This just arrived, the definitive and singular work on the Emmett Till case.
Congratulations, Devery! This is a remarkable accomplishment!
Uncategorized
New Book!
I just heard from Candlewick Press that my next book, Just as Good: How Larry Doby Changed America’s Game, will be released on January 24, 2012. This is my first children’s book, and it’s illustrated by Mike Benny, an award-winning artist with the perfect touch to illustrate a baseball story.
Larry Doby was the first African American player in the American League; he joined the Cleveland Indians in 1947, just a few weeks after Jackie Robinson started the season with the Brooklyn Dodgers in the National League. Doby endured all the same abuse as Robinson, but his story is known only by a handful of fans. His rookie season was a disappointment, but in 1948, he had a great year and led the Indians to the most recent World Series title. My book focuses on a single game in the World Series.
Anyway, it’s nice to have another book on its way. I can’t wait to finish the revisions on my next novel.
Utah: A Great Place For Writers
Our local public radio station, KUER-FM, had a nice piece this morning on Utah being such a terrific place for people who write for children and teens. Here’s the link to that broadcast:
Most of the interviews for this piece were done at the Provo City Library’s first-ever Teen Book Festival.
Writing is an Act of Faith by Chris Crowe (plus a little bitty writing exercise)
By CLW, originally published on “Throwing Up Words“
Writing is an Act of Faith by Chris Crowe (plus a little bitty writing exercise)
Chris Crowe is still trying to figure out when he fell over the hill. When he’s not thinking about thinking about writing, he likes to spend time with his family, especially his precocious and beautiful grand-girls, Ella and Kasia. He teachers YA literature and creative writing at BYU, and he’s the author of a handful of books and some really, really bad poetry.
You can take this any way you want, but I’m not intending it to be religious, even though I’m using a popular religious term: faith.
It is an act of faith to climb onto an airplane and, as it barrels down the runway at 170 miles per hour, know that somehow the forces of nature and physics will combine to lift the 450,000 pound metal behemoth into the sky and set it down again a few hours later. You hope that the worst you’ll have to endure is a rattling, lurching up-and-down and side-to-side shaking of severe turbulence and not a fiery crash where you’ll be shredded into hamburger on impact and then fried in jet fuel.
It is an act of faith to sit in the passenger seat of your car and to hand the keys to a blindly over-confident 15-year old and then to sit, doing your best not to flinch, criticize, or in any way distract the naive driver-in-training, while the rookie veers too close to parked cars, speeds in to red lights, and flips left turns into oncoming traffic. You hope that you and your car will make it home without any damage or injuries—and especially without anyone dying.
It is an act of faith to, when you’re totally naked except for the flimsiest of hospital gowns, allow surgeons—total strangers—to knock you unconscious with potentially lethal doses of chemicals and drugs, to slice into your body with razor-sharp metal instruments, and to use their latexed fingers to probe your insides and to chop out whatever they decide they don’t like. You hope you’ll wake up, of course, but also that you’ll wake up with everything that matters still in tact and functioning and that after the initial post-anesthesia vomiting and agonizing pain, you’ll be able to recover.
It is an act of faith to love someone so much that you totally and willingly reveal your greatest weaknesses, insecurities, and mistakes and trust that the person you love will not only respect you but continue to be your best friend in spite of all she knows about the worst and weaseliest of you. You hope that you can live up to her trust and affection and that it will last a long, long time—maybe even forever.
It is an act of faith to plop down in a chair—on a good, bad, or indifferent day—and to face the blank page or computer screen with a subconscious voice drowning out all your thoughts and inspiration with head-splitting shrieks of high expectations, self-criticism and self-doubt. To put that first letter on the great unknown of the blank page is an act of faith comparable to anything the boldest dreamers and explorers have done: to go boldly where no one has gone before. Faith is what turns that first letter into the first word, the first word into the first sentence, the first sentence into the first paragraph, the first paragraph into the first page. Moving that pen or striking that keyboard is like planting a tiny mustard seed with the hope, the faith, that it will, eventually, with time and effort, turn into something much grander than the original speck of organic material.
It is an audacious act of faith to keep stringing words and sentences together for an extended period of time, hoping that with enough effort, they will eventually add up to a book that is much greater than the sum of its parts. You hope that, even in the face of self-doubt, rejection, and failure, your faith will give you the courage to write that first letter, to plant a tiny speck on the blank page and to hope, no, to know, that if you keep going, sooner or later it will begin to add up to something. It’s a leap of faith, really, but you have learned that if you take that leap into the great blank unknown, you can write. Believe it or not, you can write. Really, you can write.
Chris Crowe is a good friend and a writer who isn’t afraid to tackle the hard stories from history. If you haven’t yet, read his novel, MISSISSIPPI TRIAL, 1955 and his non-fiction book GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER: THE TRUE STORY OF THE EMMITT TILL CASE. He loves his family, is a terrible tease and wishes he could have a couple more cats (his favorite pets). I’m very sorry he didn’t send his beach photo for all to see.
WRITING EXERCISE– What is it that keeps you from writing? Ask yourself this question, really think about it, then put those ideas down on paper. Look your fear in the eye and then set it aside so you can write that book that needs to be written. Feel free to share what you discover here.
Back From Tonga!
Back from Tonga and still jetlagged. Our flight left Tongatapu at 9:00pm on Tuesday night, flew for 90 minutes and landed in Apia, Samoa at 10:00pm MONDAY night. From Samoa, we flew to Los Angeles and landed there at 4:00pm Tuesday afternoon, 5 hours earlier than we left Tonga. Crossing the International Date Line really messed up my internal clock.The trip to Tonga was well worth it. I’ve posted some photos from there. More than anything, it helped me learn about the place, the language, and the culture. Of course, it was a thrill to see the places where William Mariner had been about 200 years ago.
Service Award From ALAN
New Award!
I recently learned that I’ve been named the recipient of the 2010 Ted Hipple Service Award from ALAN, the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents. ALAN is a wonderful organization, and this recognition comes as a wonderful surprise.
You can read about it on the ALAN website: