I have been a “bookworm” for about the last two years. That means that I have been constantly seeking new, good books not just reading occasionaly. For the past 5 or so months I have been a “reviewer”. In these past few months I have noticed a change in my reading habits.

I can’t just read a book for PURE FUN. I’ll unintentionally begin evaluting a book. Every sentence of every page can’t just be enjoyed. It will digest and sit in my head all day and I’ll start noticing little blemishes or faults. The great amazing parts begin to numb a little with every crack in the books facade. Books that I absolutely loved and bought a few months ago, no longer seem completely over the top amazing. I begin to pick out little things (like dialogue clarification, plot speed, realistic/relatible characters, etc) that I never noticed before.

Is this a pro or con to book reviewing? I hope its a pro, but I have yet to make a final decision.

I intended GONE to be creepy.  I intend the same for the sequel, HUNGER.  And the sequel to that, LIES.  I sat down at my laptop thinking, “I’m going to give people the creeps.”  Why?  Well, that’s beside the point.  (Sociopathy, deep-seated personality problems, a refusal to consider therapy.)

Unsettling premise:  everyone over the age of 14 disappears.  Complication: some of those kids are mutating.  From there all I had to do was follow the premise forward to get to creepy.  

I didn’t want to do the whole, “Boo!” thing.  I wanted the creepy to be as real as I could make it within the context of fantasy.  Real but not.  Realistic within a story that’s completely unreal.  Following the premise forward I had no choice, really, but to write about kids at their best and at their worst.  Neither good nor evil could be banished, I wanted both.  Because that’s reality. 

In a world where every institution has disappeared, where every authority is suddenly gone and kids — kids without experience, without education, without much in the way of moral sense — are suddenly on their own and in some cases given great power, well, bad things are going to happen.  

So anyway, I follow the premise through. And I get feedback from kids that they like the book and find it nicely creepy. I promptly put up a banner that read “MIssion Accomplished” and then I landed a jet on an aircraft carrier.  (Oh, my God, that allusion is already old enough that lots of kids won’t get it.)  

But at the same time I started getting feedback from various adults, some of whome didn’t find GONE nicely creepy.  They found it really disturbing.  And some wondered what the hell is the matter with me.

(more…)

Hi all!  I’m TheBookworm of Au Courant and this will be my first post as a member of Stupid Blog Name!

This weekend my family and I celebrated an early Thanksgiving with relatives who live pretty far from us.  Family get-togethers can usually go one of two ways.  First, everyone could be having a lot of fun and nobody is crabby (this is the rarest).  And second,  everyone is in need of a nap and little arguments break out about who gets the last roll.

Thankfully, the get-together leaned more to the first possible outcome!

There was a little argument about who should get the last candy cane (It should be me!) but overall the night went well. We played a fun game of cards called Nuts (I scored 3rd place!). We watched a movie while I was beating my cousin at chess. The younger kids were running around and jumping on all the different tractors (I have to admit, I seated myself on a tractor or two also

But my favorite part of all was the food! You got your stuffing, your gravy, your mashed potatoes, ham, turkey, buns, and desserts. After my second plate I had to lossen my belt a bit, but a little tummy ache was worth it!

On the way home I was reading The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and I just couldn’t relate to Katniss, the main character. She was use to feeling hungry and had about starved to death a couple times in her earlier childhood. Here I am with my stomach practically bulging out of my jeans, and 16-year-old Katniss was completely excited over finding an edible plant.

Wow… I have never gone hungry before (well, maybe had lunch at 3:00PM instead of at noon, but still). I guess every Thanksgiving is a little blessing, no matter who you spend it with or the dinner’s atmosphere.

Oh, great.  Now my mouths watering, luckily I can smell dinner starting to cook!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving everyone, no matter where you are!

To check out my The Hunger Games review, click here.

There are certain things that people, for whatever reason, want to know about authors.  Like:  How long does it take you to write a book?  Do you write longhand or on a computer?  Where do you get your ideas? (David Mamet offers the best response to that one: “I think of them.”) 

