Steve Newvine- Our Community Story columnist on mercedcountyevents.com, author, and service club speaker

To me, the San Joaquin Valley is full of interesting places, people with a story to tell, and opportunities to share it all with anyone who wants to expand their understanding of California.

Thanks to the Our Community Story column on MercedCountyEvents.com and several books on my California experiences, I have been able to bring some of these stories to you for now going on thirteen years.

We now have four books that detail some of the people and places in the California I know.

Beaten Paths and Back Roads- Published in 2023, offers a new perspective on such iconic locations as Yosemite National Park, the Motherlode region better known as Gold Country, the remarkable agricultural bounty in the Central Valley, and the challenges wildfires bring to first responders.  

California Back Roads -Stories from the Land of the Palm and the Pine was published in 2017. The title plays off a well-known feature of the Central Valley: the palm and pine tree in the Highway 99 median south of Madera. I explain the palm and the pine and share three dozen essays from places all over the state.

Can Do Californians is a look at people who have touched a life in California in some way. Some are well-known, such as evangelist Billy Graham or Father Junipero Serra. Can Do Californians is also the title of a Facebook page where I post my current Our Community Story links from MercedCountyEvents.com as well as postings from my archive of columns and book previews.

9 From 99-Experiences from California’s Central Valley is an experience-driven travel journey exploring nine locations on the historic highway 99 from Stockton to Bakersfield and beyond.

Growing up in New York State, I graduated from South Lewis High School, attended Herkimer County Community College, and then transferred to Syracuse University where I got my degree in communications.  

Three books recall some of those experiences. Growing Up, Upstate is a memoir of the sixties and seventies when my family of five enjoyed a good life in northern New York State.

That book was followed by Grown Up, Going Home; a collection of memories from that same period not previously covered in the first book. In 2020, the two books were combined with more new stories from that period in A Bundle of Memories.

I’m proud of two projects that recalled my early days as a professional journalist.  

Stand-by, Camera One is the true story of my first job working as a television journalist forty years ago in 1979 and 1980. It is about major personal changes such as starting the first job, becoming engaged, getting married, and meeting a friend who would change my life.  

Rocket Reporter- Elvis, Huntsville & the Space Shuttle Remembered came out in 2023. It tells the true story of my second job working in television news. It is about Huntsville, Alabama, and the Space Shuttle program at the time when NASA was preparing for the very first launch of Columbia. As the Marshall Space Flight, located in Huntsville, was responsible for the shuttle engines, NASA was a big local story.  

In addition to reporting on the first three launches, I took advantage of the opportunity to visit Memphis, Tennessee where I reported from Graceland where Elvis Presley is remembered by fans and the curious. I became one of the first reporters to go inside the Presley home before it opened for public tours. 

A short work of nonfiction called Finding Bill details my journey to learn more about my Uncle Bill from his fellow soldiers in Vietnam.  

My first fictional work was Ten Minutes to Air. It’s about a former television journalist who is framed for murder and who becomes a reluctant private detective to clear his name.  

Sign On at Sunrise is fiction about a young college student who works at a radio station while going to school in the mid-1970s.

Go Where You Needed is a fictional short story with a holiday season theme. A young man tries to save a beloved convent from closing.

Course Corrections, My Golf Truth, Fiction, and Philosophy, is about my passion for golf. I include true stories about friends, short stories with a golf theme, and some introspection on what the game has meant to me.

My self-help book Soft Skills for Hard Times takes my work experiences and turns them into learning examples for people looking for a competitive edge in work and success in life. This book has been used as a source for a talk I do for the Love Plus life skills program sponsored by Love INC of Merced.  

I usually write one book a year. My process includes outlining my proposed book, writing daily for at least six months, and then editing the manuscript for another four months. I’m currently working on a project that looks into the long mentor/mentee relationship between comedians Johnny Carson and Jack Benny. 

In 2023, I spoke about my books at several community groups and civic organizations.

Doing these talks permits me the opportunity to meet people, hear what they like about my books, and get ideas for future columns on MercedCountyEvents.com .

If your group is interested in one of my talks, you can contact me via private message on Facebook or at my email SteveNewvine@SBCGLOBAL.NET.

The past twelve years of columns are archived right here in this section below.

I appreciate you taking the time to read my columns and books.  

Author and former radio and television broadcaster Steve Newvine is Talking about radio with host John Leslie.  Moving from broadcasting to a corporate environment and following your passion for writing.  

Lots of memories and laughs in this fun-filled episode. See below -