Adam Selzer: King of the Wild Frontier

Working!

- Weird Chicago and the new Weird Chicago Blog are taking up plenty of time - on Wednesday, I spent all day in the newspaper archives digging through defunct Chicago papers for information to use in an upcoming Weird Chicago Ebook on the H.H. Holmes "Murder Castle" that I'm editing. I did the typesetting and layout yesterday. Also putting together a route for our "Chicago Anarchy Tour," which is available to school groups as the "Chicago Political Tour."

- Biking around. Got my bike spruced up for spring with a new chain and a fresh coat of paint. Yesterday I biked out to document a location that's on the Weird Chicago blog today. The day before I rode all over downtown. THis is the first time I've been anxious for spring to start in over a decade. I'm out of shape compared to where I was four months ago, though.

- BOOKS! Finished the draft of "Lost and Found," worked on the history book, got a LOT done on "Ghost Hunting for Skeptics," which I hope to finish as soon as I have a good ending for it, and have been tinkering with a synopsis for a fantasy book.

- cleaning. Ronni moves in in three days! YAY!

- listening to The Ike Reilly Assassination, the local heroes who opened for the Pogues. Man, can this dude write. I'm coming to realize that almost all of my favorite "new" bands either remind me of early Springsteen or Meat Loaf, the exception being that I also finally listened to the Zwan album and LOVED it. Then I got a Zwan acoustic bootleg and loved it even more.

I also got a Kirkus review of Pirates of the Retail Wasteland that was very positive. Oddly, though, given that this is a book where a couple of side characters try to convince the gym teacher to kill himself by slipping depressing beat poetry into his office, the reviewer says that it's a good book to float toward "tweener sitcom fans."

I can take this three ways:
1. Being sort of offended.
2. Thinking the reviewer is suggesting that librarians get "tweener sitcom fans" expand their horizons.
3. Seeing dollar signs.

If I go for #1, it's only because of my lingering distaste for the word "tweener." They were just starting to toss it around when I was 13, and I found it highly offensive. I still think it's a pretty stupid word. I do like some of the "tweener sitcoms" in circulation, though. I'm more of a teen-nick guy than a disney channel guy, I guess, but there's some good stuff out there. I guess "Ned's Declassified" is over now, but it was a really fun show, and "Naked Brothers Band" is occasionally hilarious (and, Nat Wolf is really writing his own songs, which I think he is, that guy has chops)(I'm sure I would not have said so at 13 for fear of looking uncool, but I'm old enough now that I can listen to whatever I damn well please).

In what has to be the highest honor since I made the Chicago summer reading list, I've been added to The Geeky Hot List!


Starting in earnest on a quick new YA project. The working title is changing from day today, but it has included:

"No Siree!"
"A Girl Named Gonk"
"Rock, Empowerment and Other Crap"

This is probably the strangest song I ever wrote; an account of a theoretical battle between Matthew Birchinger (an 18th century german gentleman who lacked arms or legs but somehow managed to play the bagpipes, write in fine calligraphy, and do cup-and-ball magic trick) and Lew Zealand, that Muppet who throws fish at people. I remember that I wrote it in my head during a shift at the rib joint where I bussed tables in high school. How I remembered it all, I'll never know: I probably found a way to scribble some notes on the back of receipt paper or something. I wrote a lot of songs on the back of receipt paper.

I have no recording of it, but it's in standard meter, so feel free to sing it to "Amazing Grace," "Gilligan's Island," "Joy to the World," or "House of the Rising Sun."



THE BALLAD OF MATT AND LEW
by a young Adam Selzer

Matthew had no hands or legs. He lived in Randall's hall
He entertained the guests with tricks which used a cup and ball
He wore a powdered wig and he had fine calligraphy
He used to say "you'll never find a man as strange as me!"


Lew was fat and orange and wore a Santa suit all year
Throwing fish at people was his way of spreading cheer
If you asked him WHY he threw fish, he would say "because
I am the strangest human being that there ever was!"

Now Lew, he moved to Randall's hall one sunny afternoon
Matthew, with his bagpipe, was about to play a tune
The two saw one another and they both stopped in their tracks
They knew that there was trouble and there was no turning back


Lew just looked at Matthew and he said pretentiously
"You are a funny little man, but not as strange as me."
Matthew said quite angrily "You sir are very cruel.
There's no room here for both of us we'll have to fight a duel."


