Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 5, 1995 TAG: 9507050002
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV3 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: ADRIANNE BEE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Clad in a long, sleeveless, red paisley dress, Erin has a glamour about her. Tall, thin and ebony-haired, 38-year-old Flanagan looks a bit like the late poet Anne Sexton. The resemblance is appropriate; Flanagan is also a writer. Not of suicidal poetry, however, but quite a different genre - books for middle school children.
"It still doesn't feel real," says Flanagan of the fact that Avon has recently accepted three of her books featuring guardian angels. "Every time the phone rings and my agent says "Hi, it's Gwen from Avon,' I'm calm, but inside I'm jumping up and down screaming 'Wow, it's really Gwen from Avon.'"
How many people get up every morning, do what they love and know of nothing else that they'd rather be doing? Erin Flanagan does. Each morning after sending her sons, Robert and Mark, off to high school, and her husband, an electrical engineer, to Virginia Tech, Flanagan has a cup of tea and a look at the newspaper and gets to work writing.
"Ugly ducklings always recognize the swans," she reads aloud from "Lily's Story," one of her three books in the series called "Angel by My Side." Flanagan's books touch upon the insecurities adolescent girls feel as they grow up. "I felt like a stranger in my own skin as a girl and I was pretty sure others must have felt that, too," Flanagan says.
One of Flanagan's characters, Amelia, has her say on an Oprah-esque talk show where she attacks the ridiculous makeovers guests sometimes receive. "She tries to suggest that maybe beauty isn't always something you can paint on," Flanagan says. It is a message girls seldom hear in a time when Cindy Crawfords and Claudia Schiffers saturate supermarket checkouts and television ads.
"I think a lot of kids are left to themselves. I want my books to go into kids' homes and say what their parents don't have the time to say," says Flanagan, who stayed home with her own children while they grew up. "I was a housewife and a mom first."
Flanagan also wrote feature stories for the newspaper. Daunted by a career where she was writing other people's stories instead of the ones in her head, she decided one day to try to write books for kids age 9-13.
"It wasn't a biological clock because I'd already had kids," Flanagan says. "I guess it was a writer's clock rumbling in my head, gonging loudly." An entire book had seemed an overwhelming undertaking to Flanagan but she realized that "somewhere along the line you have to be willing to tell yourself that you can do it."
Flanagan constantly credits Lou Kassem, another children's author, with her recent success. Living across the street, Kassem was and still is an encouraging mentor. "She felt that I had what it took to write and introduced me to her agent," Flanagan says. "I don't see how you can do this without a helping hand."
Helping hands indeed seem necessary. Repeated rejection caused Flanagan, who admits she has three rejected novels in her possession, to stop writing once for almost two years. "I thought everyone that had encouraged me was wrong so I ended up taking piano lessons for awhile," Flanagan says and then adds, "That's okay, though. I like playing the piano."
The first book Flanagan produced came out of a personal tragedy. "My mom had cancer and told me she wanted to stay alive until the leaves changed in Virginia," says Flanagan. "It was a terrible experience. She didn't make it ... but from it all came a book entitled 'Until The Leaves Change.'"
The story, about a dying grandmother, provoked a 12 year-old in California, a daughter of a friend of Flanagan, to send a fan letter via electronic mail. "That was so exciting, my first fan letter and on e-mail, how hip," Flanagan says.
Children aren't an easy audience to write for, Flanagan explains. "With Michael Crichton - as an adult, you give him a few chapters to develop the story," she says. "But kids get bored easily. They don't give you that much time."
Flanagan has a little advice for those who share her dream of writing. "You have to write without thinking 'Is this going to sell?' or 'Are people going to like this?'" she says. Her angel books will hit bookstores in July and if they sell well, Avon wants to continue Flanagan's series. "Until The Leaves Change," will be released later.
She opens the jacket of her newly published angel book and points to her dedication to her sons. "To Robert and Mark, my almost angels," it says.
by CNB