"The Tree" is Free

In the preface to my most recent book, Charity Case (Exeter Press, 2011), I wrote, “I have been writing all my life. Well, at least from about age four, a couple of years before I actually learned to write. My grandmother, Nanny—whom you have already met if you’ve read The Tree Nobody Wanted: A Christmas Story—told me that when I was about four I would ask for some paper and a pencil. The paper had to have lines on it. I would spend an hour or more making tiny marks on it from left to right, neatly staying on the lines. She said every couple of minutes I would stop and look off into space as if thinking about what to write next. Then I would resume ‘writing’ again. Nanny told me I did not simply write squiggly lines or scribbles on the paper the way a four-year-old would do, but I also made tiny drawings on the lines—a kind of hieroglyphics—so if it was a story about a canary, I would draw something that resembled a bird and color it yellow with a Crayola crayon. Writing about a boat, I would draw a boat; a big house, something that looked very much like a grand house. . . . I loved to ‘write’ my stories, and Nanny loved to hear me and watch me as I ‘read’ them to her.”

A few years ago, I decided to leave my film and television career—as a producer and script writer—and the business I had built (Commonwealth Films, Inc.) for the last thirty-plus years and spend all my time writing. I felt it was fitting to write the story about the Christmas that this wonderful woman and I spent when I was a small boy living with her in Brooklyn. The result was a very small book, The Tree Nobody Wanted (Exeter Press, 2007). To my total surprise, it became one of those overnight sensations one hears about. Reviewers liked it; the media had nice things to say about it; I signed books in bookstores and set records for sales; and I received hundreds of letters from readers of all ages and from all over the country, telling me how much they liked the book. One common thread that ran through all of the letters and comments was that it touched people’s hearts. Those comments touched my heart, as did the success of that book and the response to it (which you can see a sampling of on my website, tommccannbooks.com). A great many people all over this country have already read the book, but I want more people to read it. I am more interested in having more people read it than I am with selling more copies. So, I will soon be putting the book up on this blog so everyone who wants to read it can read it at no cost. I hope you do, and I hope that you will tell other people about it. If you think you’d like to have the hardcover book itself, either for yourself or as a gift for a friend or relative, you can order copies through tommccannbooks.com at a 50 percent reduction from the published price. (The fulfillment people at Exeter Press will charge $7.50 a copy instead of $14.95 if you identify yourself as a reader of my “Real People” blog.) A Kindle edition will soon be available from Amazon, at $1.99, and wherever digital books are sold. A CD-ROM version is also available from Exeter Press, again for the 50 percent discount rate of $7.50.