Monday, April 30th Chat Session with Greg Neri
2:15-3:10 (3:15-4:10pm EST)
**THIS SESSION CHAT HAS ENDED.**
Three moves
is all it takes
to change the outcome
of the game.
In Marcus’s world, battles are fought everyday–on the street, at home, and in school. Angered by his sister’s death and his father’s departure, and pushed to the brink by a bullying classmate, Marcus fights back with his fists.
One punch away from being kicked out of school and his home, Marcus encounters a mysterious chess master named CM who challenges him to fight his battles on the chess board. Marcus resists, until he hits rock bottom, and begins a journey, with CM’s help, to regain control of his life.
Inspired by recent chess enrichment programs in inner-city schools, Chess Rumble explores the ability of a strategic game to empower young people with the tools they need to anticipate their moves through life’s many challenges.
Chess RumbleComing in Fall of ’07.
About G. Neri
I am a storyteller, filmmaker, artist, and digital media producer. When I was in college, I made an animated film with jazz legend Chick Corea called
A Picasso on the Beach, which became a student Academy Award finalist and aired on HBO and Bravo for seven years. After that, I decided to become a filmmaker for real, and I wrote, produced, and directed my first independent feature film called A Weekend with Barbara und Ingrid. It opened in my favorite theater in Hollywood. Unfortunately, it also opened on the day of the Northridge earthquake of ’94, making its release rather short.
I’ve taught animation and storytelling to inner city teens in Los Angeles with the ground-breaking group Animaction, producing over 300 films dealing with issues like teen violence, gangs, and drugs. I also co-directed the documentary Fa’a Samoa which followed a 15-year-old Samoan gangbanger through the mean streets of Los Angeles.
From 1993-2003, I helped pioneer the internet business, as head of production in two highly successful new media companies whose clients ranged from Disney, Mercedes, and Motorola to Microsoft, Reebok, and General Motors. In this time, I was also one of the founding members of the Truth teen anti-smoking campaign.
In 1999, I started writing and illustrating for kids, but it wasn’t until I started writing for teens that things started to happen. Now, my first two teen books for Lee and Low, Yummy and Chess Rumble, will make their debuts in 2007. I’ve just finished a YA novel called Surf Mules, about two high school surfers who get summer jobs as drug runners. And now I have an agent and a long list of projects to create. I couldn’t ask for more.
I’m currently living in Tampa, Florida with my wife and daughter, where I’m focusing on writing and watching alligators.
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You can always email me: greg@gregneri.com.
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Thanks, Sasha. Is there’s anyone who wants to ask any last questions still?
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I have a question. Graphic novels are a cross between art and story writing. How did you get started dabbling with them?
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By accident really. I was trying to find a way to tell the Yummy story, which started as a film script and eventually became a picture book manuscript. But when a friend started making a graphic novel and showed me, it suddenly clicked that it would be perfect for the story, cinematic like the movie but allow me to not be as linear. I only really got into graphic novels after I started writing one!
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Way cool. Did you write the story and do the illustrations too?
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I wrote the story but didn’t want to do the 700 drawings to make it. Plus my illustration style wasn’t right for the story. But I am thinking about doing a book with my illustrations. I’ve learned a lot with these two coming out.
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Very interesting. 700 drawings! Wow. I really got count some of the pictures next time.
Is writing a graphic novel like writing a book or more like writing a script? Or is it something entirely different?
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It more like writing a script and storyboarding it. But it is more literary in that you can take side trips and set up facts or what ever, like footnotes.
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Chess Rumble is something totally new and different. I don’t know anything like it: an illustrated free verse novella…
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Do you know of any good book that tells how to write a graphic novel?
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I never really looked at that kind of stuff, I learned more by reading great graphic novels (see my reading list). But Scott McCloud is supposedly the best at that. He has several books out.
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What’s great about the format is, there are no real rules.
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Excellent.
Greg, it has been a treat chatting with you.
Any time you need to anything, please don’t hesitate to give Patrizia or I a shout out. When Chess Rumble drops let us know and we’ll promo for you on YACWW.
Again, thanks so much for taking time to talk. It’s been a pleasure.
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Same here. It was fun. See you…
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Thanks to everyone who participated. This session is officially over.
If you would like to know how to arrange for a guest author to come an speak with your class or institution then visit
http://www.yacreativewriting.blogspot.com
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