When her family was thinking about moving to Texas three years ago, Maggie Mei Lewis, then barely in her teens, so wanted to stay in Maryland that she hatched a seemingly far-fetched plan.
"I thought, 'I'll write a book, and I'll make enough money to stay here,' " says Lewis, 16, who lives in Turkey Point.
She still hasn't earned enough to be independent, but the result of her labors — "Moonlight Memoirs: Remembering That Family and Friends Are Forever," a richly illustrated children's book — recently took first prize in the spirituality category of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards, a competition for self-published authors around the world.
Lewis' own journey has been unlikely. Born in China, she was found abandoned in a railway station as an infant and later taken to an orphanage. That's where Rod Lewis and Greta Johnson of Edgewater, nurses who worked for the Navy, adopted her and brought her to the U.S. Now a home-schooled high school junior who plays violin, writes poetry and draws, she loves the menagerie of animals that give her family home the aura of a children's zoo.
After the death of a favorite pet, then a relative, Lewis dreamed up a tale she felt would encourage others dealing with grief. "Moonlight Memoirs" — written in verse, illustrated by Melody Lea Lamb, a New England artist, and published by a company the Lewises founded — tells of a wise old mouse who takes two younger mice aside to tell what happened to those who have gone before.
"[This] is a sweetly useful title to help teach children about loss," says Terry Hong, a media arts consultant for the Smithsonian Asian-Pacific Program in Washington. "With such insight for one so young, we'll be on the watch for [Lewis'] future endeavors."
Lewis has discussed the book, published last August, at local book festivals and on TV, and it will be displayed at festivals in Beijing, New York and Frankfurt, Germany, later this year.
The road to publication was longer than she expected, but it could serve as a primer for first-time authors in the modern age, especially those who want to maintain control over their idea.
Question: Your book has a "spiritual" message, but it's about mice. Why's that?
Answer: We've always had lots of animals. Right now we have four dogs, five cats, two birds, four rabbits, a hamster and multiple horses in different locations. ... We've had gerbils and guinea pigs. I especially like rodents. [At 6], I saw some mice in a pet store, thought they were very cute and got them. They kept on breeding until there were about 40.
Q: How'd that go?
A: I learned mice can be mean. Some of them kept biting me. I gave them to pet stores. But one, Blackie, never bit me. I let him ride on my shoulder. I trained him to do all kinds of stuff — to climb ladders and go through a little hole in my hand. Things like that. I set up treats for him and talked to him and praised him when he got there. I didn't realize mice are smart, but they really are.
Q: What happened to him?
A: By age 3, mice really start getting older. [When I was 9], he lost some hair and started coughing, making sounds that weren't fun to hear. When he died, we buried him near our pond with a lot of flowers, but I cried for like a week. It was hard losing a friend.
Q: How did the book come about?
A: I thought, if I'm this upset about a pet, something like this could be happening to anyone in the world. Who's comforting them? I started writing ideas through "Moonlight Memoirs." I wrote a message that I'd like to hear myself.
Q: Why did you go the self-publishing route?
A: My mom talked to a friend who is a literary agent. She told us if we went to a traditional publishing house, I wouldn't get to pick the illustrator. I don't think that's a good idea. And she said they'd edit my words. I wouldn't have any control over the book. The only other option was self-publishing.
Now that the book is the way I wanted it, people can see what I can do. We're trying to get it out there so we can sell to a major publishing company in the future.
Q: How did the writing go?
A: It's a lot harder than it seems. My book is 24 pages, but it took a year to write and went through over 200 edits. My mom and I subcontracted with a [communications] company and paid for an editor, [who] would ask, "what if the mice did this or that?" Sometimes it was just her opinion. ... I'd disagree, or I'd change it, then change it back. One of the main things I didn't want to happen was for the book to be written by other people besides me.
Q: How did you find an artist?
A: I looked through a lot of illustrators' websites but couldn't find any that fit the story, so I tried looking on eBay. They have sites for something called ACEO cards [art card editions and originals]. They're little works of art with a lot of detail, about the size of baseball cards.
