Running man

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Noblesville High School English teacher Bill Kenley writes first of four cross country-based novels

Longtime Noblesville resident and high school teacher Bill Kenley described his first novel as: “It’s like ‘The Bad News Bears’ on a cross country course.”

“It’s my love letter to high school cross country and distance running,” said Kenley. “It’s about identity – how when we are in high school we have to make some choices and go down some roads or someone else is going to pick who we are for us. My protagonist has a little ability as a runner so he kind of goes all-in on that as an identity. It’s not cause he loves to win, though he learns to love to run.”

Kenley said the novels also are his real love of working with teenagers.

“I just enjoy the drama of life at that age,” he said. “It’s just intense. Most of us would never want to go through it again but it’s funny to look at. I like looking at those dynamics.”

Kenley’s book deal is for four books. He is working on sophomore with junior and senior in the works.

“With each of those four I’m trying to really capture what I feel are the themes for that specific year,” Kenley said. “For me freshman year is about identity. Sophomore year is about the end of childhood and being on the fringe of being a grown-up. It’s when you get your license and when people in your class start talking about partying. That always seemed to me to be a year when things changed.”

Kenley said the third book represents recognizing the end of childhood is truly coming and the fourth is all about the running.

“It’s going to be the most sports-focused of them,” he said. “That’s just my big plan right now. It could change.”

Kenley said he is hoping to finish the sophomore book this summer, spend the winter editing it and release it before the fall cross country season begins in August 2016.

“High School Runner (Freshman)” will be released June 1. It will be available on Amazon and in independent bookstores and running stores.

“It’s really nichey,” Kenley said. “It’s a dream of mine to make it a cult classic, something runners know about.”

Running is something Kenley is very familiar with. Kenley, who said he was a “pretty decent” runner when he was younger, ran for the Millers and had the opportunity to run in college.

“I feel like when you are good at something and people respond you notice it. You kind of go where your strengths are,” he said. “The more you run, the more you get into it, the more you need the effort. There’s something even addictive about it. Once people get into distance running or cross country it’s hard for them to get out.”

Kenley also was an assistant coach at NHS for at least 10 years before he left to write this book.

“I quit because I always wanted to be a novelist and knew that coaching is such a time commitment, it’s a fulltime job and I knew I had to give up something,” he said.

Kenley said he wrote the book one summer six years ago.

“I wrote from eight in the morning to two in the afternoon, five days a week,” he said. “My rule was I had to finish a chapter every single day. Even if that chapter was three pages, it had to have an ending and something had to happen. The chapters are pretty short, from four to eight pages, but they are pretty punchy. They all have their own stories.”

Kenley said each story is a single cross country season.

“The protagonist is not me. I’m thinking people will make that leap but that’s ok,” he said. “It is really fiction.”

Kenley has taught at Noblesville for 18 years and advises its high school literary magazine. When he first started teaching the creative writing class he had 12 students in one semester.

“I had never taken a creative writing class at the time so I had to learn to teach it,” he said. “Over the years the class grew and grew. Now I have years where I’ll have 150 over the course of a year in creative writing.”

He also created The Polk Street Review with fellow Noblesville author Kurt Meyer to showcase the works of local residents.

“You’ve got to spend a lot of time working with what you want to be good at to ultimately get good at it,” said Kenley. “‘The Croquet Club’ and ‘The Polk Street Review’ have been times when I was trying to figure out who I want to be as a writer.”

Meet Bill Kenley

Age: 44

Residence: Noblesville

Education: Noblesville High School and Miami University (Ohio).

Family: Wife, Casey, and sons, Ray and Leo.

Hobbies: Running and watching movies with the boys.

Occupation: Teaches 10th-grade honors English and creative writing at NHS.

Best running achievements: Set a personal record in the 2008 New York City Marathon with a time of 2:47:05 and finished 295th overall out of 40,000 participants.

Personal quote: “We few, we happy few, we band of brothers: for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother,” William Shakespeare, Henry V


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