Posted By Tom on February 1, 2010
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.
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Posted By Tom on January 25, 2010
Last week, I finished Stag Heart Book Two. It is now off to my proof-reader, John, and once he finishes his thorough reading of it, I’ll take it in to be printed. I’m currently working on Behind the Eight Ball.
Today I happened to be writing about a 30-year-old lady who fell in love with me when I was just 17. She ended up in the Regional Center over the whole affair, then escaped and stole a car one night in her desperate mission to come the church where I worked as a youth pastor, and marry me!
I just finished writing that part and took a break to check out my website. Ironically, I had a comment posted by Troubled Girlfriend! When I emailed my webmaster to ask him about it, he immediately deleted the file and emailed me back, saying it was Spam and contained a virus! Go figure!
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Posted By Tom on January 19, 2010
After spending five nights of the Christmas vacation chatting with this kid and telling him gobs of old war stories about the days of my youth work, I ended up with 14 pages of notes. So I began working on the new book, which will be a fact-based book about my . . . life. Right now, I am up to chapter four and hopefully will breeze through the next several chapters without a hitch. So anyone interested to know how I got started youth work, will discover that in this particular book.
I think it will be called, Behind the Eight Ball, a fact-based book about the author. If anyone else has a better title, shoot it my way. I might consider it.
Well, Nick now has the Flip camera, so as soon as he feels comfortable using it, we’re planning on shooting the two scenes of the play. I hope to add a third scene to this, so we can show the whole thing at the Joyo in the spring. I’ll invite the Dodging Bullets back as we are using their music in the background of the tape, and then we’ll end that particular show with a live, one-kid monologue delivered by Alex.
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