Origin Story – The Aviatrix Book Club and ‘Literary Aviatrix’

As a high school drop-out, I enlisted in the Coast Guard when I was 18, and was a mother, a pilot, and an O-4 before I finally decided what I was interested in studying. My experience interdicting Haitian and Cuban Migrants for over a decade made me want to understand the history and politics behind the policies I was enforcing. I finally earned a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and Political Science online with American Military University when I was 35 years old. The next year, the Coast Guard sent me to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government to earn a Master’s in Public Administration.

In this episode of the Aviatrix Book Review podcast, I talk about how that experience made me reflect on what I was truly passionate about, my circle of influence, and where I thought I could really effect change, and how all of that led me to the Aviatrix Book Club and ‘Literary Aviatrix’.

I also share my vision for the future and express my deep gratitude to everyone who has brought their positive energy, participation, and encouragement to this project. I am so grateful for your support and friendship, and excited to connect with more of you in the future.

Shouts out to: all of our Aviatrix Writers and Aviatrix Book Club members; Women in Aviation, International; Aviation for Women Magazine editor, Kelly Murphy; A Chick in the Cockpit’s Erika Armstrong; and Shaesta Waiz and Michael Wildes of the Women Soar Group. 

Listen here or read the transcript . . .

[00:00:00] Maya Johanna: If you take one step, then you’ll be a little closer to your dream.

[00:00:27] Liz Booker: Hello and welcome. I’m Liz Booker. I’m a pilot and a writer. I host the Aviatrix Book Club, the Aviatrix Book Review website, podcast, and YouTube channel, the Aviatrix Writers Group, and I promote books that feature women in aviation as Literary Aviatrix on social media. And I don’t have a guest today. When I started the Aviatrix Book Club in 2020, I did a series of video introductions to explain who I was, where this was coming from, and my vision for it at the time.

Since then, we’ve had hundreds of members join, some of whom I’ve been thrilled to meet virtually or in person, and others who are passive participants whose membership I appreciate nonetheless. I thought I’d take some time to share parts of my story and the story of the Aviatrix Book Club and my literary Aviatrix brand to help all of you feel more connected to and inspired by this special and unique community.

And also to express my deep appreciation to you for your participation and support in this project. I’ll share a little about what it means to me, what I hope it means to you, and to the women who come behind us. And how my vision for it has evolved over the past two years. If you’ve listened to my author interviews or to interviews I’ve done with other podcasters, you’ve heard little bits of this here and there, but I’m going to lay it all out for you today.

Not my entire life story, don’t worry. Just the parts that led me to this community. To all of you.

How do you know if someone’s a pilot? You all know the joke. Wait five minutes and they’ll tell you. Well, people make the same joke about Harvard grads, only it’s not actually true. Most Harvard grads won’t tell you, especially in a social setting. But I’m telling you, not to impress you, but because it is directly related to everything I’ve been doing here, for the past two years,

I dropped out of high school and enlisted in the Coast Guard when I was 18. I fulfilled my childhood dream of becoming a pilot at 25 through Navy Flight School 10 years before I earned my bachelor’s degree in international relations online, while I was deploying around the Caribbean on drug and migrant interdictions with a family at home.

When the Coast Guard selected me for a fully funded master in public administration, and I was accepted to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, as you might imagine, I felt very fortunate and very grateful. I describe my experience at the Kennedy School as akin to standing on a mountaintop and finding myself surrounded by other mountains extending off in the distance to infinity that represented the world’s problems.

Those problems are vast and complex, and I have tremendous respect for my colleagues who are out there across the globe, working to solve them. What that experience did for me, though, was it made me reflect on what issues I was truly passionate about, what my circle of influence was or could be, and what problems I thought I could tackle and truly affect change.

Based on my experiences in aviation, with which many of you can connect, I decided that what I really cared about was influencing the policies and demographics in my small community of Coast Guard Aviation to create a more balanced culture for the women who came behind me. What I also learned from that experience was how to network, basically Harvard’s brand.

