Author Visit

By: Ezri Watt '32

Have you ever wanted to become an author? Are you interested in code breaking and historical fiction? On Monday, September 22nd at LMMS, authors Ruta Sepetys and Steve Sheinkin visited our school and told us about their newest novel, The Bletchley Riddle. In their book, siblings Jakob and Lizzie are sent to Bletchley Park. Jakob tries to break codes and Lizzie tries to understand her mother’s disappearance. The setting is London, in 1940, during World War Two.

The authors also talked about their lives before they explored writing. 

Ruta Sepetys wrote as a kid, but parents complained about the content of her writing, and she was discouraged from making stories for a long time. She worked with musicians in California as an adult, and she realised that songs that were about musicians' life stories were the most successful. She started asking them what their life story was, and one time someone asked her what hers was. This inspired her to write her first novel, Between Shades of Gray.

Steve Sheinkin and his younger brother had always dreamed of creating movies together as kids, and when they became adults, they decided to fulfill their childhood dreams. Their movie, however, A More Perfect Union, was not the success that they had hoped for. The brothers received a bad, one star review, and lost lots of money on the movie. Luckily, he decided to try making books in the same, fast-paced way he made movies, and was extremely successful.

Something else that Steve Sheinkin and Ruta Sepetys shared was how they met. After having both heard of each other’s work before, they were both at the same library conference, and someone asked Ruta the question “If you could write a book with any person, who would people choose?” She answered Steve Sheinkin, and they exchanged contact information afterwards and really did write a book together.

There was a questions section, and one question that was really perfect was “what advice do you have for aspiring authors?” Ruta Sepetys said that aspiring authors should work with someone else, and Steve Sheinkin said that they should start by writing something that they love.

The authors shared another tip for aspiring authors as well: their rough draft is allowed to be terrible. Many works start out that way, and become wonderful. Steve said that it was okay to lose faith in it, too, but people should still keep going. He also suggested finishing the whole rough draft before editing and revising.

This incredible author visit shared lots about the new novelThe Bletchley Riddle and how London was at the time. The authors shared about themselves and their book, and what it’s like to be an author.