Michael Nettleton’s graduation present upon departing Grants Pass High School in 1966 (senior class slogan: “God knows we tried”) was a Smith-Corona portable typewriter. In the years following graduation Mike created an impressive body of work with the little machine including copies of essays “borrowed” from other students, poetry (yes, he went through his Rod McKuen phase), pleas to the power company to not cut him off . . . again, job applications, and once a love letter to a heavily-tattooed circus roustabout who later broke his heart.
Mike also dabbled in creative writing and began to think of his typewriter as a trusted friend and confidant and even believed it would speak to him. Once, in a reverie generated by divine inspiration, he stumbled blithely across the room to apply fingers to keys before the words vanished. At that moment, Mike swears that he heard his typewriter mutter, “God help us all!”
After a stint as a founding member of the Pillars dinner theater, whose company performed theater of the absurd and served ridiculous meals, Mike discovered that there were people who would actually pay him to talk (as opposed to a healthy lineup of people who offered him money to shut up) and drifted into radio. A 40-year career as a broadcasting gypsy carried him from the redwood forests and marijuana plantations of Northern California, to the anarchist vibes and squishy climate of Eugene, Oregon, to the manana mindset of Albuquerque, New Mexico, and finally, from 1994 to the end of 2010, as a jack-of-all-trades for news-talker 1190 KEX in Portland, Oregon. There he hosted gardening, home repair, and car care call-in talk shows. Note: this is even more impressive when you consider he knows nothing about any of those topics and up until recently thought Vinca Major was the rank above Vinca Captain in the Vincan Army.
While in Albuquerque, Mike was also a partner in a recording studio/creative ad house called Some Stuff From Huff. He wrote, produced, and voiced hundreds of radio ads, television audio tracks, and narrative voiceovers. Game to try anything (for pay), he once narrated three books of the Bible for a company producing cassettes for worldwide distribution. He didn’t get the exciting chapters with Red Sea partings, pillars of salt, or enemies slain with the jawbone of an ass. His were mainly inventories and a census, so he had to pronounce names like Hezekiah and Ezekiel and Nebuchadnezzar, usually linking them with the verb “begat.”
In the early 80’s his first marriage dissolved in a puff of smoke and Mike met Carolyn. It was love . . . uh . . . like . . . er, um . . . mutual respect . . . eh, well, it was not complete loathing at first sight. They eventually hooked up (long before hooking up became MTV trendy) and discovered a mutual passion for writing, good food, and baseball.
The transition from his trusty portable typewriter to a computer was difficult. Mike and Carolyn went through five white-out encrusted monitors in their first six months. Finally, they mastered the technology, settled in, and got serious about learning their craft, enrolling in classes and critique groups led by writing coach/editor Elizabeth Lyon. Mike wrote several award-winning short stories and approximately 487 first chapters of novels during this span. Someday, in fact, he’s threatened to publish them as a collection. Working title Where the %@#&&%@ Do I Go From Here?
Mike has collaborated with Carolyn on five books and is currently working on the third book in the Devil’s Harbor series. He’s eyeing retirement and a return to treading the boards (or would that be trodding the boards?) on the stages of local theatres. This of course has to wait until he no longer has to shag himself out of bed at 3:30 a.m. for his on-air shift.
Mike’s new passion (have we mentioned his attention-span issues) is his basement pool table, where he’s brushing up on his call-shot and 9-ball skills and practicing some serious writer avoidance.
