The Game is Afoot! Cracking Open The Sherlock Society with Best-Selling Author James Ponti

Episode Summary:
The game is afoot! Join us on a thrilling adventure with bestselling author James Ponti as we delves into his latest middle-grade series, The Sherlock Society. I personally loved this Miami-based mystery. It has so much humor. The writing and characters are cinematic in scope. There's a little environmental thrillerism and it's got the best grandpa I think has ever been written in children's literature. 

Inspired by a contemplative walk around a lake in Orlando, James introduces us to a story that melds Florida's unique setting with the lively dynamic of kids solving cold cases alongside their fun-loving grandfather. The sibling duo, Alex and Zoe Sherlock, named in homage to the legendary detective, establish their detective agency to escape mundane chores, leading to a series of thrilling escapades. Learn how real-life figures like Al Capone and Murph the Surf inspired the plot, adding historical authenticity.  James Ponti's vivid descriptions and cinematic style bring this heartwarming and exciting mystery to life, making it a must-read for young audiences.  

Key Timestamps:

• (0:00:02) - Sherlock Society Book Tour
  Introduction to James Ponti and his latest book series, The Sherlock Society. Inspiration behind the series, character development, and the unique blend of mystery, humor, and environmental elements.
• (0:07:25) - Miami Crime and Adventure Mysteries
  Exploration of Miami's vibrant history and its influence on the story. How real-life figures like Al Capone and Murph the Surf inspired the plot, and insights into how James's background in film and television influences his cinematic writing style.
• (0:12:54) - Author's Research and Tour Insights
  Behind-the-scenes look at James's meticulous research process. Scouting Miami locations, incorporating local elements like Ventanitas, and ensuring authenticity through real-life adventures in the Everglades.
• (0:21:05) - Embracing Joy and Friendship
  Discussion on the themes of joy and friendship in The Sherlock Society and the middle-grade fiction industry. Encouragement to join the excitement of the book tour and grab a copy of the book.

Links:

• Purchase The Sherlock Society now!
• Watch The Sherlock Society interview with James Ponti!
• Visit James Ponti's webpage.
• Check out the original James Ponti interview on the Adventures in Learning podcast!
• Check out all of James Ponti's books!

Transcript

00:02 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
The game is afoot. Welcome to the Adventures in Learning podcast. And today we are joining the Sherlock Society book tour with best-selling author James Pont. Teachers, parents, I have to tell you this book is bound to be a bestseller. It has everything in it. It has got so much humor, it's got mystery. It has got so much humor, it's got mystery, it's got a little environmental thrillerism and it's got the best, grandpa, I think has ever been written in children's literature.

00:32 - James Ponti (Guest)
He's a fun grandpa, that's for sure.

00:34 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So welcome James. It's so nice to have you back on the Adventures in Learning podcast. Let's talk Sherlock Society.

00:42 - James Ponti (Guest)
Absolutely it's. I'm thrilled to talk about it, you know I actually I just we work a year in advance. I just finished the first draft of the second book, so Sherlock is very much on my mind, but I have to make sure I don't tell anything for the second book. We'll keep it to the first book. My brain's got to make that code switch there.

01:01 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So, for those who don't know anything about the Sherlock Society, let's talk about where this idea came from. Let's talk about the characters. What prompted you to write this book?

01:12 - James Ponti (Guest)
Well, you know, this is my fourth book series, so my last series let's still continue as City Spies, and I've really enjoyed writing City Spies and it's this great globe trotting adventure with espionage and all like that. But I decided I wanted to do two books a year. So I wanted the second book to be different enough so that in my brain they were two separate types of things. So if the City Spies are saving the world, then maybe the Sherlock Society which I didn't know what we called that at that time would be more personal. And I grew up in Florida and I love mysteries, and I grew up in Florida and I love mysteries and I really have lifelong friends, and so I thought I would love to combine those things into a story. But I actually I went out one day. I live in central Florida, I live in Orlando, and there's a lake right by my house where I walk the dog and I went out one day and I decided, okay, I'm going to come up with a new book series. And I went out for a walk and there are 10 benches or so around the lake and I made a rule. I was like I have to sit at every bench. At every bench I have to ask myself a question about what this book will be, and I can't get up until I answer it. And at each bench it has to be a harder question. And so it took me two laps around the lake to come up with the idea. But I really came up with the entire idea on that walk.

