Why I wrote the book…

Hello Dear Reader,

Maybe you’ve just read the book and want to know about the next book. If this is you, thanks for reading William & Hannah. The good news is I found out I enjoy writing and there is going to be another Howard Family Story. Unfortunately, most of it is still in my head, so please be patient with me. If you’re thinking about reading the book, please stop reading this blog and go read the book. This blog is going to be messy, stream of consciousness word salad. The book is much better. Trust me! The thing is, I’m only writing this because I have to. I know the words for the next book are in my head, but the words I’m spitting out now are in the way. It’s a log jam, and I know the book words won’t start flowing till I get these blog words out of the way.

I do like telling stories and the story I need to tell you now is the story of how this book came into being. I’m warning you, it’s going to be a long, rambling comedy of errors, but that’s how it happened. You see, I’m not really a writer. I’m a protein biochemist. Mostly a protein crystallographer, But That’s Another Story (BTAS). I’m introducing that acronym now, because I feel like I’m going to use it a lot and it saves time.

I always wanted to be a writer, a science fiction writer to be precise. I wanted to be Isaac Asimov, and he was a biochemist before he became a great writer, so I thought I should do the same thing.  Also, when it was time for college, my dad told me not to be an engineer. That was all the advice I got, so I thought …. Biochemist.

I thought I’d do the science thing for a few years and then start pumping out science fiction. That was 20 years ago and I’ve pretty much stuck to science. Never fiction. It turns out science is really hard, but really exciting when you think you’ve figured out something new and then you’ve got to write about that because those are the words in the front of your brain that need to come out next. Plus, there was a wife and kids and teaching and students and dogs and cats and chickens and a rabbit and plumbing nightmares and cars that wouldn’t start and volleyball trips and dance recitals and a skoolie bus to build…. BTAS.

And when all that is going on, twenty years can go by pretty fast. If you’ve got kids, you know all about that. Once you’ve got kids, everything changes. You’ve still got the wife and the science and the teaching and the students and the car that won’t start and the house that’s falling apart and the grass that won’t stop growing, but now you’ve got kids, and they go to the front of the line. You may notice that lawn maintenance is at the bottom of the list. It’s an accurate list. Ask my wife.

So, the kids are at the top of the list. And that means trips to the grandparents’ house. And that means they get to hear all the Howard Family stories that I’ve been hearing for twenty years. You see, I’m not a Howard. I married in. My wife’s mother’s father is a Howard and there are a lot of Howard stories. A lot. I thought I’d heard them all, but ever since the book came out and people started reading it they decided that since there is a writer in the family I should hear all the stories I need to start writing next. That’s how I know there’s another book coming, because my head is getting full of all these great stories and I’ve got to get them out of the way because once I get enough experiments done the science stories will want to come out too. BTAS.

The girls fell in love with one particular story. That’s right, the William & Hannah story. You see, there’s a castle in it, and the castle is real. Castle Howard is a big, beautiful castle in England. There are pictures of it all over the internet and it’s in movies, tv shows, the whole thing. Just Google it. Seriously, google it. The castle is cool. Also, there’s a love story and a boy who picks the girl instead of the money. And there’s a horse. It’s a great story. You can’t blame them for loving it. Also, there’s a scroll in a courthouse in Virginia that says they are related to all of these people. When my daughters saw the scroll they got on the internet and signed up on all the web sites for that sort of thing and figured out that if all that’s true and the scroll is correct then they are related to Anne Boleyn. That’s right, Anne Boleyn, the one who got beheaded by Henry VIII and started a new religion and tv shows and a musical / rock concert called ‘Six.’ Have you seen it? It’s a great musical with great songs and I know all the songs by heart because that’s what we play in the car on the way to the grandparents’ house and the dance recitals and the volleyball tournaments and the beach and the mountains and Disney World. Disney World was a long drive with just me and my youngest daughter because my older daughter was in a dance recital at Disney World and my youngest daughter had volleyball practice that she couldn’t miss so that meant she couldn’t make the flight we’d already paid for, and we had to drive. BTAS.

They loved the story and wanted to know if it was really true or not and since I’m a scientist I told them I’d figure it out. You know, science the … out of it. The thing is, I thought I could do it. We had my wife’s mother’s brother’s DNA that has a Y chromosome that should go all the way straight back to William. And it does.  But after that I got stuck. Once you go far enough back the DNA stuff isn’t usually a yes or no thing. It’s a maybe this or maybe that thing. At least as far as I could figure out. So, I said maybe, but they weren’t happy with that. So, I said I’d write a story instead, and they were happy with that, but then there were boyfriends and college and trips to Europe and science and …. You get it.

The other important thing I haven’t told you about is that my older daughter is dyslexic. My youngest daughter will read a 500-page fantasy/love story in a day, but my older daughter cried when she had to read “The Scarlet Letter” for school and won’t read all the directions on the recipe for microwaving rice. You know, the part that says to add water first? That’s how I know that if you microwave dry rice for 30 minutes your house will smell like burnt popcorn for a week.

She won’t read all the recipe directions, but she did like to read about Greek mythology. Apparently there is this other dyslexic ADHD kid who is also a demi-God with super-powers and can move water with his mind. My daughter loved those stories. She loved them so much that she moved to Greece a couple of years ago. She loves Greece, but she’s only there for school, so hopefully we will get her back some day.

The thing is, when you live in Europe, it’s really easy to visit other countries in Europe and after she saw the tulips in Holland and the Christmas villages in Germany and the Harry Potter play in London she remembered all about Castle Howard and decided to go there, but she didn’t want to go there until she read the book and since she is almost done with school and we want to get her back I had to write the book so she could read the book, visit the Castle, write her thesis and come home.

So, she read the book and visited the Castle and is writing her thesis. The thing is, she told me it was a sweet, easy book to read, which is something I have never heard come out of her mouth about a book. Ever, not since she read all the Percy Jackson stuff when she was little. And it got stuck in my head. I started to think that maybe I had accidentally written a dyslexic- friendly book. I researched, and I found out that dyslexic-friendly books mostly mean specific large fonts with more space between lines and words. So, I did that. But I’m a scientist and I thought there was more to it than that. So, I thought I’d figure it out. You know, science the … out of it.  I’m still working on that, but I figured out enough to put a number on it. “William and Hannah” has a dyslexic-friendly score of 56.8. For comparison, “The Scarlet Letter” has a score of 42.14 and the first 2,788 words of “The Lightning Thief” has a score of 56.91. If you don’t believe me, try the program for yourself. If you think I did it wrong, try to do it better. Take my program and change it. Make it better. I dare you too. I’ll even double dare you too. Will you take the bet? I hope so… That’s how science works.

All right, that’s the story for now. I’m feeling much better now that it’s out of my head and on a page. I think I can feel some book words coming next …….