Fake It 'Til I Fly!

I’ve promised a Sammy update, so here we go!

First off, to the recurring question of publishing dates: I actually have a schedule, but please keep in mind that this is the schedule that will be kept if I prove to be superhuman, which I don’t claim to be.

But I will continue to try.

Or fake it ‘til I fly!

Or whatever.

Second off, let me state that I’ve entered a tough stretch of life. Not getting into details or trying to drum up sympathy or anything (I am fine), I just share this with you because I discovered unexpected refuge in returning to Sammy’s world and following her headlong through another wacky adventure. When I’m with Sammy I actually do forget other pressures, think outside my situation, and laugh.

And what a relief it is to laugh.

I was on book tour years ago, sitting on the floor at the United gate so I could plug my computer into an outlet and work on a Shredderman book that was under deadline, when my editor happened to call to see how I was doing. I gave her an update, then shared that I was working hard to meet my deadline. When she found out that I was on the floor writing she said, “I can’t imagine that it’s going to be any good!”

Now, she didn’t mean it like that. It just sort of slipped out. And I completely understood what she did mean. Piecing together a story by stealing time when you can find it, either on the floor at a gate or crammed into sardine class, or before bed after a day of presentations and signings, you wouldn’t think that it could possibly come out well.

But somehow it came out great!

And surprisingly funny.

And now I’m in a place where there is so much going on in my life that I feel like any moment I’ll short circuit. But I have a deadline (2 weeks ago!) and a schedule to keep so I do what I can when I can. I take my laptop with me and write six lines of dialog at the doctor’s office. Six more with a cat in my lap and my computer teetering on the edge of the arm of a chair while my mother dozes on the couch.

If Nancy saw me I’m sure she’d think, “I can’t imagine it’s going to be any good!”

But that’s the incredible thing about this book.

It’s hilarious!

So maybe this is just the way I balance my life. Maybe I create the humor that’s missing to help me carry on in the real world. Whatever the reason, Sammy Keyes and the Lure of Justice Jack is going to be the funniest Sammy yet.

How lucky I am to have that girl in my life.

And now, the (hardcover) release schedule!

• Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls: September 2011
• Sammy Keyes and the Lure of Justice Jack (still the working title btw): May 2012
• Sammy Keyes #16: January 2013
• Sammy Keyes #17: September 2013
• Sammy Keyes # 18 (the last one!) : Fall 2014

Thanks for checking in. See you here next week (when I think it will be time to tell you what I’ve been up to with the Elvis Impersonator).

Bug's Life

Down and out with a bug!

See you next week!

Stay healthy!

A Rusty, Broken, Stinky Tricycle

When an LMS at a middle school in Oklahoma sent e-mails regarding a package she’d shipped, I knew I was in for a treat. Something about the package was very special, I could tell. Plus she’d hinted that the students at her school were super excited for me to receive it.

So I checked my porch for it daily, assuring her that it takes a little time to get here from Oklahoma. But after ten days of checking, I was starting to get a little concerned too.

“Something happened to it,” she fretted. “I can just tell.” She was kicking herself for not insuring it. Or getting a tracking number. Or, you know, shepherding it to my door.

“Don’t worry,” I told her, “it’ll show up.”

And it did!

There was a big square of cardboard affixed to the box with her name in the return address spot, so I knew this was The Box. So before I even opened it, I zipped upstairs and wrote her an e-mail letting her know it had arrived.

Then I opened it, and what I found was a tricycle.

An old, rusty, bent, broken tricycle.

And it smelled bad, too.

I pondered for a moment the significance of the tricycle and the possible reason this school would be so excited to send me a smelly bucket of rusty trike parts.

A skateboard would have made sense. But I have no book with a tricycle in it. Rusty or otherwise. And although our house is furnished with refurbished antiques, this trike was not the look we’re going for, either inside or outside.

So…what the heck?

Then I saw a letter inside the box from the United States Postal Service.

It was a poorly zeroxed form letter that reminds me very much of the over-copied rejection letters I received from publishers when I was starting out as a writer.

It reads:

Date: (blank)


Dear Postal Customer:


During the processing of your package the contents became unsecured and required rewrapping. We realize your mail is important to you (yada yada…) If the contents of your parcel is [sic] not satisfactorily accounted for (send us a detailed description yada yada to): PO Box 44161 Atlanta, GA We sincerely regret any inconvenience to you. (No signature, contact name or number of any kind.)


So great. Somehow whatever this school sent me got turned into a rusty tricycle.

I took a picture of the trike and e-mailed it to the LMS (since all the world except the USPS has such communication avenues) and, just in case, I asked if this is what was supposed to arrive.

She wrote back immediately and her answer was the one I was expecting:

NO!

The kids at the school had made a “quillow”—a blanket that folds into itself and can also be used as a pillow (or stadium seat, or back prop, etc.)—that had a RUNAWAY graphic in the center of it to celebrate my book and the units they’ve done around it. There was also supposed to be a “The Running Dream” backpack that the students had sewn, plus some peanut brittle.

Someone somewhere received a quillow, a backpack, and some homemade peanut brittle, and I got their nasty, rusty tricycle.

