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Pioneer Alumni’s New Book Releasing This Fall

By Thomas Gillen
Arts & Entertainment Editor

Debbie De Louise, a former editor of the Pioneer, is an author and a reference librarian at the Hicksville Library. Her previous books include “Cloudy Rainbow,” and “A Stone’s Throw.” Her new book, “Between
a Rock and a Hard Place,” is a sequel to “A Stone’s Throw” and will be releasing this fall.

De Louise is a graduate of Post and wrote for the Pioneer. Besides being an author, she has also written articles for Cats Magazine and Catnip. De Louise described the differences between writing articles for a magazine and writing a book.

Photo Courtesy of Debbie De Louse
Photo Courtesy of Debbie De Louse

“Articles are much shorter, of course, but they still entail research. Besides the feature articles I wrote at Post, I’ve also written articles for pet magazines and recently won an award from Hartz Corporation for my article on cat grooming.”

De Louise added, “writing a novel is more of a creative process than article writing because, although you include facts in a book, you have more flexibility as far as using your imagination. However, good articles, especially features, should include some creativity. Many article topics can also be turned into books and vice versa.”

In both of De Louise’s first two books, Post is either included in the story or mentioned as part of a character’s back-story. In “A Stone’s Throw,” De Louise had the main character attend Post for college and also included scenes in Brookville. De Louise explained how she paid tribute to her former school in “A Cloudy Rainbow.”
“I did not originally intend to include Post, but it turned out that way.

In my first book, “Cloudy Rainbow,” I focused on the themes of bereavement and pet loss, but I ended up taking the main character back in time to her college days and, of course, since the Pioneer and Post were such large parts of mine, I included them. I fictionalized the characters and scenes, but some of the facts were true. For instance, we often ate Fireside food on production nights, and although computers were around at that time, layout was done manually back in the late 80s.”

De Louise also feels that most there has been a change in the journalism process from when she attended Post in the 1980s to now. “There’s been a big switch from news appearing in print to that now available online and through other media. I would say most people want their news 24/7 in the fastest and most convenient way. Social Media including Facebook and Twitter are big purveyors of news today. The number of news magazines and print newspapers are declining. However, the ones that still exist usually also have an online component.”

In this age of social media, journalism majors face new challenges and have to adapt to the changing times. “I would imagine that today’s journalism students would have to be able to scoop news quicker and stay up-to-date on social media channels. They have to be aware that some news stories reported online are not always accurate, so they need to check the reliability of their sources,” De Louise said.

For more information on “A Stone’s Throw” and De Louise’s other work, visit https://debbiedelouise.com.

 

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