02:34
Um, I knew I wanted to write set in florida. I knew I wanted to write a mystery. So that those are the first two benches. That was pretty easy.

02:42
But, um, in my life I used to work at nickelodeon. I was a script writer and we had a rule at nickelodeon and that rule was every show had to have a 16 year old in the story, and it was simply because you had to be able to explain how they got around someone who's old enough to drive. You can't have a 16 year old in middle grade fiction. And so my first series was set in new york with this subway. My second series was set in dc, where there's a subway and they're the city spies and my six flights them all over. But I wanted to be in florida. But nowhere in florida has mass transit and I was really, really stuck with that and that's when I came with the idea that on bench number four or five, but there's a lot of grandparents in Florida and maybe their grandfather lives with them, like my mom lived with when I was raising my kids. My mom lived with us and I thought I like that dynamic because she was a much different grandmother than she was a mother.

03:39 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Sure.

03:40 - James Ponti (Guest)
And so, okay, so these kids and there's grandpa involved. And so okay, so these kids and their grandpa involved. And around the second lap I had it down to these two kids and their friends are solving these mysteries and their grandfather used to be an investigative reporter for the Miami Herald, and so he has a storage space filled with unsolved cold cases that he worked on as a reporter in the 70s, 80s and 90s and they can go back and they can revisit, and that was the concept that when I came I thought, okay, I have to go home and I have to start writing.

04:18 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and I just love that, I have to say, the conceit of having the grandfather as the newspaper reporter with the storage room of cold cases, that was perfect.

04:27
and the kids are so well written like oh well, thank you, it's very different than um, the city spies, in the sense of the kids being much more local, and I loved the idea that it would. It was these relationships that were formed within the context of middle grade and middle school, so you had sort of the sibling rivalry stuff. You had the trying to fit in and be cool. You had what I thought I wanted their parents, like I was like. Those are two of the coolest parents you could imagine having.

04:59 - James Ponti (Guest)
Well, when you set up a series, you have to think long-term and so, even if you don't know what it's going to be, it's like okay, I need mom and dad to have the kinds of jobs that could lead to cases in the future and lead to expertise, and so that that, yeah, no, the parents are fun. And the grandparent, you know again, having a grandfather and having him being an instigator, where normally the adults in these stories are not. That you know, and that that was fun, but then so. So for the, for the mother, I made her an attorney and for the father, I made him a um, he's a marine biologist at the university of miami and I figured okay, that gives us the ocean, that gives us the law, grandpa, gives us all the reporting. We have tons of potential stories that we can mine. We know at least I already know there's going to be at least four books in the series. So you know we have stories to go, which is really fun.

05:57 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
And Al Capone makes an appearance in this particular book. What made you decide on bringing him into it?

06:03 - James Ponti (Guest)
Well, well, I really am a huge fan of research and non-fiction into fiction I I've talked a lot about and I don't know if we did when we were on before, but the book that was really like the, a key book for me growing up was from the mixed up files, mrs basely, frankweather, yes, and it was a mystery, it was fictional, but it was set at the national, at the I'm sorry the metropolitan of Art, which is very real, and the art she described in that book was real art and I remembered as a kid that I was profoundly impacted by the fact that if we went to New York I's describing in the book as opposed to, you know, something like the movie et, which is any neighborhood anywhere in the suburbs of america right no, this is a very specific thing, and so I have always written that way.

06:55
Also, when I was in film school, I um I took a great class, um, on alfred hitchcock and we watched. He had made 50 movies in During the year. We watched like 30 of them.

