On Sale Now: Prisoner B-3087

Survive. At any cost. 

Yanek Gruener is a Jewish boy in 1930s Poland when the Nazis invade. Everything he has and everyone he loves is brutally taken from him. And then Yanek himself is taken prisoner, his arm tattooed with the number B-3087.

Forced from one nightmarish concentration camp to another as World War II rages around him, Yanek encounters evil he could never have imagined--and yet finds surprising glimpses of hope amid the horror.

10 different concentration camps. 10 different encounters with death.

Can Yanek make it through the terror without losing his hope, his will, and, most of all, his identity? 

Based on the astonishing true story of one extraordinary boy.

Scholastic Books | March 2013 | Ages 10 and Up

Available in hardcover and ebook

"A bone-chilling tale not to be ignored by the universe."

Kirkus Reviews

"Heartbreaking, gripping, raw, and emotional...storytelling at its finest."

VOYA

"Through Gratz’s spare, persistent prose, the story of the boy’s early life unfolds with the urgency and directness necessary for survivor stories. A powerful story, well told."

School Library Journal

"Gratz ably conveys Yanek’s incredulity, fatalism, yearning, and determination in the face of the unimaginable."

Publishers Weekly 

"A good starting point for students unfamiliar with the Holocaust. Pair it with Doreen Rappaport’s Beyond Courage (2012) and Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl."

Booklist 

YALSA's 2014 Best Fiction for YA Nominee

2014-2015 Nebraska Golden Sower Award Nominee

2013-2014 Georgia Tome Society It List

Spring 2013 Parents' Choice Awards - Recommended Seal

Read More

Starfleet Academy: The Assassination Game

TAG - You're It. 

The rules are simple: Draw a target. Track him down and “kill” him with a spork. Take your victim’s target for your own. Oh, and make sure the player with your name doesn’t get to you first. No safe zones. No time-outs. The game ends when only one player remains.

James T. Kirk is playing for fun. Leonard “Bones” McCoy is playing to get closer to a girl. But when a series of terrorist attacks rock the usually placid Starfleet Academy campus, it becomes clear that somebody is playing the game for real. Is it one of the visiting Varkolak, on Earth to attend an intergalactic medical conference? Or could it be a member of a super-secret society at the Academy dedicated to taking care of threats to the Federation, no matter what rules they have to break to do it?

Find out in The Assassination Game by Alan Gratz, the fourth installment in Simon Spotlight’s exciting series for teens.

Simon Spotlight | June 2012 | Ages 12 and Up

Available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook

Read the first chapter

Read More

Fantasy Baseball

 
You've never played
fantasy baseball like this before. 

A flying monkey in the outfield. A toad at short. Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz on the mound. Alex Metcalf thinks he’s dreaming, but the Oz Cyclones exist here in Ever After, where storybook characters live on as long as kids in the real world believe in them.

But Alex isn't a storybook. To get home, he and the Cyclones will have to win the Ever After Baseball Tournament and earn wishes from the Wizard of Oz. Trouble is, the Big Bad Wolf wants a wish too.

To win the tournament, Alex and the Cyclones will have to defeat the wolf, play the best baseball of their lives, and find the courage to believe in themselves. But what good is believing in yourself if the real world stops believing in you?

Dial Books | March 2011 | Ages 8 to 12

Available in hardcover, paperback, and ebook

"Chock-full of whimsical references to children’s literature, the plot builds rapidly with mile-a-minute action and well-drawn sports scenes."

Marilyn Taniguchi, School Library Journal 

Read More

The Brooklyn Nine

 One family, nine generations.
One city, nine innings of baseball.

"Gratz builds this novel upon a clever enough conceit—nine stories (or innings), each following the successive generations in a single family, linked by baseball and Brooklyn—and executes it with polish and precision."

Ian Chipman, Booklist (Starred Review)

"With an impressively cohesive mix of sports, historical fiction, and family history, Gratz has crafted a wonderful baseball book that is more than the sum of its parts."

