Neal Shusterman is a very well-known New York Times bestselling author of more than thirty award-winning books. He was born and brought up in Brooklyn, New York. He currently lives in South California with his four children. Since childhood he had been interested in literary works and began-writing at a very early age. When he was in his ninth grade, his capabilities were recognized by his English teacher. The teacher challenged him to write one story a month to earn extra credits. He took up this challenge and without any hassle, cleared it. He had once mentioned that by ninth grade, he had started taking himself as a serious writer. History has seen that most great and successful people have converted their hobbies into their professions. Neal was no exception. He can be defined as a person with clear concrete goals. He studied at the University of California, Irvine, majoring in psychology and theater. At the university he wrote an independent study program and a humor column that was very well taken by the students. Very quickly, he climbed up the ladder as a professional writer and script writer. Within a year after his college, he signed his first book deal, and a screenwriting job. He has entertained people in a big way by writing short stories, plays, essays and poems. His contribution to the world of creative writing, movie scripting and television has been invaluable. Since then he has been winning accolades from organizations such as the International Reading Association and the American Library Association for his bestowal.
Ambidextrous Personality
He has tried his hand on a lot of things such as film making, making games, film directing and writing music and stage plays, which portray his commendable versatility. He directed two short films which won him the prestigious CINE Golden Eagle Awards. Some of the successful games developed by him are “How to Host a Mystery” and “How to Host a Murder”. He also worked on the “ARMCHAIR DETECTIVES” Mystery Jigsaw Puzzles. He wrote for TV series as well such as “Goosebumps” and “Animorphs”. He also invested his talents into writing the spectacular Disney Channel Original Movie “Pixel Perfect”. He has already earned a lot of fame and goodwill in the domain that he chose for himself. He can be contemplated truly as a bundle of talents. He is also credited with being a charismatic and energetic speaker. He used to tell stories to his audiences which comprised of children, teenagers and adults. He is regularly called at conferences and workshops in schools, colleges and other institutions. His writings are loved by teenagers as well as adults. His imagination has been described as being very brilliant and futuristic by publishers.
Unwind
Neal’s book Unwind is considered as a piece of mastery by the teens. This book is also available in the audio version now along with other book such as Everlost, ANTSY DOES TIME and THE SCHWA WAS HERE . This book won for him nomination into the New Jersey Garden State Children’s Book Award in the year 2010 and 2010-2011 California Young Reader Medal. It also appeared in the 2010 Pennsylvania Young Reader’s Choice Award List. Some of the other awards it won were 2010-2011 One Book for Nebraska Teens, The United Kingdom Coventry Inspiration “Simply the Book”, and the 2011 Abraham Lincoln Illinois High School Book Award. UnWholly is the new sequel of this book. The Unwind Dystology is a series of science fiction novels by him which includes Unwind (2007), UnStrung (2012) (digital novella), UnWholly (2012), UnSouled (2013) and UnDivided (2014).
The Schwa Was Here This is a book which caters to the young adult audience. It was published by Dutton-Penguin in 2004. It talks about an eighth-grader’s friendship-with another-student named Calvin Schwa. As soon as the book was released, it received high acclamation and a starred review from School-Library-Journal and a positive review from Booklist. It received the Boston Globe/Horn Book Magazine award in 2005 for fiction and poetry. The book had been considered for a telefilm project by The Disney Channel. Shusterman has been appointed to write the script for this project. He had earlier also worked with the Disney channel on the project Pixel Perfect.
Passion Fulfills Every Dream
Here I want to quote something that the School Library Journal wrote about him: “Shusterman’s characters–reminiscent of those-crafted by Jerry Spinelli and E. L. Konigsburg–are infused with the kind of controlled, precocious-improbability that magically-vivifies the finest-children’s classics. Since an early-age, he dreamed of moving to California, because his favorite television shows were shot there. Some of his award winning books and films are Unwind, Everlost, Deadlocks, Full Tilt, Downsiders and the list goes on. His books have had deep impact on the minds of children. Most of the early stories he wrote were mostly non-fiction. He is mostly known among the teens as a writer because of his series as Dark Fusion and the novel, Unwind. One of his book was also adapted for a Disney Channel original movie. He was a longtime fan of the X-Files TV show and therefore wrote the X-Files novelizations under the pseudonym Easton Royce along with other writers such as ric Elfman and Michelle Knowlden. His requirements and demands are so high that he has to divide his time between authoring, film scripting, film directing, and public speaking. Some of his books have been written for a younger audience such as the Antsy stories which are very humorous.
The Legacy Continues
He now continues to write novels in California and is working on a screenplay for his work “Everlost”. Today, he is also a source of inspiration for other creators and artists. He says that authors should not just focus and write for a specific audience. They must consider a wide range of genres and formats. He galvanizes the other writers by his four basic writing principles: “Write, Rewrite, Read, and Persevere. The world is sure to witness great many more things from him in the coming days.
At one place he writes to his audience “I’ve always felt that stories aimed at adolescents and teens are the most important stories that can be written, because it’s adolescence that defines who we are going to be.
The links beside each book title will take you to Amazon where you can read more about the book, check availability, or purchase it. As an Amazon Associate, I earn money from qualifying purchases. If you would like to link to us, Get the Code Here.
Recommendations
Every Monday we send out an e-mail with 12 Book Recommendations over various genres, and highlighting two big new book releases. Subscribe today! Or see all our past book recommendations.
BOOK OF THE MONTH:
This website would likely not be around if it wasn't for the author Brad Thor (Long story), so you better believe when a new Scot Harvath novel is coming out, it's going to be our book of the month!
Plus it's just a darn great series. If you're a fan of Reacher, Rapp, Bourne etc - give it a try.
The best way is to join the Page Turners Club on our sister site, Book Notification. Go ad-free and help us keep building new features.
Get new release alerts, track your reading, and build your TBR. Get Notified.
CONTACT ME
Any issues with the book list you are seeing? Or is there an author or series we don’t have? Let me know!
For more information on BSIO read the About Me page.
Featured Series
Are you a Jack Reacher fan? If so, you absolutely have to read the Peter Ash series by author Nick Petrie.
I recommend this series to anyone who has liked Jack Reacher, and everyone always replies thanking me for it. Nick makes my life easy. If you are a Jack Reacher fan, past or present, Check out this great series today.
Top Thriller Authors
Are you a fan of psychological thrillers? A big fan of authors such as Gillian Flynn? These are our most recommended authors in the thriller genre, which is my personal favourite genre:
Any issues with the book list you are seeing? Or is there an author or series we don’t have? Let me know!