Captain John is me, John Torgersen.
I have five children, my youngest son is Oliver Torgersen, one of the authors.
I am an actual sea captain, who now works ashore for a company that performs underwater services, mostly for the US Navy.
I have never published anything prior to this.
In the fall of 2020, after COVID hit, my wife asked me if I could teach a vocabulary class to our son and some of his friends, who were in third grade at the time because she was concerned they wouldn't be getting much English vocabulary, as most of them spoke other languages at home. The class is held online, and it grew as others heard about it. The class usually starts with a music video. We spend time on word origins, which often means learning some Latin.
The class is still held to this day, on Sundays at 8 PM.
In the summers, we stop learning vocabulary and we read and discuss great books. We started with a few simple writing assignments and then a group of students from the class took on the challenge of writing a book together. The summer we started this book, we were reading "Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo, and it may have had some impact on the complexity of the kids story.
I have never written a book, so I don't know what that's like. Working on a book with 5 authors and one editor is interesting. A lot of the inner turmoil that writers must go through becomes a discussion or an argument when there are 6 of you trying to decide on a plot point.
My task was to organize the discussions, take notes, build the outline of the story from our discussions, and then hold them to the outline during editing.
The story was divided up into sections. Each section was roughly three chapters. From the outline, the kids knew what to write. They would submit their work, and I would edit it, making corrections and point out issues they needed to address. Clearly the most difficult part was keeping them all aligned story wise. Their sections passed back and forth between us many times, until it worked.
We started with 8 authors, 3 dropped out due to the work load, and others had to start from scratch and re write their sections. Some chapters were split into smaller pieces in the final edit.
When we reached the point where I couldn't help them anymore, all of the parents kicked in money to hire a professional developmental editor to help complete the manuscript. Each of the authors then made the suggested edits re-writing 5 chapters each, chapters they didn't write.
I then took the rewritten chapters and stitched the book back together. The result isn't perfect, but it is real.
This wasn't just a writing exercise, it was a 20 month project that involved many members of the community sharing what they knew with the authors in order to help create something that didn't exist before: an easier entry point to Sugar Land's difficult past for middle school students. Encouraged by the legacy of Reginald Moore, the authors tried to give an identity and a voice to those from whom it had been taken. The goal was to change the narrative about the Sugar Land 95 from one of 95 unfortunate people who died, to one about 95 people who lived, loved and had families. We did this with fiction, while the Friends of the Sugar Land 95 are working to do this in reality.
I have the utmost respect for the kids carrying on the work needed to create the book, as they continued the busy lives of Sugar Land middle schoolers.
Its been a great deal of work, but also amazing to see it all come together. Its been wonderful watching each of the kids evolve both as writers and as people.
That is the best part.
Capt. John
Captain John can be reached at capt.john@captainjohnspublishingcompany.com