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Yesterday, when we got out of the car, we crossed a threshold. From silence to song. Crossing that threshold speaks to the nature of engagement, a willingness to interact. It’s what we ask of readers when they open our books. And what we do when we ourselves write them.

A threshold invites us to step on through. But it’s up to each of us whether or not we enter.

If you’ve ever had a flash of an idea you failed to write down, you know about not stepping through. 

And if you’ve ever had an idea you listened to that bore fruit, you know about crossing over. You know it’s magical. And that all you had to do to tap the magic was to pay attention.

Today I’m thrilled to announce the results of tapping that magic for two debut novelists...

SUZANNE MORGAN WILLIAMS and ROSANNE PARRY

and their novels

BULL RIDER



and HEART OF A SHEPHERD:

            An unexpected gift of launching The Lucky Place has been meeting other writers at book festivals and conferences. So it’s especially fun to congratulate these two, having met and made friends with them in my travels.

Parry’s novel Heart of a Shepherd was released last month from Random House.

And Williams’ Bull Rider debuts this month from Margaret K. McElderry Books. 

Their books just happen to be among the first novels launched at The Class of 2k9!

And what’s really close to my heart is that both novels are set in the west. Heart of a Shepherd in eastern Oregon and Bull Rider in Nevada. And since Bull Rider is launching this very week, I talked Suzanne into giving us the scoop….

To begin, Bull Rider is an upper middle grade about fourteen-year-old Cam O’Mara, a ranch kid from the sage brush country of central Nevada. He’s a skateboarder, not a champion bull rider like his brother Ben. But after Ben joins the Marines and is seriously injured in Iraq, Cam turns to his family traditions—in particular bull riding—as a way to overcome his grief and eventually give his brother new hope.

Williams says the initial spark for Bull Rider actually came about in conversation with an editor who was visiting her in Reno.    

“I’d been telling her stories about the west,” she recalls. “Stories I’d learned from Indian elders while writing a non-fiction series." (More on Suzanne's background later). Intrigued, the editor suggested she write a book set in Nevada.

“I told her I could write about cowboys or rodeo,” Williams remembers. “She asked what kind of rodeo. I told her bull riders are crazy enough.”

And the idea was born...

…next… Suzanne tells us how engaging in a boy’s perspective was simply engaging in the emotional journey itself.