Stuck in Neutral (13 page)

Authors: Terry Trueman

BOOK: Stuck in Neutral

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7 Days at the Hot Corner
is a book about baseball and friendship, as well as the discovery of homosexuality and all of the emotions that come with being different as a teen. Why did you put these themes together in the same novel?

The truth is that when I saw how much crap gay teens were taking from their peers and classmates back at the time I wrote the book, it bugged me. I'm not gay myself but I know a lot of gay people, so I wrote this book to try and increase tolerance and understanding of homosexuality. Also, I'm a wannabe jock and if I could be great at any sport, I'd want it to be baseball! Why did I blend the two thoughts together? I have no idea. Even though
7 Days at the Hot Corner
is my fifth novel, I actually started writing it the very same day I started writing
Stuck in Neutral
. But
Stuck in Neutral
bumped
7 Days
out of the way on the second day of writing, and it took me all those years to get back to telling that story.

Tell us about your inspiration for
Hurricane
, which is set in Honduras. Is it true that you once lived there?

Yes, I lived in Honduras in the city of San Pedro Sula during the early 80s and loved the people and the lifestyle there. My Spanish is rough at best so the language barrier always got in my way. After returning to the United States, I lost contact with most of my Honduran friends so when Hurricane Mitch struck Honduras and Central America in October 1998, I decided to write a story that would show American teen readers how much more similar Honduran kids of the same age are to them, than they are different from them. It's kind of an odd twist of fate or something like it that Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. gulf coast about the same year that this novel first came out, and the plight of people in New Orleans was very similar to that of the Honduran people during Hurricane Mitch.

Shawn McDaniel's body may not work the way most people's doâhe can't walk, talk, or even wave hello. But his brain works perfectly, even though his family and friends don't know it. Check out how he copes with his cerebral palsy in this excerpt from the sequel to
Stuck in Neutral
.

Excerpt from
Life Happens Next

H
ere's how I spin things in my headâsome cool
things about being me:

1. I get a hot bath every day of my life and never have to lift a finger. The warm water gets squeezed over my body from the big sponge in my mom's gentle, loving hands. And this bath is by far the most enjoyable physical sensation I ever feel.

2. I have a perfect auditory memory, remembering
everything
I
ever
hear, which is
totally
cool. This ability has turned our TVs (and we have four of them!) into the greatest learning devices in the universe. I mean, who needs real life when you've got 110 cable stations? And I remember
every
show, from Cesar Millan's
The Dog Whisperer
to Little League baseball to the love life of squids to “The bark beetle lays its eggs” to everything in between. In other words, I'm damned smart!

3. Although I can't tell anybody what kind of music I'd like to listen to, I love almost all the music that's played around here (rap/hip-hop, R&B, Bach and Mozart, geezer R&R) so whatever's on pretty much always makes me happy.

4. My brother, Paul, King Jock, Straight-A Student, Tough Guy Supreme, slips me bites of his deluxe bacon double cheeseburgers every chance he gets. Somehow Paul knows that I, too, think God invented this food to make up for the fact that all of us have to die someday.

5. My sister, Cindy, is a saint. She taught me to read by playing school with me when I was little, and to this day she never treats me badâplus she has
great
taste in best friends,
wink-wink-hubba-hubba!

6. Although Mom has a master's degree in English and could be a college teacher or have some other higher-paying job, she works from home so she can take care of me. If Cindy is a saint, think about what that makes my mom.

7. I'll never have to get a lousy part-time job like carrying people's groceries to their cars in a supermarket parking lot or cleaning out toilets and mopping floors in some crummy restaurant.

8. In fact, I'll never have to get
any
job, which I figure is a good thing since
work
is a four-letter word â¦

9.... so I'll never have anybody bossing me aroundâI know this is partly a bad thing as I'll never get to boss anybody else either, but I don't think I'd like doing that anyway.

10. I have a kickass name. Shawn McDaniel is really cool sounding when compared to a name like Elmer Ulysses Fudpucker or Isaac P. Freeley.

11. I'm living in the most interesting time in all of history: medical scienceâwise, it is a miracle that a guy like me, with my so-called handicaps, could still even be alive.

Okay, let's make this 12 items:

12. I am in love with Ally Williamson, the girl of my dreams, and while I'd love to find some way to make her fall in love with me too, at least I get to imagine that she's mine all mine.

Ah, what the heck, just for good luck let's make it 13. I didn't even mention my dream life yet. Did I say dream life? Hey, Ally, here I come!

Credits

Copyright

HarperTeen is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

Stuck in Neutral

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Trueman, Terry.

Stuck in neutral / by Terry Trueman

p. cm.

Summary: Fourteen-year-old Shawn McDaniel thinks his father may be planning to kill him.

ISBN 978-0-06-447213-5 (pbk.)

EPub Edition Â© MAY 2012 ISBN 9780062216991

[1. Cerebral palsyâFiction. 2. Physically handicappedâFiction. 3. EuthanasiaâFiction.] I. Title.