I am very pleased to announce that my middle grade novel SINKING DEEPER – OR – MY QUESTIONABLE (POSSIBLY HEROIC) DECISION TO INVENT A SEA MONSTER is one of the ten English Fiction children’s novels nominated for that category of the 2012/2013 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Awards!
This is a tremendous opportunity – not just because it is an award – but because it is an award chosen by the many children who will read these books over the 2012-2013 school year. Even making the short list, as I have, is a wonderful honor and I am truly grateful for this blessing.
And oddly enough it could not come at a better time in that I am currently hard at work – and about three quarters of the way through – my next young adult novel – FIGHTING WORDS.
Over the last year I have a had an awful lot of kids come running up to me waving books that I have written and asking for autographs at schools that I go to visit. This is a new experience. You have to understand that I have been visiting schools as part of the Writers In The School program for many years – but it’s only lately that the kids have started coming to my workshops with my books in their hands.
Let me tell you that is a feeling that is polar bear cool.
Kids are a real tough audience. You can’t afford to fart around with them. Kids want the story and they want you to get to it in the most entertaining fashion. When you are writing for adults you can stop and talk about a sunrise and the way that the rain is beating down upon the concrete and the symbolic meaning of bird turds splattered upon an empty peanut butter jar.
But when you write for kids you’ve got to cut through all of that superfluous hoopdoodlery and get to the meat and bones of the story.
I can’t write much more tonight. The words refuse to spill out because my mouth is way too full of grinning!
Or in the words of the great philosopher Socrates – yowza, baby, yowza!
Yours in storytelling,
Steve Vernon
YOURS IN STORYTELLING... 