Books with author Lee Roddy

Based upon the author s successful seminars, How to Write A Story is geared towards younger writers, but may be successfully adapted for older ones. Eight lessons explain the fundamentals of writing fiction while exercises reinforce what has been taught and worksheets help with assessing progress. Students are taught a three-step story model, in which there is a character with a problem, an objective, and obstacles over which this character seeks to triumph. Exercises help strengthen the imagination, encourage revisions, reinforce elements of writing, and require original writing. Answers included.

EMILY, a Northerner who hates slavery, is stranded at Briarstone Plantation in Virginia. She longs to cross Civil War battlefields to her home in Illinois. But when friend Gideon tells her that they are all in extreme danger from a planned slave uprising, Emily joins them in a desperate effort to prevent tragedy..GIDEON, a Southern teenager, overhears plans for a slave uprising threatening the lives of his own family, plus friends Emily and Nat. Gideon enlists their aid in a desperate effort to discover who's behind the uprising so it can be stopped before the plotters strike. NAT, a teenage slave at Briarstone Plantation, plans to run away when he learns that a white slave speculator has come to sell him into the Deep South. Then Nat discovers that friends, Emily and Gideon, are in dire jeopardy from a slave uprising. Will Nat run away or stay and risk his life to help his friends?

NAT TRAVIS a teenage fugitive slave, races the clock in two highly risky ventures: One, to help his mother and sister escape to freedom. Second, to rescue his younger brother who is chained to a slave coffle to be sold in the Deep South.GIDEON TUGWELL a poor white southern farm boy hides Emily's friend, an injured fugitive Yankee on his farm. Barley Cobb, a slave catcher alerts civilian "guerilla" police hoping to charge Gideon with treason.EMILY LODGE a Northern teenager delays using her time sensitive pass back to the North to help the injured Union trooper secretly recovering at the Tugwell farm. Will her pass expire before she can use it?

Josh Ladd and best-friend Tank Catlett, both 12, are exploring a remote Hawaiian rain forest when they stumble upon the wreckage of a Japanese World War II plane. A screaming stranger suddenly bursts from the jungle and chases the boys with a sword. A frightening series of events keeps both boys in terrible jeopardy as they try to learn the story behind their strange discovery.

Lance, a half-grown German shepherd pup, is dumped into a hostile mountain wilderness to survive as best he can. The abandoned dog begins a desperate quest to return to a motherless boy who loved him. Lance had last seen the boy ride his bicycle off to school one spring morning, but he never returned. To the grieving father, the dog is a painful reminder that his son and Lance had been inseparable. The father doesn't want the dog around, so deserts him in California's primitive back country.Lance's devotion to the boy drives him to try returning home in spite of sore feet, intense hunger, wild animals, and many other dangers common to a wilderness environment. A life and death struggle with a huge black bear provides the dramatic climax where Lance fights for the one item that gives him the hope that can end his lonely journey.

EMILY LODGE, an outspoken pro-North teenage supporter in the Civil War, volunteers to help in a Confederate field hospital while waiting for a pass to return North. Betrayed by someone she thought was a friend, Emily suddenly faces charges of being a Union spy, a hanging offence in the South during that conflict.GIDEON TUGWELL faces losing the family farm unless he can raise money by secretly driving a wagon load of grain to market in spite of possible seizures by either desperate Yankee or Confederate troops. But with victory in sight, teenager Gideon stumbles into even greater danger when he tries to help a fugitive slave.NAT TRAVIS, a runaway slave safely in Canada during the Civil War, risks his life by returning to Virginia to find his mother and help her escape to freedom. Nat’s faces a dilemma when he learns that one of his brothers is also in chains nearby. Does Nat only save his mother, or attempt the seemingly impossible task of rescuing both mother and brother and starting them on their way to freedom?