In the very first presentation of that program, we were told that over the next 10 months, we needed to meet five new people every day, and that we needed to be connectors. We needed to identify people with like interests and goals and make introductions.

I came out of that program into a payback staff tour as the human resources manager for the Coast Guard’s pilots with the confidence and skills to leverage my position power and influence my community on behalf of women in aviation. And I wasn’t alone in this vision. I was privileged to be working alongside another woman in that office who shared these goals.

Together, we worked with our headquarters to formalize the Coast Guard’s relationship with Women in Aviation International, increasing our attendance at their conferences from around 10 to 15 annually, to over 120 pilots and aircrew in my second year in the office. It doesn’t sound like much, but when women make up 8 percent of 1, 200 pilots, it’s pretty significant.

We designed mentoring sessions, leadership panels, and created opportunities for women’s voices from across the Coast Guard of all ranks and crew positions to be heard by senior leadership, ultimately influencing policy changes for the benefit of women in aviation. I’m proud to say that all of these activities that my colleague and I initiated almost 15 years ago continue at the annual conferences today.

I also wrote cover articles for Aviation for Women magazine. I was inspired to write them after sitting on panels at the Women in Aviation conferences titled something like, Work Life Balance as Military Pilots. I was honored to represent the Coast Guard as a woman who had successfully navigated a military career from E3 to O4 at the time, who was a mother before I earned my wings, and who had given birth to my second child, Toward the end of my first operational aviation tour, as I listened to my fellow panel members representing the various services, I discovered that not one of them had had children while in an active duty flying tour.

This isn’t to say those women didn’t exist. They did. They just didn’t happen to be represented on this panel that was supposed to be about balancing a flying career with family. The other panel members were either still actively flying and had no children yet, but wanted to, or had transitioned to staff or reserve duties in order to have their families.

At the time, the Coast Guard was really pushing for more diversity across the service, and especially in underrepresented specialties. Well, as the Coast Guard Pilot’s HR Manager, responsible for selections and accessions for the Coast Guard, basically the hiring officer, I saw this as an opportunity to highlight the organization as one in which you could have a family and a career, and to present that to a target rich environment: the members of WAI.

So I wrote my first article and highlighted three women, two pilots and one flight mechanic, who were doing it. While I wanted to present the Coast Guard in a positive light, I didn’t want to sound like this life doesn’t come without compromises, so I made sure to include some of the challenges involved and how those women dealt with them.

A few years later, when four of the Coast Guard’s 27 air stations were commanded by women, I wrote another article highlighting them, and my third was about the three women who were serving as aviation survival technicians or rescue swimmers at the time.

I went on to serve as the chief pilot at the Coast Guard’s air station in Los Angeles. Then as the targeting chief at Joint Interagency Task Force South in Key West, where I coordinated multinational counter narcotics interdictions in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

In my last tour on active duty, I had the opportunity to fulfill another career ambition that had grown out of my international relations interests .I served as a diplomat, posted at the U. S. Embassy in Barbados as the senior defense official to seven Eastern Caribbean nations. This job was like finishing school. It smoothed out some of my rougher edges. After 26 years of military service, 3 at sea, 15 of those in aviation, and 4 in a joint job working with Marine Corps and Army Colonels, I could certainly hold my own in a hostile environment. Going through diplomatic training, working with the State Department and with seven distinct Caribbean island cultures, gave me a whole new set of skills that I had no idea at the time would translate to everyday life after the Coast Guard, but they did.

I learned to read my audience and determine when an aggressive approach made sense and when it did not. I learned to negotiate, to identify and work in cooperative ways to achieve common goals. I learned some soft skills I hadn’t had until now.

In a 28 year career, there are many other stories to tell, dozens of anecdotes that highlight the experience of a woman pilot in the military, but these are the portions that provide the background for how this literary aviatrix project has evolved to date, and my vision for it in the future.

But there’s another part of my story, not directly related to this experience, but certainly influenced by it, that explains what I’m doing here. In tandem to all the things I just shared, in my spare time, I decided to become a writer. Way back when I was a baby pilot in my second operational aviation tour, before I even earned that international relations degree, I woke up one morning with the seed of a story in my imagination.

