Frances: The Origins of THE MISADVENTURES OF THE MAGICIAN'S DOG

Last spring, when my editor at Holiday House asked me how I came to write The Misadventures of the Magician’s Dog, I thought I knew how to answer.  The seed of the novel dates back more than a decade, to when a dear friend’s daughter adopted a dog named Anatole.  He in no way lived up to his dignified name:  he was a scruffy mutt who liked to jump the fence and frequently peed on the furniture.  Still, he adored my friend’s daughter—which became very important when she was diagnosed with juvenile diabetes at the age of five.  At a moment when her life was falling apart, he was a best friend who never left her side.  Perhaps for that reason, when she asked me where Anatole lived before he came to her, I explained that he used to belong to a magician and that he could talk and do magic.  After all, isn’t there something magic about a dog who can make a child feel that loved?    

For years after that, I thought about writing a novel about a dog who used to belong to a magician.  But I couldn’t quite figure out the rest of the novel—who would adopt the dog and what would happen next.  And then our country went to war, and I couldn’t stop thinking about the kids of deployed service people:  it seemed to me that these children were carrying an enormous burden, one that they hadn’t chosen and that my own children and their friends knew nothing about.  So I wrote the story of Peter Lubinsky, the son of a deployed air force pilot who adopts a dog that used to belong to a magician.  The dog offers to teach Peter magic so that he can bring his father home—but only if Peter first helps the dog rescue his former master, who has accidentally turned himself into a rock.

This is what I told my editor when she asked about the origins of my book.  However, in reflecting back, I think my answer only skims the surface of why I wrote this particular story—just like most answers to the question of where stories come from only skim the surface.  We write the books we write because of who we are in our deepest cores, because of the questions that drive us, the desires we haven’t resolved.  These are hard issues to talk about—at least for me!—but I think there’s value in understanding a story’s unconscious undercurrents. So I thought I’d use this blog post to try to examine some of the deeper reasons I wrote the novel I wrote.  

In my case, one of my obsessions is the complex nature of love, with all of the push and pull of emotion that accompanies it.  Love isn’t black and white:  it’s full of ambivalence, one moment a source of happiness and well-being; the next, of frustration, anger, hurt.  This is true, I think, regardless of age—but for children in particular, this sort of ambivalence can be very difficult to deal with.  Children whose parents are deployed have more reasons than most to struggle with conflicting emotions.  On one hand, they may adore and even idolize their parents.  On the other, they may also feel fear, betrayal, and anger too at their parents for being gone.  That’s a lot for any child to carry.  Peter’s father is in a wonderful and loving man, and yet he’s also left his children and put himself at risk.  All Peter wants is for his father to come home—but his father would have to be a different person in order to return.  

I’m also obsessed with how anger affects people.  When the dog in my book teaches Peter how to do magic, he tells Peter that power is channeled through strong negative emotions, like anger—and the more magic Peter does, the more angry (and evil!) he’ll become.   When a friend read the first few chapters of an early draft, he wondered if magic done through anger might be too dark for a middle grade novel.  But every instinct in me recoiled from changing this particular aspect of the story.  As every parent can attest, anger is a powerful—and often scary—emotion for kids.  I wanted to write about how anger that isn’t acknowledged can fester, changing everything about how one sees the world. Yet I didn’t want to say anger is “bad.”  In the course of my story, Peter struggles to acknowledge and make peace the anger he feels, to understand that he can be angry with his father and still love him deeply.  This, to me, is the emotional heart of my story, the part of it that matters.

Of course, in writing about Peter’s attempts to reconcile his conflicting emotions about his father, I was really writing about my own struggles to understand love, anger, and the places where those two meet.  I didn’t know this when I wrote my initial draft, but I came to understand it as I revised.  And I think that this understanding helped me to make the choices I needed to make as a writer.

