Michael's Mighty Kick - Teri Kanefield

Before I tell you about Michael’s Mighty Kick, I need to tell you about two other children’s novels I wrote under pen names

The author of the popular Boxcar Children series, Gertrude Chandler Warner, died in 1972. But she kept writing and publishing children’s books! How did she do that!?

Well, her publisher wanted to keep the popular series alive, so they hired authors to ghostwrite the stories. I suspect the sale of the Boxcar stories helped keep the publishing house afloat. I thought what the heck and wrote this one.

Under the terms of the contract, I can say that I wrote it—but the only evidence is my contract (here’s a snippet).

I guess it’s easy for writers to get pigeonholed. I was evidently now a writer of children’s stories about soccer because the publishers of the books by Jake Maddox (there is no such person as Jake Maddox) asked me to write a soccer story for their series. So I wrote this one. Under the terms of the contract, my name would go on the copyright page, but the editors would have the final say on editing. I disagreed with the editing choices. Rather than spending too much time arguing (which was pointless after they pointed out that the contract allowed them to dow hat they pleased) I asked that the publishers use a pseudonym for me on the title page.

After all that practice writing soccer stories, I figured I may as well write another.

This time I hired my own editor and cover designer so I could do it the way I wanted.

Would it be catty to point out that the reviews for Michael’s Mighty Kick are better than the reader reviews for my Jake Maddox book?