BULLY PULPIT: Destin author tells teen-agers to keep 'Standing Up' to bullies

[Edited to correct Jones' name]

When a publisher accepted Brenda Jones' first book a week after receiving the manuscript, the Destin author couldn't believe it.

“It was my first book — I was in shock,” Jones told The Log. “And I can't believe how many people related to my book, how many had a kid who was bullied.”

“Standing Up,” which Publish America released in March, is the story of a teenager who moves to a beautiful beachfront town only to become the target for bullies who despise his country accent. The bullying only ends when he stops running and confronts the bullies, which is the message Joyce said she wants her readers to take from the story.

“When we first moved here,” Jones, a DeFuniak Springs native, told The Log, “my son was in seventh grade and he was bullied on the bus; this is based on that ... Some of the events are true, some of it's made up.”

Jones said her son did confront his bullies; one of them was so startled when her son showed up at his house that he refused to come out and face him.

A Shalimar Elementary school teacher, Jones said she's written for her own pleasure since childhood, and finally decided, a few years ago, to try and publish a book. A writing course helped her hone her skills and taught her the key to marketing a novel is to learn what publishers want to buy.

“They said they needed books on problems that students might face,” Jones said. “You can write a book, but if they don't need it, they won't publish it.”

The company Publish America accepted the book in a week, Jones said, and it's now available on-line at Books a Million, Barnes & Noble, Amazon.com and at publishamerica.com.

Jones said she's half-finished with her second novel, a story about a family that moved to California just as the Gold Rush began in the 19th century. She said the book's background will tie in with the fifth-grade history curriculum.

“The more I research, the more excited I get about the book,” she said. “I find out all about these things that happened.”

One thing that surprised her about writing “Standing Up,” Jones said, is how much of the work is done online: “You submit it online (then) they would e-mail it back to me and say you have 48 hours to proof it, it would go back to them ... They even e-mailed the cover. It was all done online, I never even met the people I worked with.”