by Paul Greci
This past Friday, June 5,
2015, Marcy and I posted our answers to Paul’s debut novel Surviving Bear Island. Today, you get to read Paul’s favorite's.
Great answers, Paul! We
can’t wait for our readers to read the novel. And hopefully to give us a few of
their favorites, too.
1) What is your favorite line or paragraph
from the novel as it relates to the main character's development and/or growth?
Part of me wanted to go back and just stay. It would
be easier that what I was doing now. But I knew that choosing the easy path
meant choosing death. And I wanted to live. P. 90.
2) What is your favorite chapter ending or
cliffhanger?
Chapter
One: I scanned the water. No sign of the sea lions. And the waves seemed to be
calming down. Little did I know I would be upside down in the water in less
than an hour—fighting for my life.
3} Who is your favorite secondary
character and why?
Surviving
Bear Island has one primary character. I’d say my favorite secondary character
is Tom’s father because even though he isn’t present for most of the story,
Tom’s relationship to him continues to develop.
4) What is your favorite line or paragraph
of description?
Sometime toward morning the heavy rain and wind
died, replaced by a fine mist, like the ground had taken as much moisture as it
could and was spewing it back as fog.
P. 163
5) What is your favorite line of dialogue?
Tom’s father: “When you’re alone in the wilderness,
everything is magnified.” P. 43
BIO
Living in Alaska for 25 years, Paul has seen bears
fishing for salmon, a pair of bald eagles building a nest, polar bears gnawing
on a whale carcass, 10,000 walruses hauled out together on the Bering Sea coast,
and 120,000 caribou gathered on the Arctic Coastal Plain. And when he’s not
teaching school or exploring the Alaskan wilderness, Paul Greci is thinking up
ways to keep hungry moose out of his garden. His debut novel, Surviving Bear Island is a 2015 Junior
Library Guild Selection.
Brief HISTORY OF HOW SURVIVING BEAR ISLAND CAME TO BE
PUBLISHED
Having completed the first draft of this novel 10
years ago, and then countless drafts since then, I feel incredibly fortunate to
have found a home for this book. Six years into the revision process Surviving Bear Island morphed from a
third-person young adult novel into a first-person middle grade novel. The main
roadblock I ran into when writing Surviving
Bear Island was how to write a story with primarily one character and have
it have authentic emotional depth and complexity. Early drafts of my story were
very plot heavy and episodic. As the years went by and I wrote other stories
where characters were interacting with each other, I developed my skills for
exploring emotional depth, and also for writing in first person. I think those
other manuscripts I wrote gave me the tools I needed to transform a
single-character third-person narrative into a single-character first-person
narrative that was much more character-driven and emotionally authentic. As my
agent was trying to sell a different manuscript, we started working on getting Surviving Bear Island ready for
submission and then started subbing it simultaneously with the other
manuscript, and it found its home at Move Books.
Congratulations to Paul on his debut novel, Surviving
Bear Island and for the novel being chosen as a Junior Library Guild selection.
Way to go, Paul!
To
read more about Paul Greci’s debut novel, Surviving Bear Island, please
go to:
Kirkus Review: “Bear Island is a
challenging environment to survive but a terrific thrill on the page.
(Adventure. 9-14)” https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/paul-greci/surviving-bear-island/
Junior Library Guild Selection: Surviving Bear
Island is a Junior Library Guild Selection in the High Interest Middle
Category.
