I’d like to welcome Matthew Dicks today. I’ve had the pleasure of doing a couple of author talks and book-signings with Matthew, and very much enjoyed his first novel Something Missing. His second book Unexpectedly, Milo appears in bookstores August 3.
Matthew grew up in the small town of Blackstone, Massachusetts. He was a Boy Scout, a pole-vaulter, a bassoonist, and a proud member of his school’s drum corps, and he has the distinction of having died twice by the age of 18 before being revived by paramedics on both occasions.
He left home at 18 and worked in a variety of dead-end jobs until being robbed at gunpoint at the age of 23. This brush with death finally propelled him to college where he worked his way through school as a McDonald’s manager, graduating from Manchester Community College in 1996 and Trinity College with an English degree and Saint Joseph’s College with a teaching degree in 1999.
Following graduation, Matthew went to work as an elementary school teacher and has been teaching ever since. In 2005 he was named West Hartford’s Teacher of the Year and was one of three finalists for Connecticut’s Teacher of the Year. He also owns and operates a DJ company that performs weddings throughout Connecticut. His first novel, Something Missing, was published in the summer of 2009. His writing has also appeared in the Hartford Courant, the Christian Science Monitor, Educational Leadership and on the Washington Post-Los Angeles Times wire service.
Matthew, it’s great to visit with you again and congratulations on the brand new release of Unexpectedly, Milo. You’re obviously very busy in 2010. What were you doing 25 years ago?
MATTHEW: Twenty-five years ago I was a freshman at Blackstone-Millville Regional High School. That year was marked by the traditional hazing that took place by seniors against incoming freshmen, which culminated with the annual Freshman-Senior Get Acquainted Dance.
Refusing to wear the signs around my neck declaring that Seniors Rule and rejecting demands to clear the seniors’ lunch tables, I instead stood at the door to the school and handed out flyers that read Seniors are Wimps and wore buttons identifying specific senior classmen as being weak, cowardly and inferior. In retrospect, it would’ve been easier to go along with the hazing, but being a naturally defiant individual and a nonconformist, I refused to submit to these inane traditions and made my life exceedingly difficult.
For months, I was beaten repeatedly, and on one occasion, was sent to the hospital in an ambulance. I was locked inside equipment closets, handcuffed to the bumper of a bus, and had fire extinguishers shot at me. I was eventually suspended from school for “inciting riot upon myself.” This one-day suspension, specifically timed by the administration for my own protection, kept me from attending the Freshman-Senior dance.
Well, being a nonconformist must have given you lots of material to write about, Matthew! Read more about Matthew’s work on his web site and blog.
Check out his brand new book Unexpectedly, Milo, a hilarious and sneakily profound tale about a man whose behavior is truly odd, but also oddly relatable, on Amazon. Also check out Something Missing.
