Writer Bob White Receives Honor from Arts Council Menifee

By Shawnees Peacock
MSJC Student Intern Journalist

Arts Council Menifee’s Literary Division has considerably grown over the last few years and continues to support a diversified body of prominent writers within the community. Arts Council Menifee has chosen to highlight the literary arts by selecting self-published mystery genre writer Bob White as December’s Artist of the Month.

White, a So-Cal native, has authored a total of 4 books since he began seriously constructing novels roughly ten years ago. He plans to release his new, more sinisterly toned book entitled To Catch a Monster in 2014, and is currently busying himself by writing yet another novel titled Demons from the Past.

He is also currently actively involved in the literary critique Live People from Mt. San Jacinto College and an online critique group called The Internet Writing Group.

Although White was always an avid reader growing up, he fell in love with literature and the art of writing during high school. He was a writer for the school newspaper as a sophomore and began writing short stories around this time.

“I sold my first short story at age 19 and got 5 bucks for it,” White says with a laugh.

He continued to write short stories and sell them through his college years, but eventually made the transition to writing full-length novels that would allow him the length and freedom to explore the characters and plots that he would visualize.

“Writing short stories is not as satisfying as writing novels since you have to economize your words and ideas,” he said. “I wanted to tell the bigger story.”

Writing novels has provided White with the opportunity to weave all of his life experiences, observations, knowledge and countless hours of research into an intriguing story that assumes a life of its own.

White centers his style of writing and plots around the subgenre of detective fiction known as police procedural. This genre has become highly popularized in literature, television and movies due to its ability to illustrate the activities of a police force as they investigate crimes.

His plot driven detective novels are typically coupled with a prominent archetypal character, such as the small town detective who struggles with his own personal demons known as Tony Petrocelli. This is a character that White has come to know very well and has been a primary character in White’s novels titled Abducted (2008), Body in the Lake (2012) and Carnage (2013).

While White’s attraction to detective novels and the police procedural subgenre is derived from his admiration of the infamous author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his writing mechanics are more similar to one of his literary inspirations, Robert B. Parker.

“My style is brisk; with simple sentence structure and many sentence fragments,” says White. “It’s very short and punchy.”

Instead of inflating the characters’ dialogue with words and organized sentences, he worked very hard to perfect writing in dialogue by being able to mimic the flaws that people exhibit in their everyday use of language.

White continues to impact the community with not only his written word, but as well as with his jovial personality and desire to share his passion for reading with children.

“I have learned that reading makes you a more well-rounded person, and it’s sad that more people don’t read,” says White.

White dressed up as the Dr. Seuss character Cat in the Hat a few times at the library when reading to local children, as a way to outreach to those who have not experienced a similar joy of literature.

“We appreciate Bob White’s fun personality. He marched with us in the Menifee parade wearing his Cat in the Hat costume, tossing candy to the children. He knows how to make reading fun,” said Bill Zimmerman, President of the art organization.

More information on Bob White can be found at: http://bobwhite.me/ and at
www.artscouncilmenifee.org