From School Handout to Chapter Book Series

The Adventures of Commander Zack Proton
(Simon & Schuster Children, 2007)
by Brian Anderson
ISBN-10: 1-416913-66-1
Buy this book
via Amazon.com.

A zany space adventure series for seven- to ten-year olds, packed with wacky graphics to engage reluctant readers, especially boys? Leapin’ leptons! as Commander Zack Proton would say, sounds like a kidlit editor’s dream.

But as science-guy-turned-children’s-author Brian Anderson – a piñata-making chemistry professor at University of Texas in Austin – remembers, his Adventures of Commander Zack Proton (Aladdin/Simon & Schuster, 2006-2007) serial was hardly a shoo-in. What started out as a handout to teach fourth graders about computers underwent copious expansions, contractions, rejections, rewrites, editorial and acquisition meetings before it emerged as a paperback trilogy of humor-filled early chapter books, he tells, with more intergalactic odysseys in the works.

ANDERSON: My dual-career actually happened in the reverse order – I had already signed the Zack Proton deal with Simon & Schuster when I was offered the teaching position at the University of Texas. I hadn’t applied for the UT job, but the chemistry department found themselves with an unexpected teaching vacancy a couple days before classes were supposed to start. They asked if I could come in and teach for a semester, and I’ve been there ever since. The first Zack Proton book came out at the end of my first year at UT.

My writing career began in the early 1990s with the hope of writing movies. I wrote screenplays on and off for about ten years. During that time my first daughter was born and my house started filling up with children’s books. In 2003, I took a break from screenwriting and wrote the first Zack Proton manuscript, but I didn’t have any real plans for it, and after I finished it I just left it resting undisturbed on my hard drive. In 2004, I decided to pursue children’s writing more seriously. I did some rewrites on the Zack Proton manuscript, sent out six query letters, and got interest from Simon & Schuster right off the bat.

AUTHORLINK: Where did you get the idea for Zack Proton? Did you conceive of it as a series? Did you have a target reader in mind as you wrote?

ANDERSON: If you follow the evolution of Zack Proton all the way back to the beginning, he was born as a fictional “cyberspace hero” named Roger Ramchip (a riff on the old Roger Ramjet cartoons) in a series of funny worksheets I was going to put together to help teach fourth graders about PC computer hardware. The idea was that Roger Ramchip had lost his crew somewhere inside a computer, and his search for his cyberspace rangers would lead him to the various computer components that we would be learning about in class. The worksheets never happened, but my bookworm daughter had been chewing through chapter books at an insane pace, and the idea of a commander searching for his lost crew struck me as a workable premise for a chapter book adventure series. Cyberspace became outer space, Roger Ramchip became Zack Proton, and the worksheets became chapter books.

From the beginning, the readers I had in mind were kids who don’t normally read for pleasure. My goal is to write each book in a way that when they finish reading it, they feel as though they’ve just watched a cartoon. But even though I’m hoping to reach reluctant readers with the series, it’s not “written down” to anyone, and kids who are already strong readers will also have fun with Zack Proton.

ANDERSON: My creative process is different for every book, but there are some elements that remain the same, mostly holdovers from my screenwriting days. I always have a rough outline of the entire story before I start. In screenwriting we would call this a step outline or a beat sheet, and it’s basically just a list of major story events. Then as I write, I throw in all sorts of actions and details, almost anything that comes to mind. These become setups for payoffs later in the story, or even later in the series. When writing comedy, I often follow the humor instead of following my outline, and I often end up somewhere I never expected and need some kind of plot twist to get myself back to the outline. That’s when all these little random bits I dropped into the story earlier come in handy. I can usually use one of them as the basis for an unexpected turn of events, but the twist doesn’t feel contrived since it was set up earlier in the story. There’s a lot of tweaking involved to make this work, and I end up going back and forth in the manuscript a lot to smooth out all the wrinkles. And if I get to the end and haven’t used some of them, I just take them out – or leave them there for later payoffs.

As one example of this, in chapter one of Zack Proton and the Warlords of Nibblecheese, Zack breaks something in the back of the ship, but we never learn what it is. This is because at the time I wrote it, I didn’t know what it was – I just wanted to end the chapter with a crash from the back of the ship, and I knew this would be something I could use later on in the series. In the next book, Zack Proton and the Wrong Planet, they need a spare bulb for the ship’s landing lights, and that’s when I knew what it was that Zack broke in book 2. Also, near the end of Zack Proton and the Warlords of Nibblecheese, Omega Chimp gets a parking ticket, but we never see him pay it. At some point later in the series they’re going to be in a real hurry to get somewhere and I’ll need some obstacle to slow them down, and that’s when that unpaid parking ticket is going to pay off.

