Language Arts teacher Mark Mosley wrote and published “Convict Island”, written specifically for younger readers. “Convict Island” was inspired by his tenth grade Language Arts class after they had finished reading “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding.

“I think the premise and the idea of having a kid on an island is pretty cool,” Mosley said. “I intended to write it for students who don’t really enjoy reading. So it’s, you know, a really fast pace.”

He went through many challenges at the time of writing “Convict Island”.

“I had different ideas of what I wanted to accomplish,” Mosley said. “But from getting different ideas, figuring out the pace of the book and the different elements, there were certain things that I knew that I wanted to happen. Then all of the stuff in between just kind of just came out of nowhere.”

After ending the first book on a cliffhanger, he is picking up where he left off in the sequel.

“The sequel is going through the final editing process right now and is due to come out this Thanksgiving,” Mosley said. “I haven’t decided on the name yet. It’ll probably be something pretty simple, like “Convict Island II: The Return” or something like that. Nothing too complicated since it’s a self published book. I want people to be able to find it pretty easily.”

Mosley spent a lot of time preparing for how he should create the next part of the story.

“Originally, I intended on just writing a single book, but as I was going through it, I ended up writing some different elements to it that I hadn’t anticipated,” Mosley said. “The first one ended with a cliffhanger and kind of set it up for a second one in the sequel, so it took a lot longer to write the sequel then I had intended because life just got in the way.”

With a confirmed sequel to “Convict Island” soon to be published and released after some final editing, Mosley continues to teach his classes.

“Don’t trust what you see on the surface,” Mosley said.