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MEET DOUG COONEY
by Ann Stalcup

What did you most like to do when you were a child?

Doug Cooney

I played the piano, classical, jazz and ragtime. 

What books influenced you most when you were growing up? 

I have powerful memories of Beverly Cleary and Robert McCloskey. 

Did you write stories when you were growing up? at school? Or at home as a hobby? As a young child, or as a teenager, or both?

I found an old typewriter in the closet and began to plunk out Christmas plays in the second grade. 

What audience did you have in mind for your career as a writer - adult or children?

Even today, I'm aware that when I write for children, I'm writing for the adults who support children.  I am very conscious of the dialogue that a book might spark between parent and child or teacher and child -- and also very conscious of creating a childhood world that kids inhabit independent of adults. 
 
Was your first book accepted immediately? or did you experience a number of rejections?

I had a unique journey into the book world.  I had written The Beloved Dearly, a play for children that garnered a tiny profile in New Yorkmagazine.   My editor at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers tracked me down and asked if the play could become a book.  I re-imagined the work -- and THE BELOVED DEARLY came to life as a chapter book.

Do you do other types of writing - for example, educational, nonfiction, magazine work?

I write for the theater, plays and musicals.  I have turned plays into novels -- and novels into plays.  I also write screenplays.  It is very important to distinguish between each medium -- and to understand how the experience of the story is dependent upon the form. 
 
What gave you the idea for  THE BELOVED DEARLY?

I challenged myself to write about things that  I hadn't been prepared to tackle based on my own childhood -- and settled on the subjects of death and business.  With such grim topics, I knew I'd have to write a comedy to liven it up.  I remembered a story that a high school friend had told me about his own childhood -- when he used to throw pet funerals in his neighborhood and charge kids a buck -- and flip his sister a quarter to cry.  Death and business; there it was.  I was also approaching my boss at work for a raise at the time -- so I emboldened myself by emboldening my kid-characters. 
 
How did your life change when you got married? and had children? Did it make it easier or harder to find time to write?

I am living the myth of the stay-at-home writer as primary parent.  I find it to be enormously challenging to write without the luxury of expansive time to simply dream -- or to knuckle down to the craft of writing.  I have always been motivated by pressure, however -- and the demands of family does galvanize the deadlines.  It boggles my mind when I realize how much I have accomplished in the first four years of my son's life -- despite the joys and demands of early parenthood.   

Do you write every day and do you have set hours that you work?

These days, I get up at five a.m. to have two or three solid hours without distraction before the demands of the day begin.  I am not a morning person and have never been.  I used to write deep into the evening -- but with the demands of parenthood, I find I fall asleep at the keys. 
 
Has anyone ever written you a fan letter that you’d like to share?

A student emailed to ask if I was still alive because he couldn't tell from my website and he was only allowed to write a book report about a living author. 

Is there anything about yourself that you’d like to share - hobbies, where you were born, special talents other than writing/illustrating, what other jobs you had before you became a writer/illustrator?

I  have published several titles through Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, including THE BELOVED DEARLY, I KNOW WHO LIKES YOU  and NOBODY'S PERFECT (co-written with actress Marlee Matlin.)  THE BELOVED DEARLY has become a favorite of students, classroom teachers and librarians -- and was recently published in South Korea as well.  I have  adapted NOBODY'S PERFECT into a musical in spoken English and American Sign Language for the Kennedy Center, featuring a deaf girl in the lead role.   The original cast recording of the Kennedy Center production won a Parent's Choice Award -- and the production itself will tour nationally starting in February 2010.