I used to think I had the best job in the world. Day after day, I sit around in my sweatpants and make stuff up. And people pay me for it! What could be cooler? Okay, it would be cooler if people paid me more for it, but – you know. I do okay, all things considered.

As it turns out, if you take money out of the equation (and with most writing jobs you have to), a woman named Jeanne Hoffa has the best job in the world. She writes the daily crime log for my local paper. Being from New Jersey, I love that someone named Hoffa writes the crime log. (Confused? Google “Hoffa” and “Meadowlands” and all will become clear.) Beyond that, I am in awe of her ability to encapsulate entire lives in a few short lines. Example:

Transient – white man in his 50’s wearing a baseball cap, a black trench coat and carrying a camouflage bag is blocking the driveway at the Kinder Care Learning
Center stating the governor owes him money.

Bear in mind that the paper is published in California – which means the governor in question is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Hasta la vista, baby.

More from the same issue:

Suspicious – Caller states there is a bloody knife in the dirt to the rear of the House of Bibles on Harbor Blvd. Final Case: Halloween knife. No blood.

Patrol Check – Caller request patrol car due to her husband having an affair. The husband of the woman her husband is cheating with is threatening to pummel him.

Suspicious – Man is standing in the middle of the street attempting to pull his pants down. The pants are jeans. Also wearing a baseball jersey. Possibly drunk.

Possibly drunk? You think?

And, finally, file this one under “I believe the children are our future”:

Suspicious – Authorities at Fullerton High School have student in principal’s office who asked what smoking methamphetamine does after taking ADD meds.

All of this goes to show that the best material does not lie between my ears but outside my front door. However, having also read the less-amusing entries (Disturbance – Caller’s grandson was standing outside on 600 block of e. Imperial Highway when an unknown subject pulled up in a red Volvo and pointed a black handgun at him), I’m thinking I should keep my front door locked.

All right, Meg.  I’m in.  

Oh yeah:  we are on!

Some time ago Meg Cabot issued the Crack and  Stack challenge.  Confident of her superhuman book-signing abilities, the Queen of Chicklit issued a challenge to authors: sign a thousand books.  In one hour. I’m not sure why she insists we smoke crack, but what the heck.

Wait.  Okay, I re-read the part in Meg’s post about the crack.  So never mind that.

On Tuesday, March 31st, I will present myself at the offices of Egmont Publishing, #3 Vegemite Street in the quaint English village of North  Eelpie on Gorge, Nossex, UK and whatever random string of numbers those foreigners use in lieu of a decent, God-fearing zip code.  (Maybe I should double-check that address.) There I will be presented with (up to) 1,000 books to sign.

I will proceed to school the arrogant Ms. Cabot.

However.  I would like to make note of two facts.  One: I’m 100 years old and afflicted by most of the illnesses diagnosed on House during that show’s first three seasons.  (That’s right:  leprosy. I’m down to a thumb, a finger and a nub.)  Two: there are online rumors that Meg Cabot has a prosthetic robot arm.   I don’t have any proof of that.  I’m just putting it out there, you be the judge.  So it’s possible that a fair-minded person would want me to benefit from a small handicap.  Let’s say 300 books.

The winner will be chosen by this blog’s Alistair Spalding (or his representative,) who can be relied upon to set aside the fact that his employer publishes me while some (possibly Communist) competitor publishes Meg Cabot.

When my son was two years old, he used to play with Power Rangers figures. I hope he never reads this, because now that he’s a teenager, he’d probably wire a bomb to my car for saying it. Or strangle me with his iPod earbuds.

His favorite was a green one. Trevin’s Green Ranger was missing a leg, so my son named him “Lucky.” He explained, in perfect two-year-old oral arguments, that the Power Ranger had to be “Lucky” because he wasn’t missing the other leg, too. Trevin took Lucky everywhere with him, even several times to Hawaii, when we’d go there to visit my wife’s side of the family.

