O-R columnist displays humor in first book
Dave Molter wasn’t quite into adolescence when the creative juices and ink began flowing.
“I was about 10 when I started writing silly things – like I do now,” he said, more than a half-century later. “I liked to write for the entertainment of friends, fake wrestling scripts where my brother (Harry) and I would make up names for wrestlers like General Mills.”
Over time, Molter did not lose that zeal for writing and only sharpened his cutting wit, parlaying the combination into a paying job. He is in his second incarnation as an Observer-Reporter columnist, his work appearing in print and online every other Monday. Each installment is heavy on the funny stuff.
“There’s not a whole lot in life I can’t find humor in,” he said, at a time when a tumultuous world needs it.
Now he is providing more. Molter, 68, has come out with a book, “Gimme 15 Inches” ($16.95), a self-published collection of columns that initially appeared in the O-R, plus several essays. The work, from his company Handbasket Books, is available through Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the CreateSpace e-store (owned by Amazon). Signed copies soon will be available at www. davemolter.com and www.handbasketbooks.com.
The title, Molter explained, has a mostly journalistic base. “Give me 15 inches is what an editor will say when you come back from a council meeting,” he said, referring to length of a printed story.
But he admitted the title has an indecent connotation, especially when paired with Michael Andrulonis’ cover illustration of a curvaceous woman holding open a newspaper with the banner headline, “Gimme 15 Inches.” That could be to his benefit.
“It’s suggestive enough to make people think it’s dirty,” Molter said, laughing over the phone from his Carnegie home. “My girlfriend (Pam Bice) showed it to a couple of her girlfriends and they said it was ‘naughty.’ I was happy to hear that.”
This is his first book, one Molter said he was considering “five or six years ago.”
“I dragged my feet,” he said. “But I have a friend, Angie Mullig, who is an excellent writer and editor who kept badgering me. She transcribed some columns from hard copy and wrote introductions to about 10 sections of the book (grouped by subject matter).
“Angie did a lot of hard work and I started to work on this earnestly around Christmas.”
They finished in May, and “Gimme 15 Inches” came out Aug. 4.
For Molter, this is another interesting chapter in an interesting life. He grew up in New Brighton, Beaver County, and attended Geneva College and the University of Pittsburgh. Though he didn’t graduate from either school, writing remained a passion.
Molter became a musician at a young age and continues to perform, playing bass for Johnny Angel & the Halos, a longtime local band. His initial foray into professional journalism was as a sports reporter for a weekly newspaper in Cranberry.
“I said I’d never written sports before and I didn’t like sports. They gave me statistics from a high school football game and told me to write a story from that. It was a horrible story, but they called me an hour later and said the job was mine. They said I was the only applicant to write more than two paragraphs.”
Fabled O-R editor Byron Smialek hired him in 1989 and encouraged Molter to become a weekly columnist. He stayed on until 1992 then worked in several other jobs, including internet manager at another newspaper. Molter was the communications director of a Mt. Lebanon church for six years before retiring.
He returned to the Observer-Reporter for his second stint as a columnist in 2010.
Molter said Wednesday that his book “has started to sell on Amazon. The problem, especially with self-published books, is getting the word out. I am pretty much my own publicity department. I’m hoping to work out some regional signing events.”
He is cautiously upbeat about the prospects of “Gimme 15 Inches.”
“I don’t think this will make the New York Times bestseller list,” Molter said. “But I’m hoping Observer-Reporter readers and my friends buy it.”