The Publicity Department at Simon & Schuster has forwarded your letter of March, 2016 to me. Thank you so much for writing. I was delighted to hear from you! I am also happy to answer your insightful questions.

Regarding your first question, at the story’s end, Tango did not actually find his mother or see her in person. In the Epilogue, the story’s narrator tells the reader that Marcellina and Diego had two Yorkshire Terriers in their bridal party: Sadie and Pierre. A week later, McKenna spies a wedding photo of Marcellina, Diego, Sadie, and Pierre in a celebrity magazine, which Tango later takes a nap on. So, in this sense, Tango “sees” his mother, Sadie, again. In any case, the reader knows that somehow, some way, Diego and Marcellina searched for, and found Sadie at Cold Creek Kennel and adopted her and her new son, Pierre.

The reader never finds out whether Tango ever saw his three sisters—Theresa, Esperanza, and Dulcinea—again. I like to imagine that the people who bought Tango’s sisters at Paws ‘n’ Claws Pet Boutique gave each of them a good home where they lived “happily ever after.”

I do believe that Tango is content at the story’s end. Tango feels he has made the right decision to stay on Prince Edward Island, where he’s discovered his true identity, and to remain with Augusta and McKenna, who need and love the little dog very much. I am also very happy that McKenna now has a pet of her own.

I smiled at how you explained that the character you would trade places with is Tango, so you would get to go on crazy adventures. Maybe someday you will travel to Prince Edward Island. I think that you would like the island very much!

Because you expressed an interest in reading another one of my books, I am including with this letter a signed copy of The Secrets of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea. I hope that you like the story of nine year-old Annaliese Easterling and Throckmorton, her simply remarkable sock monkey.

Thank you again for writing, Jolie. I hope that you will always love to read as much as you do now.

Best wishes always,

Eileen Beha
Children’s Book Author

Close friends and family members would have been shocked if I had broken spontaneously into song – I don’t normally do that – but I almost did. At that moment, the lyrics of Something Good, from the 1965 film musical The Sound of Music came to mind:

For here you are, standing there, loving me

                Whether or not you should

                So somewhere in my youth or childhood

                I must have done something good.

People from all walks of life were in the audience: my immediate family; our close friends; colleagues from the Roseville, West St. Paul, Saint Anthony-New Brighton and Anoka-Hennepin school districts; members of Holy Cross Lutheran Church; a woman whom I hadn’t seen since we lived in Elizabeth Waters dormitory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the late 1960’s; teachers and authors that I worked with in the MFA program at Hamline University; children’s writers from a large circle of those who’ve participated in Jane Resh Thomas’s writer’s workshops; a few folks like Henry and his mother who I met for the first time that night.

Weeks later, the memories of their faces are like shiny pieces of glass in a mosaic of my life’s best moments.

The creative members of the Red Balloon staff – Amy, Kate, Joan, and Matt – worked together to make this joy-filled evening even more special.

In the seven years since the story about a sock monkey named Throckmorton first sparked my imagination, I have often felt like Tango, our 11-year-old, 8-pound Yorkshire terrier. I’m always amazed by how fast his six-inch legs must move, and how many steps his tiny feet must take, in order to complete our daily mile-long walk. Writing The Secrets of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea, I often felt like a very little dog with very short legs on a very long walk.

Now it’s time to let my readers complete that journey.

Children’s author Katherine Paterson, in her Newberry Medal Acceptance Speech in 1981, expressed this feeling eloquently. Like her, I have tried to give my readers, “while they are young, the best, the truest story of which I am capable. I have learned, for all my failings and limitations, that when I am willing to give myself away in a book, readers will respond by giving themselves away as well, and the book that I labored over for so long becomes in our mutual giving something far richer and more powerful than I could have ever imagined.”

Indeed, now it’s time to unhand my story and let young readers slip into my open palm shiny pieces of truth from their own lives.

It’s time to take

something good

and make it better.

Martin Dosh’s sock monkey

At the time, my son-in-law Martin Dosh, an instrumental electronic hip-hop performer, was touring extensively with Andrew Bird, whose best-selling album to date, Armchair Apocrypha, had recently been released. Tango: The Tale of an Island Dog, my first novel for middle-grade readers, was about to be published, and I was looking for a new story idea.

Martin brought his sock monkey home to Minneapolis and gave it to my grandson, Naoise. The sock monkey was made out of a gray, white and red men’s work sock. He wore a zippered, black leather vest and had a multi-colored striped scarf wrapped around his neck.

Sock Monkey on the Stephen Colbert show

Andrew Bird didn’t take his sock monkey home. Andrew’s sock monkey—dressed in a suit, tie, and Converse tennis shoes—went on tour with the band. Soon the sock monkey appeared on stage during every live performance as well as on television: the Late Show with David Letterman, the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Jimmy Fallon, and the Colbert Report.

