Middle Grade Mystery / Spy / Detective
Date Published: 04-28-2022
Publisher: Fitzroy Books / Regal House
Things don’t usually come to a screeching halt at the RAT, also known as Ridgewood Arts & Technical School, Ridgewood City’s most prestigious progressive institution. But that’s what happens when Headmistress Hardaway interrupts class and announces, “A scandal has rocked the fundraising committee!” Everyone is a suspect and Hunter Jackson, student council special investigator, vows to root out the student who’s heartless enough to steal donation money. He’s not alone. Ridgewood Roar news editor, Anthony Ravello, and the rogue, indie-press pioneer, Liberty Lennon, plan to do some journalistic digging of their own in a race against each other to scoop the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to their faithful readers…or at least their versions of it. With the truth getting murkier by the day, students at the RAT gobble up news bytes and wash them down with locker-side gossip as they try to unmask the classmate responsible for the missing funds.
Is There a Message in
Your Novel That You Want Readers to Grasp?
Having all of the information in the world at your literal
fingertips is an incredible gift we have in our modern age. However, it also
comes with a few pitfalls, the most dramatic of which seems to be the
disintegration of truth in our media and on social media. A few years ago, the
word ‘post-truth’ was an actual word of the year entry in the Oxford
dictionary. That bothered me, so I decided to write a book that would help
middle grade readers develop the sorts of critical thinking skills that are
essential for daily life in our world. My goal was to create a story in which
the truth is distorted in a multitude of ways by my narrators, and to give my
readers an opportunity to enhance their skills of critical thinking by being
able to decipher fact from fiction as they attempt to uncover the culprit
behind a school-wide fundraising scandal.
Is there anything you
find particularly challenging in your writing?
I find writing in general to be one of the most rewarding
and liberating experiences a human being can have on this planet, and it comes
rather easy to me. It always has come easy, and I think the things that make
you happy often feel that way. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t take a ton of work
to perfect one’s craft, or that the road to publication won’t be littered with
potholes, but the simple act of creating characters and building storylines
around them is one that feels like second nature to me, the way I imagine a
painter must feel in front of her canvas and easel. That said, I think the
hardest thing about writing (or any artistic venture, for that matter) is
learning how to cope with rejection. It’s a large part of the total package
that, funnily enough, I learned to withstand by playing baseball, where a coach
once provided me with this sage advice: if you strike out seven out of ten
times in baseball, you’re still batting .300…which makes you an all-star.
That’s how I think about rejection in the writing world.
How many books have you
written and which is your favorite?
Breaking News
is my fifth novel and the fifth one I’ve published in the last five years.
Three of them are written for middle grade readers (Please Return To series and Breaking
News) and two are geared for young adult readers (No Sad Songs and On the Way to Birdland).
It’s really hard for me to pick a favorite, but I have a special place in my
heart for my debut novel, No Sad Songs,
because it’s the book that launched my writing career and because it was
inspired by my grandfather’s descent into Alzheimer’s and my family’s ten year
journey as his caregivers. The book is fictionalized, but it’s a fitting
tribute to a man I want the world to remember for the life he led and not for
the disease that took him.
If You had the chance
to cast your main character from Hollywood today, who would you pick
and why?
Wow, this is hard because I’m not really knowledgeable
about the rise and fall of current childhood actors, but I’ll give it a shot
anyway! Breaking News actually has
three main characters who all take turns narrating the story through the
primary documents they collect during their investigations. I think Liberty
Lennon, the spunky indie press pioneer, would be played by maybe Peyton
Elizabeth Lee (Andi Mack) or McKenna
Grace? Anthony Ravello, a straight-laced traditional reporter with a true love
for order, would be best played by Lain Arimitage (Young Sheldon). The hard-nosed detective of the piece, Hunter
Jackson, would be played perfectly by Noah Schnapp (Stranger Things) if he’s not already too old for the part.
When did you begin
writing?
I officially started thinking about writing as a
profession when I was in college, about 20 years ago. That’s when I started
writing for the school newspaper and reporting for local news stations near my
college in Reading, PA. That’s also where much of the inspiration behind the
journalistic theme of Breaking News
probably began to take shape. But, if I’m really honest, I started writing when
I drew my first breath. Writers, in essence, are observers. They are
questioners and analyzers. They are the super quiet folks in the back of the
classroom soaking up information like sponges. That was always me. The kid
who’d rattle off 30 or so unrelated questions in a row to my parents so that
I’d know every minute angle of a situation. And then I’d write stories about
them. Or video game plot lines. Or comic strips. I’ve honestly never been able
to get through a day in my life without telling some kind of tale.
How long did it take to
complete your first book?
The first draft of No
Sad Songs was actually something I began writing as an assignment for one
of my MFA classes. At the time, I had no interest in writing young adult
literature, but I got shuffled into a YA writing class at the last minute and
the first assignment was to write a scene that was inspired by something that
had happened to me as a teenager. That assignment became the first chapter of
the novel, which is now in development to be made into a feature film. That
first draft probably took me about three months, but the rest of the process
from there to publication was another two years of rewriting, developing, and
perfecting the story.
Did you have an author
who inspired you to become a writer?
The first time I thought, “Wow, I love reading!” was after
firing through S.E. Hinton’s The
Outsiders in one sitting when I was in about eighth grade. There was just
something so real, and so raw, and so relatable about the characters in
Hinton’s classic example of young adult literature that I couldn’t put it down,
and from that moment on I knew I wanted to create stories that others would
hold in their hands and in their hearts.
What is your favorite
part of the writing process?
I am the most disorganized human being I’ve ever
encountered in the real world, but as a writer I love to meticulously plan
books. I love creating new worlds and characters I could use to build a plot
around, and I love the initial moments when an idea is not set in stone yet and
when possibilities are endless. Basically, it’s the time before I muck it all
up with my writing nonsense. : )
Describe your latest
book in 4 words.
fast-paced, immersive, humorous, relatable
Can you share a little
bit about your current work or what is in the future for your writing?
I’m always writing something new even as readers are out
there picking up my latest release off the bookshelves. In fact, I just
finished the first draft of the first book in a new young adult series. I’m so
excited about the cinematic quality of this work in progress that follows four
separate narrators, a missing persons case that’s exacerbated by a rogue, true
crime podcast, a legendary real-life mine fire that’s been raging underground
since the early 1960s, our nation’s pastime, and some creepy, supernatural/time
travelly kind of stuff that makes the story bend genres and minds all at once.
I can’t wait to share it with readers!
About the Author
Frank Morelli is the author of the young adult novels On the Way to Birdland (2021) and No Sad Songs (2018), a YALSA Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers nominee and winner of an American Fiction Award for best coming of age story. His fiction and essays have been featured in various publications including The Saturday Evening Post, Cobalt Review, Philadelphia Stories, and Highlights Magazine. A Philadelphia native, Morelli now resides in High Point, NC with a brilliant illustrator and his fur babies.
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1 Comments
Great interview, Breaking News sounds like a thrilling mystery that the kids will love to read! Thanks for sharing it with me and have an amazing TGIF!
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