The Horn Book

"The fictional voice is sure and engaging, polished without being slick—an entertaining and compelling look at the deep roots of our national pastime."

Kirkus Reviews

Learn more about The Brooklyn Nine

Read More

Virtual Author Visits

Nothing beats an in-person visit with an actual author, but if your school budget has been slashed or if you just want Alan to work with one class then a virtual visit might be the best option for you. With free software from Skype, a webcam and microphone, and a computer that connects to the Internet and displays on a large screen, we can beam Alan's image into your classroom for a live chat with your students. 

What is Skype?

Visit http://www.skype.com/ for all the details and to download the free software. In a nutshell, Skype allows us to turn our computers into videophones so we can chat "face-to-face"--just like the Jetsons! The software is free and the signal goes over the Internet, so it doesn't tie up a phone line and doesn't cost anything. 

What do I need?
A computer with a webcam and microphone. Most laptops have this built in nowadays, but if yours doesn't have one you can buy a webcam/microphone that connects to any computer with a USB.

An Internet connection (preferably high speed).

Free Skype software installed on your computer.

And it's not necessary, but if you can connect your computer so that it projects onto a large screen, it makes the chat more accessible to a full classroom of kids. 

How do I get Skype on my computer?
Go to http://www.skype.com/ and click where it says "download." Choose Mac or Windows. Follow all the prompts to install the software on your computer. Easy peasy. 

How do I know it will work?
We'll set up a time to test the transmission before the day of your scheduled chat to make sure everything is running smoothly. Alan will also call in a little bit early for your chat to make sure that you have a good connection. 

How do we run the visit?
Alan prefers to take advantage of the interactive nature of the technology by running these visits as informal question and answer sessions--no prepared talk. It's best if the students have read one of his books before the chat and come prepared to ask questions. Students can come up to the webcam (so Alan can see them) one at a time to ask their question, and everyone can see and hear his response on the larger screen. It saves a little time if you can determine the order kids will go in before the chat, so we don't lose time choosing kids and having them come up to the computer. 

Want to see it in action?
Click here to see a video of Alan meeting via Skype with a class in Japan. 

Cost
$100 for a class period. 

Contact
E-mail Alan or Alan's assistant Archie to discuss an author visit. 

View Alan's upcoming events calendar
Read a Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators guide to preparing for an author visit (PDF)

Read More

School Visits

Invite author Alan Gratz to your school and your students will learn where he gets his ideas, how he outlines and writes his novels, and how as a Little Leaguer he hit his little brother in the stands with a baseball--from the outfield. 

Since the debut of Samurai Shortstop in 2006, Alan has visited hundreds of schools and libraries all over the United States--and one school in Japan!--to talk about his books, the writing process, and more. As a former eighth grade and tenth grade English teacher, he knows how to keep things relevant and entertaining, and, perhaps more importantly, how to out-smart-aleck the smart alecks.

Put Him to Work
School visits may include any combination of the following sessions:

Rounding the Bases
Using examples from all his books and baseball (what else?) as an analogy, Alan explains how his books are made--from inspiration (first base) to outline (second base) to writing (third base) to revision (home).

Recommended audience: grades 3-12
Works well for: small (classroom-sized) or large (auditorium-sized) groups
Requirements: PowerPoint projector and screen

Stealing Shakespeare
Alan stole plots and characters from Hamlet and Macbeth to write his YA murder mysteries Something Rotten and Something Wicked, but Shakespeare himself was an accomplished literary thief. In this talk, Alan discusses Shakespeare's influences and the Bard's impact on generations of later writers.

Recommended audience: grades 8-12
Works well for: small (classroom-sized) or large (auditorium-sized) groups
Requirements: PowerPoint projector and screen

Ten Things Parents and Educators Do to Discourage Reading
Every year, one of the usual suspects is held up as the thing that killed reading: video games, the Internet, mp3 players, television, movies, cell phones and PDAs. But if we're going to compare novels up to these other media, we have to start treating books like the other media, not like scholarly tomes or educational means-to-ends. In this eye-opening talk, Alan discusses ten things parents and educators do--all with the best of intentions!--that discourage kids from picking up books and reading for fun.

