A Crooked Kind of Perfect

Latest Book: A Crooked Kind of Perfect (Harcourt Paperbacks)

Ten-year-old Zoe Elias has perfect piano dreams. She can practically feel the keys under her flying fingers; she can hear the audience’s applause. All she needs is a baby grand so she can start her lessons, and then she’ll be well on her way to Carnegie Hall.

But when Dad ventures to the music store and ends up with a wheezy organ instead of a piano, Zoe’s dreams hit a sour note. Learning the organ versions of old TV theme songs just isn’t the same as mastering Beethoven on the piano. And the organ isn’t the only part of Zoe’s life that’s off-kilter, what with Mom constantly at work, Dad afraid to leave the house, and that odd boy, Wheeler Diggs, following her home from school every day.

Yet when Zoe enters the annual Perform-O-Rama organ competition, she finds that life is full of surprises—and that perfection may be even better when it’s just a little off center. Buy now from Indiebound.com, Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, or Borders.com.

More about the Author:

Web site: www.lindaurbanbooks.com

I was born in Detroit, Michigan, and raised in a suburban house that looked like all the others on my street. Sometimes I liked that sameness. It made me feel normal, when I worried I wasn’t.

Other times, though, I wanted to be different — to shine, to have people see me as special. I tried ballet dancing and singing and playing musical instruments, but I wasn’t very good at any of those things. But writing stories was fun! And often people liked what I wrote.

At Oakbrook Elementary, I wrote lots of poems and stories. One story, SUPERBOX, was about a crime-fighting shoe box. That story won me a prize. Even better? I got to read it out loud to my classmates, who laughed at the funny parts and cheered when Superbox fought off the evil potato chip can that was his mortal enemy. Nothing made me feel more special than hearing an audience cheer for a character I had written.

So, I kept writing. All through elementary school and junior high I wrote short stories and plays and poems.
But then I learned something.
Not everyone will like every story you write. And sometimes, that will make you feel very bad.

I remember once, I wrote a story about how I felt on Christmas Eve. I described my excitement, that tingling sensation I got anticipating the presents I knew would be under the tree the next morning. A boy in my class thought one of the words I used was “weird” and that I was weird as a result. He laughed at my story and his laughter stung.

I began to write more nonfiction, mostly articles for my high school yearbook and newspaper. These pieces took thought and hard work, but unlike my stories, I felt like I didn’t have to put my secret heart into them. I could hide behind the words and no one would make fun of me or the things I wrote about.

I also started to worry that maybe I was not as good a writer as I had imagined myself to be. I started comparing my writing to that in the books I read. No way was I as good as that! (More about that sort of thing here.)

By college, I had turned my writing toward advertising and marketing, using my creativity to sell the creative work of others.
Which wasn’t such a bad thing.

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1. Audio CD of Crooked Kind of Perfect by Linda Urban