At first they spoke as gentlemen about the terms of play
The loser would get out of town the winner got to stay
They'd first march off ten paces, and then each would do their worst
A roll of dice determined that Lew would be going first.


So the rules were laid out and a referee brought in
said "gentlemen get to your marks And then you may begin"
Lew stepped off ten paces and he threw a fish at Matt
Who caught it in his cup and made it vanish just like that.


As soon as Matt began his turn his thoughts were rather clear
He meant to put Lew in the cup and make him disappear
And so he hobbled to the man and even though he tried
His cup was just not large enough for Lew to fit inside.


So then began the second round, a second turn for Lew
This time instead of just one fish he tossed a great big slew.
But though a minnow nicked his ear, Matt's face remained a smile
For every fish besides the minnow missed him by a mile.


"You shall not survive this round" said Matt triumphantly
"For I have got a trick that's sure to scare you mightily"
He then took out his bagpipe and A new smile crossed his face
He said "upon this instrument I'll play Amazing Grace"


Lew was rightly terrified His hands began to shake
He said "I shall distract you into making a mistake!"
Matthew laughed and said "I've never made one in my life
no, not a single one unless you count my second wife."


"If you play a note on that thing" said Lew with a scowl
"I'll throw out a secret weapon, which smells rather foul.
I know that you will run away If I throw some fish eggs."
"Now I wont," said Matt, "For you see sir, I have no legs!"


Matthew was about to play and Lew was terrified
He reached into a little pouch which he kept by his side
He pulled a ball of fish eggs out (the stench could kill a man)
Before Matt played he threw them and twas then he turned and ran


Lew would later say he hadn't really lost at all
It had been a draw that afternoon in Randall's hall
Matthew technically had won but he had lost as well
He won because he stayed but lost because so did the smell!


Now the story's over, it's time to say adieu
but before we get to that let's do a quick review
here's the story's moral, if there is one at all:
you don't need arms or legs to do tricks with a cup and ball!

Writing for middle grade readers is hard work.

I maintain that it's pretty much impossible to do a "realistic" book from a 10 year old's POV - real 10 year olds do way too much swearing for that. Nobody would ever print it. We might have gotten away with such experiments in the 70s or 80s (for my money, the closest anyone's gotten is Jerry Spinelli's "Space Station Seventh Grade," which is actually a 12 year old, and sort of straddles a line between MG and YA), but publishers are a lot more wary of swear words these days.

Furthermore - and this is the big one - you can't always count on your readers to be GOOD readers. You can't count on them reading at a swift pace through complex sentences. This leads to timing issues.

In comedy writing, just like any kind of comedy, timing is EVERYTHING. You sort of rely on your readers to read your stuff at a certain pace (more or less) to make the comedy work, and doing that in middle grade is WAY harder than doing it for a YA book. There's a bit less self-censoring going on, so you can make just about whatever joke comes to your head (provided that it isn't, say, the kind of joke that relies on intricate knowledge of ancient Roman politicians or latin declensions) and sort of let the characters ramble on a bit. You can even have them speak in the OCCASIONAl rich metaphor.

In adult books, or books from a 3rd person POV, you can throw around some metaphors, some stunning use of language, prose forms, etc, but in YA (where 1st person is so standard, and so complimentary to the genre, that books that are in 3rd tend to seem jarring to me), you have to watch that: the average 14 year old isn't THAT profound in casual conversation. The metaphors have to be something the narrator stumbles into accidentally. In MG, it's even rougher. Not only do 1st person passages of rich langauge, prose, etc seem a bit unrealistic, a great many of your readers won't notice - or care. They'll just skip to the action or the funny parts.

So, in MG, a lot of the tricks we normally use to push the front and back cover ever-further apart don't really apply. You have to sort of contruct an artificial rhythm and make it seem about as realistic as possible. It's rough, I tell ya!

I've just been informed that I'm featured in the ALA's Book Links magazine as part of a feature on books to read for Banned Books Week!

- Write like a pirate. Go "yarr!" now and then and dream of being called "inappropriate."

- Get a book of movie reviews by Roger Ebert. I swear I learned more about writing from those than anywhere else.

