Todd Strasser's Blog - Posts Tagged "todd-strasser"

The idea to write a sci-fi adventure novel based on Moby Dick, and with environmental overtones, evolved in a slow and serendipitous way, beginning with an article in the New York Times about space junk -- those nuts, bolts, parts of old satellites and rockets that orbit the earth and are numerous enough to be a danger to working satellites, space vehicles, and stations.

If you saw the movie, Gravity, you may remember this scene where the space station is destroyed when a loose field of debris blasts through it. In an earlier scene another debris field had destroyed the space shuttle.

My original thought was to write about space junk collectors who sail through space on solar winds, pulling vast nets much the way sea-going trawlers on Earth gather fish.

Only they’d be gathering space debris.

The concept of trawling through space for junk was my original idea, but not the idea of ships sailing on solar winds.

That I remembered from a story called The Sunjammer by Arthur C. Clarke which appeared in a 1964 issue of Boy’s Life.

Originally, my purpose in writing the book was to point out (in an exciting and entertaining way, of course), that we humans have not only managed to pollute the earth with our garbage, but much of the near space around us as well.

We often hear people complain about invasive species, that is, plants, animals, or pathogens that are non-native to a particular ecosystem, and whose introduction to that ecosystem causes or is likely to cause harm to the native life. Zebra mussels, West Nile virus and Dutch elm disease all qualify.

But none of them hold a candle to the most enduring, and damaging, invasive species ever -- humans.

Not only have we ruined a great deal of the Earth, but the near space around us as well.

To make the story entertaining and exciting, it would need danger, and to my mind that led to space pirates. But, as is always the case in creating stories, that also led to a problem. Why would space pirates care about nuts, bolts, spent rocket stages, broken satellites, and other floating detritus?

They probably wouldn’t.

So I decided that the quest would have to be for something much more valuable (more along the lines of the wonderfully named Unobtanium from the movie Avatar), something that space pirates would crave.

It was around this point in my thinking that I started to listen to the audio version of Nathaniel Phillbrick’s book, Why Read Moby Dick? which I’d picked up because at the time (well, actually, even today) I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around what makes that novel such a famous and renowned work of fiction.

While I’m not sure Philbrick’s book ever quite answered its titular question, it did inspire me to incorporate the plot of Moby Dick in my story… up to a point. Melville’s famous novel does not include run-ins with pirates, nor does it feature a clan of enlightened and highly-evolved islanders.

And finally, as to the amazing, earth-shattering, utterly surprising ending to The Beast of Cretacea?

I believe I can take credit for that single-handedly ;-)

Incidentally, the evolution of The Beast of Cretacea recently came full circle when I was contacted by the editors of Boy’s Life and asked to contribute a short story about Cretacea to the magazine.

Thus, a novel that is partly inspired by a 1964 story in Boy's Life returns the favor in 2015.

We're thrilled to have Todd Strasser stop by to share more about his latest novel, PRICE OF DUTY.

Todd, what was your inspiration for writing PRICE OF DUTY?

As a teenager in the 1960s I was deeply moved by the anti-Vietnam War movement, and by many of the anti-war folk songs of the time. Certainly, by Dylan’s Masters of War (“You hide in your mansion while young people's blood flows out of their bodies and is buried in the mud.”) And Phil Och’s I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore (“It's always the old to lead us to the war. It's always the young to fall.”) The idea of writing about young people and the military was probably spawned close to a decade ago, but for many years I couldn’t find the storyline. Finally, about four years ago, I was doing a Skype about my book, The Wave, with a class from Mississippi, and I noticed that five or six of the students were wearing uniforms that looked somewhat military in nature. I asked them why and they told me they were members of the school’s JROTC unit. No sooner did the Skype end than I finally had the storyline I’d been searching for.

What did this book teach you about writing or about yourself?

It’s said that the author’s purpose is to persuade, to inform, and to entertain (PIE). But I believe there is a fourth purpose as well – that is for the writer to learn about, and explore, his or her own feelings about a topic. Often when I begin a book, I’m not entirely sure what my ultimate point or message will be. For me, revisions don’t just hone the writing, but sharpen the focus and thrust of the story as well. Among the many things I learned while writing this book was about the enormous number of civilian deaths that have accompanied modern wars. It is a fact that since the First World War, far more civilians have died than soldiers. And even while this makes me feel more opposed to war than ever, through creating this book I also came to realize that we must have a military and we must be prepared to go to war.

What's your writing ritual like? Do you listen to music? Work at home or at a coffee shop or the library, etc?

Writing is the default activity of my life. I’ve been doing it for more than 50 years. I’ve never had to make myself write. Instead, I have to make myself find other things to do so that I don’t wind up writing all the time. To that end, I read, play tennis, surf, and play the guitar badly. I’ve never been much of a TV watcher, but recently I discovered some shows that are beautifully written. My current favorite is The Wire. It turns out that a number of very accomplished crime novelists – Dennis Lehane, George Pelecanos, Richard Price, among them – have written for that show. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that it’s so good. Finally, one aspect of “my ritual” that does surprise me is what my brain does while the rest of me is asleep. We’ve all heard authors say that creating a novel is like putting together a puzzle. I often wake in the middle of the night to the realization that another piece has been put in place while I slept.

ABOUT THE BOOK
Price of Duty
by Todd Strasser
Hardcover
Simon & Schuster Books for Yo
Released 7/17/2018

Jake Liddell is a hero.

At least, that’s what everyone says he is. The military is even awarding him a Silver Star for his heroic achievements—a huge honor for the son of a military family. Now he’s home, recovering from an injury, but it seems the war has followed him back. He needs pills to get any sleep, a young woman is trying to persuade him into speaking out against military recruitment tactics, and his grandfather is already urging him back onto the battlefield. He doesn’t know what to do; nothing makes sense anymore.

