 that you think Tekawaii. This is a show about reading books, writing books, and everything in between and beyond. Today's show is called The Spark and Sparkle of Elima Loomis. And why? Because Elima is a veteran journalist, veteran writer about science, your spark, medicine, another spark, and she's ventured into writing books and novels. So she's living on her imagination as a freelance writer. And that is one of the hardest things to do. Let me introduce you to Elima Loomis. Welcome, Elima. Aloha. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. Thanks, Elima. How are you? Good. I'm fine. How long have you been a freelance writer and how hard is it to make a living at that very job? Oh, that's a great question. That's a great question. Thanks for asking. As you may know, I started my career as a staff writer with The Maui News. So I was on staff for many years over a decade with that in another publication. But I was freelancing a little bit on the side all along. So I was building up some experience writing for magazines at the time. And I just found out a great outlet for my writing, you know, to be able to write about things that weren't covered by the publications that I was employed by. Then I went freelance full time in 2014. And I have to say it's been a great career. There's, you know, a lot of people have the impression of the starving freelancer. But I've been fortunate and I've also sought out, you know, niches to write about that, you know, I knew I would be able to make a living doing. So that has made it easier to make a path as a freelancer. Right. But you have to establish yourself too, because I started out doing freelance writing as well, doing golf, traveling, tennis, and ended up doing novels. But I gave up the freelance. I couldn't do it. I couldn't keep the steady flow of income coming in. But you have managed it. Tell us a little bit about your science writing and your medical writing. You've written for some very major companies. Sure. Yeah. And excuse me. You know, that's a really good point that you made, that it was more of a struggle to write about golf, travel, and tennis, because those are really attractive subjects. And a lot of people want to write about those things. And there's a lot of people who have experience with travel and feel like they want to do that. So those tend to be very competitive fields. And consequently, it can be really hard to make a living writing about some of those more fun topics. So when I knew I was going to make a pivot to freelancing full-time and that I'd have to support myself and my family on freelance income, I made a decision to move into some more niche types of writing that I knew would be a little bit more lucrative and you know, maybe more challenging, but maybe also a little bit less competitive in a way, because there would be fewer other writers trying to work in those areas. So, you know, it was kind of an accident that I ended up writing about science. When I first started freelancing full-time, I pitched kind of a wide variety of stories. I was still writing for magazines at that time. And because there is such an interesting and vibrant science community in Hawaii, I ended up pitching a few stories about those topics and was able to use those stories to get my foot in the door of different science publications. And so that's how I ventured into science writing and I ended up, you know, covering stories that were based in Hawaii, but also, you know, nationally, I was able to write about a wide variety of science topics, you know, through those initial clips that got me started. Then a few years ago, you know, I made the decision, again, for financial reasons that, as you know, it can be challenging to make a living writing for magazines now. You know, there are still outlets where you can be paid well, but it's also a lot of work. It's very, very labor intensive. And as someone who's not just a writer, but also a parent, I wasn't able to invest the amount of time that it would take to do that job well and make a good living at it. So I made the decision to start writing content for organizations and use my science writing skills and start taking those to the private sector. And so that enabled me to write content and write material that I like to describe as journalism adjacent. So I still write a lot of articles. I write a lot of blog posts. I'm still writing about science and in this case, medicine, I sort of shifted into medicine. But instead of writing those articles for a magazine, I'm writing them for like a research hospital or, you know, research institutions, universities and medical centers. Can you give us some examples of issues that are pertinent to Hawaii that you found most interesting and people didn't know about until you wrote it? I mean, I remember flying on Hawaii Airlines one time and I'm reading one of your articles that I think was about Haleakala. Yeah, I did write about Haleakala quite a bit. You know, obviously, most people are aware of the telescopes in Hawaii. I wrote about astronomy quite a bit. I also wrote about the politics of telescopes in Hawaii, as you probably know, you know, it's been an incredibly sensitive and culturally sensitive and challenging issue in Hawaii. And so I found that some of the science publications and science magazines on the mainland that I was writing for really were interested in having a reporter on the ground in Hawaii who was familiar with some of those