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G. Neri is the author of "Tru & Nelle," a middle-grade novel based on the childhood friendship of Truman Capote and Nelle Harper Lee.

"Most people want to share stories that are moving, outrageous or whatever, and they use social media to do it. I am also sharing stories, but I use books."

That's how author G. Neri explains his approach to life. Neri, who describes his work as "teen fiction for the real world," translates real-life events into fiction. His latest is "Tru & Nelle," a middle-grade book based on the childhood friendship of authors Truman Capote and Nelle Harper Lee. Lee died 11 days before the book's March 1 publication.

We spoke with Neri in advance of his appearance at the Alabama Writers Symposium in Monroeville. The conference takes place in Lee's hometown, and runs March 31 to April 2. Find a complete schedule at ascc.edu.

When did you begin work on this book, and why?

Right when I finished it, the first draft, there was no knowledge even of "Go Set A Watchman." That was discovered, then that came out, then she passed away within this period before ("Tru & Nelle") came out.

All my books start with a kind of odd moment. With this book, it was actually about two years ago this month when Philip Seymour Hoffman died, and I did that thing that most people do when they admire an artist who passed" You start looking at their work again, and of course one of the first things I watched was his Oscar-winning portrayal in "Capote." Truman Capote was one of my favorite writers growing up, and there he is and there's Harper Lee, they're in small town Kansas. And I kind of remember, 'Did they grow up as next-door neighbors?' I had to know more.

The stories I started to uncover were so outrageous and funny and colorful. I couldn't believe that nobody had written about this friendship specifically. There have been lots of biographies, but no one had written about this friendship. It read like fiction, it was that entertaining. It called out for that kind of treatment, plus the fact that they used their childhoods for their own fiction: "To Kill a Mockingbird," "A Christmas Memory," "The Grass Harp" and many of Truman's other stories.

The more I uncovered, the more I couldn't stop thinking about it. I really want to see that book, but nobody has done that book. So I guess I have to do it.

The setting is rather different from most of your novels. How does place factor into your stories?

I have different stories that take place all over the United States, and I spend a lot of time traveling. I do a lot of school visits all over the country. The biggest accomplishment I can do is when I go back to a place, whether it's the South Side of Chicago or St. Louis or Tennessee, and I talk to the kids who read that book, and they start asking me questions. Those questions are very specific; they're trying to figure out what neighborhood I live in. I somehow capture the world they're living in so vividly that they can't believe I don't live there.

Everywhere I go, I'm interested in the story behind a place. Monroeville has a lot of story. Monroeville is like a character in the story.

A lot of the kids I visit, they've never left their city or their neighborhood and have only seen a small slice of life. A big thing for my books is to share stories of other people and other places and other times. That's one of the most important ways for young people to open up so they're tolerant of people who aren't like them.

All the main characters in my stories are outsiders, kids who don't fit in, who don't belong. To me, there were no two bigger outsiders than Truman and Nelle. That just fell right into my own natural way of telling story.

What do you read when you're in the midst of a writing project? Does that differ in any way from your usual reading habits?

It does, because I cannot read fiction while I'm writing. The big reason is, I kind of pride myself that my writing style is not evocative of anybody else. It's really my own. Part of that is, if we read a great writer, that style is just going to naturally leak into your head and you'll start writing like them. So I specifically stay away from fiction. Therefore, that means I'm reading a lot of nonfiction all the time. Because I write so much, there's really no break. Every project is kind of overlapping.

I was very lucky last year to serve on the National Book Award committee, so that allowed me 4.5, five months of reading fiction all at once. But it also meant that I couldn't write (laughs), so it's a tradeoff.

What's ahead for you?

All my books are inspired by real life. Coming up with ideas is the easy part because real life has so many amazing stories that need to be told. I won't live long enough to tell all the stories.

Even if I'm ahead of the game--I have a couple books already done--I always feel like I'm three projects behind because I'm so excited about these other stories, but I can't get to them physically.