- Make life difficult for your characters. Remind yourself that they're imaginary, and it won't REALLY hurt them any if you drop an anvil on their heads.

- Find something to get all superstitious about - I, for one, never write facing South. It's fun to be all weird about something, and makes you seem more like a weirdo. People expect writers to be weirdos. And riding around in a short bus that says "Weird Chicago" on it just isn't enough for me.

- Read outside your genre as much as humanly possible.

- If you can't get started on your book some morning, go blog about something.

I'm having an "artificial winter" night. I cranked the AC down a few degrees lower than normal, put on a sweater, and turned on my "three red albums" playlist - a collection of three albums that I normally play around October/November, on account of all the reds and a browns I see in the music. (For the record, it's Tom Waits' "The Black Rider," Marianne Faithfull's "Twentieth Century Blues," and a "Songs of France" compilation by an unidentified singer).

It's a remarkably pleasant way to get myself more into a "writing" mood. And none too soon, as it's really crunch time for "I Put a Spell On You," the "spelling bee based on watergate" book I'll be putting out late next year. The book is much more complicated than my others (so far), and building it up and breaking it down over and over, as one does in these revisions, is a challenge. Plus, this is IT. My last real chance to make the book into a great one. Not that it sucks now, mind you. But this is the last chance to make it all it can possibly be, and that's pretty nerve-wracking. My anxiety over getting "Pirates of the Retail Wasteland' just right in the last days of the revisions nearly knocked me senseless - but I do believe I nailed it. And I'll nail this one, too.

How To Get Suspended and Influence People is on the Chicago Public Schools Summer reading list (pdf) for advance fifth grade readers - one of only a couple of fiction books on the list!

Took the train out to Kankakee today to do an interview for the library's podcast - it was very nice. They have a hell of a library there!

On the bike ride to the train station, I saw this:



The Gotham City Police Department for the batman movie!

One thing I find very useful, especially in revisions, is what I call Window Dressing. There's probably a real word for this, but I've no idea what it is.

You'll notice that practically every movie has a scene or two outdoors where it looks like it's just rained. The reason for this is that wet roads are infinitely more photographable than dry ones - it's instant atmosphere.

You can use this same trick in writing - people are going to picture the scenes in their brain, and damp streets look better in your brain the same way they look better on a screen. If you look at your draft and seems like it needs something hard to put your finger on, consider setting the action against something to sort of lend the scenes a certain atmosphere. For instance, in "Pirates of the Retail Wasteland," I set the action in late January, when Cornersville Trace (the town where all of my stuff is centered) is very cold and snowy. Being able to describe the cold and the ice made for a much more atmospheric "set," and set things up for a major snowstorm that serves the plot well late in the book. During revisions, in particular, adding more information about the snowy scenery - even just a line or two here and there - lent a lot to the text. It's largely for this reason that I like to set things around wintertime. I've never written anything of any great length that took place in summer. Bright sunny days are okay for scenes where people dance merrily around and have a picnic, but, unless you're going for that "hills are alive with the sound of music" vibe, grey skies almost almost always look better.

A similar trick is setting it around a holiday - a time when there are Christmas decorations or graduation signs all over the place. Or even putting in an event - an upcoming wedding that the character has to think about, even though it won't take place til after the action in the book is long over - lends an extra bit of urgency to the situation. George Lucas COULD have set American Graffiti some night other than the night before everyone leaves for college - it would have worked fine in mid-July. But it wouldn't have worked as well.

Try it out - write a simple scene about a conversation between two people about whether to buy something in the window of a shop on a sunny day. Then try the exact same scene in the same place, only just before, during or immdiately after a thunderstorm. Don't get too melodramatic about it; mention it as little as is absolutely necessary. But look at how much it improves the scene!

Pass pages - which are like proof pages that I get to check for typos - for "Pirates of the Retail Wasteland" - arrived yesterday, so now I'm:

- editing Pirates
- revising the "Pushing Cheerleaders Down the Stairs" graphic novel
- writing the new YA manuscript

So if I walk up in your general direction and appear as though my head is elsewhere - moreso than usual, even - that's why! This is a lot of work to have at once.


Good thing I love it.

Now that the deals were finalized on the two middle grade books and the nonfiction, I can talk about them a bit more openly. I am so excited that I bought green cookware! I've always like avocado green, harvest gold, and sunburst orange cookware. Now I finally have some.