We live on a farm. I brought home some baby chickens a few years ago, but they were too small to put out in the henhouse, so we kept them in the bathroom. One day, our Aussie dog came into the house to herd and play with our little chickens. The dog played with one of them a little too enthusiastically, and ended up removing all the bird’s feathers. But the chicken didn’t die (yet), so, of course, we named her “Lucky.”

When the chickens got big enough to move out to the henhouse, they thrived there (except for the ones who got eaten by a mountain lion). They lay so many eggs that we have to give them away. And they pretty much have their run of the place, going anywhere they want to (they’re fast enough to keep clear of the dogs).

One day, one of our horses stepped on Lucky’s leg and broke it. So I guess there was some kind of weird prophesy in naming her Lucky. Anyway, she still didn’t die (yet). But her leg was permanently bent backwards, and she didn’t so much walk as hop. But she still got around okay.

When we go out to the henhouse in the mornings, all the chickens follow us inside for food. Sometimes, when we stir around the straw and nests, we’ll uncover mice. The chickens love to chase the mice. They’ll even fight over them and eat them.

I have no doubt that if chickens were big enough, they’d eat people.

And chickens can live a long time, but not Lucky. When she died (finally), I found her outside the henhouse. She had choked to death on a really big mouse. The mouse was dead, too, hanging half-way out of Lucky’s unlucky beak, a weird kind of barnyard murder-suicide.

We still have lots of chickens, but none of them have names (yet).

My office. Where I write.

By way of introduction, my name is Andrew Smith and I am happily honored to have been asked by Michael to be a part of this blog. I am the author of Ghost Medicine (2008, Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan) and have a second YA novel called in the path of falling objects (yes… it’s all lower case) coming out in September.

The other day, I read every Stupid Blog Name post. It made me really tired. But afterwards, I felt smarter.

Well, not really. I’m just making that up. It’s what I do.

Being a novelist is really cool because it’s a job where you actually get paid to make things up. I mean, sure, there are lots of other jobs where people make a living by telling lies – just read a newspaper… the front page of any major is like “The Ladders” for lying sons of bitches. But with writers, our fabrications don’t routinely inflict harm on our clients.

And, of course, a lot of the things we write about have some base in our own personal experiences…or at least they do in my case. The brothers in in the path of falling objects, for example, ride around the Southwest in the backseat of a car alongside a life-size tin statue of Don Quixote.

I have actually done that. Not with a psycho killer, though.

You can see a little book trailer for in the path of falling objects by clicking on the title, which, I believe, is linked.

And that reminds me of something else.

Not only did I read every archived blogpost on SBN, I also clicked on every link.

Now I want Jake to marry my daughter.

She’s 25, Jake.

Just kidding. My daughter is the same age as you are. I will be a good father-in-law, too. My wife… I’m not so sure about. She can get pretty cranky around boys, which explains the nervous twitch my son and I have developed.

I’ll give you until the end of the week to come back with a definite answer. The caterer needs a headcount. That and a response to “beef or chicken?”

Oh yeah… we use Macs, too. I understand that’s a plus.

So I have this new book out.  It’s called Here Today, Gone to Maui.  As far as my books go – this is my fourth – it was the most fun I ever had thinking up an idea.  I mean, I was in Maui!  And I got this idea!  And everything kind of fell into place!  And I was in Maui! 

Here’s what happened.  My husband in son were snorkeling far out in the water.  I was on the beach and lost sight of them.  So I thought:  Ohmigod, are they okay?  And then, like any good wife and mother, I followed that thought with:  Hey!  What if a woman was on vacation with her boyfriend, and she saw him go snorkeling — or maybe scuba diving — and he just never came back?  The synapses started firing, and the plot began to build in my mind.  And, oh, yeah — my husband and son were fine.  (Do not judge.  I am doing this for my art, people!  My art!)

