An Important Encounter

Dean Hughes, author of The Children of the Promise series.

Back in Fall 2007, when I made my teaching video to enter the BYU English Teaching program, I had no idea where I would be five years down the line. I didn't know that I would be in Las Vegas, Nevada at two professional conferences, surrounded by my mentors, now colleagues, in the teaching profession. I'm presenting tomorrow to a room full of career teachers, and I'm only a second year teacher! I didn't know that I would be walking down the strip with Dean Hughes, author of The Children of the Promise, Cris Crowe, author of Mississippi Trial 1955, Deborah Dean, author of Strategic Writing and What Works In Writing Instruction and my former professor, Jon Ostenson, my grammar professor, Joe Wiederhold, my co-worker and a teaching coach, and other new friends like Cris Thompson, my roommate here at NCTE. I didn't know that I would have the chance to talk over a burger, milkshake, and fries with Dean about his life as a writer.

When I was in high school, I read his books at least 2-3 times. His novels, historical fiction, made me fall in love with WWII. I laugh to think and laughed while telling him that I had decided to name my children after his book characters. "I would name one of my children, Wally!" He laughed at that. Here are a few notes from our dinner conversation. Thank you Fat Burger.

• I asked him what advice he would give to someone considering to write creatively in the current times. He laughed and said: don't. I liked the answer, noting that he was somewhat kidding, but also acknowledging the challenging market. We later talked about how 1/3 of his books are still in print and sell because of eBooks. I knew that kindles and iPads were affecting the book business! (That's what deters me from going into publishing.)
• He told Joe and I that when he was young, he wanted to be a great writer. Later, he realized that he was a writer. He could at least be a writer. He had accepted the fact that in 100 years, no one would be studying his work; he had accepted that, which seemed to show his pressure at decreased.
• He is expected to release a book every year. A lady at the mall asked him when he was going to publish his next book. He told her it was hard, but she responded, "no it's not. You're at the mall. You should be home writing!"
• He was offered to be Caroline Keene once. Background moment: in 5th grade, I read all of the Nancy Drew series. I was horrified in college when Jon Ostenson informed me that Caroline wasn't real. A group of authors were given storylines and constaints. Back to Hughes:they then wrote the story. He recieved a letter, which outlined things about Nancy. For example, Nancy could have a "sort-of" boyfriend, but she couldn't kiss him. I had always wondered why she never got together with Ned!
• He took a year off-leap of faith.
• Baseball books- publisher sold them before he had even written.
• BYU people looked down on him for selling to the masses, but he realized that sometimes he would write for the love of writing; sometimes to make a living. That was okay.
• Work through an agent.
• Biased towards fiction vs. memoir.
• Released as a high councilman; didn't like it. In charge of activities and men are too competitive. No one wants to reff.
• There are rules in writing and publishing according to what people want to read, but just when you think you have it figured out, you see someone break the rules and be successful. For example, J.K Rowling. People would tell her that children won't read such a long book, but look at it now. Kids don't read about characters younger than them, but Junie B. Jones is a kindergartener and second and third graders read her.
• LaRue and Bobbi are some of his favorite characters.
• He starts with envisioning his characters because they shape his plot lines.
• Soldier Boys is my next read by him.