Author Joins Local History and Humor To Tell His Stories

Author Joseph Yakel has his own unique approach to booksmithing. Blending humor with local history, and using his hometown surroundings as a backdrop, he's taken fiction and fact to another literary level. Armed with three recent book publications, Yakel said its the right time to spotlight his local area and its people.

(PRWEB) May 5, 2005 -- Joseph Yakel was born and raised in New York's Capital region, and calls this place home. His travels have taken him far and wide, but it’s his hometown surroundings that serve as a backdrop for his writing. With three books recently published, Yakel thinks his blend of history and humor shine a bright spotlight on the local area and its people.

Yakel began, "My roots to the Capital District have been a major influence on my writing. I split my youth growing up in Albany and Loudonville, and summers were spent at our camp in Westerlo. As an adult, I've traveled fairly extensively across America, and spent two years in Belgium, Germany, and other European countries with the US military. So, I am fortunate to have a mix of local city, town and country exposure, in combination with this broader range of exposure to draw from."

He went on, "I began writing my first book when I was about seven years old. Although I didn’t publish that book, I still have it, and I'm proud of what I did at such a young age. Looking back on it now, I think it probably marked the starting point where writing would have some longstanding place in my life."

While Yakel's desire to write has been with him since childhood, he says that it has emerged in a more public way over the last decade. "Over the years, I've penned quite a lot, but it wasn't until 1998 that I submitted my first article for mainstream publication. It was a technical piece on cable television system operations. Since then, I’ve written a number of other articles, on genealogy and military subject matter, published in both trade magazines and on organizational websites."

It’s his latest writing efforts, however, that Yakel says are his best works yet. Between December 2004 and March 2005, he completed and released three books. "Writing the material was the easy part", Yakel quipped, and with a slightly more serious tone, he added, “but putting it all together was a huge undertaking. Sure, the research was tough, but developing, and formatting each book, creating the cover designs, marketing and promotion...all of that has been a tremendous effort. I'm very pleased with the end result for each book."

As for the books themselves, Yakel said he's got something of value for everyone. Two of his books are genealogy references that also contain quite a bit of New York's Capital region history in them as well. "The Autograph Memories of Mary Yakel" is the 19th century memoir of his grand aunt. Yakel explained, "Mary was born in the South End 1879 and passed away in 1940. She had an autograph book, which was filled with entries from family and friends along the Second Avenue corridor. I took the small book of hers, a family heirloom, and rewrote it. In addition to the original book entries, I supplemented it with details and comments about the people and families mentioned within her little book. I never knew Mary Yakel, of course, but working on this memoir has helped me to understand her in ways that I couldn't otherwise."

"The JACKEL, JECKEL, JAECKEL, IEKEL, YAKEL Family History Book" is a mouthful of a title, but Yakel says the title is dwarfed by the book’s content. He went on, "Without a doubt, this has been my most intensive writing effort, ever. It's a 464-page family chronology, tracing 350 years of my Rheinish ancestry. Our original surname was JACKEL and JECKEL, but changed more than 50 times after the family came to America. In Albany, the spelling settled on YAKEL in the 1870’s, while in Milwaukee, it settled on JAECKEL, and in Iowa, the name was changed slightly to IEKEL. This book is first and foremost a genealogy reference, but it's also jammed packed full of really intriguing local and German history as well, and that's why this book and the Mary Yakel autograph book have a wider audience appeal than most references."

His third and most recent book is a complete departure from the first two, and clearly one that Yakel enjoyed writing. "The Legend of Juggin Joe" is an over-the-top fictional humor story that takes place in and around the Town of Westerlo, NY, and centers around the life and times of a hillboy dubbed 'Juggin Joe', for his uncanny musical abilities with the jug. Yakel added, "I have a pretty good sense of humor, which went a long way as far as crafting the situations that develop over the course of the storyline. What you've got in 'Juggin Joe' is a country boy comedy/melodrama...somethig of a different twist for a fiction book. I also wrote the entire story in ‘country speak’, which I think makes the story that much more fun to read. It’s a light-hearted, clean, fun adventure, suitable for all ages and audiences. I'd like people to give 'Juggin Joe' a read and share the laughter it gives them with others."

“The Legend of Juggin Joe"

• ISBN 1-4116-2588-9 * Pub date: March 2005 * $9.00 paperback * 123 pages *

• ISBN 1-4116-2101-8 * Pub date: December 2004 * $9.00 paperback * 75 pages *

• ISBN 1-4116-2715-6 * Pub date: March 2005 * $26.50 paperback * 464 pages *

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