ABOUT SUSAN

Lewis Jenkins began preparing to write books when his father, an Electrical Engineer, read him Pogo comics at bedtime. They sparked the boy’s fascination with both human history and comic fantasy because dad explained the social and political satire in Walt Kelly’s work.

          He graduated from the University of Akron with a BA in Education and an Ohio High School teaching certificate in history, government, and math. Although math teachers got jobs instantly, no school would guarantee him a history course. Loving history ever since Pop read him Pogo, he wanted to escape math for a while each week by sharing fascinating true stories of the past. The media usually portrayed tragic-comic human history as something dated and tedious. He would teach it as a storyteller sharing inside news.

          But coaches had the history courses sewed up. So he chased smokestacks for ten years, buying and selling used electrical equipment and other industrial machinery. Then he worked for four decades, mostly as a hired gun (contract programmer) writing computer code in Cobol, Forth, Java (plus other languages you never heard of) for Sherwin Williams, Office Max, Goodyear (plus other companies you never heard of).

          He retired to write articles, novels, and short stories, all in English. His lifetime of reading history, mystery, and sci-fi tech will often show in his work, but his Diary of a Robot is not so much about the past, nor is it so much a tale of AI science fiction. Consider it a story of future history since it and its sequel are probably happening. There is a tiny bit of math in it, too. Sorry.

          Mr. Jenkins's children's book, Maynard and the Bullies, was born out of the Robot book. It grew up as he feasted first on his own experiences with bullies and the history of invention, then on the history of the Cherokee and other native American nations, and finally on the realization that most of human history is about families, inventing, and bullying.

My process started after Goodyear ordered me to stay by the phone during the Y2K weekend, Dec 31, 1999 to Jan 2, 2000. To keep busy, I dug out my tame story of a toddler robot sent to discover what went wrong with a nuclear power plant. But after two days of gushing out 26 pages of plot bullet points, I saw the tale become an interesting clash-of-worlds: The toddler turned into a truth-telling robotic testing machine designed to obey orders without causing harm through action or inaction. Its trouble began as it tries to understand humans and avoid harm. So, because humans have agendas, it must first test to discover whom it can trust about what. They get upset.

I had a day-job, remember. So, my tale didn’t start getting tall until I turned its last gushed bullet into a scene (March, 2012), and also finished several long edit sessions (Ending in August, 2014). I do edit using a computer .docx file, but I also track changes visually by marking up a print book. My first few books were a format-learning chore and aren’t in the photo. The two short stacks are oldest. They and that stack as tall as I am show my many trips from reality to hope and back. Each cycle added one book (one inch) to my tall tale. Here is how it went:

• A friend had given me a copy of Writing Well by Donald Hall. I made text edits to improve the story. It took a lot of evenings and weekend time. After solving format problems, I got a version I liked and printed it. At last, I had a good book.

• Examples and advice in other books prompted changes to that good book (and to its .docx file, of course). But my print copy got so cluttered with edits of my edit notes that I had to print the new version.

• Writer’s Digest suggested their writer’s conference. I went, and saw more things to fix. I also realized that my good book had a terrible cover. I had to fix that and print the new version.

• I’d see a well-known writer’s program I could afford, join it, and see lots more things to fix. The text re-orgs, deletions, and new editing clutter forced me to print the new version.

• I’d get feedback at writer’s groups, and make more edits to improve my writing. The book got too cluttered again, so I had to print the new version.

• Twice I paid four figures for pro editors (worth every penny), and made lots more edits. The book was done at last: Time to print the new version with an even better cover.

• In the wee hours, a word or phrase would wake me, and I’d have to see if it needed fixing. The book soon got cluttered with changes again, and I had to print the new version.

• Oh boy: Contests that give feedback! Hoping for the best, I’d enter (got Finalists in one), but then see more things to fix even before they published their results. Encouraging feedback (with suggestions) often required edits—plus printing the new version.

• I’d give free copies to get a bit of feedback from pros or beta readers. The occasional feedback was sometimes very useful, so I made it work in the new version.

• Someone would announce another writer’s conference. I’d go if it was close, have a good time, and see more things to fix. Eventually I had to print that new version, of course.

• But an article in a newsletter would grab me and I’d find more things to fix. And print the new version.

I have read many hundreds of books—mostly non-fiction. I’ve read and printed Diary of a Robot at least a hundred times. Each printing in my writing journey along that bumpy path resulted in many variations of the plod-points I’ve bulleted above (some points "resulted" a lot more than others). Currently, the book is done and I’m in Contest Hope Mode, waiting for feedback in late June from the Bath Novel Award contest (UK).