Award-winning author Hetherington sponsors the Crosley Word Contest

Sands Hetherington majored in history at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and has an M.F.A. in creative writing and an M.A. in English from UNC-Greensboro.  He raised his son John as a single parent. During those formative years, Sands read to his young son every night. As a result, he and John developed the Crosley crocodile character in the Night Buddies series of chapter books. Sands Hetherington credits his son John for being his principal motivator. 

Sands shares the story of winning the Next Generation Indie Book Award and invites kids to participate in the Crosley Word Contest: 

It was a Monday, or it may as well have been because I was feeling lousy due to the spring pollen. I dreaded getting out of bed and handling all of the business I had to face, including clearing a steamer trunk full of e-mails, which I had been especially dreading.

I’m glad I decided to tackle the e-mails first. After clearing off seven or eight humdrum communications, there was the announcement! Night Buddies and the Pineapple Cheesecake Scare, my first book in the Night Buddies series, had been awarded Winner of the 2013 Next Generation Indie Book Awards in the Children’s/Juvenile Fiction category. It couldn’t have come at a better time!

My allergies cleared up (for the rest of the day anyway), and I went about my other business with energy I hadn’t had in years. It reminded me of two incidents: one was when General Grant received General Lee’s offer to discuss peace terms, and Grant’s migraine instantly cleared up, and the other was when W. B. Yeats heard about his Nobel Prize in the middle of the night and got out of bed and cooked sausages. I usually do cereal in the morning, but I did have one Italian sausage left over from the night before, so I went and fried it up as a celebratory gesture.

Then I thanked John and Crosley for their part. They are the main characters in the stories I created with my son John, when he was a young lad. Kids love the books, and it’s all the more gratifying to get this kind of recognition from my peers in the publishing community. Creating memorable characters is a main goal in writing these Adventures After Lights Out. Night Buddies, Impostors, and One Far-Out Flying Machine is the second book, recently released.

I’m now writing the third book in the series, and if you’d like to get in on the action, Crosley has a contest going on. It’s what he calls the Night Buddies Adventure Series Wacky Word contest. Winner #1 will receive a $25 gift card to a bookstore of their choice & both titles signed by yours truly. Four runners up get prizes too. And who knows? The winning words could end up in my next book!  
Visit this link to participate: http://familiesmatter2us.blogspot.com. 
You might want to have some sausages on hand, just in case!

For more information on author Sands Hetherington, go to www.nightbuddiesadventures.com

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