On the writing end, it was by far the least fun I’ve ever had writing a book.  A month and a half before my deadline, I did a read-through, thinking I was ready to launch into revisions, and I realized that the last 200 pages … what is the word I’m looking for?  Oh, yeah: sucked.  An extension was out of the question; I had two books scheduled right after it.  So, after walking around in a panic and whining to my husband for a couple of days, I just did it: I rewrote the entire second half of the book.  I worked days, nights, weekends.  I even worked while cooking dinner, zipping back and forth between the stove and my laptop whenever I came up with a good line.  I emailed the completed manuscript to my editor four hours before the deadline.  She loved it and was thrilled to see how few revisions it required.

I’ve read a lot of author interviews, and I’m amazed at how many authors talk about writing as this kind of feverish dream.  They have THIS IDEA and then THEY CAN’T THINK ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE and so they START WRITING AND KEEP GOING UNTIL THEY’RE DONE.  A few months go by, and they’ve got a finished manuscript.

I’ve never worked that way.  When I’m lucky, I come up with a great idea that occupies me for a few heady, day-dreamy days.  I’ll walk around in a fog and stuff just comes to me from some usually inaccessible recesses of my brain, and it’s not like work at all.  It’s more like being in love or taking super-powered prescription narcotics (I’m prone to bronchitis).   I put as much of my thoughts down on paper as possible: characters, scenes, dialogues, plot arc – whatever comes to mind.  Eventually, though, the inspiration fog lifts and I have to do something that can only be called work.  I am pure tortoise, assigning myself weekly minimums (typically fifteen to twenty pages) and just pushing through to the end.

But now I know what it’s like to be a hare.  There’s something astonishing to it, I must admit.  When I re-read the manuscript a few months later, the words felt surprisingly fresh — almost like someone else had written them.  And the book has some of the funniest scenes I’ve ever written.  How can something that was so torturous make anyone laugh?

Right now I’m working on my sixth book.  I’m a bit behind schedule, which means I need to get tougher on myself: four pages a day until I’ve hit the twenty-page per week minimum.  Maybe even five pages a day.  I am glad to know that I’ve got an inner hare for emergencies, but I’m putting my inner tortoise back in charge.   It’s the only way I can sustain any kind of career — not to mention my sanity.

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…)

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…)

I got my pages done today, so it was a good day. That’s the question that defines my day: did I get my pages done?

The number of pages I have to get done in order to feel that I “got my pages done,” changes. It’s not a fixed number.  Today I decided 7 1/2 was enough. Yesterday I was in a lousy mood because I crapped out after 3 1/2. Two previous days were 9 pages each, so I was feeling pretty good about that. When I lose a day of work I am impossible to be around.

My name is Michael, and I am a workaholic.
(more…)

Hi SBN (What a great acronym! With an acronym like that we’ll rival CNN or China’s CCTV in no time!). We need everyone involved to go around saying, “I SBN” we’ll make pin badges and everything . . .

I work in marketing and publicity for Egmont UK (there’s an Egmont US now too). We’re the UK publishers of Gone, and were invited to blog by Michael- Thanks!

I’ve just come back from the Bath Festival of Children’s Literature where we had a number of authors. Basically I’m the person that has to tell people like Meg Cabot (see her post below) to get off their couch and go and promote their work!

I understand what she’s saying, one of the authors we dragged along kept complaining that she could have been at home finishing her next book instead of promoting her last one. But I was unrepentant and kept her chained to the signing desk for 2 long hours, without water. I’m hoping to get some electrodes together for my next tour  - that’ll keep them in line.

Actually the real benefit of touring is that the kids get really excited about seeing authors talk. One child who was listening to Andy Stanton talk laughed so much he threw up and had to be removed – awesome. Another group watched enthralled as Jackie Morris painted an alternative book cover live in front of them.

Moments like that make festivals and tours really special places to be.

