Randy Turner's Blog - Posts Tagged "fiction"
Ten Years Since Small Town News
The woman's husband had disappeared, she didn't know whether he was alive or dead, and he was a suspect in a bank robbery that had taken the place the same day.
It was that image that bothered my students at Diamond Middle School where I was teaching in October 2001.
By the time the body of the man who hired me for that job, Superintendent Greg Smith, was found about a week and a half later, he had been cleared of any involvement in the bank robbery, but still the cameras and microphones were being thrust into the face of his widow.
During discussions in my creative writing class, the role of the media was a paramount topic, and for the first time in more than two decades, I started thinking about writing a book.
That was how Small Town News, my first published novel, began. Using what I had learned about the media during 22 years as a newspaper reporter and editor, I wrote about the reaction of a small town when it is invaded by the media.
It took more than three years before the book was published. I had put it aside while I was still working in the Diamond School District. When my position was eliminated for budgetary reasons after the 2002-2003 school year, i started thinking about publishing the manuscript. It finally happened in 2005.
Since that time, I have not stopped writing, blogging more than 15,000 posts on The Turner Report, publishing two more novels, including my new education novel, No Child Left Alive (under the name William Turner) a third novel, Devil's Messenger, and four non-fiction books, including two written with veteran newspaper reporter John Hacker about the Joplin Tornado, 5:41: Stories from the Joplin Tornado and Spirit of Hope: The Year After the Joplin Tornado.
In addition, I regularly contribute blogs to Huffington Post and Daily Kos on education and politics.
And it all started with a discussion in an eighth grade classroom.
It was that image that bothered my students at Diamond Middle School where I was teaching in October 2001.
By the time the body of the man who hired me for that job, Superintendent Greg Smith, was found about a week and a half later, he had been cleared of any involvement in the bank robbery, but still the cameras and microphones were being thrust into the face of his widow.
During discussions in my creative writing class, the role of the media was a paramount topic, and for the first time in more than two decades, I started thinking about writing a book.
That was how Small Town News, my first published novel, began. Using what I had learned about the media during 22 years as a newspaper reporter and editor, I wrote about the reaction of a small town when it is invaded by the media.
It took more than three years before the book was published. I had put it aside while I was still working in the Diamond School District. When my position was eliminated for budgetary reasons after the 2002-2003 school year, i started thinking about publishing the manuscript. It finally happened in 2005.
Since that time, I have not stopped writing, blogging more than 15,000 posts on The Turner Report, publishing two more novels, including my new education novel, No Child Left Alive (under the name William Turner) a third novel, Devil's Messenger, and four non-fiction books, including two written with veteran newspaper reporter John Hacker about the Joplin Tornado, 5:41: Stories from the Joplin Tornado and Spirit of Hope: The Year After the Joplin Tornado.
In addition, I regularly contribute blogs to Huffington Post and Daily Kos on education and politics.
And it all started with a discussion in an eighth grade classroom.
