About the author.
Ted Kozak lives in rural Kentucky with his wife Virginia and their two dogs. He has proudly served in the Marine Corps and was a police officer for nearly twenty-six years before becoming an attorney. He has practiced law in California and Kentucky.
He has wanted to be a writer ever since his sixth grade teacher read one of his stories in class.
His second novel, tentatively titled The Mystical City of Lumenaria, will be released in Spring, 2014.
He is currently writing a gritty novel about police work called The Hunt for the Midnight Ghost.
The genesis of a writer in the words of Ted Kozak.
I was shy while growing up in Brownfield, Pennsylvania, and did not often to volunteer to answer questions in class at the Brownfield Grade School. But I did like to write and I liked to write funny stories. As a consequence, I was approached by some girls in my class to write a play that they could present as a part of their activities in the Girl Scout troop sponsored by the Brownfield Methodist Church. So I wrote a play called “Sir Deli and the Seven Obstacles” with action that was so intense it would be impossible to produce it on the stage. The story was about a dense knight who had to overcome seven obstacles in order to rescue a princess from a tower, only to find out she already had a boyfriend.
I only recall two of the obstacles. One involved the knight trying to cross a moat full of crocodiles; the other involved a four-hundred pound frog that kept knocking the knight down a flight of stairs every time he tried to go up to the tower. I handed the play over to the girls and laughed to myself when I saw them huddled in a corner of the classroom trying to figure out how to stage this monstrosity.
Several weeks later in class, the teacher announced in class that she heard that the play I had written had been performed the previous night in the church basement and everyone was talking about it. She also said she was giving me an ‘A’ in English because of it.
Puzzled at the outcome, I asked the girls how they managed to produce it. They said that they made a shadow play out of it, using a white sheet back lit by light and cardboard cut-outs, and used a narrator to explain what was happening.
Later that day, when I went home, my mother, a strict Catholic, was angry at me. I remember her exact words. “What in hell have you been doing up at the Protestant church?”
Years later, I asked one of the girls, who was now a grown woman, if she remembered the play. She looked puzzled and then said she didn’t.
Fame is so fleeting.
s/s Ted Kozak
Postscript: The Brownfield Grade School burned down when I was in eighth grade, but the Brownfield United Methodist Church, the scene of my first triumph, still stands proudly at the top of the hill in Brownfield.
Ted Kozak 