Michael Grant

Michael Grant is one of the biggest authors of fantasy teen novels and children’s books around, having written over 150 books. What, you couldn’t manage 160?

He and his wife Katherine — then publishing under the J.K. Rowling-style name K.A. Applegate — co-wrote the Animorphs fantasy series, about a group of five teens who use their secret ability of transforming into animals to battle an evil invading alien life force, which was even made into a television show on Nickelodeon. (Video of the pilot episode here.)  As most kids who grew up in the ’90s like myself can attest, “Jake, Rachel, Tobias, Cassie, Marco, and Ax” ranked just behind “Harry, Ron, and Hermione” on the list of favorite ’90s fantasy book heroes.

Some of Grant’s other best known series include the Gone series featuring the books Gone, Hunger, Lies, Plague, Fear, and Light. It’s a six-part saga about a town where everybody over age 15 vanishes, and presumably the oldies radio stations start playing songs from five years before. Grant also wrote The Magnificent 12, a four-part series that can best be described by the description on the series website: “Only one thing stands between her and the destruction of the human race—a team of twelve twelve-year-olds. So humanity is basically out of luck. It’s clearly hopeless.”

But he wasn’t always penning fantasy and science fiction, as our entry today showcases. Then known as Michael Reynolds, at age seven in 1962 he wrote a short story on the typewriter. (Kids who may be reading this because they’re a fan of his, a typewriter was basically a really old-fashioned computer that couldn’t do anything except type.) Entitled “My Last Four Months,” the story chronicled the preparations for his family’s move to France, inspired by his real life living in both the U.S. and France while being raised in a military family. A picture of the original typewritten version is below in this post, followed by the story in text form.

Michael Grant in France at around the time he wrote the story, fourth one in the middle row, wearing the glasses.

Grant had this to say about his original piece as well as advice for young readers who want to become writers or authors:

Interesting. Not sure my style has changed that much.

Here’s my advice for aspiring writers:  Writing is a job, and it’s work. If you don’t want to work, if you just want to call yourself a writer, do something else.  This is a job for people who work at it.  That said, if you have talent, and if you acquire the basic skills, and if you’re willing to work hard, and if you’ll also learn about the business, and if you will stand back up every time you get knocked down, you can succeed in writing.  And then?  Best job on earth, people. I work three or four hours a day, sitting in a bathrobe on my deck, and I make more than the President of the United States.  I know: it’s insane!  But first came the hard stuff.  Don’t forget all that.

Follow him on Twitter @MichaelGrantBks, like him on Facebook at TheRealMichaelGrant, and check out his website with the “The Donald” style name TheMichaelGrant.com. Now for the story:

completely original excepting last 2 words.

the author’s second work

March 3, 1962

MY LAST FOUR MONTHS

One day, on the way home from school my mom told me that she got fired. But she seemed perfectly calm and happy, for only one reason: because she was happy. Because a drunkard, her boss, had fired her.

Me, half scared out of my wits, started thinking of all kinds of weird things to get money. The next morning I got a letter from my dad who had been stationed in France. We always thought that the Army was going to send money to go over to France, but in the letter it said that we were going to have to do it on our own because there was a ban that no dependents could go overseas until they paid for it with their own money. This just added up to more trouble. No job, no money. No money, no trip.

So, this put us in quite a spot. The first place we went to was our Grandma’s to try to borrow some money from them. They said they’d give us as much money as we needed, but that we’d have to pay it back when we got back to the States.

Now, we got the money, but there was still something else that we had to do. And that thing was the passports. So, one day I had to tell my teacher I would be out until about 12 noon. So, we went to the passport station and got a passport. Ten days later we received the passport. But when I saw the passport it didn’t look like it was worth 850 dollars. The cover wasn’t even genuine leather.

Now there was one more thing I had to do. Shots! So next day we went to the health center and I hated shots. When we got in my mom had to give me a good tranquilizer pill. But then we found out that the health center couldn’t give us those shots. And besides, my shots already covered enough time so it was a big waste of time.

Then I went over to my Grandma Marcus’s. As soon as I got over there I went straight to Channel 2 on the television. I came in on this war picture, but of course, there came a time when my mom had to drag me away from the television and into the car.

Then came my last day at school. At the end of school they gave me a book and a good-bye party.

And then, we had another goodbye party. That day just happened to be the day that I wrote this story. We had everything you could think of eating.

This looks like the end of this book because this is the first and last day of me writing this book. The only thing else that I can tell you is that we’re going on the plane in two more days. This is going to be the end of this book because there’s no more to tell. Bon Voyage!

Michael Reynolds