Time to go back to basics?

When a basketball team plays a lousy game, the first comment a coach will make to the press is, "I think we need to get back to basics." It seems to me, since life is full of cycles, the writing profession will inevitably return to basics. That thought occurred to me this week, when my 13 year old grandson deemed video games, "Boring". He then went into our backyard, cut off a tree branch, and started working on a bow and arrow.

I know the video game folks, the fantasy writers, and the horror film makers would shudder to think their target customer was bored with their offering. But as the writer of Ecclesiastics said, "There is a time for everything under the sun." Maybe he was right. Has the human cycle of interest moved away from the video game, etc, fascination? Are we seeing an urge to return to a simpler time, where a boys imagination and the natural world around him was his entertainment? I think we are. Timeless books and movies such as Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows still hold a spell over their audiences or readers. Why? I think there is an urge deep within us that craves emotional realism. That realism makes To Kill A Mockingbird a wonderful novel.

Well, naturally, I wouldn't be writing this post if I were writing sci-fi or Harry Potter. No, my focus for the past six years has been to portray a couple of young, country boys living in a small southern town in 1944, and their relationship with some eccentric adults. That endeavor has produced five novels. About 18 months ago I started to work on getting them published and late in 2007 August House published the first of the series, The Red Scarf. It's been a real hit with the teens and pre-teens in the schools I've visited, but surprising, it has actually sold better in the mid to senior adult market. I think it's popularity is simply an urge to return to the basics of life, where simple, entertaining stories draw a reader into an easy identification with the principal characters in the novel. There are no boys on broomsticks, magic kingdoms or dragons. The Red Scarf is about life. Sometimes life is laughable, but not always, and in this novel the interaction of the characters will have you laughing one minutes and a few pages later will bring tears. That's life, and that's back to basics.