A Word on Words; 2338; Susan Thomas

oregon were approached and delving into the world of books and their other this week susan thomas talks about the theory goes forward and wordsworth mr jon seaton dollar chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university hello i'm john single once again welcome to word on words i guess today susan tongues she's the author of the teardrop the teardrop is a book i found fascinating entertaining interesting i read the books so all those are grown this program this was the quickest read ever it's short it's short and it didn't tag alexander i it's a car however like more than a year to come up with the inspiration and that's what your collar to produce a rather small book when i read it i thought susan wrote this book

for children i thought that primarily because of the type answer happy that our kids aren't and why did you do that because when i started writing there i thought it was a book for kids since it's just now getting into other people's hands like yourself they're telling me oh nine it's inspirational thing maybe it's just a statement that no one's quite sure exactly what the teardrop ios and i'm not sure i am not only tell you that the teardrop is historian grief and pain suffering this very young life it's not happy story and that's why i wondered when you really intended it to be a children's book mean it's pretty rough rating i think for younger children write and i hope of a tactic if parents young children read it felt comfortable that i can read it to your children so lakes can

explain and answer questions along the way because while it is very short and very simply written and the subject is an act that were most serious facing our country and that's it but you know about crime these amenities of good jobs i mean every day unites states about man children nineteen years of age and younger are killed by violent crime and you know if that that is our future that is who we are is are children and if someone they can't be just someone or some institution if we all don't take it seriously and try to stop it i sing away and being non newspaper reporter has award winning journalist as we say in the mirror and the raptors like reporter brett our four hours last year and studied you know now a crime particularly in nashville but with national ramifications and i thought i was pretty savvy to what was going on and i realized after that

years and during the station i didn't have a clue how bad was nor did i know the huge scope of what we all have to do if we're going to stop it and the teardrop is a result of all that it is a book in which i thought i wonder how a bullet feels going to the back the brain a barking a war like you know i read the story about the two men when it mandalit is a real story it's a real life story on and if you had told it merely as real life story it would have just been another we read it in every newspaper in the united states so many times that when were you tell it through the us arrangements and that yes the ankles began and it enter the acid in an odd objects such as the bullet that you live to be a paper clip that it any other little chunk of metal and he didn't want to billy ago didn't want to do it but guns can say with angular not the boeing is best by and accidentally shot

let's talk about your story for a moment you realize cher was a little background on the man was and what ryan what happens is a man in reality was a little thirteen jamboree named terrence martin i he had thought sickle cell anemia how his life he was a survivor he goes to a middle school in nashville one day on april twenty first nineteen ninety four he's sitting there he has to finance charlie and jeremy jeremy that i had borrowed a little pistol to scare up some bullies fourth beard is a class that that they happen to be listening to beating based on this into a bam jeremy attached again if you go on strike getting them back here tuesday at fourteen they are fifty eight minutes later and it was the very first and the nationals goes we had a child back in the classroom is accidental it was supposed to happen to get the ad out that jeremy had gotten the gun yes

from another friend charlie jane year olds ryan and i were a team as best friend and team and probably would've known about again had enough about the school like because he was going for treatment reading you say that the men and calmly say in the book the mandate comes too late and therefore no lithgow had a gun and jeremy was really trying to make sure that guns can see you right here he was in his jacket pocket at the time rate stand to secure if he didn't i get caught in an arena that uses a flashing actors guild of the possible is that lehman was but the net ms jane grey zip the bulletin of the doubt they didn't have a choice of bullet that amanda done doesn't have a man and he had fired and shot him and then it is the inanimate things and objects to try to shout what it really doesn't like people would begin with angels yes oh it you've got the idea yes it i guess if we were in the christmas season we call of the

multitude of heavily whoa i were angry that they were aiming at where a lot of range of gay men in either but i think that day every day but they say it's now that i don't know if there are angels were what are you there looking down and some leaders saved i can handle it they know what's about to happen and they don't watch the one that has to stay because it's a ruined having his team as guardian angel so they'll fly away goes to salads and the story begins because they know the biggest role of olive ali angels it is you can't cry because what i'm just here can flood the earth and obviously that's in reference to a flooded now and i just spanking was the worst things that happened to this earth we don't start saving our children about crime with additional can be an earth and it's actually believe that eventually would just self employed won't cry enough two years to fathers one angels cheer theoretically and that is not unlike the solemn now