Recommended audience: Parent and teacher groups
Works well for: small (classroom-sized) or large (auditorium-sized) groups
Requirements: PowerPoint projector and screen

Q & A
Alan leaves time for questions at the end of every session, but some of his best visits have included entire sessions set aside just for Q & A. No PowerPoint, no prepared speech, just Alan in the front of the room answering every question your kids throw at him--what it's like to have a career as an author, how to get published, where he gets his ideas, the nuts and bolts of the writing process,  how he tackles research, and what kind of chances the Tennessee Volunteers have this season. Q&A sessions work best classes that have read at least one of his books and prepared questions ahead of time.

Recommended audience: grades 4-12
Works well for: small (classroom-sized) groups

Presentation Limits
There are no limits! Alan will do as many presentations as you can pack into a school day. Put him to work during lunch too! He loves having an informal pizza lunch with smaller groups of kids--the baseball team, the creative writing club, the newspaper staff, etc. Once he's at your school, Alan wants to meet as many kids as he can! If you're planning to sell books during the event, don't forget to schedule time for a signing too, before the students have to leave for their buses.

Alan's Needs Are Few

Give him a couple bottles of water, a computer hookup for a PowerPoint presentation, and (in auditoriums) a microphone--and he's good to go. If you buy him a plain cheese pizza or French fries for lunch, he'll be your best friend forever.

How to Prepare for the Big Day
School visits work best when the students are familiar with Alan and his work. It just makes sense--when they know the books, they're excited to meet the author. You can download reader guides for most of Alan's books.

Samurai Shortstop Reader Guide
Something Rotten Reader Guide
Something Wicked Reader Guide
The Brooklyn Nine Reader Guide

In addition to reading his books in the classroom, teachers can work with students before the visit to help them come up with questions beyond "How much do you make?" "How old are you?" and "How much do you weigh?" Alan's been asked all those questions and more, and he's happy to answer them (even the ones about how much he makes and how much he weighs) but with a little advance preparation kids will often ask surprising and interesting questions about his research and the writing process, and make the visit far more educational and memorable.

You'll Need Books, Right?

You can arrange pre-event sales of Alan's books through a local bookstore, or you can buy the books yourself directly from Penguin. You'll get a 40% discount off the retail price of the books--so you can either pass that discount on to the kids or sell them at full price and use it as a fundraising opportunity. Click here to read more on ordering books from Penguin, and click here for a printable list of Alan's books with all the info you'll need to place an order.

Cost

$1,000 per day plus travel and hotel.

If that's beyond your school's budget there are a couple of ways to make a visit more affordable. You can partner up with another school (or schools) in your area, booking back-to-back events and sharing the travel expenses. If you and other schools can join forces and schedule Alan for five consecutive days, he'll pay his own travel costs. Each school will only pay for one day's honorarium and one night's lodging.

You can also split a day between two schools if they're close enough together so that getting from one school to another doesn't eat into too much of the day.

This blog post by fellow North Carolina author Adrienne Bashista has a great list of grant resources for funding author visits. Some of them are specifically for NC schools, but most of the list is applicable to schools anywhere in the US.

Alan is also available for online chats via Skype for $100 per hour. Click here to see Alan Skype chat with a class in Japan! And click here for more details about planning a virtual visit.

E-mail Alan to discuss an author visit.
View Alan's upcoming events calendar
Read a Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators guide to preparing for an author visit (PDF)

Read More

Media Kit

Click on the resolution link you'd like. Then PC users right-click, Mac users control-click, and "Save Picture As..." to download images.

Author Photos
  

Photo by Wes Stitt

High Resolution | Low Resolution

*Please add "Photo by Wes Stitt" credit.

