I’m delighted to share this interview with you from this year’s virtual Oz-Stravaganza!, conducted by John Fricke. Hope you enjoy!
I’m delighted to share this interview with you from this year’s virtual Oz-Stravaganza!, conducted by John Fricke. Hope you enjoy!
The end of this month, February 25th, to be exact, marks the 10-year anniversary of my first novel “Silver Shoes. It went “live” through iUniverse on Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, and Target websites simultaneously in 2009, in both hardcover and trade paperback. As a self-published author it did pretty well, and steady sales continue to this day. The first edition is out of print now. I opted to publish directly through Amazon at a significantly reduced expense, allowing me to tinker and fix a bit of the prose (nothing major, I assure you) without paying a king’s ransom to do so. The trade paperback, Kindle, and Nook versions (the latter two weren’t available initially) are still in print today and keep me busy at events, festivals, and conventions around the country. Less than a year after it was published, my “Silver Shoes” brought me back to Kansas, where the novel was honored just weeks after I arrived with a Kansas Notable Book Award by the Center for the Book and the State Library of Kansas. It’s been a wonderful ride ever since. I thank the Oz fan community who embraced the story and have supported my continued efforts in the genre. Who knows where this adventure will take me next? I do know that after writing this book, anything is possible.
It’s been a good chunk of time now since I’ve posted on this blog, and I apologize for my glaring absence and lack of news. I’ve been grinding away on “installment #3” of the Silver Shoes saga, and I’m pleased to say it’s going well. Donald Gardner and his buddies are in for another wild ride, this time centered around the primary catalyst of magic in Baum’s third Oz book, Ozma of Oz. My own books parallel his in many respects, and that is intentional on my part. It’s why Silver Shoes was joined in chronological succession by The Powder of Life … and now looming on the horizon is The Magic Belt. My hope is to entertain, enthrall, and enchant, not necessarily in that order! But more on new works in the months ahead.
I’ve attended a couple of wonderful events this past year as a guest of both Oz-Stravaganza! in Chittenango, New York, and OZtoberFest in Wamego, Kansas. My two homes-away-from-home where “Oz” is always made a very real place for me. It’s due primarily to the people who toil ceaselessly, year-round to create indelible memories for all who come for the fun. Those men and women behind the curtain. I’ve met and continue to meet so many incredible, inspirational “characters” on my strange and wonderful journey as an “Oz-themed” author.
I thought I would share a few highlights and good memories from these events, and please—if you’re ever in New York in early June or Kansas in early October—join us for a memorable and magical experience, and be sure to say hi if you do!
Then it was on to OZtoberFest in the fall of 2016!
When I was a kid growing up, my father Leonard Schneider was an educational filmmaker. He worked for a local company called Centron Educational Films in Lawrence, Kansas. It was an enchanted life from my youthful perspective, because I got to appear in many of his films. After he left Centron a couple of years later, he launched his own company, Phoenix Productions, which still utilized Centron for its film distribution. His first project as an independent writer/director was “A Rain Day Story,” all about the creative-writing process and how people can take the things around them that they see on a daily basis and imagine new stories, new ideas, and create new adventures from the events, people, and places in their lives.
This is the same approach I used when writing “Silver Shoes,” and it’s the same approach used by L. Frank Baum as well when he wrote “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” according to his great-grandson Robert.
Recently I found an “ancient” VHS copy of this short film, which runs a mere 13 minutes. “A Rainy Day Story,” stars a nine-year-old me as “Paul” (it was a stretch playing myself). We made it back in 1972. The quality isn’t good. Not only is it digitized from a low-grade VHS “master,” it was achieved back in the late ’70s by projecting a 16mm print in a screening room and then filming that with a (state-of-the-art for the late 1970s) video camera while it ran. Ugh. A copy of a copy of a copy.
Still I want to share it with you. It was a huge part of my journey as a writer of adventure stories. It’s how Donald Gardner, an average kid from the Midwest, was born. How he discovered a silver shoe on the side of a road in Kansas one day. How his adventure into the “real” world of Oz began.
It started with the two magic words, “What if …” and went from there.
Enjoy!
I am heading back to Chittenango, NY, next week—the birthplace of Oz creator L. Frank Baum—for Oz-Stravaganza 2016! Here is a link to the schedule of events, June 3-5, 2016!
I will be one of the special guests again, this time alongside film and TV star Bronson Pinchot, author Grant Menzies, actress Emma Ridley (Princess Ozma in “Return to Oz”), Judy Garland costume collector, author, and preservationist Jonathan Shirshekan, Emmy-winning Oz and Garland author, producer, and preeminent historian John Fricke, TV and radio film critic Ryan Jay, and “MGM Munchkin by marriage” Myrna Swensen! I am selling and signing books and T-shirts as well as giving a formal talk Friday evening on my former “second-grade pen pal” Margaret Hamilton, the Wicked Witch of the West herself!
Hope to see many of you there!
Come join the fun this weekend at OZtoberFest, where I will once again be cavorting be among the special guests, selling and signing books along with the new Silver Shoes T-shirts! I’m also emceeing the costume contest and scavenger hunt Saturday afternoon—something entirely new for me! *gulp*
There will be live music, food, the incredible Oz Museum (not to be missed), where I will be stationed most of the day—featuring two new costume acquisitions from the MGM “Oz” movie, rides, games, and more! For a full schedule of events and a roster of guests, click here.
This festival is free open to the public, so bring the family and come say hello!
In addition to my new silver and green T-shirts, I’m hoping to have the revised version of Silver Shoes available for this year’s OZtoberFest in September! Here is a sneak peek at the brand new cover—an enhanced, more sinister, more magical take on the original design. The book itself has gone through some editing. Nothing major, and the story remains the same! I just tightened up the prose a bit and embellished a few sections in my never-ending attempt to make it even better. Hope you enjoy, and see you in September!
Just a quick note to let you know I’ll be heading back to Wamego, Kansas, at the end of September for this year’s OZtoberFest, and I will have T-shirts for sale as well as books. You too can be Ozzified in your very own Silver Shoes shirt! The back of the tee has the book’s keynote (promotional) slogan on it: “For years, people have thought The Wizard of Oz was a fairy tale. But Donald Gardner is about to learn the story is true.” My wardrobe is now complete.
I”m always fascinated whenever I see a pair of silver shoes like these from the eighteenth century. Genuine silver, too. They evoke a sense of realness with their expert craftsmanship and artistry, their detailed carvings, and the unusual, exotic shape. I love the buckles—almost a nod to the bows on Judy Garland’s ruby slippers. Beautiful design.
I thought I would share them, because I find inspiration everywhere in reality. Glimpses into an alternate universe where fairy-tale sensibilities reign supreme.
It was intentional that I didn’t include a depiction of the Shoes on my book cover, because I wanted readers to imagine them. Several characters in the story become obsessed with the shoes. They can’t shake the images out of their minds. I first describe them from Donald Gardner’s perspective as a cross between a Dutch wooden clog and something out of The Arabian Nights. I go into further detail about the strange carvings on their surface, which turn out to be more significant than mere artistic embellishments. Still, I wanted you, dear reader, to complete the circle by deciding for yourself what they look like.
Are these the way you picture them?
I can tell you they made me grin and nod when I saw the photo … so I had to share.
Hope you enjoy.