I understand the curiosity behind those questions.  Here’s what I don’t get:  “Do you write in Starbucks?”  It’s always Starbucks.  It’s never, “Do you write in The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf,” or, “Do you write in your favorite local café?”  (I actually took my laptop into a local café recently only to discover that they’d covered up all of their plugs – presumably to discourage loitering writer types.)  For me, one of the perks of being a writer is being able to stay home with my cats and my teapot and my hidden box of Cheez-Its.  Why would I want to leave?

But yesterday, I did it.  I wrote in Starbucks.  My house is being renovated, and there are workers everywhere, all the time, and I can’t concentrate.  (I can’t shower, either, but that’s another issue.)  So I said goodbye to my cats (who were hiding under the bed), packed up my laptop, and headed to my favorite Starbucks.  (Fun fact for anyone thinking of moving to Orange County:  According to their website, there are 20 Starbucks within five miles of my house!)

Here’s the thing I never noticed about Starbucks until I tried to work there:  It’s seriously loud.  There are those monster espresso machines going WHOOOSH, and ceramic dishes going CLINK-CLINK-CLINK, and barista girls in green Starbucks aprons saying stuff like, “Pineapples are way high in fiber,” keeping their vocal volume up to be heard over the machines.  Above it all there’s some Bob Dylan-ish music, clearly intended to make Starbucks seem, you know — coffeeshop-ish.  Like, maybe if you were just a little bit artier, you’d freakin’ appreciate it.

The customers at my local Starbucks don’t talk.  They’re almost all on laptops.  Which made me wonder: Are they writers, too?  Or are they just surfing the net?  Or are they reading their email or looking for jobs or …

Stop!  Concentrate! You’ve got to work on your book!

I’d just about managed to finish my tall cup of supposedly low acidic (but disappointingly bitter) coffee and focus my attention on my latest book when I heard the magic words across the room.  “Would you like a sample?”  A heavyset barista girl was delivering … something … to a guy with a shaved head and a middle-aged lady in a flowered shirt.  

Hey!  What about me?  Back here by the bathrooms!  I tried to catch the barista’s eye, but she just trotted back to her friends at the counter – there were more workers than customers – and they all made embarrassing food groans as they gorged on the pastry.  One of them said, “It’s so good.  It’s something I would buy on my day off.”  I smelled cinnamon.

Defeated, I re-read my last couple of paragraphs, only to have the sample-bearing barista, who was talking on her cell phone, finally spot me.  She pranced over with a nice little slice of something centered on a chunky white plate.  She paused in her phone conversation to smile and ask, “Blueberry oat bar?”

And I said, “Yes!  Yes!  Yes!”  Okay, actually I just nodded politely, took the plate from her, inhaled the warm, sweet aroma, and finally … I tasted it!

It was … okay.  You know:  one of those healthy-sounding goodies that’s supposed to make you feel all virtuous because you can actually see the oat flakes on top but that you can just tell is laden with fat.  Plus, it was so sweet it made my tongue sting.  In the end, I managed to finish the oat bar, push away the plate, and knock out a couple of pages on my manuscript, but it wasn’t easy. 

Today I got my hair cut, and the shampoo girl, Brittany, asked if I was writing any more books.  I’ve got one due in February, I told her, but the chaos of my house renovation has made it hard to concentrate.

“You can always go to Starbucks,” she said, adding wistfully,  “I always wished I had the kind of cool job where I could take my laptop there.”

“Starbucks,” I said.  “Good idea.”

I’ve been on holiday for the last week and then ill for almost another full week (isn’t that always the way it goes?)

On Tuesday evening last week, I went to the most fantastic US Election night party I could have hoped for in London. I went to a friend’s place and as soon as we walked through the doors I knew it was going to be a special event. They had pictures of all the US presidents in the hallway (including Martin Sheen, what number president was he again?). They had tapes of famous speaches playing in the bathrooms, they had cookies, they had popcorn - they even had some actual Americans there!

