On the Island

In New York now, and updating my blog from the seat at the kitchen table I sat in as a child every night for dinner. Unfortunately, there is not a bowl of macaroni and cheese in front of me as there might have been during many of those years.

The flight was kind of a mess. First off, due to all the east coast weather yesterday morning, residual delays meant our 5:20 flight took off at around a quarter to eight. Not typically a problem, but we were flying into Newark, rather than Queens, which means a much longer drive home. We ended up landing at 11 pm, which had my poor aging mother schlepping to Jersey in the dead of night on unfamiliar roads. And of course it had me, after this insanely long day, driving from Newark on unfamiliar roads back to Long Island. Needless to say, I fell asleep pretty quickly. Sam and Beth are napping even as we speak.

Readkiddoread.com is up, from James Patterson, and I like it. But it doesn't have a section for kids who struggle with reading but don't want to be left with books written at kids younger than them. In other words, it needs some high-low and high interest: Jake Maddox style!

Anyway, we're off in an hour or so to our local kosher-style deli. Very excited.

Oh, and on the YA MS the First front, editor reports riveted, but that was Friday. I am expecting something more soon, and am appropriately excited. I have done essentially no work in almost a week now, with the exception of updating my resume and WIPs for the conference, mainly by adding yet another several sports/Maddox books and a little blurb about YA MS the Second. I need to edit it, however; it doesn't touch as heavily on the fantasy/supernatural aspects as I'd like it too. Here is the blurb! You can tell me what you think:

A Terrible Mistake
Jessamine Parson’s mother died in childbirth, and on the same day her grandmother was found dead and clutching a mysterious note: “There’s been a terrible mistake.” Nearly eighteen years later, Jessa is a foul-mouthed, socially inept, and extremely reluctant college freshman. She plans to spend as little time as possible living a typical college life, preferring to game away the hours in a violent and magical online world. But Jessa’s real-world college experience turns out to be more amazing—and dangerous—than the one she leads online.

Within days of starting her college career, Jessamine is already attracting more attention than she wants: Rope, the wiry resident assistant, seems to be around whenever Jessa needs help; Thomas Priestly, Jessa’s anthropology professor, makes an unexpected appearance in game; and fellow freshman Henry is having the strongest effect on Jessa of all—it’s something in his eyes.

WARNING: This book does NOT contain vampires.

I hope I can find a wifi signal at the conference.

First you get the power . . .

Yesterday was not the productive extravaganza of writing I intended it to be. First and foremost, I am a curmudgeon, and as such had a hard time finding someplace to work that satisfied me on all levels. The levels in question are:

Free wifi, reliably. Wifi is nice, but not if you want me to buy credits and pay for it, tyvm BN cafe. Wifi that is free and spotty is worse than pay-per-hour. It can spell disaster.

Good food. If your establishment has free wifi, that's great. But if your burgers are dry, overcooked, without lettuce, tomato, or onion, and on a tasteless white bun, next to obviously-from-the-freezer fries, you fail.

OUTLETS EVERYWHERE. Seriously. This is the big one. If I'm going to set up camp and buy coffees, teas, snacks, and sandwiches for five hours straight, I want to plug in. My battery is good, but it's not that good, and one outlet for every twenty customers just ain't gonna cut it. Especially when that weird lady who had been standing on the corner singing to a photograph is at one of the tables blessed with power. She had a scone, by the way, and whatever she was drinking out of the blue plastic jumbo take-out cup she came in with. She did not use the outlet. Many glared in her general direction. I chose to seek outlets elsewhere.

So I finally settled, much too late, at Brewberry's, mainly because I was cranky and wanted ice cream. NOTE: Brewberry's is not selling ice cream until the spring. Super.

But they do have great coffee, and I did finally get about 2000 words down, which I realized after writing it had been very "tell, not show," so I rewrote all of it this morning. And here we are.

Sam just fell asleep for a nap, a little ahead of schedule, so back at it. I've still got more than three weeks left of January, and probably about 20k words to write, and I still have hope that this YA MS the first will be done before I leave for SCBWI in NYC on January 28.

New favorite show

A rare Saturday update! All right, a rare update in general.

