Novelists are often asked, how long does it take to write a book? My truthful answer is, about a year. S.O.R. Losers, however, was written in one day. How could such a thing happen? I was able to do it because the story—about a team of nerds who are required (by their school) to form
Years ago, when living in Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia, I was a member of a back-packing club. We’d meet at a nature center early Saturday mornings, and returned Sunday afternoons, having camped for the night. One of the places we liked to hike and camp was along the Appalachian Trail, in a state forest park
People are constantly telling writers, “I have a great story for you.” If the writer is patient he/she will hear a narrative about something that happened to the storyteller. Truth to tell, sometimes these are good and even interesting stories, but simply don’t resonate with the writer. More often than not, they are simply curious narratives
My eldest son had a classmate, a good friend. We’ll call him Toby. A likable, polite, full-of-fun kid, Toby was around our house often. I didn’t know much about him, save one thing: he lived with his grandparents, not his parents. I believe it was my son who told me that. It was nothing I pursued,
Lots of people are fascinated by maps. I knew a serious book collector who built a large library of books which specifically had maps in them. For example, Treasure Island, famously, has a map in it. Indeed, it’s said that Stevenson drew the map for his step-son first, and then wrote the book. I too like
My parents had a retirement home on Shelter Island, a quite enchanting and rather unusual island (wild canaries, bamboo groves, and bays filled with oysters and clams) at the end of Long Island, New York—about a hundred miles from New York City. It was around Labor Day one year that I, along with my family, had
Books evolve in curious ways. Consider The History of Helpless Harry. Or, to give it its full title: The History of Helpless HarryTo which is added a VarietyOf Amusing and EntertainingAdventures I had written, or so I thought, a realistic tale about a boy—in an historical context—who was being pushed about, and generally bullied, until he
On November 14, 1971, a man who came to be known as “D.B. Cooper” hijacked a Boeing 727 aircraft when it was flying between Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington. It was the first plane hijacking in the US. The man leaped from the plane—when it was flying—and parachuted somewhere with a mass of stolen money.
At the end of my book, Night Journeys, the two runaway indentured servants, Elizabeth Mawes and Robert Linnly, manage to escape, and flee north. True, Elizabeth was wounded, but she was free, and the protagonist of the book, young Peter York, comes to an understanding with his master, the pious Quaker Mr. Shinn. But then something
I spent the summer of my 16th year at a work camp run by the Society of Friends (Quakers) on a Cherokee reservation in North Carolina. There, with other teenagers, I labored with the local people, doing farm work, helping to clear wooded areas to bring in electricity, rebuilding homes, plus a great variety of