Each one of the Zack Proton books has been written under different circumstances, and has taken different amounts of time, but I would guess that about two months from initial idea to completed manuscript is what I would expect from this point on. If I’m writing in the summer, it would take less than that, but normally I’m juggling many different obligations – work, family, and the tribulations of life in general – that limit my writing time.

My kids don’t contribute story ideas, but they read the manuscripts and offer feedback. They know they won’t hurt my feelings no matter what they say, so I always get an honest and direct critique – you might even call it ruthless – and I always end up making changes based on their responses.

AUTHORLINK: So you have this super-fun manuscript, now what? Find yourself an agent? Start attending SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) conferences? Submit to the slush piles?

ANDERSON: Slush piles! I was still very new to children’s writing. I didn’t know anybody in the industry, and didn’t know the names of any editors. I did some web searching and bought a couple of writer’s market guides, but I was still in a fog. I joined SCBWI and they sent me a packet of information that really helped clear things up. I finally had an idea of how to research individual editors and choose one to submit to. I also went to Linda Sue Park’s web site and followed her submissions advice for writers. I sent the opening chapters to the slush piles at six New York publishers. An assistant editor at Aladdin asked to see the rest of the manuscript, and that led to the sale.

AUTHORLINK: How did the Aladdin deal come about? How much revising did you have to do? How were you told that, yes, you'd finally sold Zack Proton, and three books' worth? What did you think?

ANDERSON: The Aladdin deal was something of a roller coaster. The assistant editor who pulled it out of the slush pile loved it, and so did her editorial group. She called to say she was taking it to acquisitions, and added that almost nothing that gets that far gets turned down. But my experience with screenwriting taught me that no deal is done until the check clears. All it takes in Hollywood is for one person to say no and the deal is dead. That’s what happened at acquisitions – some people loved it, others hated it, and the result was a rejection. But my editor believed in it and sought out other opinions at Simon & Schuster.

Eventually, she recommended that we reformat the book from a conventional chapter book to a fully illustrated format with short chapters and fun little asides thrown in between chapters. She would then find an illustrator for the reformatted manuscript and bring it back to acquisitions as a package. But as part of the reformatting, she wanted me to cut the word count from 7000 words to 4000. That was pure torture both for me and for the story. The original story was pretty lean to begin with, and by the time I had scraped it down to 4000 words, it was only a skeleton of a story. I hated it. I asked for 5000 words, or even 4500, but she said it had to be 4000. I sent her the skeleton, and everybody there hated it. This was the second time Zack Proton had been rejected at Aladdin, and the project was now forever dead. But my editor asked me if I wanted to give it one more try with another rewrite. I figured there really was no hope and she was just trying to let me down easy, so I started preparing the manuscript for the next round of submissions. I added back some of what I had just cut and shaped the manuscript according to what I felt was best for the new format without regard to word count. The result was about 4800 words. I sent it back to her expecting a polite but final rejection, but this time they liked it. Zack Proton was suddenly alive again, and my editor got the green light to attach an illustrator to the project.

She called me not long after that and asked me to take a look at the online portfolio for an Australian comic book artist named Doug Holgate. I loved his work and knew he would be perfect for the series. She contacted Doug and he agreed to do some sketches on spec. When my editor sent me copies of his sketches, I knew the series would sell. On the day of the acquisitions meeting, I wasn’t even home to take her call. When I came home, I saw the message light flashing on my answering machine and I knew we had a deal. That message is still saved on my machine.

I was expecting a three-book deal because my editor had already described the most likely outcomes, but the reality of it all was still pretty incredible. I was an unpublished, unagented writer without even a magazine article credit to my name, and I had scored a three-book deal for an original series with Simon & Schuster from a slush pile submission. That’s impossible on so many levels that sometimes it feels more like a lightning strike than an accomplishment. I know I spent ten years learning the craft and I did all those painful revisions on the manuscript and basically put in a ton of time and effort to finally get to the sale, but a lot of writers have done that much or more without meeting that kind of success. I am forever grateful to my acquiring editor who pulled the manuscript from the slush pile and then fought so hard to bring the series to life, and to Doug Holgate for adding his considerable talents to the project. Without them, Zack Proton is still just a collection of bits on my hard drive.

