But I was still determined to make it as a writer - somehow. I moved to

Brooklyn and (while working a series of crummy jobs) wrote short stories, screenplays, and worked on a comic called The Adventures of Rabbi Harvey. In 2006, after literally hundreds of rejections, my first Rabbi Harvey graphic novel was finally published.

Meanwhile, I started working for an educational publishing company, just for the money. We’d hire people to write history textbooks, and they’d send in their writing, and it was my job to check facts and make little edits to clarify the text. Once in a while I was given the chance to write little pieces of textbooks, like one-page biographies or skills lessons (“Understanding Bar Graphs” was one of my early works). The editors noticed that my writing was pretty good and they started giving me less editing to do, and more writing. Gradually, I began writing chapters for textbooks, and that turned into my full-time job. All the while, I kept working on my own writing projects.

In 2008 I wrote my last textbook. I walked away, and shall never return! My first non-textbook history book was King George: What Was His Problem? – full of all the stories about the American Revolution that I was never allowed to put into textbooks. Looking back, I actually feel pretty lucky to have spent all those years writing textbooks. It forced me to write every day, which is great practice. And I collected hundreds of amazing true stories - many of which I've used in books like Bomb and Undefeated.

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