Dover teen is inspired by a good story told well

Joshua Dunn, a senior at Dover High School, has pulled off what writers twice his age struggle to do: He has seen a novel all the way to completion and gotten it published.

“Tabor Ridge,” a novella Dunn finished recently, is available at Amazon.com in paperback. He is the son of John and Amber Dunn of Dover.

Dunn said his inspiration to write came early in reading the children’s books of Matt Christopher as a child. “Since I was very young, I loved and was inspired by his books, and I think it was from the sixth grade on I wanted to write a book and follow in the same kinds of themes and stories about sports,” Dunn said. “It was just recently that I got serious about it and started really writing.”

Christopher was the author of several books of sports fiction for young readers. The well-known author died in 1997, and books have continued to be issued posthumously over his name. He is one of the best-selling sports fiction novelists of all time.

Dunn said he devoted as many hours as he could to the project, which came in at about 22,000 words. It took about four months with the young writer trying to keep to a two-hours-per-night writing schedule.

Dunn, in addition to finishing up at Dover High School, is taking classes at Kent State University at Tuscarawas and holding down a part-time job. “There were a lot of very late nights, definitely,” he said, describing the workload. “There was lots of rewriting and editing. Every time I finished a section, I read it over and decided if it was good enough to go on. I think it’s a solid story.”

“Tabor Ridge” is the story of a young man, Jake Rose, with big league basketball aspirations. Before he can come close to an NBA career, adversity tests his ambition and his faith as he works toward his goal on the courts. Inspiration for the tale, Dunn said, came from both involvement in his church and in his love of basketball.

Dunn is doing a truncated version of the promotional tour required of authors. He held a book-signing at Buehler’s in Dover on March 14.

“Tabor Ridge” is classified as being independently self-published and was submitted to Amazon, which accepted the manuscript and did the rest of the work of preparing it for publication. Now available for just two weeks, Dunn said the book is doing fairly well among local buyers, and he’s looking forward to writing more in the future.

“I have some ideas, for sure,” Dunn said. “But it will be a while until I can get the time to start again.”

Dunn credits his teachers at Dover High with helping to polish his writing skills and the considerable writing workload at Kent State for keeping him inspired.

“The reading at KSU is much more complex,” Dunn said. “I liked the work of Matt Christopher so much as a child because the stories were very good and not too far out there. I’m a fan of a good story told well.”

Though Dunn didn’t set out to write as a way to make money, he said book sales have made the work at least worthwhile. “I recognize that to do this as a career you’d have to make some money at it. We’ll see how this one continues to do,” he said.

Dunn plans to go on to Kent State’s Stark campus and pursue a degree in middle education history and language arts. But he’ll continue with writing, at least on the side.

“Who knows how this will play out, honestly?” he said.