 

So here’s my advice for writers who are beginning the process of trying to tell their stories.  Write something that excites you:  whatever sort of story it is, just make sure it will keep you glued to your laptop, pouring the pages out.  Have fun, and let your imagination run wild.  But when you revise, go back and find the emotions that are driving your story—the undercurrents that caused you to write this book and no other.  Once you understand your story’s heart, polish it.  Refine it.  Make it true.  Your story’s emotional core may not take up much space in terms of the words in your book, which could be about dinosaurs and talking mice and crazy carnivals (mine is).  But make sure that the words, no matter how few, are right. 

And then send your story out into the world, knowing that it carries with it a little bit of your soul.

Carolee: Boys and Books

My son will be leaving for college soon and the event causes me to pause and reflect upon the many ways we have shared stories over the years. It was difficult to read to him as a young child because he would barely sit still long enough to eat, much less listen to a story. It was ironic that we didn’t do a lot of shared reading until he was a teenager and we read aloud from his honor’s English texts.

One spring he was assigned East of Eden by John Steinbeck and given very little time to read this mammoth book. Between his hectic schedule and mine, it was difficult to find time to read together. One night I was on my way to pick up my daughter and her friend from the gym and my son called to ask if I could come to the restaurant where he worked. He’d cut his thumb and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. I picked him up, then went to the gym, got the girls, went looking for a minor emergency center – none were open – and finally went home to drop off the girls, call the nurse hotline, and assess the damage.

After much deliberation, it was decided that to be on the safe side, a trip to the emergency room was in order. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to grab East of Eden before we left. My son asked what I was doing and I told him that if we were going to sit in the ER all night, it would be a good time to read. He nodded and smiled and I could tell what he was thinking – What is it about mothers that makes them remember Steinbeck on the way to the ER?

We found a couple of chairs in the hospital away from the blaring television and sick people and started reading. Then we went back to talk to the doctor who tried to decide whether the wound warranted stitches, tape, or Super Glue. I was quite surprised to discover that the medical staff was contemplating using something on my son that I could have picked up at the hardware store. Of course their version of Super Glue was sterile. And about ten times more expensive.
As the doctor left and sent a nurse to clean the cut, my son and I continued reading about the demise of the Trask family and it made me think about how sometimes reading and sharing books is a leisure activity surrounded by hot chocolate and melting marshmallows, but more and more it’s a task squeezed into the “found moments” of our lives… the dentist’s office, a visit to the dermatologist’s waiting room, and of course, those unexpected ER excursions.

This past weekend we had another unexpected opportunity to share a book when we took a mother-son road trip for college orientation. Foreseeing that we would spend nearly 20 hours on the road, I suggested my son take something to read and gave him a pile of books with teen boy protagonists, to which he replied, “I don’t like fiction.”

Those are not words a fiction author ever wants to hear, especially from her son, but I’ve always made it a policy to support his reading choices and never criticize them. I work at a public school as a speech-language pathologist. Most of my students are boys, and most of them hate to read. I go to great efforts to try to connect them to material they will like. Something that will spark their interest and keep them reading. It’s different for every one. Over the years I’ve purchased graphic novels of classic monsters (Beowulf and Frankenstein), non-fiction picture books about famous battles, and comedy classics like Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Captain Underpants.

My most recent novel, Take Me There (Simon Pulse), is about a boy who can’t read or write but dreams of being a poet. He hates books, or thinks he does, because reading is a struggle, but in the end he discovers that books and words can liberate him.

I suppose that’s all I’ve ever wanted for my son, my students… to discover the power of words. So as I was packing, I asked my son, “What do you like to read?”

His answer was philosophy. News to me.

I went back through my shelves and pulled out several books along that vein, not too long, not too preachy. He chose The Fifth Agreement: A Toltec Wisdom Book by Don Miguel and Don Jose Ruiz. As we drove across deserts, into valleys, and through mountains, we talked about what it means to be impeccable with your word, how to go through life without taking things personally or jumping to conclusions, and how a person can live in the world while remaining detached from its negative influences.

The experience reminded me of why I love books and why I’m a storyteller. Books of all kinds, whether they be non-fiction, comedy, romance or history, help us think about what we value and clarify our ideals. We may not always follow those ideals, but books help us know what they are.

