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Hi, Daniel,

Glad to hear THE UNTEACHABLES was a hit. Thanks for following up and letting me know. Your questions:

1. Actually, inspiration plays very little part in being an author. We write because we have something to say, a story to tell. That’s just about all it takes to start us scribbling. Characters and details are my job — I write for a living, after all.

2. The SCS-8 kids were the ones that were streamed into that class to get through the year and become the high school’s problem. Kiana blundered in by mistake; Elaine had the reputation, wrongly, of being the school bully; Barnstorm was the athlete who didn’t think he had to do schoolwork; Aldo had an anger problem; Parker couldn’t read; and so on. They were all the difficult kids that the school was just waiting to get rid of. Not very nice, but I’ll bet it happens.

3. How to create good characters? You have to know them, to think out their little quirks and “schtick” before you ever start to write. They have to be real to you before they can be real to the reader.

Thanks, everybody! I hope we can get together on another book one day!    —–Gordon Korman—–