Whenever I was in the audience, I was captivated by the little sock monkey. He sat on a speaker stack, a double horn speaker spinning above his head. Inspired by the sock monkey’s endearing smile, I asked myself, “What if I wrote a story about a hand-sewn sock monkey who goes on tour with a rock band?”

Andrew Bird and band

“What a great idea,” I thought. “So fresh . . . so original . . . kids will love it!” The title of my new book immediately came to mind: Sock Monkey, Rock Monkey.

Alas, transforming my inspiration into a compelling narrative for young readers proved to be far more difficult than I could have ever imagined.

I spent more than a year generating hundreds of pages of shapeless text, a writing exercise that Anne of Green Gables author L. M. Montgomery once called “spade work.” But no matter how many characters I conjured, how much back story I imagined, or how often I followed a new plot line, I couldn’t unearth the central conflict and deep thematic strands necessary to drive the story forward.

The turning point finally came during a writer’s workshop when my dear friend and writing mentor, Jane Resh Thomas, asked me two questions: “What is your story about at its deepest level?” and “Where are YOU in this story?”

I shrugged my shoulders, unable to respond.

Why? Because I didn’t know.

Not long after, I realized that the story of a sock monkey who travels with a contemporary indie-rock band was not my story to tell; it was Andrew Bird’s story.

My story, I decided, would take place in the past, not the present. My sock monkey, Mr. Throckmorton S. Monkey, would be created by the matriarch of a large and wealthy family, not a fan. My sock monkey would belong to a young girl named Annaliese whose heart’s desire was stronger than any dreams of stardom. My sock monkey would experience a brief and shining moment in the spotlight for reasons that brought neither fame nor fortune.

My name is Ida Mae

Now, more than six years later, I can see many threads of my own life woven into the story both consciously and subconsciously.

Annaliese’s yearning for the mother that she never knew is one such strand, a yearning that was passed down to me from my own mother.

During the influenza epidemic of 1918 when my mother, Marcella, was five years old, her mother died. Rejected by her father and his new wife, Marcella and her two sisters were raised by their mother’s sister, my Great-Aunt Ida. Even as a small child, I understood how much my mother grieved the loss of her own.

Before she died in 2007, my mother pinned a scrap of paper, edges trimmed by a pinking shears, to the white muslin dress of a brown-eyed doll with a bisque head and gangling, sawdust-stuffed body.

Marcella’s two-sided note reads:
My name is Ida Mae (over).
Aunt Ida Hohensee was my caregiver at one time.
Love her (the doll) as I did love Aunt Ida.

Eileen and Ida Mae

To this day, Great-Aunt Ida’s doll is one of my prized possessions. She sits in a child-sized rocking chair in my writing studio and cradles an antique baby doll in her arms. Ida Mae is a daily reminder not only of my mother, but also of the great pleasure my favorite dolls (most of which I still have) gave me during my own childhood.

In The Secrets of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea, through the act of reimagining and the power of storytelling, my mother’s lifelong yearning merged with the heartfelt longings of a young girl named Annaliese. And somehow, in some small way, I feel that I have finally reunited Marcella with the one person that she most longed to know.

***

]]> 63 https://www.eileenbeha.com/blog/eileen-joins-an-author-blog-tour/ Tue, 24 Jun 2014 23:50:21 +0000 http://www.eileenbeha.com/blog/?p=24 Read More]]> Welcome to The Story Continues, the blog of children’s book author Eileen Beha.

Throckmorton

Hi! My name is Mr. Throckmorton S. Monkey. I’m a red-heeled sock monkey and one of the main characters in Eileen’s new novel for middle-grade readers, The Secrets of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea: The Story of Annaliese Easterling and Throckmorton, Her Simply Remarkable Sock Monkey.

Eileen had so much fun writing about me and the other Easterling family sock monkeys that she’s invited us to come along on her on-line writing journey.

At first, we sock monkeys existed only in Eileen’s imagination, but after the book was finished, her dear friend Millie Dosh, a talented seamstress, brought us to life.

Here’s our family photo, from left to right: Captain Eugene S. Monkey, Sir Rudyard S. Monkey, Miss Beatrice S. Monkey, Ebenezer the Lighthouse Keeper, Dame Lorraine S. Monkey, and me:

Members of the Sock Monkey Family

Recently Eileen was tagged to take part in an author blog tour. Let’s hear what she has to say . . .

MY WRITING PROCESS: A BLOG TOUR! By Eileen Beha

June 24, 2014

Many thanks to Nancy Loewen for inviting me to join this blog tour, in which authors and illustrators share something about their writing process and latest work.