Cover Scans

Samurai Shortstop
High Resolution | Low Resolution

Something Rotten
High Resolution | Low Resolution

Something Wicked
High Resolution | Low Resolution

The Brooklyn Nine
High Resolution | Low Resolution

Fantasy Baseball
High Resolution | Low Resolution

Prisoner B-3087
High Resolution | Low Resolution

All images may be used for promotional purposes without prior permission.


Video blogs
 
I Should Be Writing 

Skype chat with American School in Japan

Read More

Contact Me

E-mail:

bigcheese@alangratz.com

Snail mail:

Alan Gratz
PO Box 35
Penland, NC 28765

Follow me on Facebook
Follow me on Twitter

Read More

Alan's Books

Prisoner B-3087

Yanek Gruener is a Jewish boy in 1930s Poland when the Nazis invade. Everything he has and everyone he loves has been brutally taken from him. And then Yanek himself is taken prisoner, his arm tattooed with the words PRISONER B-3087.

Suggested audience: Ages 10 and up

 
Starfleet Academy: The Assassination Game

When a terrorist attack rocks Starfleet Academy, it’s clear someone has a very serious—and very deadly—secret agenda. It's up to instructor Spock and cadets Kirk, McCoy, Uhura, Sulu, and Chekov to get to the bottom of it.

Suggested audience: Ages 12 and Up

 

Fantasy Baseball

A flying monkey in the outfield. A toad at short. Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz on the mound. Alex thinks he’s dreaming, but the Oz Cyclones exist here in Ever After, where storybook characters live on as long as kids in the real world believe in them.

Suggested audience: Ages 8 to 12

The Brooklyn Nine 

The story of nine "innings," or nine generations, of Schneider children from 1845 to the present, and their enduring connections to Brooklyn, baseball, and American history.

Suggested audience: Ages 12 and Up



Something Wicked 

A Scottish Highland Fair turns foul when its beloved founder is found dead in his tent. Horatio Wilkes is on the case, but he'll need all his snark and all his smarts--and a little "Amazing Grace"--to bring the killer to justice.

Suggested audience: Ages 14 and Up

Something Rotten 

A stinking-rich family. A reeking paper plant. A murder most foul. Something is definitely rotten in Denmark, Tennessee, and only 17-year-old detective Horatio Wilkes can sniff out the killer.

Suggested audience: Ages 14 and Up

Samurai Shortstop 

Sixteen-year-old Toyo Shimada must blend baseball with bushido--the way of the warrior--to prove to his father there is still room for their family's samurai traditions in turn of the century Japan.

Suggested audience: Ages 12 and Up

Read More

Frequently Asked Questions

Alan gets a lot of e-mails from fans asking him questions about his books and his life. Below are some of the most frequently asked questions, and his answers. Questions are broken down into categories: personal, the books, and writing advice.
 
To learn everything you didn't want to know about Alan, check out his blog. 

Personal 

Where were you born?
Knoxville, Tennessee. 

Where did you grow up and go to school?
I went to high school at Webb School in Knoxville, then went to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, for both undergraduate and graduate school. 

How old are you?
I was born in 1972. You can do the math. 

Where do you live?
In a little town called Bakersville in Western North Carolina. 

Do you ever do tours or author visits?
I don't have any say whether or not my publisher sends me on author tours, but I do many, many school visits each year that are arranged through me. Click here to find out more about inviting me to your school. 

Are you married? Do you have any kids?
Yes, and yes. My wife's name is Wendi, and my daughter's name is Jo. We all share a blog called Gratz Industries, where we chronicle our attempts at living creative, productive lives. 

Do you have a day job?
Yes. It's writing. This is my full-time job. (Pretty awesome, huh?) And despite what my dad thinks, I really am in my office researching, outlining, writing, or taking care of writing business stuff all day. 

If you weren't a writer, what would you be?
I was an eighth grade English teacher before I was a full-time writer, so I suspect that's what I would be doing. My dream job, outside of writing novels? Game designer. I also wish I could draw comics. 

