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Writing books is a bucket-list item for him

WEIRTON -- Writing not one but two books in a four-year span means local author John Mihalyo can check off a bucket-list item. Twice.

"Always Living the Dream" came out in late 2017; "Life is Amazing" debuted earlier this month.

Both follow main character Jack Million and are fictional works, although Mihalyo bases characters on people he knows, individuals who have made an impression on him.

A Weirton resident, Mihalyo grew up in Follansbee, graduating in the Class of 1966 at Follansbee High School. In 1970, he graduated from the then-West Liberty State College, the same year he began a 38-year career at Weirton Steel. By retirement time for him, the company was Arcelor Mittal.

A widower whose wife, Kathleen, died in 2011, Mihalyo has a son, John, a daughter, Ann, and several grandchildren, who constitute the only people truly identified in the books, he said.

"The only people in the book who have real names are my kids and my grandkids," Mihalyo said. "I used their real names mainly because if they read it, they see their name in the book. Everyone else's names are made up," he added.

"It's kind of a bucket-list thing I decided to do," Mihalyo commented in explaining his reason for writing a book, noting he actually started working on the first book on a return trip from Europe.

"Believe it or not, I was on an airplane coming back from Prague," he said. "This was in 2016, and I was flying back, and I'm thinking of writing and I always carry a notebook, so I write and write and write." Fifty pages, one side, he said, pointing out that his thoughts put to paper in longhand get transposed by someone else using a computer.

"So I wrote so many pages, and then I got done and I'm thinking, 'Do I really want to do this or not?'" he continued.

He decided he did but didn't tell anyone until he was done, including his family.

"Always Living the Dream" is about a retiree who lives in a small town and is well respected. He lives his life by the four F's -- faith, family, friends and fun.

"Jake is a guy who lives in a small town, and I actually call the town Follansville, and I'll tell you why. You have to base your characters on somebody or some thing so what I try to do, everything in my book is positive, there's no negative, and I try to do tributes to the people that I use as characters," he said.

He based characters on real people but changed their names. "Even Hemingway said you base character on real people," he said, referring to writer Ernest Hemingway.

As for the origin of "Follansville?"

"My grandfather on my dad's side was from Mingo, an old Slovak guy, and when we were kids we would visit during holidays and after we were leaving, he would say, 'You going back home to Follansville?' because he would get confused between Steubenville and Follansbee so that's where the name came from."

Response to the first one fueled his interest in writing a second.

"A lot of people said they really liked the first one and asked when are you writing another one and I said I don't know if I am going to do it," he said. "I thought about it and when COVID hit and you don't really have much to do or places to go, I started writing again."

"Life is Amazing" also is about Jake Million, "a well respected character in the community. Everybody likes him, and everybody believes in him, and everybody kind of goes to him when they have problems or issues, and he in turn helps them out," Mihalyo said.

"He has some special aura about him that people think if Jake helps me, or if I go to Jake he'll help me and everything will be fine, and what happens is he gets involved in incidences," he said.

The main character returns from Florida to "Follansville," anticipating that he'll "chill out and stay home" but once he pays a casual visit downtown, "things start happening."

The first book's ending caught readers by surprise, according to Mihalyo, who said feedback included surprise at the ending, that readers couldn't figure where it might end.

"Life is Amazing" could be similar.

Whether he does a third book remains to be seen.

"I guess it will depend on the response I get from this one."

The book is available through bookbaby.com or amazon.com and locally at BookMarx Bookstore in Steubenville and at PRIME in Weirton.

(Kiaski can be contacted at jkiaski@heraldstaronline.com.)