issues and nuances and, you know, capable of reporting on those stories in a sensitive way. So I covered, you know, not just the research and the discoveries that were made by those telescopes, but also some of the controversy around the telescopes themselves. I wrote about the volcanoes a lot when we had that big eruption a few years ago on the big islands, on Hawaii Island. I covered that for an Earth Sciences magazine I was writing for at the time. And ocean science, of course, was a big topic that I covered quite frequently for different publications. Follow it, given the fact that Mauna Kea, I mean was it Mauna Kea or Mauna Mauna Kea, I guess, is threatening to erupt again? You know, as you might know, I actually no longer live in Hawaii. I know. I'm, for some family reasons, I ended up moving to Vancouver, Canada last year, which has been a big change for us. So I do still follow some of those, you know, science stories that are unfolding in Hawaii. Obviously, it's very exciting, but I'm not quite on top of it like I used to be. So I wouldn't claim to be up to the minute on every new development in those stories. Right, right. Well, science was your spark, and medicine was your spark, but your spark goal is in your books. And if we can show Elima's website, that would be wonderful, because here's where you're going to find all of her work about her, her blog, you can sign up for that to follow all the topics that she's, that she is writing about. And also the books that you're writing, the first book you wrote was one that was, is really fascinating. It was the Rough Riders. You want to talk about that briefly? Sure. I have it here. And it's a rare copy because it's, oh, I think I'm blurted. Hold it right in front of your face. And then yeah, because yeah, you've learned, yeah. It's a rare, it's a rare copy because it's actually now out of print. But it was, it was a great opportunity. It was my first book, you know, one of the first little writing jobs I had out of college was doing oral history interviews for the Panyolohala theme. And that was just a fabulous opportunity for me as a young writer because it gave me the chance to travel all around Hawaii and speak with some of our old timers and our wonderful Panyolohala and the incredible stories they were able to share about their lives, you know, as working cattlemen in Hawaii. And then a few years later, after I had been working on that for a few years and had quite a few interviews to draw from, I was able to turn that into a book for island heritage. And that was just a really, I was just a joy to work on that book. And it's a wonderful book too, because it brings in the history, culture, brings in the culture of Hawaii. And where does the word Panyolohala come from? Oh, so now I have to say it's been quite a while since I wrote this book. But as I recall, that's actually, there's some dispute around the term Panyolohala and where it actually comes from. But most people believe that it is a Hawaiianization of the word Pispanyolah, because the first cowboys who were brought to Hawaii to introduce ranching and cowboy techniques to the islands were Spanish from what was Mexico at the time, now California. And so I, as I recall, it's believed that the word came from the word for Spanish. Yes. Okay, I can see the transition easily from science and medicine to writing about the Panyolah, but then you wrote... I should go back actually, sorry to correct you, but actually science and medicine is a recent niche for me. And so this was my first, this is my first job out of college. So this is sort of where I started from. And then I moved into the science later in my career. Okay, but then you wrote a children's book. Come Amy's first roundup. Again, it has to do with the, you know, the rounding up of, I think it was courses, right? Yeah. Cattle, yeah. So as you probably remember, here it is. And where is it? It's blurred again. That's all right. We can show it on your website. As you probably remember from your experience as a freelance writer, every writer loves to look for ways to repurpose their material. So after I finished writing Rough Writers and had all these wonderful Panyolah stories, I thought, well, what else can I do with all this material? I spent years researching and you never want to leave anything on the table. So I looked at Island Heritage's lineup and saw that they did children's books and that they didn't have anything about any children's books about Panyolah. And I thought it would just be a natural subject to write about for kids. So I didn't set out thinking that I wanted to be a children's author. It was simply a mercenary decision to try to get the most mileage out of my research as possible. But after I wrote the book, I just absolutely loved the experience. It was so much fun. I loved, of course, being able to share it with kids, but I have to say that as a writer, I really love the challenge of writing for kids. It's hard, as you probably know, to take a complicated subject. And I find it much more challenging to boil something down and make it as simple and easy to understand as possible than it is to, you know, go on and on and include all the details. So I love the challenge and it made me want to write more for kids. Wonderful. And then next came the Eclipse Chaser, not the Eclipse, but Eclipse Chaser. And that's where science and writing novels came in. Right. I actually, yeah, I have to just correct you