Historical Fiction Company

Revelations from the Dead: Chronicles of the Night Waster–Linda Karger

American Brush-Off–Linda Karger

The Reformation of Nate Adare–[email protected]