Meet Local Author Keshawn Dodds

—By Sally Fuller—
I’d like you to meet Keshawn Dodds, local author, father, husband, born and raised in Springfield. He is shown in the photo reading to his lovely 10-year-old daughter Sydney. Well, that’s not exactly true. Sydney was reading to him!
I know because I was there when we shot this photo as part of the #413reads campaign for Reading Success by 4th Grade.
Look closely at the book they are reading. Menzuo: The Calling of the Sun Prince. It is the first of six books in the Menzuo~Solar Warrior series he has authored. And it is soon to be released in a partnership with Cosby Media Productions (CMP).
It’s an exciting time for Keshawn and his family. The ebook is already out, as you read this. And the paperback will be out soon.
Here’s a teaser about the book: Menzuo a/k/a Jammal Hall finds out that before his twelfth birthday that he is to become the protector of the universe and will have to face an evil Pirate Warrior named Morbid from the planet Excervo.
I would like to tell you something about Keshawn and how he came to write this book. His mother raised Keshawn and three older brothers by herself, widowed when Keshawn was seven. Keshawn credits his three brothers with helping him find his place in life as an advocate for education, sports and pursuing his passion for writing.
At the age of 17, Keshawn’s best friend, Marcus McDowell, was diagnosed with cancer. While in the hospital, Marcus wanted to do something to help him deal with his treatments and the pain he was going through. Together the friends decided to create a comic book. Marcus loved to draw and Keshawn had a passion for writing, so the superhero character, Menzuo (Men-Zoo-O) was created.
When Marcus passed away, eleven months later, Keshawn had a difficult time and says he “didn’t know how to make my way back to being me.”
A few months later, after a long philosophical conversation with Marcus’ father, Keshawn went home with the artwork that Marcus created. “I would constantly look at it and then one day, I started to put pencil to paper and just write. I continued to write and write and write until I had a three hundred page manuscript. I really had no clue how it happened, but I looked at it as a blessing,” Keshawn remembers.
What he wrote was a tribute to Marcus as well as a way of dealing with the loss of his best friend.
The good news is that Keshawn has not stopped writing, creating five more books in the Menzuo series.
More good news is his recent partnership with Cosby Media Productions in their national reading initiative, Rediscover Reading. Working on the release of the first book in the series, Keshawn and CMP have great plans for Keshawn’s Menzuo and his superhero adventures. They have designated 2015 as the Year of the Hero, so you will be hearing more of Menzuo and several other characters in development.
Watch for more excitement from Keshawn and Menzuo coming soon!