Local author would love to give up his day job
Terry Eckstein is currently the owner and president of a national recruiting company which he operates remotely from his home. That is his “day” job—it pays the bills. He has always loved to create stories. “I would have loved to have had a career writing books, but knew I could not support a family on a writer’s income.” He didn’t begin writing his first book until he was 59 years old.
He resides in the historic hamlet of Mantorville. For many years Eckstein has been involved in the business community and Mantorville’s cultural historic and arts organizations. He is also a regular patron to restaurants in and around Mantorville. Elements of the people, the surrounding area and its happenings are woven into his stories.
Raised in a little northern Minnesota community where he attended the same public school from kindergarten through his senior year, Eckstein was immersed in small-town values with its small-town problems. His family owned a department store where he first started working, getting paid by candy bars, when he was six years old.
Once a teenager, he was interacting with customers and solving problems. He learned how to deal with different types of people and their various temperaments. It was the perfect environment to prepare him for his 50-year career in human resources—the inspiration for his first novel, HR: Behind Closed Doors.
After college, he worked some years as a business manager but mostly as a human resource professional. He was employed by a variety of companies, from smaller 20-person privately-owned businesses to large Fortune 500 companies with 1000s of employees. This experience provided him with plenty of story material to draw from.
“I wanted to write a novel about my career in Human Resources, but before I took on the task of writing a novel, I decided to write some short stories about my family dogs.”
Family-Friendly THOMAS Short Story Series
The first two books, THOMAS: Gunshot in the Woods and THOMAS: Life with Judah, were initially written with the pen name Hank Thorson, the name of Eckstein’s maternal grandfather. As one of the main characters in the story, Hank Thorson tells the tale in the first person. A change in pen name was made in his most recent and third book, THOMAS: Hubbell House Adventures. Eckstein now uses his own name as the author, and it is written in the third person. Now THOMAS books 1 and 2 also show Terry Eckstein as the author.
Adult Fiction HR Series
HR: Behind Closed Doors was inspired by events that happened during Eckstein’s career. Appropriate for adults only, the novel spells out the humorous, the raunchy and bizarre acts of men and women in the workplace. In addition to hardcover, paperback and ebook, there is an audiobook version as well.
Next up:
With a new plot twist, and a few HR highlights, he is currently working on his second novel, HR: At Mayo Clinic. This will take a new direction from the first novel, and his subsequent sequels will build on it. His characters have much to accomplish and he is ruminating on three or four more HR novels to follow.
Different Series, Same Characters
The THOMAS short stories and HR novels are two very different series, but they share some things in common. Readers will find the same cast of characters. Most of the stories take place in and around Mantorville, the community Eckstein has come to love and cherish. Both series are fiction inspired by actual events. You can find Eckstein’s books on Amazon, and at local shops Johnson’s General Store in Kasson and the Mantorville Art Guild in Mantorville. For more information, go to the Mantorville Farms website or Facebook page.