Following Tom Ryan

I have wanted to be a full-time, real-live, professional writer my entire life. This week - today, actually - my dreams came true. Today was the first day of my full-time writing career, and I wanted to mark this occasion by reprinting (thank you, Cassie Jones at HarperCollins) a little bit of the P.S. section of the paperback edition of Following Atticus: Forty-eight High Peaks, One Little Dog, and an Extraordinary Friendship by Tom Ryan. For those writers out there who like to read what amounts to publishing porn, you can find the salacious details of the story in "When Opportunity Knocks: Anatomy of a Viral Post" Part I, Part II, and Part III. Yes, it takes three installments to tell the tale. 

I don't remember if Tom found my writing first or if I found Tom's, but I do remember that we found each other on Twitter. We tweeted, then we emailed, and we built a friendship. One day, he called me up and asked me to write the author interview and introduction to the P.S. section of his paperback edition. He had plenty of other offers to write that section, from authors far, far more well-known than I, but he knew I got his book.

Despite the fact that we both live in New Hampshire, and we both love to hike, I don't get to see Tom very often, as he's a private, quiet kind of guy, and I respect that. I do, however, want to take this opportunity to thank him for his faith in me. Faith that I could write part of his book, and faith that someday, we would both be full-time, real-live, professional writers. 

Introduction to an Interview with Tom Ryan

I have always been a sucker for a good coming of age story; tales of adventure, trials, and spiritual epiphany fuel my mind, my soul, and my teaching. These are our stories; the tales of humankind’s journey through the world, into the wilderness, and back home again. These are the stories I tell my children and my students. Stories of heroes who step out of ordinary lives and, despite the obstacles in their path, achieve the extraordinary.

When my copy of Following Atticus arrived in the mail, I dropped my briefcase on the floor of my mudroom, sat on the nearest chair, and opened to the introduction. The first passage I read was Tom’s description of Atticus, a lone figure atop Wildcat Mountain: “He is Frodo Baggins, he is Don Quixote; he is Huck Finn. He is every unlikely hero who ever took a step out of the door and found himself swept up in adventure.”

When I read that passage, I knew. I had found a kindred spirit. Two, actually.

Heroes are not necessarily the stuff of summer blockbusters and caped crusaders. Sometimes, they are just a man and his small dog doing what they know is right. Doing what they are meant to do.

Tom writes that Following Atticus, “…is not the end of a book but nearly a chapter.” In the following interview, I ask Tom about the new direction his life has taken since the book’s release, the obstacles he and Atticus have encountered in the world beyond the White Mountains, and the paths these two unlikely heroes have explored in search of their next chapter.

For more, including my interview with Tom Ryan, see the P.S. section of Following Atticus: Forty-eight High Peaks, One Little Dog, and an Extraordinary Friendship

Finding Happiness in the Last Week of Summer

This is it. The last week before school starts. I'm fine once the students arrive, and I take my place with them in the classroom, but the week leading up to the first day is always difficult for me. The anticipation hits a peak in this last week and I tend to lose my head a little bit.

I've prepared my lessons, my classroom, my materials for the first day of school, so all that's left to do is obsess about what else I should be doing to prepare for the coming year.

This year, I am trying something new. In this last week, I am focusing on my home, my family, and my health. In the days leading up to Monday and Tuesday's all-day faculty meetings, and the first day of school on Wednesday, my focus is on happiness at home.

First, health.

My summer diet tends to be plant-based, as I have plowed up much of our yard to make way for vegetable gardens. I love walking outside in the afternoon in order to assemble dinner based on what's ripe. Along with those vegetables, however, we eat a lot of bread and cheese. I make my own butter and ice cream in the summer, out of the beautifully yellow cream of Lee Robie's cows. And because tI don't get up as early in the summer, my husband Tim and I drink more wine to go with all of that bread and cheese.

This last week of summer, the fruits of my garden will be consumed in the form of juice, juice, and more juice. My friend Tom Ryan, author of Following Atticus: Forty-Eight High Peaks, One Little Dog and an Extraordinary Friendship, has spent his summer on a 70-day juice fast in order to break the cycle of his unhealthy diet and weight gain. He drank his way through the summer and through his book tour for the paperback edition of Following Atticus, and as a result, he's 80 pounds lighter as he begins this new phase of his life. I thought I'd do a shorter, modified juice fast this week in order to clarify my mind and jump-start my health as enter this new year. My fast is amended slightly in order to accommodate dinner with my family. I drink vegetable juice all day and then prepare a vegetarian, mostly raw dinner to share with my husband and sons at our dinner table. No alcohol, no caffeine, and no animal products. I'm feeling great - save for the caffeine withdrawal headache.

Here's what my daily juice ingredients look like. There's also a sink full of kale and chard next to this lovely pile of vegetables from my garden, and all of that becomes about two quarts of juice. I drink that all day, plus one small glass before dinner with the family. Last night's dinner was vietnamese spring rolls filled with rice noodles and raw veggies, dipped in chili-garlic sauce, hoisin and peanuts. Heaven.

Second, home.

I've been writing so much this summer that all of those projects I meant to complete this summer simply  never happened. I meant to re-side a few areas of my house that were rotting, make repairs to the chicken tractor, expand the raspberry patch, fix the rabbit tractor, create two new compost bins, paint over the green screen my kids installed last year in the playroom, and a few other stupid, small tasks. I completed exactly none of these tasks, and this feels terrible. I am used to filling my summer days with the active, tiring work of improving my home, and to reach the end of the summer and realize how much time was lost to an indoor, sedentary life is a real bummer.

