TRUANCY FAN CLUB

<div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://us.macmillan.com/static/tor/images/truancy.jpg" border="0" /> <img src="http://img.flipkart.com/bk_imgs/623/9780765322623.jpg" border="0" /><!--center--></div> THE BOOK AND SERIES THAT IS WRITTEN BY A TEENAGER (NOT ANY MORE) WHO IS SO SO TALENTED........ ITS AN AMAZING BOOK : Truancy by Isamu Fukui I RECOMMEND THIS BOOK FOR ANYONE THAT LOVES READING, FICTION, AND THINKS SCHOOL IS A POOR EXCUSE FOR EDUCATION!!!!!!!! AND FOR ANYONE THAT LIKES ACTION OR A COMPELLING STORY LINE!!!!!!!!!!! <div style="text-align: center;"><img src="http://www.esquire.com/cm/esquire/images/Nk/isamu-fukui-042108-lg.jpg" border="0" /><!--center--></div> “We have never failed school -- it was school that failed us.” This line was taken from my current project, a sequel to my first novel, Truancy. It reflects my feelings and my experiences after twelve years of public education. In Truancy, rebellious students take up arms against a tyrannical system. I found my voice when I raised my pen against a broken system. I began creative writing at the age of thirteen, first as a curiosity, and then as a hobby. I had fun writing fan fiction for my favorite videogames and television shows, and this introduced me to the joys of creation. During my first year I was fascinated with my own literary experimentation and growth. I flitted in and out of fan fiction communities where I could observe the efforts of others, and learn from their mistakes and successes. Each new discovery as a writer excited me, and as a consequence I learned much faster than I ever had in school. After a little over a year, my abilities abruptly reached a chasm that needed to be bridged. I was now convinced that I had some measure of talent. However, it was one thing to apply that to an already existing universe, with established characters and plot. It was quite another to create my own from scratch. My first attempt to leap across the chasm ended in failure. I started off by attempting a fantasy novel, a genre I was familiar with. I had an interesting premise, a lengthy outline, and an original and detailed world. But by the time I’d gotten a couple hundred pages in, I decided that what I had simply was not good enough. I abandoned the project at a crossroads in my life -- the point where parents and teachers start to explain that the goal of your existence should be to get into college. But in school I was suffering. I was unpopular, unappreciated -- even by my English teachers -- and struck every day with the feeling that I did not belong. Only today, after years of contemplation, can I quantify what it was that bothered me: compulsory schooling punished independent thought, demanded passivity, rewarded uniformity, and sought to make me dependent upon instruction rather than confident in my own ability to grow and learn. College, unlike much of high school, is noncompulsory -- and I hope that it might be better. Thanks to my writing I knew that, contrary to what some of my teachers told me, I was capable of growing and learning on my own. The time had come for me to either prove it to the world, or else slip through the cracks, another casualty of the system. Thus Truancy was born. As I planned this novel, which would embody my frustrations with school, I felt that I was literally writing for my life. Then on summer vacation after my freshman year, at the age of fifteen, a mere two years after I first started writing, I completed my first novel at the rate of one chapter per day. I told the story of a student uprising against an oppressive educational system -- I depicted school harming others as it had harmed me. This time it was not an experiment, but a passion piece. My experiences became the fuel that drove my writing, and ever since then I have returned to school intent on collecting more. The writing of Truancy was a defining point in my life. Had I failed, I’m not sure that I would ever have tried again. I couldn’t afford to fail, and in the end I think that is why I succeeded. I am eighteen years old now, and I’ve since written a second book, a prequel to Truancy, which is to be published next year. I have also begun work on a third, for school has not changed, even if I have. I find myself much more relaxed now. Unlike the typical student, I work hard during my summers and tend to be as lax as possible during the school year. Writing has become an annual spiritual journey for me, derived from my family’s traditional vacations. I travel somewhere isolated (usually the forests of Maine) and within a day my mind and body settle into a routine -- wake up, revise, write, sleep, repeat. Methodically I take my notes and outlines, accumulated over the past year, and then transform them into a complete novel. Each year I note my own improvement. In spite of being a high school student, I am still learning by myself, still growing -- and I don’t ever intent to stop. About the author: Isamu Fukui attends Stuyvesant High School in New York City. He first started writing for fun at the age of thirteen. The following year, he won a National Gold Award and a Regional Gold Key in the Science Fiction/Fantasy category of the Scholastic Art and Writing Competition. The first book in his trilogy, Truancy, was recently released by Tor.