It was about a girl who was introduced to aviation and learned to fly. There were elements of my international relations interest, particularly the history of the U. S. involvement with Haiti, and of course some action- packed helicopter rescue scenes. This story would not leave me alone. I started living in two worlds, my real life with work and family, pursuing my education, and this imaginary story world, following my characters on their adventures.

By the time I was in that HR job after Harvard, I had to get it out. And I did. I sat down one November, every day, after long and demanding hours in the office, to write 50, 000 words, along with hundreds of other writers around the country, for National Novel Writing Month. And I did it. I wrote my story.

Then I read it.

And it was crap.

I discovered that, despite being an avid reader, and a reasonably solid writer in a military context, I didn’t know the first thing about crafting an engaging work of fiction. But this story represented so much to me.

I believe the only contributions we have to make in this world that are completely unique, that can only be made by us as individuals, are our children, whether they are birthed by us or raised by us, our relationships, and our creativity, in whatever form we elect to employ it.

I hoped this story, this unique contribution I had to offer the world, might inspire young women to consider joining us in aviation. Even if it inspired one person, one young woman, who wouldn’t have considered aviation otherwise, it would be worth it. My wilder fantasies for it were that more than one young woman would be inspired by it.

I wanted to infiltrate the minds of young girls and inspire them to fly, ultimately shifting the demographics of aviation. But whether it would reach only one or many, this story needed to be the best it could before I released it into the world.

I decided I didn’t want to be a pilot writing a book. I wanted to be a writer writing a book, who happened to be an expert in her subject. So I mapped out a plan to develop the skills I needed to do that. I joined the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, attended workshops and retreats, and ultimately decided I needed a more structured approach.

I spent the remainder of my GI Bill on a second master’s degree in writing for children and young adults through a low residency program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts while I was working in Key West. I did this to prepare myself to write full time when I retired.

In August of 2019, I retired and on November 1st, I started my new job as a writer. I participated in National Novel Writing Month, again, with a new story about a girl who’s introduced to aviation in a military context. I wrote my 50, 000 words and continued to work on this story until… COVID.

Now, I retired knowing full well that my relationship with aviation, my first love, was in desperate need of therapy. My plan was to do this by pursuing a general aviation bucket list, which I could also justify as research for my writing, and get involved with the local 99s and WAI chapters. By the end of 2020, I hadn’t been able to do any of this. I was feeling disconnected from the aviation community and as someone who was writing to inspire other women to fly, I was running out of steam.

[00:14:11] Maya Johanna: Grab it, hold it by its tail before it escapes. You know its ways and you cannot lose it, that’s what you fear. So hold it up against your ear and very carefully listen to what it wants you to hear.

[00:14:27] Liz Booker: During COVID, both of my graduate school cohorts had started book clubs as a way to connect on a monthly basis. For years, I’d had this fantasy that someday I would write a comprehensive review of all the books ever written featuring women in aviation. I thought, maybe it was time to get started on that goal as a way to reignite my passion. And it might be fun to do it with a few friends to discuss the books.

At about 10 a. m. on a weekday, November 6th, 2020, I reached out in the Facebook community. In less than 10 minutes, I had over 40 responses, which sent me into a total panic. How was I going to keep track of so many people? I’d envisioned 10 to 15, but 40? I quickly googled, ‘how do I make a Facebook group,’ as the responses continued to roll in.

I made the group, posted it, and in less than a week, had 600 members. By the end of the month, we were at 1, 200.

Now, I’m not a religious person, but for lack of a better cliche, it did feel very much like the clouds parted and a ray of light shone down on me, telling me, this is exactly what I was supposed to be doing at exactly this moment.

I’d identified a gap, a niche, a need that hadn’t been met except maybe by local aviation chapters. And I fully recognized that the timing was key. That, like me, people were tired. Tired of the news, tired of COVID, and they too were looking for connection. This was big though. I suddenly had to figure out how to make decisions about books with over a thousand people I didn’t even know.

