Is Jon Talton a Reporter Who Works as a Novelist, or a Novelist Who Works as a Reporter?

Jon Talton, of the Seattle Times

Jon Talton has worn many chapeaus during his checkered career. He has written fiction and history books, performed wonders as a columnist writing about economic trends and issues for the Seattle Times, served as business editor for several prestigious journals, done mobile medical search and rescue in Phoenix, and taught theater at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. A true polymath, Talton has garnered a slew of awards -- everything from the Spiel des Jahres to the coveted Royal Victorian Order. He has  to rent an abandoned Sears store in downtown Seattle in order to warehouse his tremendous collection of accolades.

But in those rare moments when Talton is at ease with his friends and family, a faraway look comes into his eyes -- and those closest to him smile and nod to one another, for they know that their Jon is daydreaming of those halcyon days long ago, when he was a theater teacher down in the Panhandle and working as a busker on the streets of Tulsa to supplement his meager teacher's salary. He'd juggle a few tennis balls, spin a few dented tin plates, or play the Lucia Sextet on his ocarina, and then pass his battered trilby hat among the crowd, imploring winsomely: "Just tuppence is all I needs, guvnor. Lord love a duck -- thankee kindly!" 

On a good day Busker Jon (as he called himself) could clear as much as six dollars in quarters and bus tokens.

His celebrity status today makes it impossible for him to take to the streets again, of course. He'd be mobbed; torn to shreds in a mad scramble for one of his buttons or PEZ dispensers. So he bides his time, knowing full well that the public are a fickle crew -- today they idolize you, yet tomorrow you're already a has been, forgotten like yesterday's weather. Jon has his old green baize bag ready for when that day of obscurity inevitably comes; it's filled with juggling equipment, a squirting flower, and an assortment of rubber chickens and penny whistles. Never one to sit idly on his laurels, he is also taking a vocational class in how to give chalk talks. Because in the writing game you never know when the editor will put you out to pasture with nothing more than a gold plated railroad watch that's missing the second hand. 

"I used to be somebody in this town . . ."