Do you have any hobbies?
Sure. I love playing board games and video games and role-playing games. I also like building things, like chicken coops and woodsheds and catapults. I collect action figures and other toys. Oh, and I read, of course. Books, magazines, and comic books. 

What is your favorite food?
To say that my favorite food is pizza is like saying that my favorite thing to breath is air. Let's just leave it at that. 

What's your favorite baseball team?
Major League Team: Los Angeles Dodgers
Japanese Pro Team: Hiroshima Carp
Minor League Team: Asheville Tourists 

Who's your favorite baseball player?
Sean Casey, aka "The Mayor." He played for a lot of teams, including the Cincinnati Reds, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Boston Red Sox. He's retired now, and works as a commentator for MLB Network. I also like James Loney, first baseman for the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

What are your favorite television shows?
I watch very few programs, but those I do watch I tune in for religiously: Project Runway, Pardon the Interruption, Iron Chef, Veronica Mars, Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who, Justice League Unlimited, Columbo, Pushing Daisies, and all the Star Trek series. (A lot of my favorites are now defunct, but I still watch them over and over again on DVD.) 

Who are your favorite authors/what are your favorite books?
Yikes! It's hard to choose. If you held hot coals to my feet, here's a top ten:

Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; Summerland)
Raymond Chandler (The Long Goodbye)
Rex Stout (the Nero Wolfe novels)
Neil Gaiman (American Gods; Sandman comics)
P.G. Wodehouse (the Jeeves and Wooster stories)
Mike Mignola (Hellboy comics)
Frank Herbert (Dune)
Peter David (Imzadi and all his other Star Trek novels)
James Robinson (Starman comics)
Alan Moore (The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen; Watchmen) 

Did you read a lot as a kid?
No. I read some things--I remember loving Norton Juster's The Phantom Tollbooth, and enjoying a lot of classics now given to kids, like Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea--but I was usually playing video games or building forts in the woods. My best friend and I had an imaginary country we invented called West Columbia, and we made up maps and flags and a constitution and official edicts. We even printed up our own money. So even though I wasn't reading, I was always up to some kind of invention, which I like to think made me into a storyteller as an adult. I do wish I'd read more as a kid though, if only so I wouldn't feel so very behind with all the books I want to read now! 

The Books 

Where did you get the idea for Samurai Shortstop?
I've always wanted to visit Japan, and I was thumbing through a travel guide when I saw a picture of a Japanese man in a kimono throwing out the first pitch at a baseball tournament in 1915. 1915! I had no idea Japan was playing baseball that long ago, so I found a book about Japanese baseball. And another. And another. A dozen or so books later, and I had a story about a boy blending bushido with baseball and . . . well, go read the book! 

Why is that opening chapter of Samurai Shortstop so graphic?
I had two reasons for beginning Samurai Shortstop with a depiction of Toyo's uncle killing himself. First, I wanted to grab the reader's attention with something startling. But second, and most importantly, I wanted to scare Toyo, and, by extension, the reader. After his uncle commits suicide, Toyo's father says he's going to do it next, and Toyo spends the rest of the novel trying to stop his dad from following in his uncle's footsteps. The first chapter is the motivation for everything else Toyo does in the book. So that first chapter has to be graphic and scary, otherwise we as readers wouldn't understand what the big deal is. 

Is Samurai Shortstop saying it's okay to commit suicide?
No. That's what Toyo is fighting against the whole time. But ritual suicide among the samurai was a real thing, and there's no reason to pretend things didn't happen in the past just because we wouldn't do the same thing today. Toyo comes to understand his uncle's decision, but that doesn't mean he agrees with it. That's an important difference. The same could be said of modern Japan: they understand why their ancestors did what they did, but they no longer agree with it. Even by Toyo's time, ritual suicide in Japan was seen as scandalous and sensational. 

If anyone was going to die at the end of Samurai Shortstop, who would it be?
I get this question all the time, and I have no idea where it comes from. No one would die! That's not the way it ends! 

