Greg Hasty never limited himself to one genre. Fiction, nonfiction, religious self-help: He’s done it all.
Hasty started his career in journalism, where he worked as a disc jockey at an ABC affiliate in Lubbock after graduating from Texas Tech. Like many journalists, Hasty found money to be short and decided to go into banking.
“It was a very boring job, but it paid the bills,” Hasty says. “Finally, after retiring, I started painting and writing, and it has just poured out since then.”
Since the start of COVID, Hasty has published Unsettled Business, Jana and Lydia and I’m a Nobody.
Hasty’s first books discussed a young man who gets into trouble with drugs and finds God, and an underaged girl who is kidnapped from a bar and sex-trafficked.
“When you start writing, you want to be famous. That’s what everybody wants to do,” Hasty says. “I’ve found that the publishing business is very, very tough. … So I don’t think I’m looking to get famous as much as I am to enjoy doing what I’m doing and maybe some people learn something through the books.”
Woodstockers, Hasty’s fourth and newest book, features a teen girl who rebels against her mom’s wishes and goes to Woodstock alone. Along the way, she encounters the messy world of music and learns a little about herself along the way.
“[I fell] just head over heels with music,” Hasty says. “I went to the Lewisville festival, which was two weeks after Woodstock, so I got to experience a Woodstock locally. That stuck with me for a long time. The bands, the music, the atmosphere, the hippies, just all of the goings on at these festivals inspired this book.”
After publishing Woodstockers, Hasty switched to non fiction.
“It’s kind of weird, because most authors stick with a genre and go with it, but I have a lot of interests,” Hasty says.
Currently, Hasty is working on a book detailing the history of Oak Cliff, the neighborhood in Dallas where he grew up.
“I’ve interviewed so many people in Oak Cliff, particularly people of color,” Hasty says. “What I found out is that the history of Oak Cliff tends to be all about the white side, which misses 50% of what went on.”
Before moving to Plano, Hasty was a fifth generation Oak Cliff resident. According to him, his great great grandfather fought in the Civil War and then settled in the area.
“[Moving from fiction to nonfiction] is like if you’re in a normal class, and you get moved to the AP class,” Hasty says. “It was a big transition, but now that I’ve done it and on such a radical scale, I think I can do it pretty easily on something else.”
While writing the Oak Cliff book, Hasty met musician Johnny Taylor’s son, who asked him to do a biography on his life. The biography will become his sixth book.
On top of writing about anything and everything, Hasty likes to paint and attend live concerts, undoubtedly getting his creativity back after 40 years in banking.
All of Hasty’s published works are available for purchase on Amazon.