The LMS tried to find a way other than the PO Box to contact the Atlanta Recovery Center, and there is none. And of course writing a non-person at a government agency is going to result in nothing but wasted postage. (I am in awe of how they cover all their bases here.) Still, rather than give in to the frustration of this, the kids at the school decided they wanted to redo the gifts.

So they sewed me another quillow, another backpack, and baked me some more peanut brittle.

And this time they sent it UPS, and it got here without any hocus-pocus.

Issues with government agencies aside, the real nugget in this experience is that the school didn’t give up. The kids dived back in and did the whole thing again. And the teachers made time for them to come in and use the equipment to do so. The LMS sent me pictures of boys and girls working at the machines, fabricating these gifts for me. And what’s ironic about all of this is that this school is in a “lower socio-economic” segment of their region and with redistricting going on right now parents of kids who will be newly assigned to this school next year are protesting mightily. They are concerned about the school-wide Title I program, about having their kids in the oldest building in the district, and about subjecting them to a very diverse student population.

It reminds me of Jessica’s school in The Running Dream—it may not have had the greatest equipment, and the parents might have wished for their students to be in a more affluent district or a school with flashier credentials, but in the end it was the actions inside the school—the pulling together as a family against all odds--that made the school one where students truly triumphed. Sometimes it’s the creative ways around what you don’t have that illuminates what you do, and it’s usually through struggle that kids grow into compassionate, contributing adults.

Unpacking the beautiful quillow and backpack was also a good reminder that if at first you don’t succeed (or if your hard work gets transformed into a rusty tricycle), don’t give up. Try again.

All kids should be so lucky to attend a school that models and supports this.

Hate Mail!

Usually the letters and messages I receive from people are positive.

But not always!

Sometimes I receive (drum roll, please….) hate mail!

I answer my mail. (Although I am SO behind right now because of my deadline and it’s making me a little anxious.) I especially love the letters that aren’t assigned by teachers because I know the motivation to write to me is pure. (Even if they want me to send an autographed picture.) (Or an autographed book.) (Or to get a role in the upcoming Sammy Keyes movie [which is NOT in the works at this time, and which I could NOT do anyway, even if it were]. It’s all okay because I know that they’re legitimately enthused.)

(BTW, and just for the record, I am also NOT a bookstore, so don’t get any funny ideas.)

(Do we have enough parentheticals here?)

(Sheez!)

Anyway, I also appreciate the “assignment” letters—the ones where a language arts teacher has the students write their favorite author and tell them what they liked (and maybe didn’t like) about a particular book. (There must be a nationwide language arts teacher template for these letters because the structure is very often the same. It starts with something about the student—their hobbies and their pets and their families and what sports or clubs or TV shows they like—then moves on to what they liked about your story, and then asks you—even though they’re sure you’re very busy—to answer their list of questions [which can range from one to a hundred depending (usually) on whether a boy or a girl is writing.])

(Parentheticals rock!)

Double anyway, I LOVE the teachers who have their students include a self addressed stamped envelope for the reply because when you get hundreds of these like I do it makes it SO much easier (not to mention cost-reducing) if there’s a SASE. (Publishing reality: If I get 40 cents for every paperback book that sells, and it costs me 44 cents [and rising] in postage alone to reply to an assignment…well, you can understand many authors’ reluctance to write back.)

But I do write back (even if deadlines waylay me sometimes) because I remind myself that if I was the kid writing and I never heard back from my favorite-author-in-the-whole-wide-world, well, I’d be disappointed.

(Even if it was an assignment my teacher made me do.)

Sometimes a kid who’s been given an assignment will write that they weren’t wild about my book. Fine. Fair enough. So I figure that they don’t really mean it when they say to please write back. I mean, they didn’t really like my writing, so why ask for more, right? They’re just trying to finish working the formula their teacher gave them for writing an author.

One of the two “hate mails” I received this week sort of falls in this “dreaded assignment” category. The poor kid just didn’t get Flipped, hated the two points of view, hated the “boringness” of it, hated the chick on the cover. This student didn’t pull punches either. BAM-BAM-BAM! They let me have it. And then I got a litany of things I could do to make the book better. BAM-BAM-BAM!

Like I’m going to start over and publish it again?

But then, in closing, this student asked me to please-please-please write back.

Cracked me up.

The other message was more along the lines of true hate—something I don’t get much of to tell you the truth. But this woman did not like the way Swear to Howdy began (I swear to howdy it’s hilarious, but obviously this woman does not have my sense of humor. And obviously she’s not a teenage boy.)

Even though this book has generated some amazing fan mail, she said that after reading the first few pages she wanted to return the book but instead did the world a service by shredding it.

(I think we can all feel a little safer tonight.)

Now, there was a time I would have written these haters back. There was a time I would have presented a defense. I don’t like to be misunderstood, or have my work misunderstood.

And nobody likes to feel hated.

But you know what? I finally get that there are people in this world who will never like you, no matter what you do or how much you try.

(And you double-know-what? There are some people who if they did like me I’d be worried. Like, what kind of a jerk am I that that jerk likes me?)

The same thing applies to your art—there’s just no pleasing everybody.