Is Ichiko a real school? Are the storms and the Clenched Fist real?
You know those author notes you skipped at the end of Samurai Shortstop? Read them. Then go here. 

Where did you get the idea for the Horatio Wilkes mysteries?
I like telling people that Horatio is as old on paper--in my notes--as he is in Something Rotten. That is, he's seventeen years old in Rotten, and I'd been writing about Horatio Wilkes since I took a Mystery and Detective Fiction class in college seventeen years before he ever made it to print. We had to create our own detectives for that class, and that's when Horatio was born. He didn't start out as a teenager though--at first, he was a thirty-something forensic scientist who taught at a university. I never was interested in doing research into forensics though, so Horatio went through a lot of changes over the years. I always liked his character, but never found the right story for him until I started writing young adult novels, and had the inspiration to make him seventeen. It was a perfect fit. All I needed then was a story for him. I had borrowed his name from Hamlet because I liked how down-to-earth and practical Hamlet's friend Horatio was, and I figured if the character was good enough to steal, so was the story. :-) I had always loved Hamlet and was looking for a way to turn it into a contemporary murder mystery, and everything came together. After that, I chose Macbeth as the inspiration for a second Horatio mystery because I've always loved its villains--Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. 

Are there going to be any more Horatio novels?
I'm in talks with my publisher to do a third Horatio Wilkes mystery, but I don't know when or if it will come out. If it happens, it will be called Something Foolish, and loosely follow the plot of A Midsummer Night's Dream. I have ideas for lots more--including a Julius Caesar take-off that has Horatio solving a murder at a fraternity toga party during a college visit, and a version of The Tempest in which Horatio spends a summer as an intern at a Disney World-like amusement park. 

Where did you get the idea for The Brooklyn Nine?
My terrific editor wrote to me one day and asked me what I would do with a story about baseball and different generations of a family, and I came back to her with the idea of nine innings--nine generations--of an American family and their connections to baseball throughout the decades. I had particular eras I wanted to hit--like the women's leagues during World War II and the "Gentleman's Agreement" to keep black players out of professional baseball around the turn of the century--but otherwise I left the stories up to the research. I was always able to find some story I wanted to tell for each generation--often more than one story--and I enjoyed reading up on American and baseball history along the way. 

How much of The Brooklyn Nine is real?
You know those author notes you skipped at the end of The Brooklyn Nine? Read them. Then go here. 

Has anything or anyone in your life ever inspired something in your books?
Yes. When I was sixteen years old, I watched my favorite uncle commit ritual suicide. I'm kidding! I'm only kidding! The real answer is: not much. The pollution angle in Something Rotten is loosely based on the Champion Paper controversy that was all over the front pages of the Knoxville newspapers when I was younger, and the setting for Something Wicked is based on my trip to a Scottish Highland Festival, but none of the characters in my books are based on people I've known. Oh, and Horatio's car is my best friend's old hand-me-down car.

I did write one novel that uses a lot of my own experiences from high school in it, but that novel hasn't sold and I haven't returned to it in some time. If I ever did sell it, I think a lot of people I once knew would recognize themselves in it, and they'd probably sue me for defamation of character.  

Are you like any of your characters?
I share a love for baseball with most of my characters (even Horatio). I also share a lot of the emotions and frustrations of my characters at times, but I'm not Toyo, or Horatio, or any of the characters in The Brooklyn Nine. Horatio and I do share something of the same fashion sense, and I suppose there's a little part of me in all of my characters, but none of them is all me, or vice versa. When I write, I try to create characters who have lives of their own. 

You write a lot about baseball. Are you a big baseball fan? Did you ever play baseball?
You can't write baseball books and not love baseball. (Well, I guess you could, but why?) So yeah, I'm a fan. But I've always been a greater fan than player. My greatest Little League moment: I misplayed a long drive to left field, then absolutely launched the ball, trying to throw a runner out at the plate. The ball sailed over the pitcher's mound, over first base, over the fence, and into the bleachers, where it hit my little brother in the arm. All the runners scored. After the inning was over, the coach told me I had a good arm. He also told me not to come back. 