There is only one thing that Jake knows for certain: he is no hero.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shortly after Todd was born in New York City his parents moved to Roslyn Heights, New York (Long Island). Todd went to the I.U. Willets Elementary school and then attended the Wheatley School for junior high and high school. His best subject was science. He also liked to read, but had difficulty with spelling and grammar, and struggled in English. His favorite sports were tennis, skiing, and fishing.

Todd went to college at New York University for a few years, and then dropped out. He lived on a commune, then lived in Europe where he was a street musician. All the while, he wrote songs and poems and lots of letters to his friends back home.

After returning to the United States he studied literature and writing at Beloit College. After college, Todd worked as a reporter at the Middletown Times Herald-Record newspaper in Middletown, New York, and later at Compton Advertising in New York City.

In 1978, he sold his first novel, Angel Dust Blues, and used the money to start the Dr. Wing Tip Shoo fortune cookie company. For the next 12 years, Todd sold many more fortune cookies than books.

In 1990, Todd moved with his family to Westchester County, N.Y. He is the author of more than 140 books for teens and middle graders including the best-selling Help! I’m Trapped In series, and numerous award-winning YA novels including The Wave, Give A Boy A Gun, The Accident, Can’t Get There From Here, Boot Camp, If I Grow Up and Fallout.

Todd (right) with news photographer
at West Point in 1975
Several of his books have been adapted for television and his novels The Wave and How I Created My Perfect Prom Date became feature films. His books have been translated into more than a dozen languages, and he has also written for television, newspapers such as The New York Times, and magazines such as The New Yorker and Esquire.

Todd now divides his time between Westchester and Montauk, NY. He likes to read and watch movies, spend time with his grown children, play tennis and ski, but his favorite new sport is surfing.

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As we celebrate this International Day of Peace, I hope we keep in mind that among the many reasons to be against war is that children die in them. They die either as a direct result of being shot or blown up, or indirectly due to the starvation and disease that are always the byproducts of war. They died by the tens of thousands in World War One, World War Two, the Korean War, and the War in Vietnam. They continue to die in the current the Forever Wars of the Middle East and Africa.

(One Family’s Toll on a Cruel Day: 7 Children with Amputated Legs https://nyti.ms/2leRxdc)

The following is part of an article published by UNICEF in 1996. “Children have, of course, always been caught up in warfare. They usually have little choice but to experience, at minimum, the same horrors as their parents—as casualties or even combatants. And children have always been particularly exposed. When food supplies have run short, it is children who have been hardest hit, since their growing bodies need steady supplies of essential nutrients. When water supplies have been contaminated, it is children who have had the least resistance to the dangers of disease. And the trauma of exposure to violence and brutal death has emotionally affected generations of young people for the rest of their lives.”

During the 20th century, the numbers of children, and of all innocent civilians, who died in wars steadily increased. According to UNICEF, this was partly due to “advances” in technology. “Aerial bombardment has extended the potential battle zone to entire national territories. World War II saw a massive increase in indiscriminate killings, with the bombings of Coventry and Dresden, for example, and the atomic bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And this pattern was repeated in the Vietnam war, which is estimated to have cost 2.5 million lives.”

The UNICEF report goes on to say, “A further cause of the rising death toll for civilians is that most contemporary conflicts are not between States, but within them. Rather than being set-piece battles between contending armies, these are much more complex affairs—struggles between the military and civilians, or between contending groups of armed civilians. They are as likely to be fought in villages and suburban streets as anywhere else.”

“Families and children are not just getting caught in the crossfire, they are also likely to be specific targets. This is because many contemporary struggles are between different ethnic groups in the same country or in former States. When ethnic loyalties prevail, a perilous logic clicks in. The escalation from ethnic superiority to ethnic cleansing to genocide, as we have seen, can become an irresistible process. Killing adults is then not enough; future generations of the enemy—their children—must also be eliminated. As one political commentator ex-pressed it in a 1994 radio broadcast before violence erupted in Rwanda, "To kill the big rats, you have to kill the little rats."*

A much more recent example of this is what is currently happening in the Syrian civil war, where researchers have found significant evidence that bombs were targeting civilians, including women and children. According to a recent report, “In the past seven years, barrel bombs have killed [Syrian] civilians almost exclusively, an international team of scientists report Wednesday. Civilians comprised 97 percent of the deaths from these bombs.”

(A barrel bomb is essentially a large metal container filled with explosives and shrapnel. These bombs can be incredibly powerful, decimating entire city blocks. They are very imprecise weapons. Often, they are dropped from low-flying helicopters onto densely populated parts of cities.)

In addition, “The study also finds a dramatic rise in the number of children killed as the war [in Syria] has progressed. Children represented a small proportion of deaths, about 9 percent, in the first two years of the war. But since 2013, that proportion has more than doubled. Now nearly 1 in 4 civilian deaths are children. So far, at least 14,000 children have been killed in Syria by snipers, machine guns, missiles, grenades, roadside bombs and aerial bombs. About a thousand children have been executed. And more than a hundred were tortured and then executed.”

Nearly a million civilians have died in wars and conflicts since 2001. A significant percentage of them have been children.

*For the record, this line of thought has been used many times before. In Vietnam, the United States believed that a victory over the Vietcong was to be achieved by quantifiable “kill ratios,” to reach that elusive tipping point where the insurgency could no longer replenish its troops. This approach hard-wired incentives to secure a high “body count” down the chain of command, with the result that U.S. soldiers often shot civilians dead to pad their tallies and thereby move up the ranks. It is estimated that more than 2 million Vietnamese civilians were killed in that war.