Welcome to the Guestbook!
I’m always eager to read your comments about my books and stories, so please feel free to pitch in. Here are a few things for you to know:
1) I answer the messages here personally.
2) No message shows up here until I actually answer it to prevent spam and other inappropriate postings. So there will sometimes be a delay before your message posts, especially if I am traveling.
3) Teachers, a gentle request: Please do not have multiple children send me variants of the same message. A group email is much easier to respond to and not such a drain on my time. My thanks in advance for being alert to this.
Sign the Guestbook!
Hi Bruce Coville,
We liked Jeremy Thatcher and we hope you keep writing amazing books like this. We loved the creative details you used to describe the magic shop. We were wondering why the dragon egg changes colors? We can't believe you wrote 13 drafts! How long were you working on this story?
Thank you for writing Jeremy Thatcher!
Your readers,
D.C,K.B,R.C,A.W,A.H,and HC.
We liked Jeremy Thatcher and we hope you keep writing amazing books like this. We loved the creative details you used to describe the magic shop. We were wondering why the dragon egg changes colors? We can't believe you wrote 13 drafts! How long were you working on this story?
Thank you for writing Jeremy Thatcher!
Your readers,
D.C,K.B,R.C,A.W,A.H,and HC.
Reply by Bruce Coville
Dear D.C,K.B,R.C,A.W,A.H,and HC -
I'm so glad that you liked JEREMY THATCHER. Your question about how long I worked on it is an interesting one. I first had the idea for the book in 1982, when THE MONSTER'S RING, the first Magic Shop book, was published. I had wanted to do a sequel to RING, but the editor didn't want one. But I didn't want to let go of the Magic Shop, so my next idea was to do a set of short stories and I sat down and made a list of things you could buy in the shop.
When I started to write the story about the egg, it kept growing, and by the time it was forty pages long, it was clear it wanted to be a book, not a short story! That took a lot more thinking - the book was not published until 1991, nine years later! Of course, I worked on many other things during that time, but you can see that it took years for this egg to hatch!
BC
I'm so glad that you liked JEREMY THATCHER. Your question about how long I worked on it is an interesting one. I first had the idea for the book in 1982, when THE MONSTER'S RING, the first Magic Shop book, was published. I had wanted to do a sequel to RING, but the editor didn't want one. But I didn't want to let go of the Magic Shop, so my next idea was to do a set of short stories and I sat down and made a list of things you could buy in the shop.
When I started to write the story about the egg, it kept growing, and by the time it was forty pages long, it was clear it wanted to be a book, not a short story! That took a lot more thinking - the book was not published until 1991, nine years later! Of course, I worked on many other things during that time, but you can see that it took years for this egg to hatch!
BC