(Next is a) graphic novel called "Grand Theft Horse," which is the story of my cousin who is kind of a modern-day outlaw out in California. She trains race horses. If you know anything about the horse-racing world, there's a lot of tragedy going on. Hundreds of horses are killed every year racing. To save this racehorse, she broke in Christmas Eve to save this one race horse because if it raced one more time it was going to die. She had everything against her, she was banned from the racing world, she had criminal charges against her, first charge of grand theft horse in a hundred years.

She represented herself (legally). And she's not an educated woman, it was kind of a big thing. She's one of those outsider spirits, and she inspires me.

AN EXCERPT

Chapter one: A Case of Mistaken Identity

Monroeville, Alabama--Summer, sometime in the Great Depression

When Truman first spotted Nelle, he thought she was a boy. She was watching him like a cat, perched on a crooked stone wall that separated their rambling wood homes. Barefoot and dressed in overalls with a boyish haircut, Nelle looked to be about his age, but it was hard for Truman to tell -- he was trying to avoid her stare by pretending to read his book.

"Hey, you," she finally said.

Truman gazed up from the pages. He was sitting quietly on a wicker chair on the side porch of his cousins' house, dressed in a little white sailor suit.

"Are you . . . talking to me?" he said in a high wispy voice.

"Come here," she commanded.

Truman pulled on his cowlick and glanced across the porch to the kitchen window. Inside, Sook, his ancient second cousin (thrice removed), was prepping her secret dropsy medicine for curing rheumatism. Sook normally kept a close eye on Truman, but at that moment, she was humming a song in her head, lost in thought.

Truman stepped off the porch because he was curious about who this little boy was. He'd made no friends since arriving at his cousins' house two weeks ago. It was early summer and he yearned to play with the boys he saw making their way to the swimming hole. So he straightened his little white suit and wandered slowly past the trellises of wisteria vines and japonica flowers until he came upon the stone wall.

Truman was taken aback. He scrunched up his face; he'd been confused by Nelle's short hair and overalls. "You're a . . . girl?"

Nelle stared back at him even harder. Truman's high voice, white-blond hair, and sailor outfit had thrown her for a loop too. "You're a boy?" she asked, incredulous.

"Well, of course, silly."

"Hmph." Nelle jumped off the wall and landed in front of him -- she stood a head taller. "How old are you?" she asked.

"Seven."

"You smell funny," she said, matter of fact.

He sniffed his wrist while keeping his eyes glued on her. "That's from a scented soap my mother brought me from New Orleans. How old are you?"

"Six." She stared at the top of his head then put her hand on it, mashing down his cowlick.

"How come you're such a shrimp?"

Truman pushed her hand away. "I don't know . . . How come you're so . . . ugly?"

Nelle shoved him and his book into the dirt.

"Hey!" he cried, his face bright red. His precious outfit was now dirty. Seething, he jutted out his lower jaw (with two front teeth missing) and scowled at her. "You shouldn'ta done that."

She grinned. "You look just like one of them bulldogs the sheriff keeps."

He pulled his jaw back in. "And you look like --"

"Just what on earth are you wearing?" she asked, cutting him off.

It should have been obvious to her that he was wearing his Sunday best -- an all-white sailor suit with matching shoes. "A person should always look their best, my mother says," he huffed, scrambling to his feet.

She giggled. "Was your mother an admiral?"

She glanced at the discarded book on the ground and started poking at it with her bare foot till she could see its title -- The Adventure of the Dancing Men: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery.

"You can read?" she asked.

Truman crossed his arms. "Of course I can read. And I can write too. My teachers don't like me because I make the other kids look stupid."

"Cain't make me look stupid," she said, snatching the book off the ground and scanning its back cover. "I can read too, and I'm only in first grade."

With that, she turned and climbed back up the wall.

"Hey, my book!" he protested. "I didn't say you could take it!"

