Inspire Young Writers ... Invite An Author To Your Classroom

There's no substitute for an "expert" in your classroom. 

It's one thing to tell your students that this or that thing is important. It's entirely another to bring a person in from the real, outside world, someone who actually does the thing, and can talk about it. 

This is more than "how to," more than facts. If you bring in a writer, an artist, a welder, a musician ... people who really do the things you're talking about in class, everything changes. 

A visitor to your classroom brings energy, confidence, excitement and the real-world authority that comes from having successfully accomplished a thing. And those qualities shine a guiding light for your students who are coming to believe they want to travel that same path. 

How to find one? 

Start by asking. Is there a budget for bringing in speakers? Money is always a good thing. But not essential. Ever since I first started selling stories to CRICKET Magazine, way back in the '80s, I've been visiting classrooms. And its still something I enjoy doing. 

In the Eugene OR area, I'm local and free. Elsewhere, I'll travel for expenses or ... can we Skype? You bet. 

I particularly enjoy visiting classrooms from grades five to eight, the approximate reading level of my Cheechako series (covers above). Volume 1 in that series, "Cheechako," is highly rated and well-reviewed for reluctant readers. Reading specialists tell me it's the kind of book a kid (who normally doesn't want to read anything) cheats and reads ahead on. 

The other two, "Float Monkeys," and "Musher!" are also exciting Alaska tales of adventure, and all are great for reading out loud, too. 

Please share this blog!

If you have teachers on your mailing list or "friends" list, please share this post. I've made my living as a writer for thirty years. Writing is on a short list of things I'm really good at and enjoy talking about. And if I can really make a difference for young writers, it's really what I want to do.  

"Indecent Exposure," Soon out in Paperback!

I write two book series, the Cheechako series for middle grades and an adult mystery series. Sometimes, like lately, it can get crazy around here.

We have three new books coming to paperback in the next 30 days, including "Indecent Exposure," which many of you know from its Kindle debut several years ago.

Check out the new cover!

We tossed out the old cover. Do I hear cheering? It turns out the only one who really liked it was me. Except for the fact that it was dark and fuzzy it was perfect. More than that, I didn't know until it had been up awhile, that it was a photo of legendary dog musher George Attla Sr. One more reason I didn't want to stop using it. 

Watch for a new book in each series.

This month we're publishing the second book in the Father Hardy series. It's called "In Gold We Trust." One comment I've heard frequently with "Indecent," is "I couldn't got to sleep without finishing. For a writer it's the best!

I'm hoping readers will feel the same about "Gold," which felt like a rocket ride when we went through doing revisions. 

Announcing Book 3 in the Cheechako series: "Musher!" 

Although I wrote the Cheechako books for grade 5 and up, I've discovered "up" goes all the way to the top. It's not unusual to have people who are even older than I am—imagine that—introduce themselves to tell me they loved it. Luckily the combination of interest in Alaska and interest in adventure is something we don't grow out of. 

A big "thank you" to readers.

For those of you who have been reading, reviewing, commenting and passing my books along to friends, thanks so much! Keep it up. I can use all the help I can get. 

I know there are several hundred thousand books you could be choosing at any moment and am so pleased that a whole bunch of you have been choosing mine. 

When you have a chance to read one of the new books, I'd love to hear from you!

I got fired from my first writing job ... and other strokes of luck.

I taught jr. high school for ten years, enjoyed it, loved the kids and got good work reviews. But by the end I'd begun to publish my writing for pay ... things like short fiction in Cricket magazine and Sunday features in the old Seattle P.I. ... and I was ready to make writing my day job.

So I used my fiction and features to leverage myself into a job writing catalog copy for an outdoor equipment company called Early Winters. The name is still around though the original company is long gone. I wrote my brains out.

I loved my Correcting Selectric, and I loved filling blank sheets of paper with information and benefits of sometimes quirky outdoor stuff. Copywriting is the best training in the world because, rain or shine, the goal is lively, compelling, spot-on copy. Lots of it. I was thrilled that they liked my stuff and used everything, less thrilled when they fired me at the end of four months and I had to go home and tell my wife.

Why did they fire me? I honestly have no clue. Didn't then, either. So I drove across the lake and interviewed with the senior copy editor at Eddie Bauer, a man named John Kime, who had used to write "Dragnet" radio episodes with Jack Webb. He asked how much I'd been making: I told him honestly, $6 an hour. It stank even then.

He said he'd pay me $12 an hour and I'd start Monday. There's no joy quite like the joy of a new job and massive raise. From there I went to advertising agencies, big national projects ... McDonald's, Holland America, Starbucks ... producing TV spots in L.A. and later out on my own.

Why mention all this now? Because in the last three years I've written five and a half novels and published three so far, and people sometimes ask how I do that. Part of the answer is I've written for pay for about 35 years. I have that muscle. And here's what you need to know from my experience.

If you're going to be a writer, write every day no matter how it feels. I do about 800 words most days ... two pages. If you only do one page a day, you still end up with a novel in a year. This is the most important part of writing: showing up.

You can do that, can't you? Show up?

A book kids read when they don't want to read anything

I didn't write "Cheechako" to be a book for reluctant middle-grade readers.

I wrote it to be the kind of book I would have searched for, jumped on and disappeared into when I was ten, eleven or twelve.

