(continued from page 5 )
Did you write about yourself at all? Yes, in the first story, “The Stutterer’s Apprentice,” the Governor asks Kevin for his name in front of bright lights, a large crowd, and news cameras. That actually happened to me in my senior year of high school, just a few months before graduation. My school announced that Florida’s governor was going to meet my class, so we had to line up to meet him. The Governor walked up to me, shook my hand while maintaining eye contact, and asked my name, as a barrage of bright cameras flashed, waiting for me to say something. A stutterer can overestimate the time it takes to say something, and it felt like it had been a tense thirty seconds staring into that politician's eyes while trying to say my name – something I’ll never forget. The only way for me to get that thought out of my head was to write about it, through a character in the story, so it’s no longer a secret. I laugh at it looking back.
What is the main message of your book? Stuttering is a normal variation of human behavior and stutterers can accomplish great things in life.
How did you feel when you saw your book had reached #1 on Amazon? When I committed to writing The Stutterer's Apprentice, I never anticipated it would be something many people would read. I’m glad the right audience, people who stutter and their families and friends, found the book and enjoyed it. It’s a little scary though, when you have ideas that float in your head for a couple of years, suddenly appear for everyone to read about.
Are you going to continue writing? What is your next project? I'd like to engage in the development of kids/family novels and movies, particularly those with meaningful messages that people can learn and enjoy together. I'm doing a summer internship now at a film studio in California. I’m hoping to update the book with more pictures and character sketches.
What else should we know? My mom passed away last year after a 5-year battle with an illness. Sometimes we think of experiencing seemingly dreadful events as negative, but they can sometimes illuminate surprising elements within ourselves we never dreamed possible. Maybe without my mother’s condition I wouldn’t have had the courage to plunge through all the work to create a book? Maybe without a stutter I would be a far less caring, creative person speaking in this interview. To me it’s more about finding meaning in our plights than succumbing to them.
8
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45