So, projects:

1. PIRATES OF THE RETAIL WASTELAND - finalized, out February 08
2. I PUT A SPELL ON YOU - Spelling bee satire (based on watergate). Written and turned in, not yet revised. Fall 08, I think.
3. I PUT A SPELL ON YOU, ALSO - sequel to above. About 2/3rds written. Out Fall 09, I imagine
4. LOST AND FOUND - middle grade book that sold this week! I think this may also be Fall 09
5. LOST AND FOUND 2 - sequel to above, out sometime later
6. THE SMARTASS GUIDE TO US HISTORY (tentative title at best) - in research stage. I think it'll be out in 2010.
7. Top secret YA project - offers are on the table, but it'll probably be out under another name. Readers with a copy of the book and a decent search engine will probably be able to figure it out, though.

Meanwhile, I'm working on the graphic novel based on "Pushing Cheerleaders Down the Stairs," and I have ideas for a couple more books in the Leon series at some point.

THe history book is going to be fun, because there really aren't a lot of rules in the teen nonfiction market. There aren't many books IN the genre that aren't about Your Changing Body. I figure I should really have something on that subject in the book, though. Maybe I'll use the Civil War as a metaphor for Puberty. The country was getting to about that age, and things WERE getting hairy in the southern regions...

Another interview with me is up on Kelly Fineman's blog. This one focuses more on the poetry and features a couple of teasers from "Pirates of the Retail Wasteland"

These things are fun!

Sometimes you don't have to change much or be all that creative to make a pretty funny parody song - sometimes you just have to change one word and have a whole new song.

EXAMPLES:

1. Change "Me" to "Smee," and you have yourself a pretty silly pirate song.

ie, "Lean on Smee," "Baby Come to Smee," "I Want You to Want Smee." These work especially well if you can do a good Mr. Smee voice.

2. Change "woman" to "wookie."

"Just Like a Wookie," "My Wookie from Tokyo," etc. You'll have to change a bit more of the lyrics to make it work, but these things practically write themselves.

3. Change "Horses" to "corpses."

"Wild corpses couldn't drag me away." Zombie songs also tend to write themselves.


Another good one that doesn't come up quite as often is changing "solitary" to "cemetery," but it works. You can turn "Solitary Man" into a very, very different song by changing just that one word.

These generally won't be particularly great parodies with a long shelf life, but they're good for setlist filler. I generally advise against turning "heart" to "fart" or any number of words to "pee," because it's just too easy, but if you're playing a gig to a bar full of drunken mouth-breathers, those particular cheap gags tend to go over pretty well.


I will PROBABLY not be resorting to these tricks tonight at MoJoe's Hothouse (2849 W belmont) tonight at 7, but you're all welcome to come find out.

Ran across the first negative review of my book today - I can't find it again now that I've found it, though. It was linked from some library website. I can take some comfort in the fact that most of the books the review service behind it does like seem to be the kind of "heavy" YA books that I don't generally enjoy, though. An awful lot of them seem to be about dead parents.

In the mean time, here's the every-so-often rundown of my current projects:

- I Put A Spell On You, Also - the second spelling bee book; due in Sept. On the backburner for now; I think I'll dive into it after revisions for the first one, which'll probably be along in a few months.

- proposal for a middle grade project, currently titled "Lost and Found."

- "Pushing Cheerleaders Down the Stairs" - graphic novel "script." Finished the rough draft last week.

- nonfiction project - on submit, waiting to hear from some people. In the mean time, I need to get to work on it.

- live album - crawling out of musical retirement to record this next month, then I'll be mixing through mid- June or so. Couldn't wait to do the cover, though, so that's already pretty much done. I'll rework it into ad advertisement for the shows I'll be recording next month and post that here sooner or later.

- pimping my bicycle - having fun with this. Added detachable mini speakers to the handlebar connecting to an ipod hookup on in the crate on the back. I can only really hear it if the street is quiet or the song is loud, but it's pretty cool, anyway.

- spring cleaning - drudgery. And with rumors that the landlord is selling the complex, which may end up leading to my having to move out, seems a bit less necessary than normal.

My book has been nomintated for the ALA (American Library Association)'s Best Books For Young Adults 2008 list!

