Seattle Author: Books for Kids and Anyone Else With an Open Heart

I'm very excited to feature Sundee Frazier, author of Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything in It, The Other Half of My Heart, and a nonfiction adult book: Check All That Apply: Finding Wholeness as a Multiracial Person. Her most recent children's novel, Brendan Buckley’s Sixth-Grade Experiment was released last week on January 10. Here's the Q&A session that I was privileged to have with her recently:

Author Sundee Frazier, photo by Emerald England.

Q: When did you decide you wanted to be a writer? What has your background in writing looked like?
A: I recently discovered a book I had as a child (my family lived on Queen Anne Hill in Seattle at the time). It was a Dr. Seuss book in which you filled in blanks about yourself, including what you wanted to be when you grew up. I wrote, “a famous writer.” I was eight. So I guess you could say I decided as a child. Then I forgot. But writing didn’t forget me. I majored in journalism, so of course I did a lot of writing in college, but then I ended up going into ministry for ten years, so I suppose you could say I forgot again. But, once again, writing didn’t forget me. It was in the context of speaking about being biracial at a national conference for this campus ministry that an editor from a major Christian publisher asked if I would consider writing a book on the experience of being mixed race. Check All That Apply: Finding Wholeness as a Multiracial Person was the result.

Q: What made you decide to write about multiculturalism, and to write for children?
A: My husband and I were newly married, on a plane to somewhere, and he turned and asked, “If you could do anything, without regard to money, what would it be?” I replied immediately: “Be a children’s writer.” And that’s when I knew I had to do it. I find it a great honor to write for young people.
As for the subject matter I’ve chosen, it’s all come out of my personal experience. My African-American heritage is very important to me and I believe a part of my calling is to keep the history and contributions of Black people alive through the stories I write. But I also see the world through the eyes of a black-white, mixed-race person. I suppose I am multicultural by birth. As author Paule Marshall once said, “Once you see yourself truthfully depicted, you have a sense of your right to be in the world.” Another part of my calling is to let mixed-race kids or kids who are multicultural by birth or adoption or experience know that they have a right to be in the world, too.

Q: How did you get "Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything in it" published? Was it a struggle to get a first novel published, even after having your work published in collections and anthologies, and after "Check All That Apply"?
A: I gave myself ten years to get a children’s book published, thinking that would be no problem, right? It took nine! But only one rejection letter. (I got a few more for a picture book, but shelved that project to focus on novels). That one letter was all it took. After that, I determined I would not submit again until I was sure I had something publishable. I enrolled in Vermont College’s MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adult program, which is where I started Brendan Buckley’s Universe and Everything in It. After I completed the manuscript, a mentor from Vermont College connected me with a literary agent who sold my book within a few weeks. So I would say the struggle was all in learning and honing the craft of fiction writing, and in particular, fiction for young people, which has some of its own unique requirements (staying in a young person’s point of view, for one, and letting the child propel the action and be central in solving his or her own problem).

Q: How do you juggle the difference of writing nonfiction for adults, and fiction for children? How do you balance the two in your mind?
A: At this stage in my life, fiction for kids is what I feel most compelled to write and that’s all I’m doing. So there’s no juggling act—except the one involving being a mom of two young children and being a writer.

Q: What inspires your children's books?
A: In the case of Brendan Buckley, it started with a family story and the question, “What if my white grandparents had not changed their minds about my parents’ interracial marriage and I had grown up not knowing them?” That’s how the idea of a biracial kid who doesn’t know his white grandpa and wants to know why came about.

For The Other Half of My Heart, a news story about mixed-race twins—one who looked more black and the other who looked more white—provided the initial idea for the novel, and it came from my editor, actually. I brought in a lot of my personal experience (including being in pageants as a teen) to develop the main character and plot. Some family history—this time from my black grandmother and her experience of being raised by her fair-skinned grandmother—influenced the story, as well.
Mostly, I aim to be honest with my readers—not to avoid uncomfortable subjects like race, because I know young people are thinking about these things and it serves them to read and talk about them.

Q: Tell me a little more about getting started with the idea of a 'sketch' when you struggle to get started on a book or story.
A: Getting started is just the most awful, gut-wrenching, difficult part for me. I suppose because I am a perfectionist and I hate how necessarily bad my writing is when I first embark on a project and am groping along, trying to find my way to the characters and their stories.
So, part of how I’ve tried to make myself feel better is to think about the first draft as a sketch, just as visual artists create sketches before they put paint to paper. Sketching frees me to play around more and gives me permission to allow big gaps in the writing or long stretches of extraneous stuff I know will never end up in the final “painting.” Sketches never look like the finished product. They’re not meant to.

Q: What did you learn writing "The Other Half of my Heart" that you will take with you to future books?
A: To remain calm. It’s not worth it to stress yourself out over the messiness that is novel-writing. And also that I cannot control one little bit how people respond to my stories. Some will love them to the point of tears, finding a connection to the characters that validates their experience; others will be only lukewarm about them or primarily see the flaws. What matters is that I write the best story that I can, and that only happens by digging deep into the reservoir of my experience and empathizing with others in their experiences—and not letting myself off the hook when I know what I’ve written is not the best I can do.

Q: Do you have plans for future books? Can you share a little bit about them?
A: My most recent novel, which just came out last week, is a sequel: Brendan Buckley’s Sixth-Grade Experiment, in which Brendan enters the world of middle school and is trying to figure out girls, friends, and his relationship with his dad, all while attempting to win a national science competition by creating methane from cow poop. The highlights of researching this novel for me were spending a day aboard the RV-Centennial out of Friday Harbor and holding a green anole. (No cow poop was handled in the creating of this book.)
I’m working on a novel about an enterprising nine-year-old who plans to run a conglomerate by the time she finishes fourth grade.

Q: What advice would you share with young writers, specifically ones with a multicultural background?
A: My best advice would probably be what Brendan’s dad says to him at one point in the first book: “Don’t let anyone tell you who you are, or what you can or can’t be.” You have stories that only you can tell; if you don’t tell them, they will never be told, so be brave and write (or draw or record or act or dance) them out. The world (and you) will be better because of it.