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What inspired me to write...
Dovey Coe
I wanted to write a book set in the mountains of North Carolina, way back in the day, because I love everything about the mountains--the music, the folklore, and the arts and crafts. I started with a vague idea of writing a story about a girl and her brother, and then one day this voice came into my head and said, "My name is Dovey Coe, and I reckon it don't matter if you like me or not." The rest is history.
Where I'd Like to Be
I got the idea for writing about a girl in foster care after volunteering in a group foster home very much like the one Maddie lives in. I was interested in writing about friendships that are made under difficult circumstances. At first I thought Maddie and Murphy would be good friends, but as I wrote the book that started to change. I realized that Murphy was a person with a lot of secrets. It's hard to be good friends with somebody when you don't know the whole truth about who they are.
The Secret Language of Girls
When I was nine, my family moved to Charlottesville, Virginia. The first person I met was a girl named Suzie, who I immediately wanted to be best friends with. As it happened, another girl moved to our neighborhood about the same time I did, and she also wanted to be best friends with Suzie. I guess Suzie liked the attention, because for the next two and a half years, she would be best friends with Virginia for awhile and they'd give me the silent treatment, and then she'd turn around and be best friends with me, and we'd give Virginia the silent treatment. Finally, sometime around sixth grade, Virginia and I realized that we had much more in common with each other than either of us had with Suzie, and we became friends with each other and a whole group of neat kids who were smart and liked books.
Chicken Boy
I started writing Chicken Boy when I lived in the suburbs of Raleigh, NC. North Raleigh is one of those places that just won't stop growing, but driving around you'll see little pockets of leftover rural communities tucked in between the subdivisions. I was interested in what it would like to be a country kid who goes to the school with kids who have no idea that people who say "yes ma'am" and "y'all" still exist. So the character of Tobin McCauley was born, and his story grew out of that triggering idea.
Phineas L. MacGuire … Erupts!
My son Jack really likes to read, but since he's only seven, he's too young to read most of the books I've written. So I decided to write one I thought he and his friends would like, and since he's pretty interested in scientific matters, I decided to write a book about a kid who's a serious scientist. It was fun for me and Jack to try out the experiments that Mac (aka Phineas L. MacGuire) does in the book. Look for more Phineas L. MacGuire books to come!
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