Did you create the cover images for your books? Do you have any say about them?
I wish I were that talented. No, I didn't create the covers to any of my books, and no, I don't really have much say (if any) about what they look like. But covers are terribly important; they say, "Don't judge a book by its cover," but we all do, don't we? Here's how it works: when the writing is finished, my editor sends a description of my book and some thoughts about what kind of tone or look she wants the cover to have to the designer who's gotten the assignment, and then she works back and forth with the artist and the art editor to create something they hope will say what the book is about, stand out on a bookshelf, and sell copies. I've been very lucky to have gotten terrific covers for each of my books--a testament to the talents of my editor and the Penguin art department! 

If you didn't write your books, would you want to read them?
I get this question a lot, and it always surprises me. Maybe it's because I write books meant for young readers and I'm not "young" anymore? I guess what some people don't realize is that a lot of adults--including me--still read young adult novels. So yeah, I'd read my own books even if I wasn't the author. I can't imagine writing a book I wouldn't read! I write about only those stories and characters I'm interested in. If I didn't like them, I wouldn't write about them--especially since it takes such a long time and such a lot of work to write a book. If I didn't like what I was writing, it would be awful--and the books probably would be too! 

Which of your books is your favorite?
This too is a tough question--like a parent being asked to pick which child is his favorite. I love all my books, and I often say my favorite is the one that came out most recently. If I had to pick a favorite though, I'd say Something Wicked--I already knew Horatio and was glad to see him again, and to research that book I went to the Grandfather Mountain Highland Games, which was a blast. That book was a lot of fun to write every step of the way. 

What are you working on now?
A bowl of popcorn. 

Writing 

Did you always want to be a writer? When did you decide to be a writer?
My original dream was to be a Jedi master. Unable to master the Force, I quickly turned to writing. When I was in grade school I produced a newspaper called the Blue Spring Lane News for my street, and by fifth grade I had written my first book. It was called Real Kids Don't Eat Spinach, and it was a play on a popular humor book at the time called Real Men Don't Eat Quiche. I think my mom still has it. I kept writing stories and newspaper articles all through middle school and high school, and studied writing in college. I guess I should have seen this coming. 

Where do you get your ideas?
All over the place. In line at the grocery store, reading a magazine, surfing the internet. There are stories everywhere if you're looking for them. My favorite writing teacher showed me the trick of keeping an idea book, a journal where I can scribble a good piece of dialogue, an idea for a character, a random quote--anything. I've filled five and a half books in fifteen years. Not everything in my idea books will turn into a novel, but they're great places to experiment and have fun without the pressure of turning them into a real story. 

How do I become a writer?
Well, you sit down at your computer and start writing. If you want to write well, I suggest you a) spy on your friends and family and listen to the way people talk, b) keep your eyes open and watch everything that happens in the world around you, c) always start in the middle of the action, d) make sure your story has a beginning, middle, and an end, e) read a lot and imitate your favorite authors. Note I didn't say copy what they write--just how they write. And did I mention you actually have to sit down at your computer and start writing? 

When and where do you do your writing?
I write on a Dell laptop I bought with the money I made from my first television script sale. I love writing by hand, but it just takes too much time. I find that my thoughts get ahead of my ability to scribble, and then I lose whatever it was I was thinking about. Typing on the computer is so much faster, and allows me to cut and paste and rework with the words right in front of me. As to where I write, my family and I live in a house we designed ourselves, and I have a small office with a nice view of the woods. I research, outline or write from around 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. every week day. I'm also a night owl, so sometimes I write very late at night after everyone else has gone to bed. 

