How does an online bookseller become the author of a book of her own? That’s what this webblog is all about: my journey of words. In these pages, I’ll show you how I moved from selling the words of other authors in my book business, Junebug Books, to selling my own words in middle grade novel form to Random House Children’s Books. Come along with me. Follow the word trail of this blog as I tell you the how, where, why and even the “how come.”
The Beginning
Actually, I was a writer before I became an online bookseller in 1998. I started writing at age eight, scribbling poems in Mrs. Doster’s fourth-grade class at Oconee St. Elementary School in down town Athens, Georgia. Mrs. Doster liked my poems enough to send one, “How Would You Like to go to the Moon?” to Jack & Jill Magazine. Apparently, that was my first rejection slip since I never heard another word on that subject. (I suspect my teacher filed that early rejection in the round file, to spare me from forth-grade author anguish!) I still remember my “moon” poem from fourth grade. It went like this:
How would you like to go to the moon
up in the blue, blue sky?
How would you like to go to the moon
up in space so high?
I think I would like to go to the moon
up in the blue, blue sky.
I think I would like to go to the moon
up in space so high.
Well, okay. It’s a simple poem about space travel. But remember, in 1959 when I wrote this poem, man (or woman) had not yet been to the moon. So when I looked outside my bedroom window in our little frame house on Indiana Avenue, the moon looked like a wild, unexplored place. And I really wanted to go though I knew my chances as a fourth grade girl in the late 1950s were practically nonexistent. Still, I wrote about it and those words still echo in my mind today, when we actually hear rumblings of possible space shuttles to the moon for all in the not-too-distant future.
I continued to write poems after I “graduated” from elementary school. Later, in high school, I landed on the newspaper staff where I fielded the occasional article assignment. Once in English class, we were assigned to write a character profile. I wrote about a man sleeping in a seat near me on a plane ride to Chicago for the National Scholastic Press Association national convention. When the teacher handed me back my “A” paper, she asked me why I wasn’t writing for the school literary magazine. I didn’t have a good answer for her, other than something about being on the newspaper staff and maybe I didn’t have time for both.
But I kept writing poetry and a little fiction during my high school days. One of my early short stories ends with Julian Bond as president of the United States. This was in the 1960s, in the days of the Civil Rights Movement. We had sit-ins at our Woolworth’s soda fountain counter on Clayton St. in downtown Athens. Crosses were burned on the very road where I lived. TV news broadcasts were filled with black citizens marching for their equal rights. So to me, my story which ended with a black president was almost as daring, and unlikely to come true, as my poetic trip to the moon. Yet today, we have an African-American presidential candidate.
I’ll continue my journey of words in the next installment of this blog. Come back and check it out soon. Who knows where we’ll go!
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