I had the privilege of getting to know Nancy when we were students in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Hamline University. To this day I can remember reading the early drafts of her beautiful short story, “Harvest,” recipient of the 2006 Associated Writing Programs Intro Journal Award and published in the Mid-American Review. Nancy’s book-length manuscript, a young adult novel, was selected as “Outstanding Fiction Thesis” when we graduated in May, 2007. Not only is Nancy a talented writer across multiple genres, but she’s also a wonderful mother, devoted daughter, and blessed with a kind and generous spirit. Baby Wants Mama, her latest picture book, is absolutely delightful!

Click here to see Nancy’s post and to backtrack through the blog tour.

What am I currently working on?

At 4:17 p.m. on Monday, June 16^th,I sent an email to Lauren Rille, Associate Art Director at Simon & Schuster, requesting eight last-minute text changes to The Secrets of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea prior to its release by Beach Lane Books on August 16, 2014. So, I’m finished!  At the moment, I’m breathing a deep sigh of relief, knowing that the book I started writing in January of 2008 is finally going to print.

(Yay! Hooray! I can hear Throckmorton say.)

I’ve also just started the process of revising my first and yet unpublished middle-grade novel, Don’t Call Me Carrot. Using a writing journal, I’m exploring ways to transform a minor character into a major character, and perhaps the book’s structure into a dual point-of-view.

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

My two published middle-grade novels have been described as “classic” in style, each bearing the literary characteristics of an old-fashioned tale. Both books feature a multigenerational cast of characters and two interacting, somewhat timeless worlds: a realistic world with human characters and an imaginary world inhabited by anthropomorphized animals (living and stuffed).

I’m challenged by story structures that force me to take risks with point-of-view. Told by omniscient narrator, Tango: The Tale of an Island Dog shifts perspectives between three animal and two human characters. The point-of-view in The Secret of Eastcliff-by-the-Sea – third person limited omniscient – is further constrained by the fact that Throckmorton is inanimate; he can think, see, hear and smell, but he can’t move.

Why do I write what I write?

I fully intended to write adult fiction when I enrolled in the MFA Program at Hamline. Then in the summer of 2002, I took a 2-credit course, Writing the Middle-Grade Novel, taught by Kate DiCamillo . Noting that I had a suitable “voice,” she encouraged me to attend the bimonthly writer’s workshops for writers of children’s literature led by Jane Resh Thomas , which I did for almost 10 years. Now, I’m motivated by the desire to have one of my stories positively influence a child’s life in the way that my favorite book, Anne of Green Gables, influenced mine.

How does my writing process work?

The most effective writing process that I’ve ever used sounds simple: sit in the chair and do the work. Back in the day when I was a special education teacher, we called it “time on task.” And hard to do when “life” so often gets in the way.

Five other writing processes work well for me.

One, I keep a writing journal for every book that I’m writing, or thinking about writing someday: a scrapbook of character sketches, freewriting, clustering, newspaper clippings, magazine pictures, poems, photos, or anything else than resonates with me as I contemplate a story.

Eileen’s Writing Journal

I also use a modification of a method called “dreamstorming” that I learned in a week-long workshop with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Robert Olen Butler, as described in his book From Where You Dream . Butler proposes that fiction is the exploration of the human condition with yearning as its compass. Creating a mental collage, I allow my imagination to take me all over the novel, beginning, middle and end, in no particular order, focusing on sensory details, which I record, but don’t set into prose for weeks, or even months, later.

Also, when I start a new story, I like to tell myself something that I learned from Jane Resh Thomas: that in the first draft, I’m telling the story to myself. Keeping this front and center in my mind helps me get the editorial critic off my back. I ask myself, “And then what happened?” and move on.

Revision, says author Janet Burroway, is the heart of the writing process — revision not just in the traditional sense of improving a word choice, or cutting a scene, but in the sense of re-envisioning the entire work, being open to new meaning. And the only way that I know how to re-vision a story is to write tons and tons of pages that I know I’ll have to discard: a mock diary written by the protagonist, a fake interview with the antagonist, or a scene rewritten from the points-of-view of all secondary characters.

Finally, I always, always read my work aloud, word for word, after every major revision – and never fail to be surprised by how much revision that I still have left to do.

Next up on the blog tour: Mary Losure.

I first met Mary at a writer’s workshop with Jane Resh Thomas about ten years ago and we’ve been writing colleagues and friends ever since. I’ve had the privilege of reading drafts of all four of her published and soon-to-be-published books for children. The Fairy Ring: Elsie and Frances Fool the World and Wild Boy: The Real Life of the Savage of Aveyron  are narrative nonfiction, published by Candlewick Press. Her new book, Backwards Moon, a fantasy for ages 7 – 10, will be released on September 15, 2014 from Holiday House.

An award-winning writer, Mary is passionate about words and the power of story, whether real or imagined. I also hear that she plays a mean mandolin.