Goodreads
Goodreads asked Brian LeDuc:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Brian LeDuc n 2010, I led a reading group in my daughter’s fifth grade class. There were three boys and two girls. The girls liked what they called “realistic fiction;” two of the boys liked fantasy; and the other liked sport themes. I had been exactly like the last boy, and I went to the local library in search of a sports-themed book with a female protagonist. I was hoping that such a book would satisfy at least 3/5 of my group. The librarian pointed me toward titles by John Feinstein and Mike Lupica, each of which had strong female characters. They weren’t the stars, but at least they were prominent. She also told me that novels were still coming out under Matt Christopher’s name, but on re-reading a couple of the stories that I had loved as a ten year old, I found them to be too simplistic and formulaic for the group I was working with.

So I decided to try my own. At first I tried to see the story from beginning to end, but that went nowhere. One day, I sat down and wrote "Ava Flynn stared out the window of her new house in Chapel Hill" and everything just started to crank.

I received positive feedback from friends and family (surprise, surprise) and made the book available on Amazon, but that seems to be the end of it. There is no shortage of stuff to read. Anyway, I thought I'd give the Goodreads community a try.

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