Avi

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Ideas from Real Life?

One of the ques­tions I am often asked is, “Do you get your char­ac­ters and sto­ries from real life?”

The answer is part­ly. An ear­ly book, No More Mag­ic, had its incep­tion at my old­est son’s fifth grade birth­day par­ty. It was a super hero cos­tume par­ty, and we held it in a park. One boy came dressed as the Green Lantern, com­plete with a jade ring bor­rowed (with­out per­mis­sion) from his moth­er. He lost it in the park grass. The rest of the par­ty became a search par­ty. Ring nev­er found.

Who Stole the Wiz­ard of Oz popped into my head because I came upon an atlas of imag­i­nary places.

I lived in the house in which Some­thing Upstairs takes place. It appears again in Gold Rush Girl. And I resided in Prov­i­dence, RI, for a good num­ber of years.

Noth­ing but the Truth came to life when I read a news­pa­per account of a school cri­sis based on false rumors.

Blue Heron is set at a Mass­a­chu­setts lake­side where I used to vacation.

Don’t You Know There’s a War on? recalls mem­o­ries of my school days dur­ing World War II.

Who was that masked man, any­way? remem­bers the days (as a kid) when I used to lis­ten to the radio endlessly.

The Good Dog has for its main char­ac­ter our own dog, McKin­ley, and the town we once lived in, Steam­boat Springs, Colorado.

Seer of Shad­ows draws on years of doing pho­tog­ra­phy in my own dark room.

School of the Dead is set in a pri­vate school I vis­it­ed in San Francisco.

The But­ton War is based on a sto­ry my late Father-in-law told me about his world War I expe­ri­ences when a boy.

Mind, none of these sto­ries are about real events. They were mere­ly nudged along by experiences—lived, heard, related—along the way.

2 thoughts on “Ideas from Real Life?”

  1. You are one of my favorite his­tor­i­cal fic­tion writ­ers. I love read­ing your books out loud to my class­es. We are right in the mid­dle of The But­ton War now. Excit­ed to see what you write next!

    Reply
  2. I am going to read every­one of the books you have writ­ten that I have not read as my 2021 gift to myself. And re-read those I have loved in the past ie Char­lotte Doyle and Sophi­a’s War.

    Reply

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