From Richard Peck

I heard from eloquent writer and teacher Richard Peck, who wanted to share part of his most recent journey. He speaks about introducing his new (fall 2010) book, THREE-QUARTERS DEAD:

A bit of a departure. It's very contemporary, about a girl with a cellphone in one hand and the steering wheel in the other. And so a horror story. Real life is too extreme for fiction, so I've told it has supernatural horror. How strange to be writing a contemporary story for the first time this century. How strange to write about people who communicate chiefly by texting -- from the back of the classroom and from behind the wheel of the speeding car. How eerie to be writing in the depths of a recession that hasn't thinned the herds of top-of-the-line cars in suburban high-school parking lots.