She stopped and considered Truman until something behind him caught her attention -- Sook was fanning smoke out the kitchen window. Nelle squinted at Sook, then back at him. "Say, Miss Sook ain't your mama -- she's way too old. And I know her brother, Bud, ain't your pa neither. Where your folks at?"

Truman looked back at the house. "She's my older cousin on my mother's side," he said. "So's Bud and Jenny and Callie too."

"I always thought it strange that none of 'em ever got married or nothin'," said Nelle, watching Sook. "And now they're still all living together just like they did when they was kids -- even though they're as old as my granny."

"That's Cousin Jenny's doing. She's the boss of all of us, what with running the hat store and the house at the same time -- she makes sure we all stay family."

"Well, why do you live here?" she asked.

"I'm just staying here for the time being. My daddy's off making his fortune. He's a . . . entre-pren-oor, he calls it. I was working with him on the steamboats that go up and down the Mississippi, but then the captain told me I had to leave. So Sook and them are watching me for now."

"Why'd they kick you off a steamboat?"

"Because . . ." He weighed his words carefully. "Because I was making too much money," he said finally, fiddling with his oversize collar. "See, my daddy brought me onboard to be the entertainment. I used to tap-dance while this colored guy, Satchmo Armstrong, played the trumpet. People were throwing so much money at me, the captain got mad and told me I had to git!"

Nelle seemed skeptical. "You're lying. Let's see you dance, then."

Truman looked at the soft dirt he was standing on. "I can't here. You need a wood floor to tap on. And besides, I don't have on my dance shoes."

Nelle stared at his clothes. "Who gave you them funny clothes anyways?" she asked.

"My mama bought them in New Orleans. That's where we come from."

No boys she knew ever wore anything like that. "Well, they sure do dress funny down there in New Or-leeeens. Is that where your mama's at now?" she asked.

Truman stared at his feet. "Maybe."

"Maybe? Well, for land's sake, why ain't you staying with her then?" she asked.

Truman shrugged. He didn't want to talk about it.

"Suit yourself," said Nelle. "Say, what's your name anyways?"

"Truman. What's yours?"

"I'm Nelle. Nelle is Ellen spelt backwards. That's my granny's name. You got a middle name?"

Truman blushed. "Maybe. What's yours?"

"Harper. What's yours?"

Truman's face turned even redder. "Um . . . Streckfus," he said, embarrassed.

Nelle looked mystified, so Truman explained. "My daddy named me after the company he worked for -- the Streckfus Steamship Company."

Nelle choked back a laugh. "Well, I guess you wasn't kidding about that boat." She was going to say something else but changed her mind. "Okay, then, see ya 'round."

She jumped off the wall onto the other side.

"Hey! What about my book?" he yelled after her.

She was already running back to her house. "You'll get it when I'm good 'n' done with it, Streckfus!"

When Truman wandered back to his house, he told ol' Sook about his odd encounter with Nelle. She just shook her head. "Poor child. Her daddy works all the time and her mama's . . . well, she's a bit sick in the head."

"How do you mean?" he asked.

Sook glanced over at Nelle's house, running her hands through her thinning gray hair. She was small and slight but full of life -- and opinions. "Her mama acts real peculiar sometimes -- wanders the streets saying the strangest things to people. Some nights, she'll be playing her piano on the porch at two in the morning, waking up everyone in the neighborhood. Some say it's to block out the voices in her head."

"Can't she take some of your dropsy medicine for that?" asked Truman.

She shook her head. "Some things can't be cured -- even by my special potion." Sook leaned in and whispered to him, "Sometimes her mama forgets to cook supper, and poor Mr. Lee and his children end up eating watermelon for dinner!"

No wonder Nelle acted strange.

That night, Truman went through his collection of books and picked out one just for her: a Rover Boys adventure called The Mystery of the Wrecked Submarine.

She'll like this one, he thought. He left it on top of the stone wall for her.

When he woke up the next morning, the book was gone.