Lesson One

S.S. Wilson's first novel Tucker's Monster is the Winner of the 2011 Bill Fisher Award for Best First Book - Fiction, presented at the 23rd annual Benjamin Franklin Awards.

S.S. Wilson, screenwriter of such films as Tremors and Short Circuit has just finished his first novel Tucker's Monster after 30 years. "It really was 30 years in the making," jokes the author. After being "side-tracked" by success in screenwriting and directing, Wilson returned to a book he began over three decades ago and is now writing his second novel Fraidy Cats.

S.S. WILSON has always been a storyteller with a love of fantasy. His high school science project was an animated dinosaur that demonstrated the concept of persistence of vision, the "flaw" in human optics which makes movie watching possible.

As a teenager, Wilson made backyard stop-motion animation "epics" with 8mm film and later went on to study film and television at Pennsylvania State University and the USC graduate film program, where he met writing partner Brent Maddock. He and Maddock landed early jobs writing material for animation giants Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng's television specials featuring the Road Runner and Daffy Duck.

Wilson also wrote a book on special effects stop-motion animation, PUPPETS AND PEOPLE.