Sierra Mountain Times

After nearly two and a half years of writing and rewriting his story, local author Ben Esch is pleased to announce the release of his debut novel, Sophomore Undercover. Signed by the publishing house Disney-Hyperion, Sophomore Undercover, a young adult comedy about a sophomore journalist trying to uncover a drug scandal at his high school, was distributed to bookstores across the U.S. on February 24th, and on Saturday, March 28th from 2 to 4 p.m. Ben will be signing copies of the book during his book release party at Mountain Bookshop in Sonora.

Ben, a native of Sonora and a Sonora High graduate, said that a lot of the inspiration for his book came from his own high school experiences, although it wasn’t until many years later that he put these times gone past on paper and decided to pursue a career as a writer. Now, at age 26, Ben looks back on the journey that brought him to where he is today, and offers a glimpse of what the future has in store for this emerging author on the young adult scene.

Our investigation of Ben’s interesting life begins during his high school years, where Ben, as with most students, experienced his first taste of creative writing during high school years.

“English was my favorite subject and I always enjoyed reading, but I was never one of those kids who was always writing short stories,” recalled Ben. “I was actually a kind of a mediocre student and was much more interested in basketball. Writing was something I had always enjoyed, but I never really thought that it was something I could do for a living. In the back of my mind I always thought it would be cool to be a writer, but outside of writing for school, that was pretty much the extent of my writing.”

After graduating from Sonora High in 2000, Ben attended Columbia College before transferring to UC Berkley as an English major. It was here, where he began to experiment a little more with his writing ability. 

“I took a few screenplay classes and wrote one or two screenplays, but the class that interested me the most was a class on detective fiction,” said Ben. “I was really starting to get into mystery stories and it got me thinking that although I was really liking this genre, there wasn’t really one that felt like it was written for me or had characters that I could identify with. Because I felt like there had never been a story that was written specifically for me, I decided to work on creating a detective story that I had always wanted to read. So when I’d have an hour between classes I’d go to the library a couple of times a week and work on the story.”

However, during those busy college years, his detective story was eventually abandoned and forgotten and it wasn’t until years later that the story was rediscovered.

“After I graduated I found out that it was kind of hard to get a job with an English degree,” he laughed. “But I had some college friends teaching over in Shanghai, China and I had always been interested in doing that so I decided to go to go over there and teach English.”

Yet he quickly discovered that teaching English in China wasn’t his life’s calling.

“I decided it wasn’t really for me,” he said. “I figured it wasn’t worth the $10 an hour. But since I had some money left over from college I decided to hang out over there for a while.’

His hanging out time consisted of playing a lot of basketball and waiting for his friends to return from work…as well as discovering what he wanted to do with his life. It turned out that Ben’s “hanging out” wasn’t a complete waste of time, and all the free time he had on his hands turned into a blessing in disguise as his passion for writing began to resurface. And, as any author knows, one of the key ingredients for writing a book is time…and Ben had plenty of it. So Ben went back to the writing board and began to capitalize on his free time as he revived his writing talent…as well as his long forgotten detective story. 

“To be perfectly honest I forgot about it for a couple of years, but when I was in China and I had all this free time I decided to look back to that story and see what was there,” he said. “I realized that the story wasn’t actually half bad and I that I was still really excited about the characters so I decided to finish the story. It was really the first thing I took seriously and I started to go full force on the project and see where it would take me.”

Now that Ben had discovered his calling, after a few months in China he returned home to Sonora where he dedicated himself to becoming a writer. And it was from his hometown surroundings and experiences that he siphoned inspiration for his story.

“A lot of the characters are based on people I knew in high school and in Sonora,” he said. “There is a lot of great material here and it was kind of fun to go through and write this book because I got to re-examine my high school experiences through a different set of eyes.” 

For nearly a year Ben re-examined these experiences as he re-examined and reworked his story.

 “After I moved back to Sonora I basically wrote for about a year,” he said. “My parents refer to the time I spent writing the book as a really cheap masters of fine arts program because I had to struggle through it, and I taught myself to write through writing this book. It was a big learning experience. I think finishing the first draft took about six months, but it was such a rough draft it is kind of hard to say when the first version of the book was actually finished. It was a difficult process.”

But Ben was not alone during this process and had the support of his family to help make his story come to life.

“My mom, my dad and my brother were always the first line of people that I’d show anything to, and they had great suggestions,” said Ben. “That’s another cool thing about this whole book experience is that it has added a neat activity for all of us – it’s created a neat thing for all of us to share…talking about the book, talking about suggestions and working on it together. That’s been a lot of fun.”

As Ben began showing his story to people outside of his family, he found that they had suggestions for the book as well and he spent months and months revising and rewriting his story.

“The key thing to remember is that even though suggestions for a book can feel like they’re knocking it down or attacking you a little bit, you have to get over yourself and just realize that everybody wants the same thing,” he said. “They all want the book to be better. More often then not, their idea will be a really good idea. Ultimately I guess you just have this mental switch and know that whenever people give you notes they are always doing it to try and help your book. It doesn’t always mean that suggestions will help, but their intentions are in the right place. In my mind I always welcome suggestions and listen to them try to think about them critically and filter them through my own thinking process. It’s up to you as the writer to somehow take their idea and make it your own. And if I decide that their comment will make the book better, I am a hundred percent behind making that change.”

