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Good News! I received an email Kerrlita Westrick and Shirley Berow, co-chairs of the Grand Canyon Reader Award, organized by the Arizona Library Association. Instead of telling you about it, you can read the important bits for yourself:

Dear Mr. Preller,

It is out pleasure to inform you that your book, Justin Fisher Declares War, has been nominated for the Intermediate Book category of the 2015 Grand Canyon Reader Award! Congratulations!

The Grand Canyon Reader Award is a children’s choice award with approximately 45,000 Arizona students voting each year. Your book, along with nine other tiles, will be read by teachers, librarians, and students all over Arizona and voted upon by April 1, 2015.

Well, that felt good.

As a writer, all I’ve ever wanted was to be read and, hopefully, acclaimed to some extent. Approved of. Valued. Appreciated. I dream of at least some fraction of the reading public to say, in essence, “Hey, you did good.”

Making it on these state lists is so important to keep a book in circulation. So, absolutely, a heartfelt thanks from me. Much appreciated. When I look at the other titles on the list, well, it’s just crazy. Not expecting to win, that’s for sure.

Though it’s been well-reviewed, and sometimes even praised, Justin Fisher has been pretty much ignored by the purchasing public (not to mention my own publisher). A paperback edition has never been made available in stores.

Justin Fisher was conceived as part of a series of school-based stories, including Along Came Spider, which was honored by the NYPL back in 2008. Both books share characters and the same setting, Spiro Agnew Elementary.

Here’s a nice review of Justin from a 5th-grade teacher, Franki Sibberson, who called it “One of my go-to funny books for boys.”

From the first  moment I saw these covers, I thought: “Uh-oh.” I expressed my worries to my editor, that they didn’t at all convey that the stories were school based, but was told that the decision had already been made. End of discussion. Oh well. Everybody does their best, I guess.

To help the humor come out, I had really, really wanted the books to be illustrated, ala “Wimpy Kid,” but that was not in the cards. But most wonderfully, a group of students from Pennsylvania sent me their own illustrations a couple of years back. I love student artwork. Here’s some highlights:

Now I can only hope for an invitation to visit school in Arizona.

February is wide open! Brrrrr.

A wonderful, dedicated teacher took time off from her afternoon to bring these two students to my signing at Pooh’s Corner, a bookstore in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

All those got was my signature and a few friendly words.

But I got this terrific photo, those two great faces. Winning!

Thank you for the hospitality, Sally and Camille. Long live the great independents.

I love looking at these faces. This class, along with every other 4th-grade classroom in Grand Rapids, Michigan, received free copies of my book, Along Came Spider, as part of their “One City, One Book” program. Then they entered a contest and won a visit from the author.

How come I feel like the winner?

On Monday, I appeared on a local morning televison show in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Click here to see me in all my telegenic glory.

I’m posting this, just barely, from the antiquated computer in my hotel in downtown Grand Rapids, birthplace of Amway and President Gerald Ford, so you’re not going to get anything fancy in this post.

I should also mention . . . it took me three days in this hotel until I finally turned the right way after getting off the elevator. It was a small but satisfying victory. Life is good.

The facts are fuzzy. A while back I answered ten questions by somebody who was writing a piece to be published . . . somewhere. Hey, it seemed legit at the time.

I do know that my book, ALONG CAME SPIDER, was featured in Michigan — some 1,600 copies were distributed to 4th-graders in 34 public schools — and there was a contest to “win an author,” that prize being me. Which is why, oh wild wonders, I’m winging where I’m winging next week. Grand Rapids, better batten the hatches.

What follows are my answers to the aforementioned ten questions.

1. Where did you grow up? What college did you attend?

The youngest of seven children, I was born in a blizzard in 1961, and grew up in Wantagh, on the south shore of Long Island, NY. I was an indifferent, distracted student in high school. For college, I stayed within the SUNY system and went to Oneonta –- which I loved. That’s where I became a serious, committed student.

2. What/Who motivated you to become a writer?

Look, I wanted to pitch for the New York Mets. When that didn’t work out –- and it became clear very early on –- I had to move on to Plan B. As a teenager, I kept a journal, wrote poems, scribbled lyrics to imaginary songs. Maybe it was a product of being the youngest, but even though I was intensely social, I was always able to be alone. For writers, that’s essential. You have to be okay with solitude.

