To be filed under “Further Adventures of a Literary Lion”:

Your New Favorite Writer is pleased to announce that his middle grade novel,  

IZZY STRIKES GOLD!,

will be published in 2024 by independent publisher HenschelHAUS, Milwaukee.

TA-DA!! Huzzah!! Thank you very much.

#

AND HOW DID THIS GREAT BLESSING COME TO PASS?

Here’s a recap:

When I retired from my retirement job in 2016 to devote myself to writing, I did not know exactly what I would write about. But I figured whatever touched the emotional core of my being would be a good place to start. 

That sent me back to my childhood. Specifically, to my grade-school years in Streator, Illinois, a prairie town of fewer than twenty thousand souls. The era was the 1950s. 

Yes, Gentle Reader, those 1950s. The famous Fifties. The Fabulous Fifties. Which were not always completely fabulous, in case you didn’t know.

But here’s the thing: Life, by itself, does not make good art. If I wrote a simple recollection, you would find nothing remarkable or interesting about it. Indeed, when I look back on my actual childhood, no meaning or theme can be divined. 

Yet it draws forth a strong emotion, a yearning to revisit those moments and find something . . . momentous. That’s why I write fiction. Perhaps I can touch the core truth of life by wrapping it in pretense.

So I made up a juvenile character, Izzy Mahler, a young boy in a small town in the 1950s, beset by bullying schoolmates, mystifying grownups, and a drive to reconcile conflicting events. Izzy’s experiences are my own, but rearranged in the hope they will add up to something.

I wrote a short story, “Nickel and Dime,” that links a six-year-old Izzy with two separate memories—being shaken down by bullies, and buying a candy novelty on credit. The tale had humor and nostalgia, and The Saturday Evening Post featured it on their website May 27, 2016.

Hoping to repeat this success, I wrote a seven-year-old Izzy into a romantic competition with an intriguing classmate, both kids hoping to win a bicycle. This was web-published as “The Liberation of Irma Ruger” on February 3, 2017.

And I hit the trifecta with a slightly deeper story, “The Lion’s Den,” about Izzy, still age seven, and his family tree. This piece won honorable mention in The Great American Fiction Contest and was published in its annual contest anthology.

There was more yet to say about Izzy. I thought there might be a coming-of-age novel buried somewhere in Izzy’s experience. I wanted to write it but didn’t quite know how.

MEANWHILE, my Scandinavian ancestors lured me to devise a fictional story featuring Norsk immigrants and fugitive slaves. This sweeping historical epic took five years to reach fruition and was published in August 2022 as Price of Passage: A Tale of Immigration and Liberation.

After most of the writing was done on Price of Passage, and while engaged in a two-year struggle to get it published, I doubled back and started to work on Izzy’s coming of age. 

This book would be a bit stiffer in content than the innocent childhood tales picked up by The Saturday Evening Post. It would focus on an older Izzy, in the momentous year when he was twelve. 

Alluring and enigmatic Irma Ruger plays a part in the story, and bullies from earlier Izzy stories also appear, as well as a couple of new bullies. This time around, Izzy is mired in a family drama with serious dimensions. But there is also humor and a huge dose of authentic Fifties nostalgia. 

You will enjoy the read, and so will your grandchildren. 

When I thought the book was finished, I did the same thing I had done when I thought Price of Passage was finished. I took it to Christine DeSmet. 

In the most respectful and encouraging way, she took it apart—chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, line by line—and helped me see what was working and what was not. We found enough needed improvements to make the book five hundred percent better than it had been. 

Nobody can do this like Christine. She has a gift and a calling.

The next step was to expose it to the target audience. Though written for ALL readers, Izzy Stirkes Gold! will be classified as a middle grade novel, merely so the booksellers know what shelf to put it on! It’s unlikely the book will appear on many bookstore shelves. Most of its sales will be online or direct from author to reader at book fairs and craft shows. But the need to categorize persists. 

In the publishing world, if your protagonist is twelve years old, you have written a middle grade novel. It’s that simple. Many such books provide enjoyment and edification to full-grown adults, but no matter; they are still middle grade books.

I wanted to see how Izzy would do with its nominal target audience, so I contacted my grandson’s fifth-grade teacher, Matt Fiedler, and asked if I could introduce Izzy Strikes Gold! to his students. To my delight, he invited me to visit two or three afternoons a week and read the whole book aloud to his class, a half-hour at a time. 

That experience alone was worth the whole effort. I found out what eager learners those kids are, and how they identified with a boy much like them but living in The World of Sixty-Five Years Ago. We had a fabulous time, and they affirmed for me that Izzy Strikes Gold! brings the reader some of the same longings and frustrations I knew as a boy.

By then I had begun a wide-ranging search for an agent or publisher to help me make the manuscript into a book. 

A few weeks ago, I began conversations with Kira Henschel, a very experienced publisher with a catalog of books by wonderful authors. 

As a result, I am now to be one of the wonderful authors in her catalog. This blessed event will occur about halfway through 2024. 

Don’t worry, Dear Reader; I’ll keep you informed. 

When the book comes out, do yourself and your grandkids a big favor: Buy it!

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer