By Mark Ambrogi
The Zionsville Community High School physics classes got credited for an assist in Ted Sanders’ new book “The Keepers: The Box and the Dragonfly.”
Sanders’ cousin Matt Mulholland has been a physics teacher in Zionsville since 1999.
“When he first started writing the book four years ago, he would bounce ideas off me,” Mulholland said. “For example he would say what would happen if you turned off gravity at a moment’s notice and you jumped? Could you leave the earth? How high would you go? I would take those problems back to my physics classroom and some of my advanced students discussed it. Could Michael Jordan jump off the earth if there was no gravity? Would air resistance slow him down? It led to some great discussions in my physics classes.”
Mulholland said students would work those problems and give the report to Sanders.
“I can’t say we were a great part of research for him, but we were a little part of it,” Mullholland said. “We were very grateful he gave us any acknowledgment at all.”
Sanders said the acknowledgement to Mulholland and his class was well deserved.
“He’s done a lot to help me promote the book and help write it,” said Sanders, whose book was released March 3.
This was the first of a four-book fantasy series that Sanders, a creative writing professor at the University of Illinois, has committed to write for HarperCollins Publishing. After completion of his book tour, Sanders visited Zionsville to have an extra book signing at Black Dog Books on March 26.
Sanders spoke to the writers club and book club at the high school on March 25. The next day he spoke to a group of 90 students at both Zionsville Middle School and Zionsville West Middle School.
Anne Roy, a Zionsville Middle School sixth grader, saw the presentation.
“I was excited to get the book after I heard about it,” said Anne, an avid reader who came to the book signing.
Mulholland, 43, and Sanders, 45, have always been close. The cousins, whose late mothers were sisters, frequently get together to play board games and attend Gen Con. Mulholland grew up near St. Louis and Sanders near Chicago.
The second book of the series is almost finished and will be published in March 2016.
“I kind of know what’s going to happen but a lot of times I don’t know, because the characters make their own decisions sometimes about what’s going to happen next,” Sanders said.
Sanders’ first book was a collection of short stories for adults.
Before he started writing, Sanders worked in the large children’s section at a book store in Champaign-Urbana, Ill.
“I always wanted to write a kid’s book so I think it was only natural that at some point I would try,” he said. “It’s actually the first novel I’ve written.”
