A Traverse City-based journalist is making his way into fiction writing, with a novel that comes out at the end of April.
“Found & Lost: The Jake & Cait Story” is out April 29.
Howard Lovy has a 40-year career working for outlets like the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and The Detroit News, and has had bylines in Publisher’s Weekly.
He spoke with IPR’s Ed Ronco about making the switch to fiction. Listen to the conversation through the audio player on this page, and some interview highlights below.
Interview highlights
On venturing into fiction writing: “I’d been covering a lot of very serious subjects and so I decided to take a break a couple years ago and just see if I could write some fiction. The story came to me and in a relatively small amount of time, just three or four months, I clacked out 80,000 words. And even my wife said ‘This is like nothing you’ve ever written before.’”
On writing his characters, Jake and Cait: “Well, what I wanted to show — because it takes place in two time periods — is growth over time, or change over time. I’ve always been fascinated by that. There’s teenage Jake and Cait who are one way. Jake, as a teenager, is very quick to judge. Older, middle-aged Jake is a little more mellow and has learned through life that things are a little more gray.”
On the sense of place in the story: “Interlochen and northern Michigan is a place where real people live, but it’s also where people vacation. To me, it took on this kind of mythic quality. It’s strange, just going to the Interlochen campus, there’s a mixture of things I remember from 40 years ago, and things that exist today. And that’s what I wanted to show for the characters, too: There’s what they knew in 1985, and the reality of 2025 along with all the baggage that goes with it. Interlochen isn’t just a place. It’s this creature that kind of changes in their minds.”
