About the author James M. McCracken
At the age of thirteen I enrolled in Mt. Angel Seminary. It was a boarding school run by the Benedictine monks of Mt. Angel Abbey. I spent my teenage years there. It was also there that I began writing by accident. I'll explain.
My first love was drawing. One afternoon, at a basketball game, I sat down next to a friend's sister and began drawing. It wasn't long before she started to ask me what the picture was about. I told her it was nothing, just a dumb picture. She wouldn't take that for an answer and insisted I tell her the "whole story." She being older and bigger than me, I quickly made up a story and thought that would be the end of it. It was not. She then told me to write it down. I shined her on with a nod and an, "okay," but I had no intention of doing so.
A few weeks later she was visiting again and asked to see my story. That's when panic set in. I told her I hadn't finished it. She told me that the next time she came to visit, I had better have it for her. I quickly bought some typing paper and began writing. Four years and four-hundred and fifty typed pages later, the story was still not completed. However, now I was in love with writing.
I had always wanted to write a story about teenage years growing up in a seminary/boarding school. Thus, the Charlie MacCready series was born. While it is not an autobiography, it is inspired by the stories I heard and my own experiences while at the seminary. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I have enjoyed writing them.
Sincerely,
James M. McCracken
