Jay, an Indiana native, spent his career as a businessman,
but that did not stop him from telling stories. “I was in charge of writing a
company newsletter,” he recalls. “I always included some fiction to make it
interesting.” His creative side also showed itself when he read fairytales to
his children. “I’d take a story and tell it in different ways, changing it as I
went along,” he says. Unbeknownst to him, one of these tales would form the
basis for his first full-length novel.
When his daughter was 11 years old, Jay, who was in Germany
on business, found a unique way to tell her a bedtime story. He wrote a fable about an alligator named
Montooth and sent her a chapter every day. Years later, he discovered that she
had kept them all. She encouraged him to
write a book based on the story, and he finally agreed. Jay had developed a keen interest in the
Cuban Revolution after hearing about it from a Cuban co-worker. “I started
thinking about how I could incorporate the fable into the Cuban Revolution,” he
says. The result was Montooth and the Canfield Witch.
Montooth and the Canfield Witch started out as a novel for
adults. “I wanted to begin the story with the characters as teenagers so they
could be in their twenties by the time of the revolution,” he explains, “and
because I wanted it to be something I could share with my daughter, I didn’t
want to include anything inappropriate.” When the book was published, Jay was
surprised to find that teens comprised a large segment of his reading audience.
The story centers around the adventures of Carty Andersson, the feisty teenage
heroine, and her four-man “Crew.” Jay wanted a strong female protagonist and admits
that he was influenced by his daughter. According to Jay, “She’s like Carty in
many ways. They both have strong personalities.” Jay also notes that his
characters have a baseball connection. “I’m a Cleveland Indians fan,” he says.
“The first names of all the good characters are the last names of Indians
players. The first names of the bad guys are the last names of Yankees.”
In Montooth and the Canfield Witch, what starts out as a
school science project leads the Crew into a page-turning adventure involving a
mysterious female hermit, a group of unscrupulous treasure seekers, and a
diabolical Cuban who will destroy anyone who gets in his way. The book has
earned three medals from Virginia's Young Voices Foundation for excellence in
literature in the following categories: Adult Fiction, Juvenile/Young Adult
Fiction, and Mystery/Suspense Young Adult Fiction. It has also earned the
Royal Palm Literary Award for Historical Fiction from the Florida Writers
Association.
The second book in
the series, Race for the Ryland Ruby, begins in Cuba and takes Carty and the Crew on an adventure with roots in King Solomon’s mines. Race
for the Ryland Ruby won the Young Voices Foundation Awards for Young
Adult Fiction and Young Adult Southeast Regional Fiction and received the Young
Voices Foundation Seals of Approval for Adult Fiction and Historical Fiction.
Book Three, Red Cross of Gold, is the latest installment.
It follows Carty and her friends to Purdue University where Carty becomes a
suspect in a professor’s murder. Carty and the Crew learn valuable lessons in
this next stage of their lives, discovering that the bonds of friendship can
transcend both distance and ideology. The Crew also learns, however, that
virtue may not always win out. As with the first two books in the series, Red
Cross of Gold is a multi-award winner, receiving the Eric Hoffer Award and the
New England Book Festival Book Award for Young Adult Genre. The three novels
are cleverly linked together by the Montooth fable
Jay’s latest release is somewhat of a departure from his
Montooth series but is still based on a Montooth story. Explaining ObamaCare
to Kids: The Legend of Montooth and the Dillos originally appeared as a small part in one of the Montooth novels, but
Jay has transformed it into a classic children's fable with what he calls”
homage to Aesop, Lewis Carroll, and Hans Christian Andersen.” Like Jay's
signature fables, it uses a variety of animals to explain life values. Young
readers will relate to the characters and will easily recognize the morals of
the story as Montooth, and his friends work together to fight for what is right
in a society much like our own. Parents will have the opportunity to
connect the story to modern world developments, including the establishment of
ObamaCare. The book has been awarded the Pinnacle Book Achievement Award for
Juvenile Fiction and the Global E-book Award for Best Website Design.
Jay hopes his novels will resonate with teens as well as their parents and grandparents. “I wanted Carty to be a spokesperson for the values of the 1950s,” he says. “I want to show teens that you can be rewarded for the good things you do – for being a positive force in life.”
Jay hopes his novels will resonate with teens as well as their parents and grandparents. “I wanted Carty to be a spokesperson for the values of the 1950s,” he says. “I want to show teens that you can be rewarded for the good things you do – for being a positive force in life.”
For more information, visit the author’s website at www.montoothbooks.com.