ANDERSON: I did have a vision of what Zack Proton looked like, but it’s nothing like what’s in the book. Because Zack Proton originated as a take-off on Roger Ramjet, I envisioned him as a big, dumb, muscle-bound grown-up. But since I knew there would be a picture of Zack Proton on the cover of the book, there was no need to describe what he looked like in the story. When my editor read the manuscript, which of course did not have a picture on the cover, she envisioned Zack Proton as a kid. In that moment, Zack Proton became a kid. The final design then came from Doug Holgate.

Most of the character designs come entirely from Doug. Occasionally I’ll provide a descriptive note or two, such as the general size and shape of Effie, or the Leonid Brezhnev eyebrows on Gori Blastinov, but most of the characters come with no description at all. And sometimes Doug doesn’t adhere to the descriptions I provide. I had originally described the villainous Big Large as looking like a medieval knight, but Doug drew him as a Viking thug instead. I loved Doug’s version of the character, so I went back and changed the story to match the pictures. Doug Holgate is an incredibly creative guy, and one of my favorite things about writing Zack Proton is the first time I see Doug’s illustrations.

Doug and I had no contact while the first book was in development, but since then I have needed some original high-resolution Zack Proton illustrations for marketing purposes. I contacted Doug to get those files, and we have stayed in touch by e-mail ever since. He’s a great guy, very funny and very cynical. Doug is now working on illustrations for a series by Sarah Weeks entitled Oggie Cooder, and I can’t wait to see that one.

ANDERSON: I’m a very, very small fish at Simon & Schuster. Their marketing department is deluged with new titles three times a year, and it’s all they can do to hit the trade shows and put the books out and hope they get noticed. A few select books whose authors have prior records as award winners and bestsellers get some individual attention, but since both Doug and I are new at this, we’re completely on our own. Simon & Schuster has been helpful in recommending me as a featured author at the Texas Book Festival and sponsoring a signing at the Texas Library Association annual conference, but any ongoing marketing campaign we want for the series is entirely on our time and on our dime.

I’ve already spent my entire advance from the first book promoting the series. I’ve passed out flyers locally, done book signings in Austin and San Antonio, and printed up posters that I give out to librarians and award as prizes at signings and school visits. I’ve also gotten bookmarks and magnets made and hired a publicist, who arranged a few radio spots and some print coverage. Most importantly, I’ve had invaluable support from friends who have helped spread the word about Zack Proton.

Marketing a book is expensive and time consuming, and the results are slow in coming. But I keep reminding myself of how hard my acquiring editor fought to bring the series to print. I want to do everything I can to make the series succeed just to validate her faith in Zack. I also hear from kids (and their parents) who love Zack Proton and want to know when the next book is coming out. I remember how excited my daughter would get every time a new book in her favorite series came out, and I like to think that there’s some kid out there somewhere who gets that excited every time a new Zack Proton hits the bookstores. And maybe if I’m lucky, there is also some kid out there who was given a copy of Zack Proton by a desperate parent or teacher and who has for the first time discovered the joy of reading. That’s Zack’s real mission. I’m just his ground support.

ANDERSON: The response to the series so far has been overwhelmingly positive, from second graders all the way to middle school kids, but without a national publicity campaign, the series still isn’t very widely known. I’m waiting to hear from Simon & Schuster on whether Zack Proton’s sales figures to date support continuing the series. The numbers look good to me, but Simon & Schuster probably has a different standard.

In the meantime, I’ve just finished two picture book manuscripts and have a couple of middle-grade novels underway. I hope to finish one of those by the end of the summer and the other by the end of the year. If Simon & Schuster renews for three more Zack Proton books, those will obviously get priority.

ANDERSON: The non-fiction market for science books for kids is insatiable. Science and technology are always evolving, which creates a constant need for up-to-date books. I’m having a lot of fun with fiction right now, but I have some non-fiction ideas I’d love to pursue when I get a chance. But no matter what you write, try to write every day if you can, because you will either develop a habit of writing or you’ll develop a habit of not writing, and either habit is hard to break. For more information for writers, check out the writers page at the Zack Proton web site, www.zackproton.com.