Following his review, there is an open letter to me in which the reviewer demands that I replace his copy of the book because he spit iced tea and soda on it. I'm pretty sure this is the first time anyone ever wrote me an open letter - makes me feel like Bob Dylan must have felt when they wrote him one in Sing Out in 1964. Only that letter was a nonsense letter criticizing him for his choice of subject matter, one I'm sure he could shrug off. This letter to me is a very serious matter regarding beverage safety. As a concerned citizen, I feel it's my duty to respond.

OPEN RESPONSE TO BRIAN FARREY

Brian -
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, that I take more seriously than beverages. Pop, in particular. Ask any of my friends - I'm a fiend for cans of pop. I love everything about them. The weight and the feel of a full can in my hands. That satisfying sound they makes when you open them - not unlike the snap-hiss sound of turning a lightsaber on. The way you can feel the rim of the opening with your tongue. The noise it makes when you flick the top thingie that some people think you can collect and trade for time on a dialysis machine (which you actually can't, though, in theory, you could collect thousands of them, sell them for scrap metal, and then use that to pay for dialysis). I even love the process of finding one more place on my desk to cram an empty one.
I'm not as into iced tea - down in Georgia, where i used to live (in the infamous Gwinnett County, no less), they're into this substance called "sweet tea," which is a cup of sugar with some water to fill in the cracks and some brown stuff for color. It effectively turned me off of iced tea, but I can appreciate that some people feel the same way about iced tea that I do about pop. Weirdos, mostly, but it takes all kinds to make a world.
So, while the inducement of mirth is a large part of both my day job and my night job, it has never been my intention to hinder the enjoyment of any beverage. While I'm pretty sure that insurance will list a tea-stained book as only cosmetic damage (and people who are into sepia tones might call it an improvement - it gives it that "aged" look), I will float the possibility of introducing the constitutional ammendment you mention to my senators (Obama and Durbin) and my congressman (Danny K. Davis). I agree that it is imperative, if not for the books, then for the beverages. Please, please, let's think of the beverages.

With all apologies,
adam

When I'm doing a rough draft, I shoot for 1500 words per day. The hardest one is usually the first of the day - especially if I took a couple of days off to work on another project for a hit.

So far today, I've read the comic section, all the Bob Dylan news, a couple of magazines, checked for new reviews at amazon about fifty times (hint hint to those who read - and liked - the book), read about a zillion news/politics blogs, and nearly finished my coffee.

NOW, though, I'm getting to work. I still think I can have this rough draft hammered out in two more weeks, tops.

So I'm getting to work.

Right......now.


or.....now.

The whole event went rather well, I thought. Ending up having enough time to read 4 of the 5 excerpts I have marked for such events.



The snowstorm very nearly made it an event without any copies available - the truck didn't arrive until the afternoon before, but they were able to get them out in time.

Okay, I'll be blunt: I didn't really expect that I'd be that nervous. Other than my paranoia that it won't be in any bookstore, anywhere (getting first novels on the release date isn't the highest priority going, etc), I haven't BEEN nervous yet. I keep telling myself "hey, if it doesn't do well, it doesn't do well, and I have at least three more coming out, anyway."

Well, now I am nervous. Very, very nervous. To the point of distraction. I've aleady vacuumed. And I wrote nearly 4k words in my current rough draft, well above my 1.5k quota. I have watched television and looked at the weather. Big snow coming. Wondered whether the book would be challenged where I went to high school (in the infamous Gwinnett County, GA. They were banning stuff in my day, too, back before Harry Potter came along and caused several locals to REALLY get their panties in wad).



Booksamillion has it listed as "in stock." Several hours early. I'm callin' Robocop.

If there's one thing that I think the English language needs, it's more rhymes for "people." I would imagine that other languages have very few lines about "people" that correspond to lines about a steeple, but we have gobs of them, since it's about the only rhyme that really works. You can have some contraction rhymes, like "the creep'll get you," but it tends to sound forced (sort of like finding a rhyme for orange that work - I know of two, but they sound more like a parlor trick than a good song line).

Here are some new words:

Greeple - a pile of rubbish

Leeple - a narrow cobblestone alley

Cheeple - the sound of a bird laughing



I'd make up more, but we have to go with a few at a time. Let them build up. Go use 'em.

