Brian R. Duncan
Hello, how are you? Doing good? Getting enough protein and fiber? I know, we could all use more.
So, hi, my name is Brian Duncan. I write books for the greatest reading audience in the world, kids. Their tastes are still fluid, they love the strange and silly, and, most of all, teachers make them read.
For me, the writing bug bit back in 5th grade. The assignment was to continue the story from a given prompt. I ran so far with it, I never returned to normalcy. I felt a thrill in conjuring wild tales or even just enlivening school essays. Everything ready for a rocket ship to a career?
‘Not so fast,’ said adolescence.
I continued to write and write, but the dare of showing anyone was too much to bear. Too shy, too afraid of feedback, of being vulnerable, of being measured and weighed and being found lacking. So, the writing went on with bursts and fizzles behind closed doors. I took a creative writing class in college. My genius went unremarked upon. There were also the practical considerations as parents are wont to advise, meaning do something else.
There was no surrender, no chance of it. The enthusiasm when overtaken by the creation of a story was too reality obliterating. But I also knew my stuff was nowhere near publishable. I looked to writing books for help from Dorothea Brande to Ray Bradbury to Anne Lamott and more. Like many I did the Nanowrimo thing. I was producing words with greater ease, but the product was still barely readable.
Two things changed my fortunes. One was that I coalesced around a form of outlining that has kept the threads of my stories from unraveling. The other was having children. With them came the opportunity to revisit the joys of my own childhood, watching cartoons, reading Dr. Seuss, and telling wild stories.
Hubbard 12: Goranchy Adventurer Extraordinaire is the first of these wild stories to by published. Perfect for grades 3 – 7 for the big reader and the reluctant. You can learn a bit more about it below.
Coming this year – the first two installments of The Island of Amazingness series. A fantasy of magic, royalty, pirates, and fantastical creatures. Living alongside humans in this new world are Bearps (Bear-person), Fants (six foot tall green insects), Churfs (orange and pink donut shaped beings), Rinthians (small flightless birds with great eyesight), and Untones (fish-people). The characters learn that curiosity has consequences and reality is not what they’ve been told.
An alien species, the Goranchy, live on a decaying spaceship with leaders who will not face the crisis. A frustrated, know-it-all, Goranchy girl named Hubbard 12 takes it into her four hands to prove them wrong. He ambition, however, overpowers her preparation. Hubbard crashes a scout ship on what she thinks is a strange land, but is, in fact, a human being ten thousand times larger than she.
Hubbard communicates with her host, a middle school boy, who shares many of her problems. Together, they take on the challenges of the everyday and the extraterrestrial to reunite Hubbard with her family, prevent catastrophes, bridge the gap in child-parent relations, and make some friends along the way.