It's not a long book, only about 140 pages–which turns out to be good. And it's filled with action, adventure, and maybe most of all ... independence: the chance for kids to get off on their own. It's the stuff of many kid's dreams.

By chance, several of my early readers are adult middle-school reading specialists and so I started hearing about reluctant readers. These are kids who can read, but choose not to. They'd rather be doing something else ... almost anything else.

The book is already in use in classrooms, and teachers report back that students choose to miss other activities like movies and special school events to sit in the classroom and read "Cheechako."

Some even did the unthinkable. They sneaked and read ahead. For an author, does it get any better?!

I'd like to ask a favor. If you know a middle-school teacher, librarian or reading specialist, would you forward this "Cheechako" link for their consideration.

http://www.amazon.com/Cheechako-Book-Jonathan-Thomas-Stratman

And thank you!

The Back Cover ... Writing the Book was Easier

The third book in my Cheechako series is titled "Musher!" The book is in edit ... actually in the queue for editing ... and I need to write the back cover blurb and send it to the cover artist.

I've been putting this off.

Some of you have already seen this Jesse Joshua Watson cover painting for "Musher!" I'm very happy with it so am including it again. But of course a great cover only ups the ante for the back cover copy.

With an actual physical book, the prospective reader likes the cover enough to pick up the book, turn it over, read the back and then ... hopefully ... (breath held) ... turn to the front and read a page or two before plunking down dollars and going home filled with anticipation.

Oh the pressure.

So here is my first draft back-cover copy. Yes, weigh in. I'm wide open to likes and dislikes, comments and questions.

Back cover copy:

It’s a dogsled enduro: three hundred grueling miles of ice, snow and danger. But for Will Rollins, his best friend Elias Charlie, and Will’s savvy lead dog, Blackie, this might just be the race of a lifetime. Sure there are new friends, like racers Becky and Peter. But who is sabotaging sleds and gear and how far will it go before someone gets hurt? When friends compete, when marauding wolves come to call, when Blackie takes on a monster grizzly ... if Will does go the distance can he come back alive? 

Thanks for reading. As always, please feel free to like, comment, and share this with interested friends. 

Welcome to Nenana, Alaska

It's a bit hard to tell from this view, but what you're seeing is a log tripod out on river ice, connected to land by a cable. Here's a link for a better view: http://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/

Scroll to the page bottom to see this view.

The river is the Tanana ... Tan-uh-nah, though not well known, one of America's significant rivers. It flows on west to join the Yukon River.

This is a view from the town of Nenana ... Nee-nan-uh ... on a map just about dead-center in the state, midway on the railroad between Fairbanks and Mt. McKinley National Park.

I have two novel series, the Cheechako series for middle-grade readers and the Fr. Hardy mysteries, which is an adult series. Both do (or soon will) include episodes built around breakup on the Tanana.

Breakup is a big deal in Nenana, and in central Alaska generally. Nenana hosts an ice pool, and people from all over buy a ticket and attempt to guess exactly when the ice will warm up enough to break up and be swept away downriver.

What happens is, the ice moves this tripod, which tightens the cable, stopping the clock. There are several hundred thousand dollars to be won. Do you feel lucky?

I saw my first breakup at age eight. It remains vivid in my mind, though more than a half century gone. And, when I write about breakup, I'm writing about those I remember from back then. It was exciting, dramatic, potentially deadly for anyone foolish enough to be out there when the ice started moving.

So, yes, a great place for me to put my characters. To read about a dog trapped on moving ice, and the daring rescue, check out my series' first book, also titled Cheechako.

To read about a human, trying to make it to the other side, watch for In Gold We Trust, a Fr. Hardy mystery, due out this summer.

You can read the first 30 pages of any of my books, free at this link: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=node%3D154606011&field-keywords=jonathan+thomas+stratman

Please forward this blog to Alaska-loving friends and on Facebook, please "Like" and share. 

"Mr. Stratman, how much money do writers make?"

            I started making writer visits to middle-grade classrooms in the early ’80s. I was a Cricket magazine author in my spare time, writing and selling short stories. I’d made several cash sales by then and seen my first story actually published by Cricket the year before. Getting to visit kids and their teachers to read my stuff and to talk about writing, felt—still feels—like a bonus.

            The ‘money question’ surprised me, but probably shouldn’t have. It’s a way of asking, “How successful are you? How important?” And we all do it, though not usually so directly. An adult will always ask: “Are you published?” which is a form of the same question.

            It’s fun to be paid for writing something creative. Money is a tangible reward we all recognize and understand. But here’s the thing: money is not why most writers write.

            I write because I like to tell stories and certainly am not immune to praise—which includes cash. But I started writing at about age fourteen—songs and poems, then stories. I wrote through college, went to teaching where I saved my ideas all week, and wrote way late on Friday and Saturday. I wrote all that time, and published, without even the hope of money.

            The fact is, writing feels good. It feels good to do and it feels good when someone is moved by it.

            My cousin called from China to tell me he couldn’t go to bed without finishing one of my mysteries. Can you imagine how good that feels?

            These days I get up at six and write for about two hours, an average of four rough-draft pages, usually about six mornings a week. It feels right.

            I’m about halfway through my sixth novel. I have an adult series and a middle-grade series. And I admit there are times when I ask myself about the money, and occasionally times I fret about it.

            But here’s the thing. Would I be writing if nobody paid me for it?

            Oh … wait a minute … I am!