While at freshmen orientation, my son registered for classes. Among his choices were astrology, philosophy, and physics. On the way home I asked if he would be interested in a book called Dancing Wu Li Masters by Gary Zukav which combines mysticism and physics. He said he would, so upon our return I immediately went down to the bookstore near my house and ordered a copy. I’m sure it will make a nice addition to his dorm room. I don’t know if he will actually read it with his study obligations, his part time job, his intramural sports, and his busy social life, but it will be waiting patiently on his shelf for the time when he is ready, like a seed waiting for rain, an idea waiting for words, or a mother waiting for a phone call from a son trying to find his place in the world.

Jonathan: Love Among the Ruins

Boys do like romance in their novels, but they would rather be staked down over an anthill rather than admit it. I mean, even in movies that are absolutely sacred to my brothers in the Church of Testosterone, we do want John McClane to hook back up with his wife at the end of DIE HARD. We want Indiana Jones to get the gal. We want Superman to wind up with Lois Lane.

What we don’t want to hear (or read about) is the day-to-day aspects of those romances. Later, when we’re in our late teens, that will become more important. During college it will become very important to the point of poetic obsession. Brooding may even be involved. After college, it’s all about the hunt for the perfect female.

Give all that, when I sat down to write ROT & RUIN, my first teen novel, I was faced with the realization that I had to write a romance. Sure, there are zombies, and gunfights, and daring escapes, and chases on horseback, and murder and evil bounty hunters. But ROT & RUIN is also about falling in love.

Benny Imura, the fifteen year old protagonist, is maybe a little young for his age. Like I was at that age, he’s a bit dense, more cranky than he needs to be, and incapable of placing value on things close at hand. There is a girl, Nix Riley, who loves him. She’s a little younger, and Benny grew up with her. He CAN’T fall in love with her, even if those feelings are starting to percolate. That way lies madness. Actually, that way lies the quick demise of whatever ‘mystique’ we think we’ve built around ourselves. Guys, you see, want to be slouchy cool and mysterious. It’s impossible to be mysterious with a girl you grew up with. She knows everything about you. That’s half of the problem that Benny faces: no way to be all cool and mysterious and edgy.

The bigger and deeper problem is that of possible rejection and its dire consequences. If Benny decided that he did, after all, have feelings for Nix, what would happen his estimation that she had the hits for him was inaccurate? What if she didn’t love him? What if she rejected him? For Benny that’s the end of the world, at least in terms of his self-worth is concerned, because if the person who truly does know everything about you rejects you…then surely she must be basing that on actual knowledge that you’re just a loser.

I’ve read enough boy-oriented fiction to know that I could have left the romance out of the story…but where would be the fun in that? Especially from the writer’s point of view. It is our goal in life to create as many complications for our characters as possible. A story about happy people on a sunny day where nothing bad happens is booooring. Stir in complications, catastrophes, complexities, conundrums, conflict, clashes (and, apparently a lot of other ‘c’ words), stir vigorously and you have real drama.

So…much as I love poor Benny Imura, I could not leave him in emotional neutral, so just as he starts to get interested in Nix, I introduce the Lost Girl –a mysterious, beautiful ‘older’ girl living wild in the Ruin (oooo—air of mystery!)—and then I have Nix kidnapped.

This allowed me to use the main adventure of the novel as Benny’s pathway toward understanding his feelings for Nix (and for the Lost Girl); and for getting Benny to the point where he has a clearer idea of what romance is, what commitment means, and who he is.

So far….none of the boys have complained that there is romance in the book. With all the zombies and gunplay, some of them haven’t noticed. The girl readers, on the other hand (always a little sharper in my experience) have noticed the romance, and based on the letters I’ve received, they like it quite well.

Whew!

I just finished the second in the series, DUST & DECAY, in which each character wrestles with personal demons (instead of interpersonal struggles); and we just sold books #3 and #4. I’m already planning how to introduce all those C-words into the lives of Benny, Nix and the Lost Girl. I’m pretty sure the readers will dig it; just as I’m pretty sure the characters are going to want to sic a zombie on me.