Dream [dreem] --noun:

Biography:

Arthur T. Lee started writing creatively when he was six years old. When his first book, a 1-page story entitled The Rainbow Goes to Japan, was chosen to  go to the local Young Author's Conference, writing became much more than an assignment. Says he, “It was clear to me then—while on the swings at recess, I believe--that writing was what I wanted…yearned…had to do.” Partners Again is his first novel.  With several more Middle Grade and Young Adult novels in the works, Arthur currently resides with his wife and three boys in Washington State, where, he says, “I have the privilege of telling my boys a bedtime story each and every night.” 

Growing up, Arthur enjoyed everything from watching movies to playing sports to reading books. Regarding this he says, "I loved good, clean movies. As an impressionable boy, they brought images and ideas into my heart and mind in ways I never could have imagined. I loved to play sports, too; and I was really good at them, though never as great as in my daydreams. And last of all I loved to read. Without question, books made words come alive for me. But in reading I was a passenger only. I desired to not only sail on the ship, but captain it as well; to sail across oceans as of yet undiscovered, and inhabit islands whereon I could build new worlds and influence others through word, imagination, and sport. My brother and I would spend countless hours bringing to life our stuffed animals and toys and imagined characters through stories created off the top of our heads as we played. Though we didn't have a video camera, my brother (who is now seeing success in the film industry) and I would pretend to film entire movies in our front yard, each of us taking on different roles and characters. Within those simple stories, characters and emotions ran deep; plots thickened; problems found resolution;  and climaxes grew in potency. In my memory, those were some of the greatest and most powerful stories ever told yet never captured on paper or film. Certainly, they formed the very foundations of a life-long love for storytelling in all its many facets."

Mr. Lee is a long-time member of the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators

A long time advocate of increasing child and adult literacy through the powers of reading and writing, Mr. Lee is also a member of the Children's Literature Association, and a proud supporter of schools and libraries, The Literacy Site ,  The SOHO Center/National Children's Literacy Initiative, and the First Book movement, "giving children from low-income families the opportunity to read and own their first book. "

Furthermore, Arthur is a fervent supporter of family friendly entertainment and the organizations that create, fund, and promote it.  A member of the Parents Television Council ( Why? Because our Children are Watching), he also supports the Dove Foundation (www.Dove.org), a foundation that , like Mr. Lee, embodies the optimistic belief that one can make a difference in the world by creating and supporting quality, family-friendly entertainment.

 Personal Snippet About Me:

 As I grow older, my memory--like my hair--begins to grey, and it becomes much harder to separate the facts of my childhood from the fictions...

Like the fact that little chocolate eggs wrapped in colorful, shiny foil fell out of the sky early one Easter morning and landed in mine and my brother’s shoes. Or the fact that our neighbor was a murderer who barbecued his victims every Friday night after work, and even once tried to shoot us while we were innocently jumping on our trampoline. Then there was the time a famous basketball player came to wake me up for my early-morning paper route, and the day I found a pickle tree growing in the back corner of our yard. My brother came from outer space. A lady on our street talked to lizards. My principal stirred his coffee with the lead-end of his pencil—and liked it. My art teacher chased me with a shovel after dark. And I once knew a kid who was caught picking his nose during class and, as punishment, was forced to continue picking it until he had filled up an entire thimble. It took all recess long, and by the time he was done his nose was so deflated it looked like a popped balloon.

Now, all stories have an end--that, I’m afraid, is an irrevocable truth; although often those endings are really just beginnings in disguise. Either way, when my story reaches its end, and the Golden-Spurred-Man-Upstairs calls for my guns and holster and hat, and I finally get the chance to rewind the tape of my life, I am sure I will see—perhaps—that some small embellishments were, indeed, made in order to add flavor to the monotony of every-day-living. But should I discover that absolutely everything I once held to be fact was all along fiction, and everything that I took for fiction was really fact, I shall still be pleased to say I lived a happy, adventurous childhood, and what I discovered along the way—be it real or imagined—was mine to live, mine to imagine, and mine alone to share. And that is precisely what I have set out to do.

On My Self-Portrait & Writing:

Here, in my "Self-Portrait of a NoMad Man", I, like many writers I imagine, find myself smack dab in the middle of The Utopian Divide, caught between two worlds; the world where my typewriter and dreams reign supreme, and the world where a sea of voracious sharks eagerly await my manuscripts to pick them clean; the world wherein the muse of my fiction seeks to inspire and the a-muse, who despises everything good, seeks to focus on the dark and dire. She is a sad and grumpy sort; and if it were up to her, she would have me write about dark and grumpy things. But I will not--I cannot!--give into her. Nor can any other writer afford to let the a-muse drive the fiction of our hearts from our hearts. The sharks will come and go, the a-muse will be a life-long friend and foe, and may, at times, yield powerful prose; but the writer who heeds the nearly inaudible song of their Muse, who gives precdence to the great, permeating good in the world over the not-so-good, and honors in word the triumphant over the conquering or the conquered, will never find their feathered pens or ink-wells without ink.