Square Hearts and Second Chances, with Julee Balko
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What inspired Julee Balko to become a writer and how did early teachers shape her career?
My favorite thing about Square Hearts is it's a second chance love story with a twist because it was just as important for me to write a love story where the woman falls back in love with herself as much as falling in love with a man.
Hello and welcome to Uncorking a Story. I'm your host, Mike Carlin, and today I'm joined by a returning guest, Julie Balco. Julie is an author, poet, and freelance writer. Her third novel, Square Heart, just came out this past May. Welcome back to Uncorking a Story, Julie.
Thank you. Thanks for having me back. It's exciting.
Excited to have you back here, Julie. And just remind us where your story as an author begins.
I always say that my story began before I was born because I don't remember ever not writing or not thinking in words. Um I joke that my mother would say I came out with a pencil, but that seems a little gross now. Um but I really always as a kid who loved to write and had a journal and was always thinking in words.
Yeah, that sounds like it could be a very traumatic birth for your mother if you came out holding a pencil.
It explains why I write about uh troublesome mother daughter relationships. Maybe that's where it started.
And did you know like when you were a kid, did you know, hey, I want to be a writer when I grow up?
So in fourth grade and fifth grade, both of my teachers made such a big deal about my writing that somehow it just became a part of me and I thought, one day I want to be an author and um, you know, my day job is a writer. Uh so yeah, that's all it took was a few teachers who had believed in me and then I believed in myself.
Yeah, teachers are so important, especially at at those young, sort of elementary school ages. Getting the right encouragement then, uh, really does make a world of difference. Particularly if, you know, if if you're somebody drawn to the arts or something, you know, more creative.
Yeah, definitely. I don't I don't think I would have um Just realized that or you know, they made me feel special and then I believed in that and then that just kind of fostered my creativity and I really it's really what kinda drove me to keep keep writing. So you never know, your fourth grade teacher could decide your career.
Yeah, no, I uh I remember my fourth grade teacher quite well, actually. She was uh I I just moved to Connecticut from Florida. Um, so it was in a new school, you know, new friends, new atmosphere. And my fourth grade teacher, and I I was always scared of nuns because the nuns I had, but my parents sent us to Catholic school as kids. And the uh the nuns we had in Florida were were were mean. They were just these mean the sister Peter Marie, mean. I mean, just very mean. And so I'm scared to death. I come to this new school, new atmosphere, uh, nicest woman I've ever met. I mean, just a kind-hearted um sister Dorothy Collins. I tracked her down years ago and I actually interviewed her. She was one of my early guests.
I think interviewed number eight on this show. Yeah, we're up to four almost four hundred and ninety. But I just wanted to tell her like what J just how much I valued just her kindness when I was like nine years old. It was uh it was a touching moment. I started to cry. But you know, I cry a lot of it.
I I do know that my fourth grade teacher read my first book 'cause someone had given it to her. So that's pretty cool.
Now, if if memory serves, your first book was um to help deal with the loss of your mother. Do I remember that correctly from our first conversation?
My yeah, my first book was uh heavily about grief and followed the Greek journey as part of the creative theme. Um and yes, I wrote it after my mother had passed and felt like grief was super lonely and nobody writes about it enough. Which is why in Square Hearts I revisit grief again, but it's more about how it becomes part of your story and how you kind of live live with it and learn to love again with it.
Yeah. So I I wanted to bring that up because uh in the two years since we've we had our first interview, my mother passed away.
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