Local best-selling author working on a new novel

CAPE ELIZABETH — Cape Elizabeth best-selling author Boo Walker is originally from South Carolina. He said he has been a “wanderer,” living in South Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Washington, New York and Valencia, Spain. While visiting Maine, he and his family fell in love with the state and knew eventually that they wanted to make the Pinetree state their home.

Originally, Walker was a musician and songwriter. He says his career was cut short “because of a career-ending hand problem known as focal dystonia.” Walker says that diagnosis sent him “scrambling back to the drawing board” to find another creative outlet. While he isn’t a full-time musician, Walker still plays music and teaches banjo. He says he is getting more interested in guitars.

He was inspired to write by reading the works of Nelson DeMille. Walker was just 17 years old, hiking through Ireland, when he read DeMille’s works for the first time and he said “it just blew me away.” He knew then that he wanted to write, but he didn’t start immediately. He didn’t begin until 2002, when he left Nashville.

“Once I knew I wanted to pen a novel, I started reading like crazy. And one of the first books was Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’. An amazing piece of advice he gave is that a great writer is a great reader,” said Walker. He said he was literally reading everything from craft books to fiction to journalism. He started his first thriller, ‘Lowcountry Punch’, and eventually published that novel under his pen name. He put that thriller on the back burner when he found inspiration in his next adventure.

Walker moved to Red Mountain, a small wine growing region in Washington state, on a whim. He went there to recover from the loss of the musical path he had been on. He bought a horse and a vineyard. This venture taught him how people and wine can be an interesting world. He was moved by the town and the people and said he decided to “start writing more impactful fiction that dives into the lives of quirky people like the ones in his novel, ‘Red Mountain.’” He says that was is the book that helped him find his voice.

“I am most proud of ‘Red Mountain’ as it represents me taking a chance and pouring my heart and soul onto the page for the first time.” Currently, Walker says he is in “the depths of a developmental edit for a book called ‘An Echo in Time,’ which will be published next August.” He said his recent work has a dual timeline, “diving into the effects of a transgenerational trauma.”

Walker’s work is categorized under book-club fiction. “The way I see it, I write high impact fiction about quirky everyday characters fighting to climb out of their tragedies, and step into better versions of themselves.”

Walker and his wife visited Maine in 2019 to research the setting for his novel, “The Singing Trees.” He had been to Bar Harbor before, but not Portland or Cape Elizabeth. “After only a day or two, we were mesmerized.” He said the food, local music, like-minded people, and overall culture of the area was a perfect fit for his family. The clincher, he said, might have been the Scratch Baking Co.

After his visit to Maine, Walker went to Spain while keeping Maine in his mind and checking out properties until he found one.

One of his favorite parts of living in Cape Elizabeth, he said, is watching his son play football at Wainwright Field and baseball at Upper Lions Field. “Sitting out there with all the parents watching our children fight it out is about as good as life gets to me.”

Summing up his passion for Maine, he said, “I might always be from away, but Maine is deep in my heart and soul now.”