briefly. I'm not a novelist. I don't write novels. I'm like strictly a nonfiction writer. So this was actually much later in my career, maybe about maybe 10 years elapsed between when I wrote my first books and when I wrote Eclipse Chaser. But by the time I was thinking about that, I had moved on. I was now freelancing full time. I was science writing full time. And I was interested in writing more books. I by then I had a literary agent and was talking with her about different ideas. And she had worked with this series before called Scientists in the Field, which is a wonderful series. And at the time it was published by Houghton Mifflin. And I think it, there might have been some kind of sale in the publishing world that I think it might be now with a different publisher. But she had sold to them before and suggested that I find a topic for that. And once again, I looked at some of the fabulous science that's being done right back in Hawaii. And by then I had, you know, done quite a few stories for, you know, science publications about the Institute for Astronomy and some of the researchers there. And someone suggested wonderful scientist named Shadia Habal. And I have to find a picture of her. Sorry, I should have had this prepared, ready to go. But Shadia is a, here she is, if you can see her. Shadia is a, well, we can't see her, but that's okay. Yeah, there she is. Just brief pop pops in and out. Yes. Sorry. She's, she is a solar physicist and she uses total solar eclipses to study the sun's corona and which is the sun's atmosphere, which is a pretty interesting and mysterious and important part of the sun. And by traveling around the world chasing solar eclipses, she's able to get sort of a once in a lifetime view of this very special part of the sun's atmosphere. And so I reached out to her and I had written a couple articles about her already, I believe, at the time. And so she was willing to let me tag along with her on the 2017 total solar eclipse, which she happened to be going to Oregon to observe. And so I just had an incredible opportunity to travel with her to that to watch her and her team in action. And maybe the most fun for me, I got to team up again with Amanda Cowan, who was a longtime photographer at the Maui News. We had collaborated as reporters for many, many years. And she was able to come with me to shoot the book. And we had a couple days in the field together. So that was a lot of fun. That's wonderful. And you'll have to excuse me for calling books and novels. To me, they're, you know, I know they're not the same. I do know the difference. But yeah, I get excited about anything that being the covers of anything that is a novel, a book, or, or, you know, just a story. I just love it. Well, I have, I have so much respect for novelists because, you know, as a nonfiction writer, I don't think I have the imagination to make up worlds like an only right about the world that we have. Yes. So I have so much respect for novel fiction novelist. Yeah. Obviously, you do have the imagination because your next one is O'Hanna Means Family. Yeah. That is an adorable, that's an adorable book. You know, I think it was mentioned that it's it goes along the lines of the house that Jack built. And I have to agree with that. But what, what makes it wonderful is that it's easy to understand. It's easy to, it's, it's rhyming. It's, you know, it's just, I think you did a really good job with a very short piece. And then the course, the end of the book where we have the commentary. Excellent. Just adorable. Yeah. Thank you so much. It was really a joy to write, you know, as, as you mentioned, you know, it's not entirely made up because it's, you know, based in Hawaii and, you know, very traditional, you know, traditional Hawaii, Hawaii food. And, you know, my experience growing up in Hawaii and eating poi. But it was really a delight for me as a writer to use a more creative part of my brain and write something that's a little more lyrical and poetic. And as you mentioned, it's for much younger children. So, you know, my book Eclipse Chaser is really more for a middle school age child. And I had a little space to, you know, to explain a bit more about the physics of, you know, solar eclipses and, and things like that. But for Ohana Means Family, it's really for a much younger child. And I think it's only about 250 words in all. So it's a very different kind of challenge to write something like that. Yes. The illustrations that go along with it are very good. Do you want to talk about the illustrator at all? Yes. You know, as you might know, if you've ever done anything in children's publishing, as the author, you have no control whatsoever about the illustrations. So, you know, the first time I saw them was a couple of years after the book had been sold. And, you know, you just kind of send your words off into the world. And you don't know what you're going to get back. And so the publisher finally came back to me a couple of years later. And they had hired Canard Pot, who's a I think he's quite acclaimed award-winning illustrator. And so of course, I was thrilled that he was being paired with the book and, you know, I saw the illustrations only after they were all completed. And he did send them to me. And I asked Hukua Pellegrino, who provided some cultural expertise on the book, to take a look at them as well, make sure there were, you know, nothing that needed to be corrected. But it was a