About the Author

Nicholas Gray

THE STORY THAT REFUSED
TO STAY SMALL

 

The earliest version of Model Citizens began more than two decades ago as a story Nick developed with his son.

But Nick being Nick, the story didn’t stay where it started.

New characters appeared.

The friendships grew.

The Model Citizens found an old hangar.

Then came the model airplanes. Pilots. Mechanics. Veterans. Rivalries. Cooks and neighborhood people coming to help. Problems to solve. Bigger ideas. Bigger stakes.

Every time the story seemed to have found its boundaries, Nick’s imagination pushed past them.

What began as a story shared between a father and his children gradually became something much larger:

An epic adventure about five young friends, an unforgettable group of older characters and what happens when two generations discover just how much they can accomplish together.

Now, the story is a well-rounded, full blown adventure book – Model Citizens: The Wings of Change.

 

DON’T JUST TELL A STORY. TELL A GREAT ONE.

Nick has a simple philosophy about storytelling:

People don’t just want a story. They want a great story.

Something that grabs you, wakes you up and makes you want to know what happens next.

That’s why Model Citizens: The Wings of Change doesn’t begin with a lesson.

It begins with an adventure.

The friendships, mentorship, teamwork, courage and connections between generations emerge because of what the characters go through together—not because the reader is being told what to think.

  

Nick believes a good story keeps readers guessing about what might come next. It makes them care about the characters, gives those characters something worth fighting for, and then takes readers somewhere they never expected to go.

 

A SONGWRITER’S APPROACH TO STORYTELLING

Long before Model Citizens became a novel, Nick was writing songs.

Songwriting and storytelling come from much the same place for him: finding an idea, creating a feeling and turning it into something another person can experience.

A song needs edges to give it texture. So does a story.

There needs to be rhythm, surprise, emotion and momentum.

And above all there needs to a reason to keep listening—or keep turning the page.

That creative instinct helped shape the world of Model Citizens: colorful characters, humor, action, unexpected turns and an adventure that keeps getting bigger.

THE WORLD OF MODEL CITIZENS

Today, Nicholas Gray is the author of Model Citizens: The Wings of Change.

But “author” only tells part of the story.

He’s a songwriter.

A character creator.

An imaginative thinker.

And, above all else, a storyteller.

Model Citizens is a world that lived in Nick’s imagination for years, changing and expanding until it finally became the adventure it was meant to be.

And if there’s one thing Nick hopes readers feel when they reach the final page, it’s simple:

That was a great story. I can’t wait for the sequel!
A STORYTELLER LONG BEFORE HE BECAME AN AUTHOR

 Nicholas Gray has been creating stories for as long as he can remember.

Stories. Characters. Songs. Music. Ideas.

For Nick, creativity has never stayed neatly in one place. A character leads to another character. An idea becomes a scene. A scene opens the door to something bigger. And before long, a simple story has taken on a life of its own.

That’s exactly what happened with Model Citizens: The Wings of Change.

IMAGINATION WAS NEVER THE PROBLEM

Growing up with undiagnosed dyslexia, Nick struggled with reading and writing in school without understanding why.

He wouldn’t discover the reason until adulthood.

But while getting words onto a page could be difficult, coming up with them never was.

Nick’s imagination was always running and still does.

He became a lifelong storyteller and songwriter, creating characters, situations, lyrics and stories in his head long before he ever thought of himself as an author.

Dyslexia may have influenced the way Nick learned, but it never limited the way he imagined.

If anything, it helped reinforce something that appears throughout Model Citizens:

There is more than one way to think.  More than one way to solve a problem…and definitely more than one way to tell a great story.
WHEN STORYTELLING BECAME SOMETHING MORE

Nick’s mother recognized his gift for storytelling when he was about thirteen and family or friends were visiting, she would sometimes call him into the room and ask him to tell everyone a story.

So he did.

And then something happened.

People listened. They laughed. They reacted.

Nick realized he could hold a room with a story. And when people responded, he kept going—adding another detail, another character, another twist, making the story bigger and seeing where his imagination could take them next.

Those early experiences taught him something he never forgot:

It’s important to tell a story the right way and finish it on the right note.