With each change and each draft, each month Ben’s writings evolved into a story that eventually took the shape of the book, he titled, Sophomore Undercover. However, finishing the story was only half the battle. There was still a lot of work to be done, and transforming the pages of writings from his computer into a book found on the shelves of bookstores across America, was a long journey.

“The first step is to hook up with an agent,” said Ben. “That is an involved process, but basically what happens is once you write the book and you have it at the place where you feel like you can sell it or you feel like you can show it to other people and get it out there, you do some research and try to find an agent that represents the kind of books that you write.”

In Ben’s case, Sophomore Undercover would be classified as young adult literature.

“To be perfectly honest, at the time I didn’t actually know about young adult literature,” he said. “I didn’t really know that it existed as a genre. But after I wrote the book a friend of mine who works as an editor told me that my book sounded like a young adult book and that young adult literature was this great genre with all these really great books. So he gave me a lot of suggestions for books to read and it was through his suggestion about the books that were out there that I found out that this genre existed, and not only does it exist, but that my book fit in pretty well with what was going on in it.” 

Ben’s next step was to write up a query letter and begin pitching his book to agents of this genre.

“I did quite a bit of research and found this one agent who had represented a few books that I really liked that were also kind of similar to the book that I wrote,” he said. “I just had a good feeling about him because he seemed to be into the same kind of things that I was into in terms of books…so I sent him a query letter. This is basically a one-page paper that describes who you are, describes what the book is and is hopefully written in such a way that kind of shows that you have some talent as well. This letter is what you use to get people interested.”

This is exactly what Ben’s letter did.

“I sent it to the agent and he was intrigued by the query letter so he asked to look at the entire book,” said Ben. “So I sent him the book and he looked at it and saw that it had some potential and a lot of problems and he said, ‘I’d really be interested with working with you on this if you’re open for suggestions.”

Having no problem with suggestions, Ben agreed, and entered into the next round of the writing process.

“This started a seventh month process of my agent giving me very extensive notes on how to improve the novel,” said Ben. “It was a big process and I knocked off 80 to 100 pages! It was difficult, but in the end I really think it made the book a lot better. Once we got to that point where he thought he could sell it, we made things official and I signed with him and then he sent the book out to about ten different publishing houses. The ideal scenario is to get a bidding war started between the publishing houses. For example Random House might really want it and so might Scholastic and they start bidding against each other.”

Although Sophomore Undercover didn’t start a bidding war, it sparked enough interest for Disney-Hyperion to buy it.

“You only need one publishing house to want it, and I was lucky enough that Disney-Hyperion was very excited and interested in the book, and we ended up signing with them.”

But once the sale happened it was still a long process before Ben’s book was distributed to bookstores.

“The entire process from deciding that I wanted to be a writer to actually getting the contract and signing the contract with Disney was about 15 months…and even after I signed the contract it was still another year and a half before the book actually got in the stores!” he said. “So in total we are looking at like two and a half years for the entirety of getting a finished book. I had no idea it worked like that in the publishing industry. I thought I would sign the contract and it would be in the bookstores in like a month – but things take quite awhile and they really like to plan stuff out way in advance. You have to learn patience…which is difficult.”

However, Ben is not one to complain and is thrilled that the public can finally read the story that he has been working on for so long. He has already received a lot of positive responses and my personal favorite is from young adult author Adam Rex, who said that reading the book is “Like getting kicked in the nuts by Mark Twain.”  Ben describes the book a little differently…

“It’s a humor, young adult mystery book about a kid named Dixie Nguyen who is a reporter for the school newspaper and who is kind of a social outcast and gets picked on by a lot of people,” said Ben. “The worst part about it is that he never gets to write about what he wants to write about or anything newsworthy – he just covers stories about the Chemistry Club or the football team. But one day he is in the locker room bathroom and he sees a couple of the football players injecting something. He thinks that its drugs but he’s not sure so he decides right then and there that he’s found a story, and if he can find out that they are taking drugs and blow this scandal he could have the chance to be published in big newspapers and take down the football team and really turn his life around. So he starts investigating this drug scandal. But the thing about Dixie is that he has a lot more enthusiasm than common sense and his investigation starts going off in all these crazy directions. He gets arrested, he ends up in drug counseling, he falls in love, he goes undercover to a hillbilly bar, and he ends up naked at the school dance – all these crazy things happen to him as he’s investigating the story.”

That is just a glimpse of the humorous story contained within the 242-page hard cover book, and Ben is hoping its fun-filled pages will appeal to the young adult audience.

“It was a lot of fun to write and I am hoping that there are kids out there in high school who were like me because it just didn’t feel like there were books written for me at that time in my life,” he said. “Sophomore Undercover is exactly the kind of book that I wanted to read when I was a teenager but could never find. It was either middle grade books or adult books, and I never felt like there were high school books written for me that I would’ve really loved and that I would’ve thought were funny. There are some out now and I am hoping that this book will kind of fill this gap as well and really appeal to high school kids. That is the real goal.”