complete surprise to me as well. And so I was just delighted to see what a beautiful job he did with the illustration. Cautious when you're writing about Hawaii, are you very cautious? I'm making sure you use the right terminologies and you can represent well. And because I know I'm very cautious when I write any story about Hawaii. And I write a picture. That's a little trickier. Yeah, of course, it's so important, you know, and like I mentioned, I really was so grateful to have Hukua Pellegrino, who is a language expert and a cultural expert, to, you know, really make sure that the story was correct and appropriate. But yes, I think that's very important. Yes, we want to represent correctly. What topic most excites you, Lima? You've gone, I mean, you have, you now have a nice rainbow of topics under your belts. You've got experiences. You've got knowledge in various camps. What most excites you? Oh, my goodness. That's such an interesting question. You know, over my career, one thing I'm really grateful for is how much variety I've been able to cover. And so, you know, the things that are interesting me today or most exciting for me to write about might be completely different tomorrow. You know, at the moment, I'm working on another children's book about pollinator gardens. And it's really made me excited, first of all, about pollinators. And but, you know, secondly, it's really was really resonating for me as the theme of how individuals and communities can make a difference by working together. And, you know, I was really surprised to learn when I was researching this book that even though, you know, as most people know, bees and other important pollinators are really threatened, and some of them are endangered and very threatened species. And they're so important for ecosystem. But I was really surprised to learn that actually, you're able to make a pretty big difference just with a very small garden or, you know, cities are actually at the forefront of conservation for some of these species, because they are such small creatures, you don't need acres and acres, you know, hundreds of acres of conservation land to protect these species. Sometimes something as small as a rooftop garden or a city park is enough to provide them with the habitat they need. So I was really inspired by that and it sort of has got me excited to think about other ways that individuals can make a difference in their community and in the world. I understand that my me and my friends are on the Monarch butterflies right now. Yeah, it's so important to preserve them and, you know, and one of the best ways to do that is by planting food and habitat for them. Yes, what's in your future, Vima? Where are you headed? What's on your horizon? Oh, my goodness. You know, I would love to write more children's books. It's something that I find really exciting, you know, especially as someone who, you know, uses that analytical part of my brain a lot during the day when I'm, you know, writing for hospitals and writing about research and things like that. I really enjoy the time I get to spend on more creative projects and writing for children is really exciting because, as I mentioned earlier, it's it's such a creative challenge for me as a writer to, you know, try to make something that's understandable and interesting and exciting for kids to read. So I would love to continue working on that. You know, as I mentioned, the the project I'm working on at the moment happens to be about bees and pollinators. But I have no idea what the future could could have in store for for that. Yes, well, you're in an interesting place now in Vancouver. So it'll be interesting to see what you come up with. Yeah, you know, I have lots of friends here in Hawaii. So we hope you'll stay in touch with us here. Elima, what's on your nightstand? What are you reading? Oh, my gosh. Okay, well, I wish I brought it up for you and tell. I'm an avid reader. I am always reading for for pleasure, read a lot of fiction novels. And at the moment, I'm reading a novel called The Likeness by Tana French. And I love her. And it's a mystery set in Ireland. And there's kind of a cool spooky twist to it. So I've really been enjoying that. So I think the fall weather has has made me want to get cozy with some good mystery novels. Her writing is fantastic. Tana French's writing is just fantastic. She actually is someone who will study as writers. But have you heard of Mary Roach? She's a scientific writer. Of course, I love Mary Roach. I've read all her books. I love her. All right. Elima, thank you very much for joining us. I wish you much success with everything that you write from your science and your medicine to your children's work and your and anything that you do because you are a delightful writer as well. And you have you do take a complicated subject and you bring it down to not down, but you break it down so that it's understandable and educational and entertaining all at the same time. And it's why I wanted you on the show. I think you are full of spark and sparkle. I'm so happy to have you. Thank you for joining us. I would like to thank the studio, all of the staff, Jay Fidel, and especially the underwriters. We so appreciate you supporting Think Tech Hawaii. And of course, the viewers, thank you for joining us. My name is Elaine Galant. This is Books, Books, Books. Good night. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at ThinkTechHawaii.com. Mahalo.