Most Read Stories Behind the Stories: No. 9, Crispin: the Cross of Lead

This sum­mer, I’m re-post­ing the 10 Most-Read Sto­ries Behind the Sto­ries from this blog. I’ve rewrit­ten each essay some­what and includ­ed the most-often-asked ques­tion about the book. 

This book is #9 on the most-read list, my 43rd book.

Crispin: the Cross of Lead

The sto­ry of Crispin: the Cross of Lead is complex.

1. My wife and I were dri­ving from Den­ver to the moun­tains, lis­ten­ing to a lec­ture by Dr. Teofi­lo Ruiz, chair of the His­to­ry Depart­ment at UCLA. It was all about the medieval peri­od. I was fas­ci­nat­ed, and told myself that sure­ly there was a sto­ry here, and I must do some reading.
2. I did read a lot more—found won­der­ful stuff—and began to shape a sto­ry in my head.
3. I also had a dream—I think it was a dream—and it was about an extend­ed medieval sto­ry which I would write in four parts. The dream told me the begin­ning, the mid­dle and the end. An orphan boy was in it along with a large man who befriends him.
4. I wrote a first draft, but decid­ed I had to go to Eng­land to do more research. When in Lon­don I went to the British Muse­um, the medieval sec­tion. There I saw a case of lead cross­es, giv­en to peo­ple dur­ing the peri­od of the Black Death. Only then did I incor­po­rate the key lead cross into the story.
5. The sto­ry takes place when the Eng­lish spoke Mid­dle Eng­lish. How to sug­gest a dif­fer­ent, but read­able Eng­lish? The first draft was writ­ten in verse, in a form of unrhymed poet­ry used in 14th Cen­tu­ry Eng­land. [Chaucer, Lang­land]  The result­ing num­ber of pages was much too long, so I col­lapsed the lines, but all the same, much of the book remained in iambic pen­tame­ter. I just nev­er men­tioned that to anyone.
6. Mean­while edi­tor A at Pub­lish­er B asked me if I would pub­lish with her. I said, yes. A con­tract was signed but no book was stipulated.
7. Crispin, at the time titled No Name, was sub­mit­ted to edi­tor C at Pub­lish­er D.
8. Edi­tor C decid­ed the book, in the draft I had sub­mit­ted, was not what was wanted.
9. Mean­while, A had resigned from pub­lish­er B.
10. No Name was offered to pub­lish­er B
11. Since the edi­tor at Pub­lish­er B, the one who had offered the con­tract, was no longer there, No Name was assigned to Edi­tor E.
12. The revi­sions were long and ardu­ous, none more so than the open­ing pages.
13. The book was pub­lished with the title Crispin: The Cross of Lead. It was ded­i­cat­ed to Dr. Ruiz, that fel­low whose lec­ture gave me the idea for the book. It got fine reviews, but I am not one to have expec­ta­tions about awards. In any case, I was work­ing on anoth­er book.
14. ALA Mid­win­ter is when the New­bery Award com­mit­tee gath­ers and announces the award on Mon­day morn­ing. The con­fer­ence is not one which many authors attend.  For the only time in my writ­ing life (before or since) I was invit­ed to attend to sup­port anoth­er book of mine, the pic­ture book called Silent Movie.
15. At the Con­fer­ence I had the worst case of flu I have ever had. I was sick to the degree that I was shiv­er­ing. When­ev­er I could, I fled to my hotel room, got under a blan­ket and was sick. The worst time was sit­ting at Sun­day break­fast with a few mem­bers of the New­bery com­mit­tee, although at the time I did­n’t know who they were.  I was in no mood to chat. I excused myself and flew home, chang­ing my flight so I could leave Philadel­phia as quick­ly as possible.
16. Back home Mon­day morn­ing at 5 AM (still ill) I was on my com­put­er rush­ing to rewrite my daugh­ter’s let­ter of appli­ca­tion for a sum­mer job, when the phone rang. It was the chair of the New­bery Com­mit­tee, Starr Latron­i­ca. “Con­grat­u­la­tions,” she said, “you have won the New­bery Award.”
17. In truth, my first thought was, “The next book bet­ter be good.”
18. I hung up the phone, and burst into tears.
19. “What’s hap­pened?” asked my wife.
20. I said, “I won the New­bery award.”
21. All my flu symp­toms vanished.

What did I learn from all this? If you get a bad case of the flu, win­ning the New­bery award will appar­ent­ly cure you.

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Most often asked question:

The Crispin series con­sists of three books. Was there not sup­posed to be a fourth, set in Iceland?

There was a fourth vol­ume, and it was to be set in Ice­land. I even began to write it. Went to Ice­land. (Fas­ci­nat­ing place!) But the series had an odd pub­lish­ing his­to­ry. The first and sec­ond books were pub­lished by Hype­r­i­on. Then the orig­i­nal edi­tor left and went to Harper­Collins. It was there that book three was pub­lished. But for what­ev­er reasons—I was not told—they chose not to do the fourth book. I have always wished to do so, but I don’t know who would pub­lish it, and there­fore have nev­er com­plet­ed it.

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