The front room was decked out in US flags and banners, we had the trusty old BBC on the television as well as a projector screen showing streaming images from CNN and NBC. We watched the states turn blue with growing wonder and when Ohio was called and when the electoral votes were counted we all went crazy!

People were screaming and shouting, tears were shed, we hugged, we toasted, we cheered. It was the best election night ever.

This wasn’t even our election night, it was yours. We care what you think. Thanks for voting!

PS. Sorry if this seems out of date now, I’ve just been really really ill (sniff.)

Yeah, I know I’m a little late here, seeing this prop already passed on November 4, but I still feel the need to express my outrage that such a thing could even become part of California’s state constitution.

For those of you who are non-Californians, Prop 8 goes as follows, short and (not so) sweet:

“Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”

It basically eliminates the right for homosexuals to get married.

This to me is just ridiculous for several reasons. I’m not sure what good could be accomplished by enacting this law. All it does is discriminate, and what does that show about the people of California? That we are homophobic and prejudiced against people outside the norm? I definitely would not like to be seen that way. Think about it: the United States used to have laws preventing interracial marriage, between whites and blacks, and between whites and Asians. Those laws were repealed because they aren’t constitutional. Those laws eliminated marriage rights; so does Prop 8. Why is it okay now to prevent certain people from getting married when you can’t do so to others?

I know some religious groups, particularly the Catholic Church I attend and especially the Church of Latter Day Saints (the Mormons), were in support of Prop 8. I believe they refer to the Bible to declare that homosexuality is a sin. Being a more scientific person, I believe that sexual orientation is something you’re born with as a result of chemicals in your brain. I didn’t know until a little while ago that some religious people view homosexuality as a choice. To me, that is just ridiculous. I mean, I did a quick search on Google and found loads of sites confirming my theory. I mean, I just don’t understand, if everyone is “created in God’s image,” then aren’t the gays also? But then again, religion and science don’t mix too well, do they?

I’ve also heard some people say, well, so what if the gays can’t marry? They can get a civil union. Unfortunately, they are not the same thing. If a couple is married, then they are married in every state and have the same rights as every married couple. If a couple is in a civil union, then their rights aren’t uniformly defined across the US. So if perhaps someone in a civil union had a health care plan that included his/her partner in one state, they might not get the same benefits in the next state.

Some people want to protect the “sanctity of marriage.” Well, I hate to let this come to light, but people can get married in Las Vegas one night and then divorced the next. If that doesn’t violate marriage’s sanctity, then I don’t know what does. Some people think marriage is solely defined as the “union between a man and a woman.” Well, words change over time, as do their definitions. People will change language as it suits them. Why doesn’t that seem to apply to the word “marriage?”

Also, don’t even get me started on the ridiculousness of some of the propaganda supporting Prop 8. I’ve seen so many commercials and so many signs that my eyes have nearly bled (seriously). One of my favorites goes as follows: a young girl (maybe in second grade?) comes home from school and tells her mom something along the lines of “Today I learned that princes can marry princes and that if I want to, I can marry a princess!” And then her mom looks all shocked and probably proceeds to instruct her daughter in the “correct way of marriage” or something like that. Seriously, that commercial is so wrong it’s funny. Firstly, public schools aren’t required to teach anything about marriage, which is why I highly doubt a second grader would ever come home from school to talk about “princes marrying princes.” Besides, if there was a school program about marriage, parents can request to have their child excused from it, and the schools are then required to follow this request. On top of that, if parents don’t like the way public schools are teaching their children, they always have the option to home school their child or put them in a private school. And I don’t want to hear anything about well, maybe they don’t have time to home school their kids or maybe they can’t afford private school. Well, if they cared enough, they would find a way to make it happen.

I’ve also seen some of the most ridiculous handmade signs in support of Prop 8. One of them, I believe, said something like “protect religious freedom.” Uh, hello?!? Americans already have religious freedom. However, what we do not have is a mixture of government and religion. I don’t think eliminating rights for homosexuals to get married has anything to do with religion. It has to do with discrimination.

