Edgar Allan

"I always wanted to be a writer. I started writing early, and badly, sending off short stories to national magazines when I was ten or eleven. They were all returned. "But I kept at it. All through high school and college. Everything I sent out came back. Thanks but no thanks. "I moved to New York and worked in a publishing house. I kept writing. In fact, I was fired from my first job for spending more time on my own projects than on the publishing house's. "I wrote on. "In 1968, an editor from a small California publishing house and I had lunch. She gave me an outline for a story she thought I could write well. I knew immediately I had to try. "But what I wanted to do was write a short book, full of emotion and detail and excitement, for readers of all ages. I didn't know that Edgar Allan would be regarded as a children's book. "It was. "And when it was, everything fell into place. The minute Edgar Allan was launched successfully, I sat down to write Lisa, Bright And Dark . It, too, was a success so there was no turning back. Although I do write books for adults, the ideas that stimulate me always seem to come to me in the form of a story for young readers. I get ideas from everywhere: from the newspapers, from radio, from lunches and talks I have with friends. "Right now, if I never get another idea, I have more story lines to work on than my lifetime probably permits." Both Edgar Allan and Lisa, Bright And Dark , were selected as among the Best Books of the Year by the New York Times. Lisa, Bright And Dark was filmed for television, and aired as a Hallmark Hall of Fame on NBC-TV. Mr. Neufeld's other books have as recently as this spring (2000) been cited as among the best of last year's Young Adult titles by the New York Public Library and YASLA.

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