07:05 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Wow.

07:06 - James Ponti (Guest)
And his movies were. He loved this element that I really connected to of using famous locations in his movies, Very famous being Mount Rushmore, north by Northwest, but I think it's Saboteur has the Statue of Liberty. North by Northwest also is the UN building, and I have always liked that in storytelling. So I wanted real places in Miami and where possible, I wanted to use real history. And a history that not a lot of people know is that Al Capone, even before he went to Alcatraz, had already moved his operation from Chicago to Miami and Miami is where his life played out. He went to Alcatraz in the middle of it. Then he came back and Miami is where he died and so I thought, well, that's kind of interesting and Al Capone's famous and there's that great book. You know, al Capone does my shirts and he's already. He's in the world of the kid lit even.

07:59
And I looked and I read and I found that Al Capone actually the one conceit I made is in real life. He buried a box of safe deposit box keys, of safe deposit box keys. I just turned it into money, but there's like millions of dollars and the keys open the safe deposit boxes for millions of dollars. And he did that before he went to prison, and in prison his mind was so wracked with disease that when he came back he could not remember where they were and his niece even had him hypnotized.

08:32
They dug up the property, did all this stuff and to our knowledge this box was never discovered and I thought, well, I can use some of that and I can look into some other real miami, like colorful. The thing about miami that's so interesting is there's crime, and there's horrible crime in miami, but there's also colorful, bizarre crime there, and so I was trying to find the colorful without getting too dark. We also used a guy named Murph the Surf, who was a jewel thief from Miami and a real character. Anyway, I tried to incorporate those to make the adventure and the mysteries that much more realistic.

09:10 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I definitely think it worked. Do you think you could share a paragraph or two from us?

09:15 - James Ponti (Guest)
Well, yeah, sure, when I was on that walk around the lake to come up with the idea, I thought all right, I know I want these kids solving mysteries, I know I want their grandfather to help them, but why are they doing it? What is the quality about them that makes them want to do this? And I was sitting on this, the last pitch I sat on and an opening paragraph came to me and I, amazingly, I wrote it down. When I came back and I thought, well, that's where I'll start and I'll fix that. It's still the opening of the book. So it worked for me then. So i'll'll just read that.

09:54
Maybe if our last name was Baker, we would have sold cupcakes, or if it was Walker, we might have taken care of people's dogs while they're on vacation. But it's Sherlock. So starting a detective agency just seemed like the thing to do, especially compared to more traditional middle school money-making schemes like babysitting, boring lawn mowing sweaty or cleaning the attic. Boring and sweaty. My name is Alex Sherlock. I'm 12 years old and my sister, zoe, is 13. We had enough of bratty kids in wheat field yards and wanted something new and exciting for the summer. Tempted by the lure of adventure, we jumped at the chance to become detectives. Then three weeks later we had to jump into Biscayne Bay that's because we were passengers on a yacht that exploded. Okay, maybe we were more like stowaways than passengers, but let's not focus on that part yet and I thought, okay, their name is Sherlock. That's kind of distinctive, it's.

10:50
You know, I grew up in a small beach town, not like Miami. I converted my small beach memories to a bigger city, but I grew up in a small beach town in Florida and I remember that sense of both. You're thrilled for the summer, but also you're kind of bored, and I would get tap into that with the entrepreneurial sense that a lot of kids have these days. It's much more entrepreneurial than when I was growing up sense that a lot of kids have these days. It's much more entrepreneurial than when I was growing up. Maybe there's an idea there that will give a reason for why are they solving mysteries? And I went with that and it went from there and it has been, you know, go ever since. You know, like I said, I've written now that I've just finished the first draft of the second book, I'm about to go on a tour for the first book and I love these characters. I love that I get to write them.

11:35 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and they are wonderful, and you were. You were alluding to the fact that you come from a film, background film and TV.

11:42 - James Ponti (Guest)
Right.