3. How many books have you written?

I first published in 1986, and my career has been a long journey of trying different things, making tons of compromises along the way. Let’s say that I didn’t hit my first one out of the park. I wrote for food, I wrote to pay the bills. I’ve done more than 80 books overall, I’ve lost count. There are 40 in the Jigsaw Jones series. I’ve learned something from each and every one. But instant success? That was not my path. And I’m okay with it. Really. No, really!

4. In your opinion, what is the major theme in “Along Came Spider?”

It’s a book about the struggle to find your place, about fitting in, and some of the roots and tender shoots of bullying. It’s about being a friend, hopefully a good one, and what those responsibilities might be, which is not always so easy or so clear.

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I’ve been enjoying Linda Perlstein’s wonderful book, Not Much Just Chillin’: The Hidden Lives of Middle Schoolers, which you might recall from a previous post, here.

I’m not really interested in conjuring up a new review for it, since most of it has already been said. For example, from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Perlstein’s interpretation of what’s going on inside [middle schoolers] hormone-charged world is information every educator and parent should have . . . . A fascinating and important book.”

But as a writer, as someone who finds this stuff useful — applicable, insightful, helpful, necessary — I just want to say: Thank you, Linda Perlstein, great job. Very impressive, not only the detailed, intimate research, but somehow organizing that mound of raw data, as it were, into such digestible (and entertaining) form.

I’ve been working on a book about middle schoolers, seventh-graders to be precise, and at the same time sharing a house with a seventh-grader of my own. This book feeds and informs that work. So as always, I’m reading it with pen in hand, underlining, starring, writing in the margins, endlessly fascinated, sympathetic, horrified, amused, saddened. Such an age of change and uncertainty.

I share the above as an example of my marginalia. I nodded during that passage, because it exactly echoed the central theme of my 2008 book, Along Came Spider.

Anyway, here’s another brief passage I loved. Perlstein is writing about Jackie Taylor, a seventh-grader, her inner thoughts and musings:

If there were a giant question box in the sky, to which you could submit any query without fear of embarrassment, Jackie would ask two things: How do you make out? and What happens after you die?

There it is in a nutshell, don’t you think?

“Talent must be stimulated by facts and ideas.”

– Robert McKee, Story

For the most part, I don’t talk about writing in global terms. It’s an individual process, and it’s not like I think I’m a master. I mean, sure, I’ve been writing professionally since 1986, so I’ve learned some things along the way. As time goes on, even I have to admit that I probably know something. Even so, I try to limit that to sharing my own experiences, things that have worked for me, rather than pretending to know what works for everyone. I’m more student than teacher. Nonetheless, one guideline of this blog since inception has been to be open about my work as a writer, no matter how squirmy that might make me feel.

I mean to say: A huge, huge part of me lands in the A.J. Liebling camp, who wrote: “The only way to write is well and how you do it is your own damn business.”

That’s why I don’t type status updates about my work on, say, Facebook, or begin party conversation by expounding upon my work routine. My brother, Al, sells insurance and I sure don’t want to read on Facebook about how he does it behind the scenes — just make sure I’m covered when we bend a fender, bro. However, I submit that a writer’s blog is different: You came here, I didn’t hound you down, so it’s your own damn fault if I sometimes prattle on about me, me, me. There’s an assumed interest that, again I contend, just isn’t there in most of social situations.

Back to the topic at hand, research: It’s like that last line in the Jefferson Airplane song about Alice In Wonderland, “White Rabbit,” I agree with the dormouse: It’s vital to feed your head. Ideas don’t usually appear in a vacuum. My most enthusiastic writing is fueled by new knowledge, new information. My focus is largely on building character, revealing character through events. If I only write about what I know — a rant I’ll save for a later date — then all my characters will ultimately be limited by the contents of one (not necessarily fascinating) character, me.

Fortunately, it’s never been easier to learn new things — and it’s also fun.

Two examples:

1) I’m writing something now and it struck me that a minor character might be really into tropical fish. He’s got a fish tank, reads books about fish, is just deeply into it. I have a personal connection to that, since when I was growing up my father had a fish tank and, for a while, my brother and I picked up the hobby (Billy even bred Siamese Fighting Fish — craziness, believe me!). But this was long ago. Let’s see . . . what else? As a kid, I loved the movie, The Incredible Mr. Limpet with Don Knotts. More recently, I’ve renewed contact with an old college friend who is . . . really, really into tropical fish. So he got me thinking about it again.

The reality is that I don’t know much about fish