There was a lull in my acting career and so I needed help. And so I went to this gentleman who I knew from years ago, he was my agent at another agency and he to talk to everybody you know in the company to see if they were going to represent me. Finally they said yes. And I went back the second time and they were taking the art off the wall as the company imploded.
I finally got somebody to say yes. But in those 90 days that the, that I was there as a client, he said why don’t you write books for children about your dyslexia and I said because I’m dyslexic, I have no sense of self and I don’t believe that I could write a book, period.
One other time he said it, he said this time I’m going to introduce you to my very good friend Lin Oliver who knows everything about children’s literature. And so as Lin said we met, the fish was horrible. But the meeting was great. And we hatched Hank Zipzer right there.
In that meeting Henry told me about growing up with dyslexia and how school had been such a challenge for him and so debilitating really and demoralizing and I related to that, I never had dyslexia but I’m the mother of three sons. And while they didn’t have specific learning challenges they were all difficult in school.
So the idea of creating a character, a hero character who was not, who was happy with himself and always except that he wasn’t successful in school really appealed to me. SO we put all of our life experiences together, our kids are about the same age, and we created the character of Hank who is smart and resourceful and creative…
And funny.
And intelligent and funny. He just happens to stink at school. And, and so that character attached himself to our hearts and existed for the next 15 years in books.
And then realized you write what you know, at least emotionally. You write what you understand. The comedy we, we just have the best time with. We’ll just go anywhere and say anything and do anything in our comedy. And we took that premise, we took that premise of expressing, of writing a story and put it into the, our newest, newest novel which is alien superstar.
That we are all the same, under whatever you think you look like or whatever you, somebody else thinks you look like, don’t just a book by its cover, no pun intended.