Oh, and my oh my, should you have seen all the signs in support of Prop 8 around where I live (I live in a rather conservative part of SoCal). One time when I walked home from school, I counted at least twenty something “Yes on 8” signs. The day before the election, I saw one house with at least 10 signs. I’m pretty sure I saw a man who lived in that house jaywalk across the street to plant some “Yes on 8” signs on public property. I’m glad they were gone the next day.

This weekend, I turned on the news and saw that there were anti-Prop 8 protests occurring in LA and one other southern California locale I forget. There were a lot of people holding signs that said “H8” because, well, that’s what Prop 8 is. I really hope Prop 8 will be tried in court and found unconstitutional (against the United States’ Constitution, not the California constitution considering it is now a part of it) because I believe in tolerance for people who aren’t like me. I am an open-minded thinker, and I hate it when people tell me what to think. I especially hate it when people lie to me. And this is why I am so against Prop 8. It serves no purpose other than to eliminate rights and promote intolerance and discrimination.

Of course, this is not solely a Californian issue. It was put up to vote in several other states, I believe Arizona and Florida (I may not be right, and there may be others as well). I hope in those states, their new prevention of same-sex marriage will be overthrown.

Muses?  Um, I think they’re on aisle 13.

Non-writers like the word “inspiration.”  My guess is that most writers don’t so much.  I know I don’t.  ”What’s your inspiration?”  ”What inspired you?”  ”Ooooh, you live in Italy, that must really be great for inspiration.”

Well, actually Katherine (Applegate) and I are leaving Italy.  We are dragging the two kids, the two dogs and the cat away from stunningly beautiful Tuscany to stunningly dull Orange County, California.  Why?  Are we expecting to find a muse to inspire us in Southern California?  No.  (The last muse in Southern California was killed during the wildfire season of 1997.  Her siblings had died earlier from mudslides, smog and earthquakes.)  What we’re expecting to find is high-speed internet, book stores, an Apple store and a Target.  Each of those mundane things is more important to me as a writer than my lovely view out over the rolling vineyards.

(more…)

I know, I know:  I’m not keeping up with this blog.  I’m behaving very badly.  Useless.  But I promise I’ll do better, starting in, oh let’s say three days.

I’ve been preoccupied.  I am ashamed to admit that I am a hopeless political junkie.  Politics is my sport.  I’m checking polls literally hundreds of times a day.  Yes, I know the meaning of “literally.  I literally mean “literally.”  Again and again and again, starting with the DailyKos poll first thing in the morning and proceeding around and around like a crazy person until I pass out at night with my laptop open to FiveThirtyEight.com.

I could draw you a color-coded map right now, showing every state as red, pink, yellow (toss-up) light blue or dark blue.  It’s really kind of sad.  But it explains why I’m not pushing people for posts or writing my own.  I’ll be better in a couple of days.  And since this is a YA lit blog and not a political blog I’m not even going to tell you who I support.

Unless you click on the “More” button.

(more…)

I love anagrams. And I love Rosemary’s Baby, both the brilliant and underrated Ira Levin novel and the unbelievable Polanski film adaptation. So I am killing two birds with one stone—make that three—to convince you to buy Rosemary’s Baby and read it soon (Levin started as a screenwriter and he’s a master at both understatement and making totally implausible situations seems real), rand ent the DVD of the film, even if you’ve seen it before. There’s so much to love, from Ruth Gordon’s nutty Satanist, Mia Farrow’s gorgeous Sassoon haircut, and John Cassavetes generally oozy ickiness, which, if you’ve ever dated an actor you will recognize immediately.

But really I just want to throw in an anagram I came up with while playing with paper and scissors—I’ve recently given up the act of cutting but still like to play with sharp objects.

So, here’s a nice use of “anagram” from Rosemary’s Baby, just to get us started.

“With no false moves she made [the scrabble pieces] into Roman Castavet.