you use them as titles of chapters in this can call a lovely loop book it's not the boy it is a wonderful book and you use these inanimate objects to sort of a post or the casket and a hearse first we both know at the hospital it was just so embarrassed that i can the hospitals you see a place thats quietly bank knew no bank is de niese it wilkinson make oh people feel comfortable with that there was like a circus i mean reporters were running around like leaves cops were they are cameras are flashing with and that she had been peeled and scale and hospitals went into shock it wanted a hunting islamic state because the bottom up all day in the hospital was so upset i mean it's a strange it's strange even trying to talk about this book because i wanted the deal and i wanted to get to the very base level of feeling of what it means when a child that's totally needlessly well i thought as i wrote you you talk about bricks more

of a hospital having feelings when you talk about the marriage we talk about the boat sobel it really didn't want to add that on the paper clip oh when utah talk about guest guy you are saying there are the reason that isn't a metaphor of sorts that that three against the idea that these inanimate object really weep and cater more than we do yes at this team say up until you get back up to heaven oh it was nothing they watch the news and say send a young girl shot over twenty dollars or a drug deal gone bad and a three year old baby gets struck by stray bullet i think we take it for granted now billy and as long as we take it for granted when their fix anything is only going to get worse as statistics show

you know juvenile crime in america and look at the surveys is really only going to this deadly an increase in crime is bad and it's you know happening everywhere but it's that age group and it's the children were losing its not only this ques me the actual children they lose their labs but an example of tea man who has tears mari have been fortunate enough to interview the children that were at the school that day and it's all you can de not to burst out crying when you listen to a fourteen year old girl sag our last night childhood that moment i will never be the same i'll never be able to look at life the way i once did so it's not only killing our kids it's changing the whole generation of key its empire and and that's something that at my age and so your ages can imagine agency new friends get you know shot and scale i am one is that signing her monthly when the same age that that one

about the other so i can realize that you know this is not your first book elaborate on on a book wilt away and he's when history of the athletes served in a traditionally black girl university and you were not long ago local manhattan has which is totally out of there trying out at night and i mean it is the most it's common to see a lot of the sexes and i notice you didn't ask them on a program you wrote mandela now because it's not the tier that means that the remaining in handling an outdated train drew out of man crying and frustration are investigating do you know about crime and one waiter said i'm gonna take without windows seven fighter i'm gonna go crazy i can't do anymore say of wordless werman has one and once you've heard it a system and what he felt good for a week you ride back into guest a teardrop and elliot

last to laugh with co reporter branch man at the tsa and in the inner city and nashville hot seat next to them astray whether yes or and within about like to try to understand what was going on because obviously in nashville if you live in these urban areas in that particular warn you about it you're likely to be martyrs not at cia do is you add in approximately project a word in a slot and the two top results from maine having lived they are heard gunshots every night run out one guy in this fourteen year old boy shot a fifteen year old boy over a drug deal and the attitude was also this like and i'm not putting anyone dying because it's not any it's it's america dollars but it was like no big deal to say for a lot of people that had live there other labs see young boy lying there bleeding now we're seeing another symbol of lying there

bleeding right and what they've cried out and the tear drops of all right and active at it surely there is there are no it's nothing alliances are no more kinds of what's in the words that it is everybody sang white we got to stop this we have airways do it and i don't have those answers wooden for tinted but if the two documentaries anchor mike anybody think that wait a minute this is really really wrong and my children my grandchildren and if the need is there any left after that that we want them to live that way in america running the most progressive country in the whole world and then what's wrong here you see if you look at if you look at the cover of a low flow menendez towed up the camera might be a little known if you look at the cover you see on that cover to drop and the tear is an extension of the p it's a lovely a cover very plain very well done i think of them as it