And I had to figure out how exactly to offer a small book club feel in virtual land. I just switched into Commander mode. Having worked with large teams in both military and civilian contexts, I knew that to try to make decisions by committee with that many people would be too complicated and I’d probably lose people in the process.

So I dove into Amazon to create a reading list for 2021. I’d pick books I wanted to read, but I’d make sure the list would be diverse in terms of genre, historical period, and types of flying experience so that anyone who is interested in aviation and books, no matter their reading preference or their particular aviation interest, would find at least one book on the list they wanted to read.

When I typed ‘woman pilot’ into the search bar, I got an 80 plus page return. As I scoured the books, half of them either had nothing to do with women or nothing to do with aviation. But as I dug deeper and deeper and started tallying the relevant ones, I was amazed at how many there were, and thoroughly annoyed at how difficult they were to find.

This is when I learned about search algorithms. I still don’t know exactly how they work. kind of like the avionics boxes on the aircraft, P. F. M. But what I do know is that there are times even now when I know an exact title and author’s name when I go in to search that the book still doesn’t come up. I think the tipping point for me was when I got to page 40 of this return and discovered what I considered to be one of the most interesting and exciting new releases that year, Cecilia Aragon’s memoir, Flying Free.

I’m pretty sure my shoulders drooped.

I knew what I needed to do, and I knew it was going to be a steep learning curve and a tremendous amount of work, but I had to build a website to serve as a central source to find these books. My own novels could wait. This is what I was supposed to be doing.

As I researched and launched that effort, I began to brainstorm other possibilities.

Weren’t there book clubs where the author joined in the conversation? But with over a thousand members, we would probably need multiple discussions in a month. And what author has the time for that, I wondered. I’d probably need to record that discussion, and I was nervous. Did I have the technical acumen to run and record a meeting with an author and multiple guests? What if things went off the rails? Was I comfortable recording something for public consumption that wasn’t scripted and wasn’t completely under my control?

No, I was not. I might be able to do a one on one interview, though, and record that for audio only. I asked myself, or for video, too? Ugh, the thought of having to hear my own voice was enough to paralyze me, but video, too?

But if I dug into my core beliefs, the premise of which is that people need to see examples of success that look like them to believe that they can do it, too– and I’ve heard people say that this isn’t true for them, but I know from my own experience, it is true for me, and it is at the heart of my motivation to write my stories– it had to be video too.

The new learning curve, the workload, and the significant excursion well outside my comfort zone just grew exponentially.

I made my draft reading list. I decided I would only select books for which the author agreed to do an interview. And I started emailing them. I thought the book, A Chick in the Cockpit, about an airline pilot, which I hadn’t read yet, might have the broadest appeal.

So, I picked it for January, and reached out to Erika Armstrong. She said yes! As did ten of the other authors I reached out to, leaving one big- name, mainstream author who, after multiple emails to her, her publicity team, and her publisher, finally declined. And who could blame them? I was nobody from nowhere. And why, if she was a multiple bestseller, who didn’t need the book sales, to me?

It was fine. I had about 500 other books to choose from. Erika was so lovely. She graciously agreed to a prep call since this was going to be my first ever attempt at something like this. I felt like it could make or break the whole effort and I wanted to do it reasonably well.

She was so encouraging, so positive, it gave me the strength and courage I needed to push through the scary prospect of putting myself out in the world. She also, coincidentally, envisioned a future in which sponsors would flock to my platform and audience to support my cause, hoping in turn to recruit the next generation of women pilots, just like me.

More on that later.

That interview with Erika, which was amateur at best, remains my single most viewed interview on YouTube. With a following of 425, 000, she really helped launch this project and I’m forever grateful.

Something else that I didn’t anticipate was going on behind the scenes with this effort. Authors, especially those who had launched their books during COVID, But others, too, saw this as a platform to promote their work to a receptive and concentrated audience. I agree, and as a writer who wants to publish my own work, recognized that I had plenty to learn from them. I also recognized that some of the books I’d read, featuring women in aviation over the years, might have benefited from some better editing or some writing coaching.