So, yesterday, day one, of this last week of summer, I replaced the rotting siding on the lower third of the front of the house, the lower third of the back of my garage, and began repainting the areas that most needed scraping and a new coat of paint.

Today will be spent scraping and painting that garage and completing the second coat on the front of the house. If I have time, I will re-side the lower part of the back of the house.

Last week, Larry Ferlazzo asked me to submit a short piece on how I prepare for the first day of school for his EdWeek blog, which you can find here. When he asked me to write those words, I stuck to the subject of the classroom, but If he were to ask me to write that same piece today, I would have to mention how important it is for teachers to spend some time on themselves, their homes, and their families. Everything will fall into place when the students arrive on Wednesday, August 29, but if our homes are not in order, we won't be giving our students or our families everything they deserve.

This year, happiness in the classroom starts with happiness at home.

Update: front of the house re-painting complete, as long as you do not look at the dormers. I am afraid of heights and Tim won't let me put on my climbing harness and shoes and attach myself to a rafter. Believe me, I thought of it...

Following Tom

I love walking across the street to our tiny village post office. My proximity to this lovely little outpost of civilization is particularly convenient just before Christmas, when I remember what a nightmare the pre-holiday post office was when we lived in cities. These days, I stroll over, wrapped presents in hand, and chat with Jewel, our postmistress about the news of the neighborhood as she tabulates my postage. Today was particularly lovely, however, as I received a package. I handed Jewel the "you have a package!" yellow slip from my post office box and she handed me an envelope from HarperCollins. I ripped it open, and there it was. My advance copy of the Following Atticus paperback.

I flipped to the P.S. section to find my part in the book: an interview with the author, Tom Ryan. Yes, I get to do interviews all the time, and yes, seeing my name in print has lost a teensy bit of the lustre and thrill I felt when I saw my first published pieces, but it's still pretty damn cool.

What makes this particular project special to me is that my involvement in this book is a gift from Tom. Tom discovered my work - through Twitter, I think - and we started corresponding about our writing. At that point, Following Atticus was not out in hardcover yet, so I got to watch Tom's progress through the gauntlet of book publicity and appearances. When it came time to prepare the paperback edition, Tom went out on a limb and asked HarperCollins to allow me to write the author interview and its introduction. Normally, the publisher has someone in-house write this section, and it's unusual for the author to be named, but Tom pushed. Fortunately, his wonderful editor, Cassie Jones, was game, and they supported me through the process of producing the P.S. section.

Authors can be a snarky and divisive lot, and it's unusual to find the ones who will share their success with writers who have not yet broken through. Tom is one of those authors. He is not only a talented writer, he is a kind and generous person, and I am grateful for his faith in me.

Following Atticus comes out in paperback on August 7, and Tom's blog has all the details of his book tour, if you want to come on out to get a book signed and meet him (and Atticus).

Happy reading!

Once There Was a Thing Called Spring

It may take longer for spring to arrive here in New Hampshire, but as a teacher, I think that can be a good thing. As soon as the light changes from gray to golden, the kids can feel that  the the freedom of a long summer is near. This year, we had an early spring that lapsed back into winter, and the kids felt cheated, as if the promise of an approaching summer had been ripped out from under their feet. The daffodils had just begun to emerge from the earth when the snow began to fall again. The best skiing of this New Hampshire winter came after the threat of winter was past and the kids had put their skis away in the basement. But not me. I skate-skied my heart out on the last of the winter's offerings.

When spring came around a second time in April, I still had miles to go and entire plays to teach. As far as my students were concerned, spring had come, and gone, and come again, and it was past time for school to be over.

The seventh grade is coming up on their Twelfth Night performances, so we spend a lot of time out on the playground, blocking scenes. I plan the eighth grades' performances for good fall weather and the seventh grade performances for good spring weather, because it's too loud when they all rehearse in our small middle school at the same time. The eighth grade has the larger parts in our schools' spring musical, so I make sure they memorize Shakespeare in the fall rather than the spring, when they are also trying to memorize their lines in the musical - The Music Man, incidentally.

The eighth grade English class is in the middle of reading King Lear and rehearsing their graduation speeches. We are in the chaos of the storm on the heath, and I have assigned a final project for this book that's...well, unconventional. Sometimes, conventional just isn't going to work, particularly in this second spring. The eighth grade has been asked to create their own visual representation of the storm in King Lear - the one inside Lear, the one outside; all of it matters.. Years ago, I asked my Rowland Hall/St. Marks School students to do the same, and they created some incredible stuff. Sculptures of words, cotton, wool, paper, wire, and velvet, and I was awed. I hear that this time around, my students are creating video and audio presentations as well as the sculptural presentations I have come to expect. I love this assignment so much, I am creating something, too, and I can't wait for the unveiling.

We all have aspirations of summer vacation. I have writing deadlines - wonderful, exciting assignments - that hover out there, just waiting for classes to end. I get to hand a book proposal in to an editor who is actually excited to receive it. I have assignments to write four magazine articles, all about stuff I know little or nothing about, but can't wait to learn. Best of all, a New Hampshire writer friend of mine, Tom Ryan, asked me to write the author interview and its introduction for the HarperCollins paperback release of Following Atticus. There's some more big news surrounding that book that I am not allowed to talk about quite yet, but suffice it to say that I am indebted to Tom and his Harper Collins editor for their faith and support of my writing.

But before all that can happen, I have King Lear and Twelfth Night. I have to make up for my students' waning attention spans with my own manic enthusiasm, and simply pray that we all make it though the musical, final exams, the school trip to Montreal, and graduation.

New Englanders hope for spring, wait through six months of winter, slog through mud season and swat through black fly season. And then it comes. The beginning of the most beautiful season on earth.