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
It is not usual to suddenly come upon information about yourself when you were five years old. Adult son Shaun was going through old family papers when he found my report card for my AM kindergarten. As I say, I was five years old. S=satisfactory. I=improvement. U=Unsatisfactory. I like to think things have gotten better.
Emily Upham’s Revenge, or, How Deadwood Dick saved the Banker’s niece. A Massachusetts Adventure by Avi Pictures by Paul O. Zelinsky William Morrow, 1979 If you have read one of the previous Stories about my Stories, in particular, how The End of the Beginning came about, you’ll find reference to me visiting my good friend, Avon. Avon and
In the summer of 1975, I was working as a librarian, and trying to write. My first two books had been published. But, still needing to work full time at something other than writing, and having worked at the New York Public Library for about ten years, I took a librarian’s job at Trenton State
My first novel, No More Magic, had its origins in my son’s eighth birthday party. At the time, I was living in Lambertville, New Jersey, a charming old 19th century town, the birthplace of James Marshall, the man who, in 1848, first discovered gold on Sutter’s Ranch in California. Situated on the Delaware River, Lambertville
To understand this story about a story you need to know that my birth certificate name is Edward, though other than signing a credit card I never use it. Once upon a time I had a good friend, since passed, who was a writer. Avon actually published a number of fine non-fiction books along with his
In the late sixties, I was trying to be a writer. The best of my achievements was that I did have an agent. But I was also doing many other things. Among such things was a cartoonist; not as an artist, but a doodler. So it was that I doodled a bunch of humorous note
I was terribly saddened to learn of the death of Natalie Babbitt. In the days when I lived in Providence, Rhode Island, we became good friends. She had a very rich talent, but was utterly modest, indeed painfully (to me) self-effacing about her skills. She did not attend the award ceremony when she won (1971)
One of the most common questions I, as a writer, am asked, is; “What inspired you to write such and such a story?” I know many writers get asked that. To my ears, the use of the word “inspire” in that context has a magical or mystic ring to it, as if God, as per the