So this is my website which will eventually (hopefully) be used to help push my eventual (and hopeful) kids book, tentatively titled Sneaky Little Outlaws. The hook and blurb I’m sending out to agents goes something like this:
This modern-day Robin Hood tale follows eleven-year-old Robert Holt whose snap decision to steal a birthday present from a spoiled kid escalates into an all-out “rob the rich to feed the poor” crime spree.
It begins as a simple gesture. After a rich friend snubs his KaSteel action figure, Rob swipes the toy and leaves it on the doorstep of a kid whose parents can’t afford one. High on that goose-bumpy feeling of helping others, Rob organizes a band of benevolent outlaws—including “little” Jack Keller and Rob’s secret crush, Mary Butler. Sneaking into the houses of rich and rotten kids from Sherwood Meadows to Notting Hill, the outlaws steal excess toys by the bike-load, and deliver them to charities all over town.
But when Mary makes friends with the popular Princess Clique, Rob can’t help but wonder if she’s finding targets for the team or getting a jumpstart on junior high popularity. Suddenly disabling alarms, hiding under beds and ducking the police becomes less about helping poor kids and more about clinging to friends no matter what the danger. With grownups breathing down their necks, cool kids treating them like losers and a band of highway bullies working like mad to hijack the goods, Rob’s simple gesture winds up sending him and his fellow outlaws mask-first into disaster.
As I wait for this whole writing thing to pan out, I spend my days working as an AVID support tech for a rather large sports network in Philadelphia. Of course, when I tell people I’m an AVID tech, it makes them think I’m like really super excited to be a tech. They get pictures in their head of me standing around going, “Woo hoo! Okay everybody, let’s calibrate!” Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy what I do, but AVID is simply the name of the video editing product I support. And believe me, it’s a good day job to have (one that my more pragmatic friends encourage me NOT to give up whenever I mention dreams of becoming a best-selling author).
On the personal side, my wife Lauren and I are the proud (most of the time) parents of a six-year-old sparkplug named Allison, a three-year-old monster named Jesse and a one-year-old Zen Buddhist named Max, so a good chunk of my writing time these days gets eaten up (airplane-style) playing princess, Spiderman and peek-a-boo.
For now this website is a collection of miscellaneous musings on childhood, grownuphood and parenthood. Feel free to leave a comment and let me know you stopped by.
-Brian
Email me at: hodges.brianhodges [at] gmail [dot] com