And again into Adrian Marcato.

And then again into Roman Castavet.

. . .

“’He’s Adrian Marcato’s son,’ she said. ‘The man who said he conjured up Satan and was attacked downstairs by a mob. Roman is his son Steven. Roman Castevet is Steven Marcato rearranged—an anagram.’

Guy said ‘Who told you?’

‘Hutch,’ Rosemary Said. She told Guy about All of them Witches and Hutch’s message.

. . .

Rosemary looked at Guy uncormfortably and said, ‘You don’t think he’s –the same as his father?’

And here’s my anagram of the day:

SARAH PALIN = A PLAIN RASH

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Now, you may be thinking, why would a lowly teenager like me (who isn’t even old enough to vote) be interested in the presidential election? Well, even if I cannot cast a ballot, I do care where this country is headed, because, frankly, it’s the adults who are deciding my future.

I consider myself lucky to be relatively politically aware and to have my friends the same. I think it’s a pity that most kids and teens aren’t interested in politics because they don’t think it affects them. WRONG. The leaders of this country are creating the world of the future. And we all belong to the future, especially the younger generation. If people don’t care about electing future leaders, then they shouldn’t lament how horrible their situation has become in the future, because they didn’t try to change that outcome when they had the chance.

Now, I’m going to remain neutral in this post, because my point is not to persuade people to vote a certain way but to try show the benefits of being more politically aware. I don’t know, if the knowledge that electing certain people could mess with the future you want doesn’t make you want to be politically active or at least aware, then I don’t know what will.

Part of the problem with politics is the stickiness, evasiveness, lying, and just general politician qualities that make it so difficult for people, especially young people who are trying to figure out their political philosophy, to understand what each candidate stands for. And this only discourages people from trying to become politically aware, because, trust me, it is a LOT of hard work to find out who’s right and who’s wrong and what’s really going on. And then there’s the whole internal debate of if you agree with this or that issue. Just ignoring this whole mess would be the easy way out. Unfortunately, making a country run smoothly has never been easy, and in order to make it do so, people have to work hard from the bottom up.

So, I encourage everyone, especially young people, to watch the debates online, if you haven’t already. Visit Obama’s and McCain’s websites. Some other great sites to check out are Ya for Obama, YA for McCain, and MyDebates.org.

Don’t let your future be decided for you.

Greetings readers of Stupid Blog Name! While on my latest book tour (England, Sweden, South Africa, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand) something truly exciting occurred. I came up with the idea for the official Crack and Stack Challenge.

Editors, publicists, and booksellers who are reading this, please let your authors know:

It’s on.

The Crack and Stack Challenge has been informal up until now, but that’s over. I want official numbers. I want to know—who is the fastest stock signer on earth. That’s right. ON THE PLANET.

Because, I’ll be frank—I think it’s me. (Robert B Parker, who only signs using his initials, doesn’t count. To participate in the Crack and Stack Challenge, you must sign with at least one full name. Do you hear me? One. Full. Name).

In case you’ve never heard of the Crack and Stack Challenge, allow me explain: I made it up. I made it up on my past book tour due to my being sick of authors who take forever at their stock signings (for those of you who don’t know, a stock signing is when authors are sent to a warehouse or book outlet and asked to sign thousands of copies of their book, which are then sent on to random customers or shops to be sold as “autographed copies”).

Authors are asked literally to sit there and sign their name over and over several thousand times, and some will take forever to get through their books.

This is, of course, excusable for elderly or infirm authors. For those authors, it is reasonable to expect their books to have to be handed to them individually for signing.

But that is not okay for perfectly healthy young authors. Perfectly healthy young authors should, in my opinion, be required to participate in the Crack and Stack Challenge.

Why is Crack and Stack so important?

Because due to perfectly healthy young authors who take forever to sign their books, my publicist insisted I get up at six in the morning to make the two hour drive to the book outlet where the thousands of copies of my books were waiting for me, so that she could hand feed me each book one at a time.

