About Edward Myers, continued
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What about some of your other books? One of the great things about being a writer is that I can explore many of my interests and share them with other people. I wrote Hostage because I'm fascinated by desert ecosystems and what you can find there. I'm also interested in dinosaurs. I combined these two interests in one adventure story to portray the mysterious "high desert" in western Colorado and eastern Utah. And Survival of the Fittest? As a kid, I lived for two years in Peru. We lived mostly in the capital city, Lima, but we traveled to other parts of the country as well. One of our trips took us to Iquitos, a city on the Amazon River, and from there we went on some excursions up the river and into the rainforest to visit small villages. Ever since then, I've been fascinated by the rainforest and all the remarkable people, animals, and plants that live there. I decided to write a survival-adventure book set in the Peruvian rainforest, and Survival of the Fittest is the result. Have you experienced any of the hardships that Rus, Jodie, and Matt undergo during their ordeal? No—fortunately, I've never been through anything like that. Every event in the book is completely made up. Are you like any of the characters in Survival of the Fittest? Each of the kids is very different from what I was like at their ages—and totally different from what I'm like now. Survival of the Fittest is one of those books that I wrote out of my imagination, not out of my personal experience. Have you ever been lost in the rainforest? Never. But I spent a wonderful visit in Peru in 1997 as part of my preparation to write the book. I returned to Peru with my daughter, Robin, who was ten years old at the time, and together we explored the rainforest, observed animals in the wild, and visited rainforest-dwellers' villages. For more information about this trip, click the link on my home page called "Ed and Robin in Peru." What are you writing now? I've recently finished two books. One of them, Duck 'n' Cover, is a novel about a twelve-year-old boy and his experiences during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Duck 'n' Cover takes place in 1962. That may seem like a long time ago, but it was a time very similar to our own, when everyone was worried about our national safety and whether our country might be attacked. The other book, Ice, is a novel about teenage emergency medical technicians (EMTs). One of my jobs is working on a volunteer ambulance squad, and for some years I've wanted to write a book about some younger EMTs and what they experience. Ice is a story about two high school seniors, Seth and Jenna, who are in conflict following the death of Jenna's sister, Frannie, who was also Seth's girlfriend. Their community's ambulance squad becomes the place where they act out this conflict. Neither book has been published yet. I also have two fantasy novels in progress. Do your kids ever help you
write your books?
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Is there a weather station
atop Mt. Remington? 
