Sierra Writers
Lee Roddy
Best-selling author Lee Roddy in June, 2006, signed a publisher’s contract for his non-fiction book, How to Write a Story – An Instructional Guide to Understanding and Teaching Basic Story Writing. He said this gives him a current total of 48 book contracts in hand, including reprints. Most are novels for young readers.
The author’s earlier works included his novel, Grizzly Adams, which became a prime-time television series. His nonfiction book, The Lincoln Conspiracy, made the New York Times bestseller list. Roddy’s juvenile novels alone have sold two million copies.
He said, “A left shoe built up 3.5 inches with a cork sole made a writer out of me.” Born sickly and handicapped on an Illinois farm, he was confined to bed or a chair for the first 10 years of his life. There he became an avid reader and began writing. At age 10, he moved to California with his parents. Many surgeries corrected his health problems. His left leg grew to the same length as the right.
By age 12, he knew he wanted to become an author. His first short stories where published when he 14. At age 22, he went to Hollywood to begin his professional writing career part-time while earning a college degree in communications.
Roddy is experienced in many forms of form of writing. His first full-time writing position was for a Los Angeles advertising agency where he created print copy for major national and regional accounts. Later, he became promotion director of an L.A. advertising agency.
In Hollywood, he worked for NBC, CBS, and the old Blue Network (now ABC) and also scripted radio dramas for independent stations.
He wrote travel pieces for various national newspapers and magazines, movie shorts on historical subjects and articles for various magazines.
He was general manager or sales manager for radio stations in the Disneyland Hotel, Anaheim, California; in Hollywood, California; and Honolulu, Hawaii.
He was a staff novelist-researcher for a motion picture and TV production firm.
He was columnist, feature writer and journeyman reporter for daily newspapers.
He was also the editor and publisher of a small chain of weekly newspapers.
His credits include four series of novels (40 titles) for young readers, three “stand alone” juvenile novels, three contemporary adult novels, and six adult historical suspense novels in two trilogies, plus several “ghosted” autobiographies.
Roddy has taught fiction across the United States for Writer’s Digest, for several colleges and countless writers’ conferences. Hundreds of his then-unpublished students went on to sell their first of many novels.
Roddy is a past president of Sierra Writers (1999-2000). He and his wife, Cicely, have two children and two grandsons.