I did not WANT to get up at six in the morning to do in four hours what should take one. There was no reason for it.

But do you know how hard I had to argue with my publicist that it would not take me four hours to sign a thousand books just because it took some other perfectly healthy young author four hours to sign a thousand books? I had to prove that I could do it!

Which is why I came up with the Crack and Stack Challenge.
(more…)

It’s not really surprising that I love Halloween.  Like all fiction writers, I spend my days making up stories of people who don’t exist.  (Which, for some reason, society lets us get away with.) But it’s more than that.  My books turn out, again and again and in many different contexts, to be about people pretending to be other people.  I don’t know why identity fascinates me so much, and, frankly, I don’t really care.  But on Halloween, I don’t have to limit my weird identity fixation to paper. 

My husband and I throw a big Halloween party every year.  And it’s funny: when it comes to dressing up, no one is neutral.  Year after year, some people find excuses not to come because they hate the whole costume thing.  (Surely it’s not because they don’t like me?)  Far more start talking about the party in January and haunting eBay for the perfect costume by June.  Maybe writers don’t have a monopoly on identity issues?

Enough text.  Heeeeeere’s Britney ….

It was a revelation when my girlfriend patiently and kindly explained to me that I was a geek.

I was obviously surprised: my love of sci-fi, spending time in libraries, getting excited about physics, weren’t these things cool? I wanted clarification because I’m a bit self obsessed, “Okay, fine.” I allowed, “But I’m King of the geeks right?!”

We live in Hackney, which is in East London. We have this regular walk we do from our house, through London Fields park, down Borough Market, through a flower market and into Spitalfields (another market).

It’s a nice walk. Give me a shout if you’re in the neighbourhood and we’ll do it together.

For those of you who don’t know or haven’t been to London this area is a vibrant, young and fashionable place to be (or at least, it is since we moved there).

I call the route we walk the ‘Catwalk Mile’. Everybody attempts to outdo each other in clothing craziness. Jeans pulled up around their chests, odd shoes (or no shoes), hats of all shapes and sizes, pins and badges - anything goes.

Interestingly more and more of these charity shop fashionista’s are dressing as bookish librarian types. The increase in people wearing cord trousers with a high waistline, thick rimmed plastic glasses and cardigans means that the Catwalk Mile is starting to feel like a trip to the local library. (Apologies if I’ve just offended every librarian on the planet).

The good news from all of this is that being a Geek really is cool again - look at Napoleon Dynamite. If you’ve been sitting in a dark room reading by a dim light, open the curtains and go outside! Times have changed! As you sit proudly with a well-thumbed copy of your favourite paperback, you’ll be recognised for the style icon and trend setter you really are.

I was talking a while back about doing school visits to promote the paperback of GONE and the launch of HUNGER (GONE 2) and the editor I was talking to made a good point.  She said, “Look, the question is how you’re going to present yourself.  You have to put some thought into that.”

The gold standard is someone like Lemony Snicket (Daniel Handler.)  He would play the accordion and tell jokes and basically put on everything just short of a Broadway show.  I only met Mr. Snicket while getting a book signed for my kids.  So I didn’t have a chance to talk to him and say what I would like to say.  Which would be, “Thanks a lot, jerk, you’ve really raised the bar for the rest of us.”

I don’t play a musical instrument.  I don’t tell jokes.  I’m a big, fat, baldheaded, cranky old man.  The things I care deeply about are politics and food.  If I had to sit down and talk to a group of YA readers the topics of conversation that would come naturally to me would be, 1) My preference for the Powell doctrine of overwhelming force, 2) Why food ideologies are ridiculous and beside the point.  I can do a good extemporaneous half hour on either.  Or on any number of other topics that would cause a 14 year-old (and most other sensible people,) to fall into a coma.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy talking.  It’s hard to shut me up unless you have a baseball bat handy and are prepared to use it.  But, man, what do I talk to “the kids” about?  The things I’m interested in are things that will either cause students to consider jumping out of the window, or, things that will make their teachers want to throw me out of that same window.

