Tag Archives: The Secret School

Serials in the 21st Century

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Keep Your Eye on AmandaThe first serial I wrote was Keep Your Eye on Amanda. Chapter 1 appeared in the Colorado Springs Gazette Telegraph on October 3, 1996. Readers loved it. Authors found new readers. (I recall riding a NY subway, watching an old man read a chapter of The Secret School in the NY Post.) Other newspapers joined in. Readers clamored for it. Teachers used it in classes, grandparents shared it with distant grandchildren. 

Though I remained the nominal head of the company, Linda Wright took it over, transforming it into a unique publishing venture. The name Breakfast Serials was introduced. Other authors joined in. Katherine Paterson. Linda Sue Park. Joseph Bruchac, among others. Illustrators Brian Floca, Emily Arnold McCully, Timothy Bush. 

Under Ms. Wright, the growth of Breakfast Serials was extraordinary, eventually reaching a circulation figure of thirty-three million! It probably became—in terms of readers—the biggest publisher in the world. All, as it were, beneath the radar. But just as Breakfast Serials expanded around the world, the US press—under the internet onslaught—virtually tanked. What to do?

Instant Serials

Ms. Wright regrouped and has now invented a way to make serialization available online, as Instant Serials. Here, terrific stories and great art are available in serialized form, along with a means of chatting (online, with no smack talk) about the stories. The reader (parent, grandparent, and teacher) sets the release dates of successive chapters. Which means readers will still have to laugh, cry, and wait … a little. Quite amazing.

If only I had known

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Sometimes, when you publish an historical novel, readers send in corrections (I had the wrong gear shift sequence in the Model T Ford, in The Secret School). Sometimes you get additional  information. Here is such a one for Sophia’s War. As I wrote my correspondent, “Oh! If only I had known about this particular soldier’s name and that the cannon still existed!!!!!” Maybe in the second edition.

Peterson markerThis hard-to-find marker, with a plaque that reads “The Grave of John J. Peterson, Revolutionary War, Westchester Militia (1746 – 1850)” is the grave of a little-known African American soldier, who played a small but crucial role in a pivotal event of the war. On September 21, 1780, Peterson, along with Moses Sherwood, brought a cannon from Fort Lafayette at Verplanck’s Point to Croton Point. There they fired on the British frigate Vulture which was waiting to pick up Major John André, who at the time was plotting with American General Benedict Arnold for the surrender of West Point. The Vulture abandoned its river position, forcing the spy André to move overland on horseback. He was captured in Tarrytown a few days later carrying plans of West Point. André was hanged in the tiny Rockland County hamlet of Tappan on October 2, 1780. Today, the cannon used by the patriots sits in front of the Peekskill Museum. Sherwood is buried in Ossining’s Sparta Cemetery