Wednesday
of this week I was invited to E.A. Hall Middle School in Watsonville to talk to
a group of seventh and eighth graders about writing my mystery novel, The McHenry Inheritance. Early in the
game it became obvious I was facing a tough crowd.
The
students were part of the Reading Buddies program sponsored by the Rotary Club
of Watsonville, which has adopted the school. As part of that adoption, club
members volunteer to go to the school once a week and spend an hour reading
with a student. It’s been wildly successful, and the kids who take part
typically show a significant improvement in test scores and classroom
performance.
Since
they have been reading books, one of the club members thought of asking me over
to talk about writing my book. It’s probably a bit above their grade level, but
I was happy to do the presentation. No author should ever turn down an
audience, and I wound up selling two copies — to the principal and one of the
teachers.
A Future Investigative Journalist
My
plan was to start out by showing the two-minute video trailer for the book, ask
if there were any questions about it, then move on to other topics based on the
initial response. So at 11 a.m., the lights were dimmed, the video was shown,
and when it was over, I stepped forward and said, “Any questions?”
A
boy at the back of the room raised his hand, and I called on him. “How old are
you?” he asked.
Damn.
The kid has a future on 60 Minutes,
and I mean asking the questions, not answering them. I couldn’t think of a
clever evasion, so I answered as quickly as I could and called for the next
question. As it turned out, the questions filled the hour, and I never had to
go to my prepared talk.
Some
of them were from adults, but still provided an opportunity to share a point
with the kids. One of the Rotarians asked, for instance, how hard it was to get
a copyright, and that led to my explaining to the students what a copyright is
and why it’s important. I also talked about print-on-demand book machines, such
as the ones they have at Amazon and Bookshop Santa Cruz.
We Talked About Fishing, Too
When
we asked for a show of hands, it turned out that more than half of the kids had
been fishing, though only one had been fly fishing. In anticipation of such a
response, I had brought some props, including a 9-foot graphite fly rod, a vest
of the sort worn by fly fishermen, and a selection of trout flies, including a
Quill Gordon, the fly for which my main character is named.
The
props enabled me to talk about several of the detail points of the sport. It
was raining, so we couldn’t go outside for a casting demonstration, but I tried
to use the furniture in the room to explain how precise an angler has to be in
casting to a rising fish. What I think really impressed them was my description
of how the fishing vest allows a fisherman to pull out and tie on a new fly
while standing in the middle of a river.
Any
time I speak to a group of adults, I can generally read the audience pretty
well. With kids, it’s tougher. It’s hard to say how interested they were or how
much of this will stay with them. But I was happy to do it because it can’t
hurt for students to see that books are written by real people. Maybe some of
them will write their own books down the road.