Maybe if I provided the tools and resources to aspiring authors to do things better in the future, their books might reach a broader audience? So I decided that during these interviews, I’d spend some time talking about writing and publishing. I thought maybe collectively we could provide a chart for other women in aviation who had stories to tell about how to write and publish their own future work.

The Aviatrix Writers Group grew out of these ideas and now we have 140 members. The authors have connected with one another like never before, help promote each other’s work, and support one another in their writing and publishing journeys. In order to build an audience for all this and to promote these amazing books that I feature in my interviews and on the website, I’ve experimented across social media and built a following of over 8, 000 in the past two years. Another steep and painful learning curve.

Fast forward to this moment in 2022, heading into our third year of the Aviatrix Book Club, the Aviatrix Writers Group, and the Aviatrix Book Review website, YouTube channel, and podcast. I have learned so much. In my moments of doubt when I’ve had low numbers of podcast downloads, When I’ve assessed whether the time and energy is worth it, and believe me, it’s a lot, I work very hard to prepare for these interviews and present the story and the author in the best light possible, but still ask them the hard questions when it’s appropriate. The answer to those doubts has been a resounding yes.

While I like to joke that I have essentially paid to work full time job over the past two years, in the balance, I am personally in the black. I may not have received financial compensation, but the friendships and connections I’ve made, the secrets I’ve learned about writing and publishing, the perspective I’ve gained on our collective history and experiences, these things far outweigh any potential financial gain I could ever ask for.

And I don’t mean to pretend that this is entirely altruistic. In addition to those intangible earnings, I have been growing my platform for my own work when it’s ready, and experimenting and learning from what works and what doesn’t by practicing with other people’s work.

I just want to pause here, though, and say thank you.

Thank you for the positivity and energy you’ve brought to this effort. Thank you for your participation, either in virtual discussions or in post discussions. Thank you for inviting your friends. I have gained so much from getting to know you, both virtually and in person. You were the therapy I needed and you reignited my passion and motivation to keep writing.

I am very grateful.

[00:25:13] Maya Johanna: Find it sleeping in its nest before it wakes up. Touch it gently, you want it…

[00:25:32] Liz Booker: now, I’d like to share my vision for where this goes in the future, and I’ll start with the writers because really, they’re what brought us together. And they make up the content, they are the substance of this entire effort. But first, I’ll back up a little. When I was ready to launch the Aviatrix book review website, I thought I’d leverage that relationship I’d made with Aviation for Women magazine and ask if I could write an article to promote this effort.

The editor, Kelly Murphy, was very supportive and published a piece that celebrated the launch. Later in the year, She asked if I’d be interested in writing a regular Authors Connect column, which I enthusiastically agreed to. Reconnecting with WAI made me remember the success I’d had in establishing the activities for our Coast Guard women, which, as I mentioned, continue today.

WAI has supported authors at their annual conference since its inception. I personally remember going home from every conference with a suitcase full of books. They offer book signing tables on the exhibit floor at no charge to the authors, and in the past, also ran a bookshop. At WAI 2022, we experimented with a writer’s panel and an author reading on the schedule.

I wanted to learn how things worked at the author tables, so I was basically a groupie for three days, pulling people over and bragging about the authors who were there. We’re planning similar events at WAI 2023 based on what we learned last year. I thought moving the reading to early in the conference might generate a little more excitement and would hook people to visit the tables, meet the authors, and buy the books later in the conference.

And while the conference room where we did it last year was fine, I thought we could class it up a bit. So, we’ll be hosting a reading on the first night of the conference in what I hope will be a nicer venue with food and refreshments and some time to socialize afterwards. We’ve also asked WAI for an extra booth to do a self supported bookshop on the exhibit floor.

My vision is for us to test and tweak these events with WAI, and when we have a model for what’s working, export them to other aviation events like conferences and air shows throughout the year. This is all part of a bigger plan to formalize the Women Writing in Aviation into a non profit organization that might have scholarship opportunities to support aspiring authors in the future.

As I began to develop friendships with our writers, I had a paradigm shift about my brand and what I was doing. I decided I’m not in the business of writing critical reviews of my friend’s work after it’s published. It doesn’t help their work at that point, and it doesn’t align with my efforts to get our stories to as broad an audience as possible.