Just got done with lunch at Good Earth. Yes, a late lunch. Anyway, our waiter was Chad* again, if you can believe that, and he convinced me easily enough to get the turkey sandwich special, which was on oat cranberry bread, with provolone cheese and granny smith apple slices. I recommend it. Not sure it was quite as good as the similar sandwich once served at St. Helen Cafe in Williamsburg, but hey, at least Good Earth is still in business.

The main reason for my post is a new obsession: The Guild! It's one of these Internet-only sitcoms, with episodes 3 to 6 minutes long; Beth sent me the link for it earlier today and I watched every episode available, which is exactly 14, I believe. The awesomeness, besides being usually genuinely hilarious, is made up of two things, as far as I'm concerned:

1. It was written by and stars one of the Potentials. 50 points.
2. It is about the members of a guild in an MMO. 50 points.

For extra credit, one of the guild members is beginning to think, Hey, I should probably quit--or anyway cut down. 10 points.

That is a total of 110 points, which is an A+ on any scale.

Sure, you will need to "get" MMOs to "get" many of the jokes, but most of the humor is pretty clear, even if you're not a recovering druid.

*Chad was our waiter during our first and only previous visit to Good Earth, well over a year ago. He is noteworthy for his muscles, tattoos, loquaciousness, and shorts, which he wears all winter.

Remembering Picture Books

The Internet feels kind of slow today, so I thought I'd better do my part.

The sky is blue here in Saint Paul, and the three or so inches of snow on the ground are light, fluffy, and generally pleasant under one's feet. This is the easiest snow to shovel, but if the sun has its way, soon some little melting will begin, and then the snow will become wet, and heavy. This is how heart attacks happen.

I've been giving the YA MS some additional thought. Not on purpose, you understand. These ridiculous thoughts come to me in the shower or in the middle of the night, when I'm completely unprepared for them. At any rate, I have a brilliant (ha!) idea for a middle section, and -- get this! -- a PART TWO! oh good.

What this means, to sum up, is a final MS, in the who-knows-how-distant future, nearly six times the size of the original draft, which was, I'll admit, quite short.

All that said, Dr. James Orbinski of Medecins Sans Frontieres was on MPR this noontime, and it made me feel like writing about any topic other than genocide is pretty much a waste of time.

I suppose I'll get over it.

Bought a copy of The Snowy Day for Sam today. It was one of my favorites as a child. Which reminds me: I need help finding a book! When I was a child, I had a few favorite picture books. One was The Snowy Day, one was Whose Mouse Are You?, one was Make Way for Ducklings. However, there was another. I cannot recall the title, nor the author, nor the illustrator. But I can remember what it was about:

A boy recalls a trip to the park, sometime around dusk. Shadows fall over everything, and the boy's recollections are skewed. He saw, for example, a man walking with a grizzly bear! But, maybe, that was just a big dog, after all.

Any bells ringing for anyone from that description? Any tips are appreciated, as I'd like to get a copy of that one for my boy (and, yes, for myself, too).

In other news, I managed to stuff a huge lunch into my gaping maw (shout out to Tom Sniegoski!), and now I feel like crap. Salad for dinner is definitely in order.

A mention in the blogosphere

Many thanks to "Get Johnny Reading" for this mention. The Mummy at Midnight is one of my favorites* I've done for SAB, so this is especially cool.

More later. . . .


*Due in no small part to the awesomeness of the art. Look at that cover!

Web Presence

A Friday update!

In the last month, I have really kicked my Internet profile into high gear. There's this blog right here. Plus I'm a twitterer now. Or a tweeter. Or I tweet. Whatever the hell it is.

I've also got my bloglines account up and running, finally. I had the account for ages but never added any subscriptions. But watch out, 'cause my list is growin' like, um, something that grows fairly slowly!

I also dropped this blog onto Google Analytics, which is a pretty fun little tool, but it leaves me with one question: Who the hell is checking my blog on a daily+ basis from Sterling, Virginia?? I get Maine. I get NY. I certainly get Minnesota. But Sterling, Virginia?

I wouldn't ask, but (A) it's been driving me crazy, and (B) it's very close to DC, so it makes me a little paranoid, and (C) I use lettered lists instead of numbered lists in running text nowadays because I feel like John Green should enjoy a monopoly on numbered lists for the time being.

Enjoy your weekend.