11:42 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
How did that influence the way that you crafted the book? Because I could totally visualize it in my mind's eye as I was reading.

11:49 - James Ponti (Guest)
Well, you know, I write. It's hard to talk about writing without sounding, I don't know, weird. You know I I write books the same way I wrote scripts, and so they're probably more visual. And, you know, cinematic seems like a bigger word than I feel, but they probably are more cinematic than if I had got a different background. You know, because I'm thinking of setting, I'm thinking of location, I'm thinking, I think a lot about how movies are edited and I try to edit scenes that way Because I feel like kids, young readers, are very visually literate. Visually literate, they understand story at a much more rapid pace than any generation before and I feel like there's a translation of that in the books that if you use visuals in a certain way, even though they're reading it, they can make some of those jumps. But I approach the books and again, I don't remember if we talked about this before, but you know I approach the books the same way.

12:53
When I used to produce documentaries for nbc sports and for the golf channel and I would go and I would scout locations if I was going to do a documentary about, I did one about this guy who was probably in prison for 27 years and I went to new york, to buffalo, where he's from, and I scouted where the crime took place and his home and all these places, and you figure out where are you going to put the camera, where are you going to interview the people? And I did the same. So I wrote a draft of this book and then I went to Miami and my friend, christina Diaz-Gonzalez, who actually the book is dedicated to, is another writer. She lives in Miami and we spent a couple of days going to every single location in the book. And I would spend a couple days going to every single location in the book and I would then say well, is this really where this seems to take place? And this chapter should take place? And you know well how should we? Where would I put the mind's eyes camera? Where would I? You know? And and so I still try to produce the book like I produced television, in the degree that I want there to be a logic to how things come out.

13:55
And it's only, like you know, I wanted, I wanted a place for them to have a meeting, like at a coffee shop, and then, going there and talking to Christina, she says well, you know, in Miami we have these things called Ventanitas. I think I'm saying that right, and a Ventanita is a coffee shop. It's really just a window on the street and you come up and you go out. And I think the first one was at Versailles, at the famous restaurant in Little Havana, and I said, well, that sounds good because that's specific to Miami, and then also it helps me because I wanted it outside, not inside. But then we went to Ventanita and it had a laundromat. It was like a combination coffee shop laundromat and it was because it was a laundromat first and then they had coffee for their customers and then the coffee got popular.

14:47
And I would not have come up with that combination had I not gone and seen it in person. And I just feel like that kind of research, just like if I was going to do the documentary of the book, I would have gone and found like, oh, we're going to shoot here, I want to set it here. So I moved it to there. I also had a scene or a chapter or two that was going to take place at the Capone Estate. It's over 100 years old, it's classic, famous building. The day I got there they were tearing it down After a hundred plus years. I got there as a crane is destroying.

15:21 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Oh my goodness. And so that informs the book.

15:24 - James Ponti (Guest)
So now I have to change the book, but also it's like, thank goodness I went and I found that out, so, yeah, so I that way comes into play. I also I wrote on a show called the Mickey Mouse Club, and the Mickey Mouse Club we had 20 kids who played cast members, some of them famous, like Ryan Gosling and Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears, went on to become superstars. But at the time when I was working with them, they were 11-year-old kids, and there were 20 of them, 15 or 20 of them, and if you didn't use one of the kids one week, their parents would let you hear it, of course, like well, why didn't you? And when you write for television, you become very cognizant of like okay, I need to make sure that I don't forget about performers or actors, and when I write I try to be that way about the characters. It's like I need to make sure that I don't forget that Lena is a character that wants some page time too, you know. And so my mentality from television definitely informs the way that I write.

16:24 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
Well, and I think that you were able to sort of find a balance with the four kids and grandpa and giving them all their place in the sun, and that really worked.

16:33 - James Ponti (Guest)
We really, really important. You know that the beauty of doing school visits and talking to kids. I always ask kids if they've read the books, if they have favorite characters, and I'm always fascinated at how divergent those answers are. I would think that, okay, someone is going to win like 75% of the favorite kids and it's not. But then that tells me that, okay, that means every character is some reader's favorite character and they'll feel cheated if that character doesn't get the chance to shine every now and then oh, I like that.

