Stephen Tesher's Blog: My Life is a Cliche

My coming of age, fast-paced thriller, Black Ice, has been requested by book reviewers in Portugal, Quebec, and all over the United States. So exciting! Hope they enjoy it!

My wife and I did a postmortem review of the family vacation in Florida. Old dynamics still rear when siblings and cousins get together. But what we realized was we all have the power to change, evolve and grow. And so old dynamics can fade away. They can die. To make room for the new. The power, we realized, is in our hands. And truly, I think that's the case for everyone. As Marianne Williamson wrote, "Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us." I can repeat that to myself over and over and over.

I was very touched when the parent of one of the students I teach - a student who unfortunately does not perform well in the class - wrote me to let me know how much she enjoyed my novel Black Ice. She didn't have to write me, she could have focused on her son's poor performance, she could have blamed me for it, but she didn't. It's got to be hard to watch your own child, knowing how capable they are, choose not to try and accept the consequences. Maybe my book helped to distract her. I hope it helps someone in some way.

I'll be reading excerpts from my new novel, Black Ice, at Halyards Bar, 406 3rd Ave. Gowanus Brooklyn, on Saturday, Feb. 28th at 1pm. I'm proud to be a member of Verbal Supply Company, a collective of gifted writers - novelists, poets and dramatists - who read and record their work for a live audience. You can hear the writers read their own work at www.verbalsupplycompany.com

I've been invited into the creative writing classes of a high school to read from my new novel, Black Ice. The novel's a coming of age thriller. It's about a high school aged boy with too many breaks coming face to face with an elusive love he can't have. The character has a drinking problem and uses it to deal with life's obstacles. He falls into sexual acts he's never tried before; he consumes copious drugs with less-than-ideal friends; at one point he considers a killing spree. All fun stuff to read. EXCEPT this high school is in the same district as the middle school where I teach. The maturing juniors and seniors I am reading to were once the same bright eyed, hormonally crazed, morphing little adolescents in my 7th or 8th grade English class. They looked to me for guidance. They asked me questions about writing. They were silly and distracted. Now I'm reading this... stuff... to them! I'm a little nervous, actually. Stay tuned to find out how it all turns out.