Over the past couple of weeks Ben has already been able to interact with his future audience by visiting high schools and talking to teenagers about his book and about writing. In fact a week before the release party at Mountain Bookstore, Ben will be visiting local schools in Tuolumne County to talk to kids about being his experience as a writer.

“What I am really hoping will happen is that I can maybe reach a kid or two that was like me in high school,” he said. “Kids that never thought that becoming a writer could be a possibility. I never really met a writer until after I had been published, and I think it would’ve been nice to actually talk to a writer and see that they are just normal people. And if kids want to write and tell stories, I want to let them know that this can be something they can pursue in the future.”

Because of his previous experiences, Ben has plenty of advice for aspiring students looking to make a career out of writing.

“The first thing I tell kids is that if they want to be a writer, they have to read pretty much all the time,” he said. “That is the one constant of all the writers I’ve met. One hundred percent of them are avid readers and read everything.”

Ben has always tried to follow this rule as well. 

“I try to read as much as I can,” he said. “In terms of my genre of young adult my favorite writer is a guy named Dave Yoo. He’s hilarious and has been a big influence on me and I think his books are the best stuff out there. I really enjoyed his books Girls for Breakfast and Stop Me if You’ve Heard this One Before. Outside of the young adult genre my favorite writers are Steven King and Larry McMurtry.”

Yet whatever the genre, Ben is proof that reading is the key to making a person a better writer.

“Reading will help you develop your style,” he said. “It is good to be surrounded by words and to find out what you like and what you don’t like. Not only is it essential to being a writer, its just fun to do.”

The second thing Ben tells young aspiring writers is to remember their experiences.

“I tell kids in elementary school and high school to try to remember that time in their lives because that is when a lot of really important stuff happens,” he said. “Their key creative material is happening right now and it would be a shame if they forget about it. I tell them to keep a journal or a diary…or at least write themselves some notes on Facebook. They need to make sure that they remember this stuff somehow.”

Those interested in remembering some of these humorous high school experiences won’t be disappointed by Sophomore Undercover. The book will be for sale for $16 at Mountain Bookshop at 13769 Mono Way in Sonora’s Junction Shopping Center, as well as at other local bookstores, big bookstores and online at amazon.com and powells.com. But if you want to get a signed copy and meet the author, be sure to stop by Mountain Bookshop next Saturday. He looks forward to meeting you.

“I’ve signed some books and done some talks, but this is the first release party I’ve done and I am really looking forward to it,” said Ben. “It will be a great time to meet up with teachers and friends and people from the community who have been really supportive of me through this entire process. Plus, Mountain Bookshop is a really great place, and growing up it was a great place to get books.”

For the non-readers, there is always potential for Undercover Sophomore to become a movie, so keep your fingers crossed.

“Hyperion is a publishing company that Disney bought and while there is a lot of overlap, there is not a guarantee that just because Disney bought it that they will make a movie,” said Ben. “I am not expecting it to become a movie…so if it does happen, that would be great! I still retain the movie rights along with my agent, so really anybody could make the movie…but there is no guarantee.”

However, when Ben signed with Disney-Hyperion they did throw another book into the contract, guaranteeing him the opportunity to write another book.

“I guess they threw another book into the contract because they wanted to see what I could do in the future,” said Ben. “I’m lucky enough that my only job is writing, and about six months ago I moved down to Los Angeles and I’ve been working here ever since. Although Sonora will always be my home and I go home frequently to visit family and friends, the people I work with down here are really cool people. My editor is great and I am really excited to be working with everyone. I have an office set up in my apartment, but I also spend quite a bit of time writing at coffee shops around the area. Currently I am working on my next novel for Disney-Hyperion that should be coming out either in the fall of 2010 or winter of 2011.”

Ben’s next book will also be in the middle grade/young adult genre, and he hopes to continue in this niche.

“I am really having a lot of fun writing it and I am hoping I can keep writing books in both young adult and middle grade genres,” he said. “Young adult is a pretty exciting genre because it’s not exactly set – there are a lot of changes being made and the content is getting a little more mature. It’s for high school kids so it’s dealing with issues that they’d be dealing with now and written in a way to make it exciting for them. I am really happy to be in the young adult category and I think that the most interesting things in fiction that are happening right now are happening in young adult literature. It’s good to be a small part of it.”

Depending on how Sophomore Undercover is received, Ben has hopes of writing a sequel.

“I’d really be open to doing a sequel but I think we are going to wait to see how this one does. If people like it, I will definitely write a sequel. If people don’t like it, I will have to find something else to do. Hopefully they will like something else I’ll write or else I’ll have to get a real job,” he laughed. “But if I can write about a book a year I think I can make a living…which I hope I can do. I am really enjoying doing this and really enjoying writing. It’s kind of up to the people if they like the books and I am hoping that they will so they will let me keep doing this.”

To find out more information about Ben Esch and Sophomore Undercover, visit www.benjaminesch.com.

“I am pretty proud of the website,” said Ben. “It launched about five months ago, and I think it turned out well. There is a lot of fun stuff on it and there is even a video game made for the book on there. Check it out!”