(more…)

(Yes, there is a reason I’m writing on this topic, but that will come up later.)

Personally, I dislike game shows. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of Jeopardy every now and then (the nerdy side of my shows through), but every day? Most definitely not!

I’ve never understood why certain people (*cough*cough*my mom*cough*) are obsessed with these game shows. It’s not like the watchers are winning thousands of dollars and extravagant prizes. I don’t see why people get excited over other people who they most likely do not know winning large sums of cash. I don’t understand it (being the kind of selfish person I am). I would rather not waste my precious time watching other people win money.

But on the other side of the coin, what if I got on a game show and won a bunch of money? Wouldn’t I then want a whole bunch of people to watch me on TV, my friends, my family, and even people I do not know?

Not being a huge fan of game shows, you probably wouldn’t think I’d ever consider even trying out to be a contestant on a game show. Yet, one Thursday a couple months ago, that’s exactly what I was doing. And what d’ya know, I got on. Whoop de freakin’ do.

Actually, it is kind of a big deal for me. I am a rather selfish person (see above), and I like money. Can you blame me? I like books and new clothes. To get those, I have to have money. To get money…I have to win a bunch on a game show. (Okay, I could get a job, but this is much simpler). So, even if I don’t particularly like a certain game show, I wouldn’t say no to winning a bunch of money on that show.

…Which brings me to the purpose of my post. I’d like to invite/ask/beg all of you to watch me and my BFF on Wheel of Fortune this coming Wednesday, October 22 at 7:30 p.m. PST. Pretty please? It would make my day! You might even discover my real name (if you do not know it already) if you pay extra special attention.

I cannot imagine that young adult readers will turn in droves to this blog to explain the current state of the world.  That’s what parents, teachers and South Park are for.  Nevertheless kid readers who may be watching their parents weep uncontrollably as they watch CNBC, or who overhear them wondering whether there’s an iPhone app for translating hobo signs, may be wondering if the world really is coming apart.

Short answer:  nah.  

I’d be the last person to want to go “age and experience” on you, but I’ve lived through ten of the last zero apocalypses.  The end has been nigh since I was born.  Always nigh.  Nigher.  Nighest.  But no, the end will not come soon enough to keep you from having to write that history paper.  I had to pay my taxes today, so once again the end is running late.

There’s a really great song called Eve of Destruction.  I was playing it today as I went fishtailing around the gravel road that leads to my home.  The tune is portentous, the lyrics grim.  The chorus goes like this:

But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don’t believe
We’re on the eve
of destruction.

Yeah, well, it’s true, I do tell you over and over and over again, my friend.  You know why?  Because that song was written in 1965.   The big thing the songwriter was worried about?  Red China.  Kind of thought they were going to blow up the world.  Turned out they were just going to send us toys decorated with lead-based paint.  

I was 11 in 1965.  In 1970 I was in 10th grade.  I was one of two kids to put together my school’s first ever Earth Day assembly.  Our big concern at that point?  Overpopulation that would lead to wordwide famine within a couple of years.

Yeah, that kind of didn’t happen.

I’m not saying you shouldn’t do your best to figure out what’s happening in the world and decide how you can help things work out for the best.  Not saying there aren’t very real problems and threats.  I’m just saying stay cool, don’t lose too much sleep over things and keep a clear head.   People who panic end up looking like idiots down the road.

One of the great things about being a famous author is that you receive piles & piles of adoring fan mail.  At least, that’s what I’ve heard.  (Meg, care to comment?) 

Me, I have to settle for stuff like this:

Subject:  My book report

Dear Carol Snow,

I have recently read your book “Getting Warmer.” It was a very good book, and I am looking foward to more books by you. I have a book report that is due very soon, and needed some help on it. The teacher wants to know the setting, and is expecting a description that paints a picture for the audiance. In your book, i couldn’t find the setting that well. if you could help me it would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

(A book set in Scottsdale, Arizona)