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...Day Two with Suzanne Morgan Williams, author of Bull Rider

            Nevada author Suzanne Morgan Williams calls herself a research junkie. You get the sense that for her, researching elements of her new novel Bull Rider was one of the best ways she knew to engage in her story. “I love to do research and writing Bull Rider I was terrified I’d get something wrong—big or little—so I did a lot of it,” she says.

To find out more about bull riding she interviewed ranchers and professional bull riders, and visited a local bull riding ring. When it came to the Iraq war she read injured soldiers’ blogs and visited the VA hospital and Fisher House in Palo Alto. But she didn’t stop there.

Because her character, Cam, is a skateboarder, she went to Winnemucca’s skate park and asked a skater to demonstrate the moves Cam would make on his skateboard, “to be sure the tricks were actually doable.”

The Nevada landscape in Bull Rider came to her naturally, though. “I love Nevada,” says Williams. “And I truly enjoyed taking quiet moments in the book to describe the smell of wet sage brush or the call of a meadow lark.

“I think the public may see the open range as idyllic and the people who live there as somehow different,” she adds. “Maybe old fashioned or from a bygone era.” So it was especially rewarding for her to portray a modern kid in a small town. “One who skateboards and surfs the Internet for the newest You-tube videos.

“I don’t think there are any places where time stands still,” she notes. “Just places where people choose to hold on to some traditions.” For her, the traditional background of Cam’s family provided an excellent contrast to the very contemporary and difficult problems they faced.

A family dealing with a son returning from Iraq with traumatic brain injury (TBI) wasn’t always in the plot. Originally the novel was a school story about Cam. The story about two brothers evolved with each draft.  

To begin with, she knew she “wanted the book to include lots of action scenes. And if you’re writing a book called Bull Rider that’s bull riding.”

The idea of an older brother returning from Iraq came up while Williams was outlining Cam’s family. Since she knew Cam was from a ranching family involved in rodeo, she gave him an older brother who was a champion bull rider.

“From being a sister and a mom I knew there would be feelings of competition from that,” Williams says. “And when I asked the question, what’s that brother doing now? I knew he’d be in the service.”

What was it like for her writing from Cam’s perspective? 

“When I write boy characters, I try to channel some real emotions and situations from their point of view,” she says. “I don’t write down to anyone, boy or girl and I hope girls will love Bull Rider, too.”

The truth is, engaging in a boy’s perspective meant simply engaging in the emotional journey itself.

“There definitely was an emotional journey,” she says. “I don’t think it’s over yet. I’m always a little shy about arranging research and it felt a little invasive to be asking questions about a fictional young man who was seriously injured in Iraq.”

At first, she avoided the issue by avoiding writing about Cam’s brother, Ben. Then she thought Ben would be paralyzed below the waist, but found in her research that TBI was a much more prominent injury for Iraq vets today.

“That set me to learning about TBI and its affects—not an easy thing,” says Williams. “It also required I totally rewrite Ben.

“But I believe this version of Bull Rider is the book I was meant to write,” she adds. “I hope readers will learn about TBI and the toll it takes—and that more people will be aware of the debt we owe to so many of the wounded from this war.” 
                 

About the Author…Bull Rider might be Susan Morgan Williams’s first novel, but she’s long been engaged in writing. She’s authored eleven books for children including Made in China, Ideas and Inventions from Ancient China, (Pacific View Press, 1997) and The Inuit (Franklin Watts, 2003). Her research has taken her four times to the Canadian Arctic to work with Inuit people and she’s also worked closely with Native Americans from various tribes on several books and projects.

Williams has been a Nevada Artist in Residence, a recipient of several Nevada Arts Council Jackpot Grants, and was awarded a Sierra Arts Foundation Fellowship Grant. Bull Rider is a Junior Library Guild Selection for 2009.

            …next engagement? A very special look at books from the other side of the fence.  

 … z.v.