was it to put that the player and that way ah be played it was no no one workout were to several artists in their grimy and they wanted because their its references to angels they won and an angular they wanted clowns or something like that and i said no because i don't want anybody to pick up the teardrop and think it's a soft reed our people to know what stark it's brutal and it has a meaning and they can either think about it or not that i didn't want them to tango angels and maybe lighthearted or clouds and have pretty they are because it's not a pretty book it's a very it's a very brutal book and i will if i were you to advise retrospectively say first robbery in it i think our prototype and rid of them go home for at least out ahead that you'd drop in blood

red but it's a beautiful concept or however it's done and let me just say beyond that there are blood tears the flow on almost every page come and talk a little bit about getting into the whole time methodology of making an animate object live welcomed the way it began actually i was approached by ms mari to a man's man and to write a book and i went through all the letters in albany clips newspaper clips and every gang and said i'm writing this blurb it's going to be like every newspaper story in every newspaper unless you say what it was she looking for ms moorer she mans land to day and that she wanted to a man's life to mean something because he was a fighter and he deserves more than he got that far and so she was wanting some form to do that

and she's not a writer herself and so i was approached with when you write a story i realized it was eleven o'clock one night without lights out for the night i don't write during the day and i realize i cannot write anything that somebody hasn't heard before were out just be changing the names in the city or whatever and so i just sent them a computer and started typing actually tighten tighten typed intact intact intact title that was written it was no i'm not writing that it took me a long time ago there was a fast writer it was almost like it was the emotion coming out in may after working and you know about crime after year it was like a thought process as it happened we get just the bottom land of camp and i went to a man's you know as a reporter i covered it and i remember looking at these beautiful cast against dr curtis guess there's an ally and it seemed he had in such a good damn about flowers around it and they're banging so stately a little team is by this line is like the president remaining year and i thought well this is the caskets big bang you

know you got to be eighteen and with hundreds and hundreds of caring oh walking paths trapping rises dotting cards is any budgeting and one and enjoy it ah i realize that the horrors no reason cars exist is the capital to the grades i and the horse up hard enough about what he was glad because he didn't like to carry people to their grades that already begun just like the whole didn't want to a man to the whole war ii old radical maryland added live longer net and i could just i myself i live their life the whole thing is so that we know it so everybody understands the hole in the ground yes in the graveyard and the whole just didn't want any was snorting its displeasure that day because the red there was coming out of it and in pubs and you know dusty red dirt and i was there and i was there and he'll sign up about holden walking team and an insurance because of this one war and that it was it was almost like their appetite you

know and man brain didn't think much i just wanted people to know that ah if we don't do something i don't know that we can have hope for a future america are settling on any can of america that i think i'm most of the swallow would be proud of would be happy for our grandchildren to grow up in and if that teardrop that will look like somebody think than our be very very happy to know toibin i thought you're going to have been an announcer alike fiddle while writer editor to allies out in the end i mean i mean you you put him up there has been a new bike and we're talking about the guns well i had a happy ending but the fact is you know about america does not have a happy ending so when tina gets to heaven is garnering so much time in life to a man who had a stroke when he was eight years old because of his anemia and lenient

in his scrawny little boy you've made the fighter acquire the sky that we get to heaven he could fly iran without a lawyer he laughed he felt so good that barely ever had he didn't have to be one to feel that way just bail out and the poor and indian summer cells and was just great if i can determine that his guardian angel had to tell and the rules haven't just like when you go anywhere and he told you know don't shout don't get angry if you don't have to be can respect the other angels don't know blah blah just the basic rules and then he told him the media's role which is you cannot look down through the layers of life at least one year as new angels armstrong going to say what's at the tunnel through the tunnel of light which is our and such a man said whoa tie and wire and dividing into say well potatoes he was whispering to fit in with the other items tierney demanded david you got shot the place right now was looking than an hour

almost broke the biggest rule i almost cried and you know wanting to steer can lead the year that's the biggest rule in heaven and then the guardian and a foe it good team isn't and you know with iran it settled and they all the guardian angel almost crimes of a good thing and that show came into the boat ride and setting an aisle the senate knocked the math than they are you kind of forgot about our view now he was traveling up daleiden planner and that's a good and he misses mom and badness friends that he knew that they nine children it's insane enough so that didn't really making that said that they started thinking about gosh jeremy nice france and he had a gun he said when it funny and he started recall and ali's things that he had harder same newspaper about kids getting killed for no reason and he had accepted it just like the rest of us do and all a sudden it didn't feel right anymore he sued well that shouldn't be happening little it shouldn't be dying and getting old boys and girls should be shut down for no reason and he discovers that in that sense he