So, I’m gradually transitioning my brand away from aviatrix book review toward making everything fall under Literary Aviatrix. I learned a lot from my website in the past two years. It could be so much better, and I know what I want to do to improve the interface and content. So when I’m ready and able to build a new site, it will be the Literary Aviatrix website.

I have some other exciting side projects, not directly book related, but aligned with my brand and grounded in story that I think you’re all going to be excited about and love, but I’m not ready to announce them just yet. I feel like this project has really taken off because of you, what I would consider the base support for our collective stories.

But what I really want, not just for my book when it comes out, but for the Aviatrix canon as a whole, is for it to reach a much broader audience. Really, since the beginning, I’ve had as my goal to craft a narrative that resonates with people outside of aviation and to generate more interest in our stories with the hopes that it will expose more people, those parents and grandparents and teachers, who influenced the next generation, and to reach those young girls themselves.

That’s the next level for this effort. And it’s what I want to focus on in the coming year.

All of these great ideas require resources, time, energy, effort for sure, but also money. While I truly am happy to work full time without financial compensation, because I love everything I’m doing and I love being connected with all of you, I could do more and better if I had the support of a few sponsors.

Even though Erika Armstrong encouraged me at the very beginning to start thinking about sponsorship, I was slow in coming around. I felt like I had so much more to learn. I needed to get this thing established and most importantly, see if it would even outlive Covid isolation. Well, it has, and on the advice of some mentors, I decided I was ready to figure this out early this summer.

Just about the time I was feeling completely overwhelmed and unable to decide what to do next or where to turn, I was contacted by Shaesta Wa and Michael Wildes. As most of you know, Shaesta is the previous record holder for youngest woman to fly solo around the world. And Michael, who in his day job is the editor of Flying Magazine, was Shaesta’s media director for that trip. From that experience, they identified a gap in the market.

There was no full service media company devoted specifically to the aviation community. And they decided they’d start one. They were launching the Women’s Soar group, and they were looking for clients with great content who they could help get to the next level. They were exactly what I needed. Exactly when I needed them.

And like me, they’re not only big idea people, but hard working. They’re willing to do what it takes to make their dreams come true. I mean, all you have to do is look at Shaesta, who decided she was going to fly around the world solo in her 20s, raised the money to do it, and followed through. I am so grateful to be working with them, and I feel their interest in my project and the interest I’ve received from other collaborators is indicative of the value and potential this project offers our community.

So here’s my call to action. Keep buying, reading, sharing, and reviewing our authors books. If you have the time, join us in the virtual discussions. As with any organization, you really do get out what you put in, and in this case, the putting in is really just showing up to talk about a book, meet new people, network, make new friends from across aviation from around the world.

And if the discussion dates and times don’t work for you, or your local aviation chapter wants to jump in with us, you can host a discussion. Just send me a message on Facebook, or email me at [email protected], and I’ll post an event with your date and time, and I’ll do my best to join in.

If you enjoy the author interviews or watch the videos, I’d greatly appreciate if you would like, subscribe, leave a review, send me your feedback, and share it with your friends. If you prefer to get your information via email, sign up for the Literary Aviatrix newsletter, which I recently launched thanks to the Women’s SOAR group.

And finally, if you or someone you know is interested in connecting with our community through sponsorship, I’d love to hear from you. My hope is to involve a few key sponsors who I can tailor my efforts with to help them achieve their goals while bringing value to our community. You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and even LinkedIn, which still doesn’t know what to do with me, apparently, at Literary Aviatrix.

Thanks for listening. Thanks for being a part of this community.

Blue Skies and happy reading.

[00:34:20] Maya Johanna: Here I am, I’m ready to go again, I’m ready to say goodbye. When the sky is high, no reason to stay on the ground. Lift your hands and you can touch it, fly. The your minute you felt you’ve found, understand that you can have it all. The wings are in your soul. When the sky is high, no reason to stay on ground lift your hands and you can, you can touch it, fly.