Two years ago, I received an email from a boy who was just 15 and still living in a group home in Pennsylvania. At the time, he could not know that I was really thinking about putting away my writing pen and never picking it up again.
He wrote, “I just read Scratchin’ on the Eight Ball, and I cried. I haven’t cried since I lost my baby a year ago. If you haven’t touched a million kids like me by now, don’t worry, you will one day!”
The kid, now 17, wrote to me again on Saturday evening just to check in with me. His timing couldn’t have been better. While most of my books have been self-published and marketed on a dental floss budget, I did have one book published by a New York publisher in 2003. It sold 10,000 copies, and then the company folded. So the book came back to me. So, now I venture once more to put my books in the hands of kids like this one. Who knows? Maybe some day I will touch a million kids with the words that I write. I can only hope so.