broke the next to the worst role he looked down through the tunnels of like in that very moment was another key had with another band and that he'll another kiev for no reason and before to manuela a teardrop and we got right to his chain the angels they were you know halfway across have been silent and they came flying like a flock of rockets but as fast as angels are they weren't fast enough to gauge that you kept that you fail and in the rains began to fall on her now as a sad the outset i thought was a children's book world that loved to win any age you think that he talked to a psychologist about whether they should really no sir i have that i got after i read it nail it still makes me cry sometimes i i would not wanted in the hands of children without their parents are at having read it because it takes you to the bare bones of life and death

and brutality gravelly desert tech shopping clothes and the way it's really connected to children could understand the way you do it ft roach you have all there were you know to be a book knowing really share for abortion or the concept of the book i hear where a couple people read my mom was the fires not here and everybody that reddit me as whale and publisher of the economy that i work with a man and everybody that reddit crowd ms like wait a minute you know i can cover a tv commercial that's ok but why people cry and isn't touching them this way and that it was at that point that aig manager courtney said i want to publish that book its limited location writing about thousand copies only get it out and see if it touches other people the way it touches all these people that are at a manuscript major national book that i had been wonderful guide

bob what i can now work don't know the exact number but a substantial number of just a couple of guys about to distribute and other big booksellers are all looking at it and now you know a lot more about the book publishing is a cinematic but what this is happening to the teardrop is they're sending it to the regional people that babbitt going on to the national because i believe it is a national book versus a local regional book so the publisher says that's right well it's a national problem not a reason a prominent scientists by is by no means an incident is limited to the one inner city a place where the men came from and beyond that i mean it's not a question of class or well rich kids and poor kids are suffering from loss of life rich kids and poor kids are carrying guns rich kids and poor kids are doing drugs the problem is universal in the

am in the final definition of that word now researchers and scientists sound so many books in may i will live long after item but yeah the next book that dan working only a lady named chris as more who was the original three phases of aids ah she grew up in a small canyon south carolina where there was this blood feud between two families in the spandex seventeen that's the people that three an electric chair one of them the woman the ringleader was executed to be the first one execute warrants out in history it's fascinating book i just know about my hands on the research and then it didn't do that for a while and then after that i've gotten that eighteen hundred more well yes and it now when you write you i don't mean you on this book and his son came and so when you did the earlier book gone sports

took a lot of research that is not not that's not to say that that journalistic work you had done the irs a juvenile law once did and how not to research what i'm really saying is that it was a different sort of research and is it your a thought that you will primarily stick a nonfiction i hope to write whatever i want to whenever it comes to me and that would be across the twain and doing what i consider the teardrop to be a serious drop teardrop a serious thought the man handing out handily manny planned when i need a good laugh to doing historical pieces to doing on not bottom line as i want to write and i like people and i want to communicate and that's what i did and that's what led the design is when i'm writing i think when you're writing until now have been so fact laureate i would have not thought that you maybe have the talent of the night

when you take an inanimate object and it's feeling and make it to prod narrative happy and said maybe laughing week made them laugh and weep strikes me that there is enough imagination there to new fiction as well well well look i know that a moment that you back a nose into nearly when you've done manhattan now because a nine year long term you've got to me with my career and how to handle a maine saturday really getting a real crowd i thought i guess in that damn i'm proud the teardrop in hopes that it touches somebody know what about team is mullah how she feel about a year ago she was it and she adds nothing but she wanted oh it's not the book imagines that she loves it because sid is coming in second and said i need more on the free and speaking of math and only one a copy and so i took her sister susan thomas author of the

teardrop has been our guest ana we're done we're your hosts as ben johnson involved chairman of the freedom forum's first amendment center at vanderbilt university this program was produced in the studios of wbez and the national team