How long does it take you to write a book?
The research on historical novels actually takes longer than the writing. The idea for Samurai Shortstop had been percolating for a month or two when I thought of the title and a rough story idea. Then I hit the library, and for the next few months I only did research. When I felt like I could construct a chapter outline of my story, I stopped reading and started building the story. The outline probably took me a month to refine (it was very detailed!), and then I began writing. Once I begin writing, especially when I have a detailed outline that tells me where the story is going, I can write a chapter a day, sometimes two if I'm really cruising. At that rate, I can have a first draft in about a month--but then begins the long editing phase. I rewrite things that are choppy or don't work, bounce the story off trusted early readers, and then go through another round or three of corrections. From idea to final draft, it probably took me about nine months to write Samurai Shortstop. After it sold, I spent another year doing more research and going through even more rounds of revision with my editor. 

What do you do about writers block?
I try to avoid the whole problem of writers block completely. I used to suffer from writers block all the time--I'd be sitting at my computer, ready to write, and have no idea what I was going to write. The clock would tick away, and with it would go the time I had to write that day. Then I'd come out of my office mad that I hadn't gotten words on the page. Then I learned to outline, and that's made all the difference. I now outline every novel I write, chapter by chapter, before I ever write the first word. If I hear a scene in my head, I scribble it down--when the muse speaks, you listen and take notes!--but I never try to push past the inspiration in the outline phase. Once I know in detail what is going to happen, I sit down to the keyboard and try to figure out how to tell it. Those are two very different processes, but most writers try to tackle them both at the same time. Separating them was a real breakthrough for me. I still get writers block (of a kind) when I can't figure out what's supposed to happen next during the outline phase, but at least then I don't come out of my office thinking that I've wasted time by not getting words and paragraphs and chapters written. Once I have the outline finished, I never get writers block--which is important when you're in a mood to knock out first draft pages. I open my notebook in the morning, turn to the next chapter, read what's going to happen, and then start writing.  

Do you belong to a critique group?
I have a critique group of one--my wife, Wendi. She reads everything I write, and gives me good, honest feedback on it. Sometimes too honest, and I don't want to talk to her for a few days, but then I get over it. Usually.

I know many writers who thrive in larger critique groups, and many who have all been able to parlay their work as a group into publication. Larger critique groups just never worked for me. 

Interviews

The Reading and Writing Podcast - 2013

Writer, Writer, Pants on Fire - 2011
Chapter 16 - 2011
From the Mixed-Up Files of... - 2011 

The Happy Nappy Bookseller - 2010
TeachingBooks.net - 2010

Guys Lit Wire - 2009 
Market My Words - 2009

Novel Journey - 2008
writing it out - 2008
joelleanthony.com - 2008
The Book Report podcast - 2008

Interactive Reader - 2007
Cynsations - 2007
Karen's News - 2007
Dulemba.com - 2007
Powell's Books - 2007
Paper Tigers - 2007
The Edge of the Forest - 2007

Read More

Appearances

Alan is a former middle school, high school, and university instructor who knows how to keep things relevant and interesting in the classroom.

School visits may include any combination of:

School assemblies (45-60 minutes)
Classroom/library presentations (45-60 minutes)
Writing workshops (45-60 minutes)

Alan also enjoys doing shorter, less formal events with kids, like pizza lunches with students who've read his books, interviews with school newspapers, and book signings. Once he's at your school, he wants to meet as many kids as he can!

Suggested audience: Grades 3-12
Full day fee: $1,000 plus travel & hotel

(Please remember, a school visit takes away
two or three days of Alan's writing time!)

If you can't afford a full-day fee, consider sharing the travel expenses with another school in your area, or split the day between schools. Alan is also available for online chats via Skype for $100 per hour. (Click here to see Alan Skype chat with a class in Japan!)

School visits, particularly classroom presentations, work best when the students are familiar with Alan and his work. Teachers and librarians are encouraged to make copies of Alan's books available to students in advance of any school visit.

Pre-event sales of Alan's books can be arranged through a local bookstore, or directly from Dial Books. Click here to read more on ordering books from Dial.

E-mail Alan to discuss an author visit
View Alan's upcoming events calendar 

Read a Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators guide to preparing for an author visit (PDF)

Read More