Dr. Joe Reese, lecturer at Muskingum College in the English department, has written two youth novels, Katie Dee and Katie Haw, and Dear Katie Dee. These are funny and gritty stories told in letters from a Texas farm girl in the 1960Â’s, to her best friend. There is nostalgia as well as treatment of harsh realities of farm life in KatieÂ’s letters, all based on experiences the author had while growing up in Texas. School children get to hear Dr. Reese read these stories to them when he visits their classrooms. A group of his listeners illustrated Dear Katie Dee. Reese has also written plays, short stories, articles and essays

November 2005 Author Talk: Dr. Jim Chlovechok

Dr. Jim Chlovechok owns a sports medicine practice in Cambridge and is a former Ohio Athletic Commissioner and a national Bando kickboxing champion He began his suspense novel, Gameface in 1997, the year before Mark McGwire's and Sammy Sosa's famed home run chase. A powerful steroid called "Gameface" plays a role in his novel. "Information on steroid use was available even then, says Chlovechok, although Major League Baseball still kept its head in the sand." Chlovechok says he spent several months with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Kentucky to research the forensic aspects of Gameface, which came out in 2002. He said he has been interviewed about the book and performance enhancing drugs in sports on more than 100 radio stations in the U.S. and Canada. He was asked to comment medically on Curt Schilling's ankle injury on a Boston radio station during the 2004 World Series.