17:09 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
So I have to ask um as part of your research for settings, did you end up having to tromp around in the everglades?

17:16 - James Ponti (Guest)
I went to the everglades. I didn't trompomp much, I just I took a boat tour and I and I looked around, um, I had, uh, I, I did, I did a lot, though I, I, I went to the Marine patrol it begins with the rescue by the Marine patrol in Biscayne Bay and I went to meet with them just to look at their office so I could describe their office Right and they said, no, we're going out in the boat. And they threw me in a boat and we raced around Biscayne Bay and I talked about exploding yachts and I'm thinking they're gonna think this is ridiculous and they're like that happens all the time and it's all about, like rescues that they've done and yachts that have sunk, and like they showed me where some were still half submerged.

17:55
Um, and I went, I hung out with a marine bi, the University of Miami, and we went to his lab where they're growing coral late at night, you know. So we're there in the middle of the night and we have all these grad students and they have this coral that's just come in from all these places and they're playing Marvin Gaye music to get the coral in the mood to just be. You know, make more coral or whatever, and it's just like okay, this is really great fun to do it. So I, the everglades, I felt like outdoors with the coral, was the buggy enough.

18:26 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I didn't need to actually go get buggy in the everglades I say you managed to uh make me feel buggy and sweaty yes, it is so buggy there. It is, yeah so you're getting ready to go on tour with the Sherlock Society? Yes, the tour looks amazing. You are being accompanied by some serious heavy hitting authors and illustrators on this tour.

18:53 - James Ponti (Guest)
What was the genius behind that? Well, so I don't know if when I first went on tour, they tended to send you alone and and more. Now the tendency at least that I've gone with is I'd much rather talk to someone, and the beauty of the middle grade writing community is we're pretty much all you know, everyone, or at least one person removed from almost everyone. So on a regular, weekly basis, I talk to Gordon Korman and Stuart Gibbs and Christina Sturmbot and Karina Gleaser all these authors, these great authors and so I try to visit with people like that, for a couple of reasons. First of all, it's great because it lets people who know me meet them. It lets people who know them meet me. It lets us talk in a way that's fresh, so that each bookstore event it's going to be different, because what I talk about with christina diaz gonzalez in miami is different than what I'm going to talk about with ellen owen hennicon in dc or with chris grabenstein and gail foreman in new york. But it's all.

19:54
I am very much into the concept of book joy and the concept of. I think it is positively disarming for kids when they realize that authors aren't names on a book but they are regular people who are goofy with their friends, and their friends are also the authors. You know, and we're going to let you see us be goofy. So, for example, for this book one of the things that I decided to do a year ago I got a bunch of deerstalker hats like Sherlock Holmes wears, and whenever I was with authors I asked them, I said, hey, do you want to pose for me? And so right now you know I'm releasing all these pictures.

20:40
I have over 50 authors posed in goofy poses like Sherlock Holmes, and it's not small. We're talking Jeff Kinney, Kate DiCamillo, just this huge mammoth. And they write serious books or they write goofy books. Or you know Angie Thomas, who writes very hard books and all these. But when you see them goofing off in the hats, you realize they're just goofy people like me. And so I wanted the tour and I wanted all kind of the publicity around the book to really embrace this idea of joy and friendship, which is at the core of the book, but is also at the core of our industry of middle grade fiction. At the core of the book, but is also at the core of our industry of middle grade fiction.

21:21 - Dr. Diane Jackson Schnoor (Host)
I love that and folks, the Sherlock Society is out this week. The tour is going on. You can find all of the information on James's website and I'm going to drop links to that as well as to our first interview. It'll all be in the show notes. Run and get this book. Trust me, you will not regret it. 

21:39 - James Ponti (Guest)
Thank you so much