Elvis Holds Sammy

This week we laugh.

Go ahead.

I sure did.

If you read the post from 2 weeks ago, you've probably guessed that this photo is courtesy of Nancy, who took the ARC of Sammy Keyes and the Showdown in Sin City to all the places mentioned in Sin City.

She couldn't find a Mini-Elvis, like I did during my research trip (and like Sammy does during Showdown), but this guy's maybe even funnier. I wonder how much Nancy tipped him to hold the book. I wonder how much work he gets, there on the Las Vegas Strip, offering to pose with tourists.

Maybe he has a good singing voice.

Maybe that's the motivation.

Still. I wonder if he knows he needs a little help perfecting the whole Elvis thing. I wonder who he is when he's not Elvis. I wonder if he's got a day job.

I really hope he's got a day job.

Anyway, January 8th is right around the corner.

You'll be able to hold Sammy, too.

And find out who her dad is.

Just remember, the year ends in 13.

Can't wait.

Where's Our Girl?

I received a flurry of mysterious e-mails from Nancy (my editor) this week. They had a short teaser subject and an attached picture. No text, just the picture.

The subjects were "Where's our girl?" "Shady location," "Mystery man," "Hungry," "Searching," "Uh, oh"....things like that.

And as I opened them up, one by one, I was, like, HUH? Why is she taking a picture of the ARC of the upcoming Sammy Keyes in the midst of crackers and cookies? Wow, those are cool sunglasses, but...why?  And the book at the feet of suit of arms? Hello?

It was like my son was in kindergarten again and we were going around to odd places taking pictures of Flat Stanley. (Please tell me you had the Flat Stanley Experience as a child / parent.) But I had no idea why Sammy was in front of a fancy light. Or a stony sculpture. And I was feeling secretly dopey. Like, am I supposed to know what she's talking about?

And then, ZAP -- I got it.

It was the map. The corner of a map visible in the bottom of a picture.

I had studied that map when writing the book.

I'd studied it a LOT!

Stupidly excited, I wrote her back with the answer to where our girl was. Turned out Nancy had an elaborate series of pictures still in the queue--pictures that made it more and more obvious where Sammy was--and she was bummed that I'd figured it out so fast.

So right now you're going, Wendelin, hello? Sin City? How could you not have known? It's in the title, right?

I was in Flat Stanley mode, okay?

The first thing I thought was to share this with you. Especially since I've decided NOT to do a contest for ARCs of the book because I don't want some of you to know the identity of Sammy's dad before others do. No matter how fair the contest is, it just doesn't seem fair.

But I thought it would be fun to make a collage of the pictures she'd sent and post it for the super sleuths among you. (It was only after I was done with my little collage masterpiece that I discovered another batch of photo e-mails from her. I could share them later if you want, but I wasn't going to start over! For now, here's the first wave for fun (and to torture you a little :) ) ).

In the upcoming book, Sammy goes all these places. Can you identify any of them?

Have fun!

Sammy Update!

The problem with a mystery is that once you've read it you know whodunit. There's no ah-HA moment the second time. It's like a joke--it isn't really funny after you know the punchline. So I never share my work-in-progress Sammys with Nancy (my editor, for you newbies). Key to me is finding out from her when she knew who the story's culprit was. Her first read is very valuable because she's an astute reader as well as mystery buff.

Usually I manage to pace the story in a way that reveals things such that she solves the mystery at a satisfactory time -- ideally around the same time Sammy does. If something tips her off too early, she can point to a sentence, an action, or even one word that can be changed. I can't stress how important her first read is.

My goal with Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise is to have it be an homage to the mystery genre because it's the last true mystery in the series written in a genre that has provided me with reading enjoyment since I was a young girl. So I set out to make this a classic mystery, with heroes and villains trapped on a cruise ship, sleuthing and snooping and, of course, Sammy sassing!

But it's also the book where Sammy (and we) get to know her dad.

Which is A BIG DEAL.

And as much as I like sleuthing and snooping and Sammy sassing, I loved the progression of the relationship with her father. It became the aspect of the book that shined through everything else for me.

Nancy loved this subplot too, but when she told me she'd figured out the mystery early on, I knew I was in for a big re-write. After all, if you set out to write a fabulous mystery but  your editor's figured it out by page 100, you've definitely fallen short of your goal.

In early September she sent me a letter.

I read it and mulled.

In mid September we spoke on the phone for an hour about plot changes.

I mulled and then got to work.

And that's where I've been--buried in a rewrite. And as difficult as restructuring the story is, it started to become fun when I let go of the old and let Sammy be Sammy. In the original manuscript, there was a lot of Sammy talking to the villains. Now she's up to her eyeballs in spontaneous (read: dangerous) reactions, and rash (don't try this at home...or on a cruise ship!) actions.

She may be turning 14, but (as Marissa points out) the shadow of 13 is definitely following her!

Man, I'm going to miss that girl.

A little page-count update: I'd said in an earlier post that I was aiming for a slightly shorter overall length. Maybe 250? Some of you were, NO! but I saw it as an (extended) bell curve, where the series started under 200 pages and would taper to The End the same way.

In my mind it made for nice aesthetic symmetry.

Well, (although I'm sure things will change slightly) as of tonight we're weighing in at 302.

(Can I hear a chorus of YES! please? There is a huge difference in work between 250 and 300 pages.)

So much for aesthetic symmetry.

I hope you're also happy to learn that since we'll have some extra (blank) pages at the back of Sin City, it looks like the first chapter of Killer Cruise will be included when SC is printed up. (It was either that or include ads for my other books...I'm thinking you'd prefer the first chapter of KC, am I right?)

Finally, I hope you enjoy the cover art for Killer Cruise. (That will probably be tweaked, too, as you know, but I thought you'd like a sneak peek.)

Looking forward to your comments (and YESes) :)

Thanks for stopping in. See you next week!