What it boils down to is acceptance.

I accept that not everyone’s going to like me.

I accept that not everyone’s going to like my work.

The best defense is to just let it go.

Stop The Clock!

There's a four book contract on my desk and it's making me sad.

Mark laughed at me when I told him. 

He's been waiting a while for a one-book contract to come through.

So yeah, it's pretty silly that a four-book contract would make anyone sad, but it's for the final four Sammys and The End is coming at me like a freight train. Choo-choo. (Boo-hoo!)

Maybe I won't sign them! I'm going to miss my first deadline anyway, so why sign something you can't fulfill.

But my agent extended my grace period in the contract(s) so dang. I don't have that excuse.

The contracts arrived on my oldest son's twentieth birthday.

I cannot believe he's twenty!

TWENTY!

He can't believe it, either, and decided Disneyland was the place to go to avoid facing the end of his "childhood." So that's where we went this weekend!

So where do I go to avoid facing the end of Sammy? Disneyland doesn't seem right. And she's not "18" yet (the number of books). She's not even 15! She's only 14.5! She's still a kid. I have a lot of time left!

That's what I said about my son.

Maybe if I wrote sloooooower I could avoid this ending for a while.

But time just keeps marching, man, and my son's already twenty.

And these contracts are sitting here on my desk ticking.

But then there's Mark, in the next room, laughing, keeping it all in perspective.

Silly girl.

He's twenty. He's happy. He's healthy.

Silly girl.

It's a four-book contract and you're sad?

Wedding Crasher Art Process

Hi there and thanks for checking in! Before I get going on this week's post I want to thank everyone who left such nice comments last week. This community is so positive and supportive and I know I've said it before but, once again, I appreciate you!

(I also know there are questions in last week's comments and I will get back to those asap.)

Meanwhile, I think you'll find this week's entry fascinating because it's the inside scoop on the cover art process. I've mentioned in several entries how the writing process is in some ways more a re-writing process, and I think it's worth noting that this is often the case with the artwork as well. (And, extending the concept, with anything creative.)

To the left is the cover for the paperback edition of Sammy Keyes and the Wedding Crasher (which I believe comes out in May). I received the proof in the mail last week and busted up, even though I'd seen previous sketches and had a pretty good idea of what it would look like. Still, seeing it as a finished cover was really fun.

So how am I planning to explain all the steps involved in getting to this cover when I'm not the artist?

I'm not.

I'm going to let Karl Edwards, the illustrator for the Sammy paperbacks explain via his blog post. For those of you interested in art or illustration, this is an invaluable look at the process. For those of you who are just Sammy Keyes fans and want to see what the poor artist had to go through to make us all happy, you'll see the previous renditions (and Sammy on a motorcycle!). For those of you who have already read Wedding Crasher in hardcover, you'll see that all the sketches took liberties with the storyline, and that is because capturing the essence of this story with a single image (note that all the covers have just that), was a tough job.

So until next week, I'm delighted to introduce you to Karl Edwards, his blog, and his  fascinating overview of the cover art process. Enjoy!

PS If you like Karl's entry be sure to leave him a comment--it's always nice to get positive feedback and you guys are great at that!

It's Always A Big Deal

We just returned from an author friend's book release party. (Sherry Shahan for Purple Daze--a free-verse YA novel with "mature" content.) It was a 60's themed bash in keeping with the new book's Vietnam era setting, and it was nice to see so many of her friends celebrate her newest achievement, even though she has many books already in print.

Books are like babies. Everyone makes a fuss over the first one and showers you with congratulations and gifts (well, the actual buying of your book anyway), but after you've had a few, people (understandably) start losing track. The fussing fades away because it's no longer a novelty, it's just what you do.

So if you're the tenth child in a family, there will probably be few pictures of you, and lots of hand-me-down everythings.

But it takes just as much energy to build that tenth child as it did to build the first. Actually more, because you now have those other nine to tend to and keep on track.

So it's still a big deal to you, and still as big an accomplishment. And even if it has grown into "what you do,"  each book that follows that first one is just as special. (And something people who are praying for their first book would kill for!) The difference is, you can't expect the rest of the world to do cartwheels for you. It becomes your job to throw the celebration, and why not? You deserve to celebrate, and it's a lot more fun with others around you.

I never met an author before becoming one, and Sherry was one of the first published authors I got to know. So it was really great to see her decked out in hippie gear and taking time to celebrate what I know was several years of hard work. 

It was also good to talk to other people at the party--a nice reset on appreciating the good fortune of having even one book published. There was a woman there who told me how my talk at a local writer's organization ten years before had stuck with her.

I'm like, Hello? What in the world did I say?

Turns out, words of encouragement. About sticking to it. She said that my ten years of rejection served as encouragement to her. She's now very close to getting her first book picked up by a major publisher and she said that once she does she'll pass the same encouragement on to others.

Final thought: Sometimes when things fall into your lap--or they just happened for you easily--you don't truly appreciate that there's cause for celebration. But it's not lost on the person who's been trying for years and years. So if you're one of them, hang in there and visualize your first book bash. Then your second. And your third.

And invite me, would you?

It's a big deal.

It's always a big deal.