Meg Cabot and Gossip Girl’s Cecily von Zeigesar at the Gothenburg Book Fair in Sweden (reporter in the middle)

Greetings readers of Stupid Blog Name! I was so excited when Michael and Katherine asked me to be part of this blog because of course I’m a HUGE fan of the Making Out series, and I was always hugely jealous of Animorphs because it was such a genius idea.

I haven’t read Gone yet but I’m insanely jealous of it too because I had an idea I thought was sort of like it and I was worried if I wrote it Michael would think I was copying him, until Michael assured me (when I explained my idea to him) that it was differentish enough (from what Michael told me about the Gone sequels, we’re headed in very different directions—his sound outrageously good, whereas mine are just…well, insane).

Anyway, I’ve been enjoying reading the blog but haven’t been able to contribute much because right now I’m on a book tour to promote the UK releases of some titles of mine (Airhead and Allie Finkle’s Rules for Girls).

Book tours sound super fun to people who’ve never been on one but of course when you’re actually on one they’re almost the most hideous things on earth, possibly not as bad as having your fingers pulled out of their sockets by Jack Bauer on 24, but depending on the time of day when you’re asked, then they’re about even. I think it’s because you spend so much time as a writer just sitting around writing…or staring into space. Or watching Judge Judy.

And then suddenly someone says, “You can’t do any of these things anymore. You have to get up by this certain time and look nice and be here by this time and speak in front of 500 people and then go on television and then go on the radio and then be at this party with all these people you don’t know until midnight and then wake up at six the next morning and then get on a plane and do it all over again in a new city and you can’t go back to your normal life until this date,” and it’s really…well, startling is one word for it.

I went to the State Department website once to see what to do if I’m ever kidnapped in a foreign nation and what it described was a LOT like being on book tour. Check it out for yourself if you don’t believe me.

When I was first starting out as an author I longed to be sent out on book tours. I longed to be put up in fancy hotels and be waited on hand and foot, to have intellectual chats with reporters about my books.

And yet somehow this never transpired. The fancy hotels do, occasionally, but I rarely get to spend more than a few hours in them, always sleeping, and the reporters and I almost never have time for tea. They’re too busy running off to get their next scoop and I’m too busy running out to get to the airport.

I used to be disappointed when I’d have a book out and there’d be no tour set up to promote it. Now when I have a book out and I find out there’s no tour I’m super relieved.

I realize it’s fantastic when you’re publisher even gives you a book tour. Most authors don’t get one , unless they pay for it themselves. I’ll admit, without a book tour it’s very difficult to crack the bestseller lists these days unless you’re a Big Name Author.

But there must be an easier way to sell books!

Anyway, I have to go to bed now. Not that I have any pajamas to wear or a toothbrush because my suitcase didn’t make it here to South Africa from Sweden. Maybe it will catch up to me tomorrow, before I leave for Hong Kong.

Who knows?

More later.

Meg

So, negotiations continue.  Dark, shadowy forces, (lawyers, agents and editors) are at work.  Naturally, Katherine and I are very, very busy.  Dealing with cat butt string.  Or is it cat butt-string?  (Editors?  help me out.)

Here in Italy the kind of advanced technology that allows Americans to seal their garbage bags by pulling on a space-age device called a “drawstring” is unknown.  Trash bags here come with a sort of filament.  A long and exceedingly fragile plastic thread that is in no way capable of actually sealing the bag against the sorts of super-pressures built up by American waste production habits.

There’s a five stage process involved in properly sealing the Italian garbage bag:

1) Stall until garbage is spilling over the top.

2) Lift garbage bag up while producing old man grunts.

3) Attempt to use the filament despite the failure of the previous 912 attempts.

4) Find the duct tape, curse Italians for their refusal to do the hard work necessary to produce state-of-the-art bag-sealing technology, the children for creating trash, the wife for creating children, the numbness in my left thumb caused by stabbing myself with a knife opening a Nerf pistol two years ago resulting in a degree of clumsiness in tearing off duct tape, and George W. Bush because why not?

5) Drop the stupid string on the floor where it will be eaten by the cat.

(more…)