Photo by Beth Warren
Pete Chaney
The fifth grade school teacher read his short stories, handwritten on notebook paper, to the class in a two-room country school in Virginia. Pete Chaney knew what he wanted to do—become a writer, a teller of tales.
He was a 17-year-old college student working as a copy boy for the Norfolk Virginian Pilot VA as he began a career of “peddling prose.” At 20, he was sports editor of the daily Sanford NC Herald and next year published his own weekly, the Camden SC Citizen.
His estimation is that he has worked on more different newspapers and magazines than most people have read. Awards from press associations came for column and news writing, and for photography.
Always his dream was to write fiction. He came to believe more truth can be told in fiction than in non-fiction. He felt that facts limited the telling of the full story as seen by the writer, just as an artist does not try to paint a picture that competes with a photograph.
Credits include writing the million seller One Day at a Time, a biography of gospel singer Cristy Lane. He has written several screen plays and a science fiction novel, Angel’s Walk.
He moved to Chattanooga TN in the mid 1980s to work on his novel with historical subjects that intrigued him. His Valley of the Mules depicts the hybrid animal as a vital part in the history of America as seen from characters living in the shadow of Lookout Mountain.
Bertha Klausner was his friend and agent before she died. Finding little interest from other agents, he put the manuscript on a shelf. Friends urged him to bring it out after years and the union with enterprising printers, Dave and Alison Hixson, brings it to life.
Pete is absorbed with the historical setting of Chattanooga where he lives and plans to bring out “a few more novels before I get too old.”
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