For some future Weird Chicago podcast, we'll be doing an interview with a guy who thinks there's a corn conspiracy.

Thanks mostly to high fructose corn syrup, corn is in just about 80% of the food you eat (or some other such megaboss percent). From what I understand, if you get a burger down at McDonalds, there's corn in the meat, the bun, the pickle, and the condiments. I'm not 100% sure that's true, but it sounds about right.

Is this some sort of conspiracy? Does it just indicate that everyone in congress thinks they might one day be running for President, making them eager to sign any bill that promotes corn (knowing full well that it'll help them out when the Iowa caucus comes around?)

Man, I love my job. I get to run around supposedly haunted buildings and meet the weirdos - which reminds me of a TV show idea I had: "Meet the Weirdos." It would come on right after "Meet the Press," and whoever was just on that show will sit down with a bunch of weirdos. I think you can probably tell a lot about any given political figure based on how they react when asked about the Corn Conspiracy.

And tomorrow I start work on my fourth book!

Dreamed I got a rejection for my current nonfiction project stating "the content is weak, the material is weak, there are too many historical figures in it, and it's simply the wrong time to introduce something like this into the current Spiderman continuity. There's too much going on with Spiderman right now."


For the record, the project has nothing to do with Spidey. But seriously, when IS there a good time for Spiderman? He's always dealing with some kind of major crisis or another. And yet, he still has time for wisecracks. And that's why we love him.

Deep into revisions of "Pirates of the Retail Wasteland" now - I know that some authors hate doing revisions, and dread getting that revision letter from the editor. I dread the letter a bit, too (what if they say the whole thing sucks?), but I like the process. It's a last chance to make this chunk of pages into a better book.

The other night I had a dream that the book came out in its current, mid-revision form, when I have so much left that I want to do with it. Waking up from that dream felt like Scrooge waking up on Christmas morning with another chance to make things right.

I'll take a few days off the revision this weekend to work a bit on finalizing a proposal for a nonfiction book (hope to have some news about that soon).

Finished the draft for "I Put a Spell On You" (aka "Gordon Liddy Goes Berserk," aka "All the Principal's Men," aka "To Bee,") and sent it off to my editor this morning, ready to settle into six weeks of just editing a couple of proposals and maybe starting in on the draft for the Spell sequel, which is due in the fall.

THEN, five minutes later comes the revision letter for "Pirates of the Retail Wasteland."

So now the issue is: do I do FOUR projects over the next two months, or push the start of the Spell sequel back a little?


Well, no matter for now. I must celebrate the finishing of Spell 1!

Well, the best news first: 2006 was the first year I successfully avoided the retail and restaurant business since 1993! Instead, I worked as a writer and a ghostbuster.

First things first: early this year, I began my career as a tour guide for a ghost tour company here in Chicago. By the end of year, I was running tours (and, occasionally scientific investigations of haunted places) for two companies, included one, Weird Chicago, that I helped start. I'm skeptical enough to say that I may not have actually encountered any ghosts, but I've certainly run into some cool stuff. There's no such thing "as" good ghost evidence, only "cool" ghost evidence.

Time not on the bus was generally time spent writing - 2006 was a "limbo year," in a way - my first book, How To Get Suspended and Influence People was sold last year, but it won't be out until February of 2007. So, to pass the time, I wrote a few more books! In Spring, thanks to Nadia, my fantastic agent, I sold three more books: a sequel to "suspended" and a couple of middle grade spelling bee satires to be released in 2008 and 2009. Here's hoping I can keep up the same pace next year!

In May, I travelled back to Snellville, GA to serve as best man at my little brother's wedding - I can barely begin to express how odd it is to think of my baby brother as a married man! He and his wife, Melissa, moved to Hollywood shortly after the wedding. I'll be going out to visit them in a couple of weeks!

Other interesting things I did this year include:

- collaborated on a screenplay for a movie, "At Last, Okemah," which looks as though it'll be filmed next year
- learned to drive a bus
- painted my bedroom (with the help of the lovely Ronni!)
- perfected my tomato sauce recipe
- started work on a handful of other books (enough to keep me busy next year, whether they sell or not!)
- traveled to see Bob Dylan concerts in St. Louis, Fort Wayne, East Rutherford, and Philadelphia. Also went to Detroit to see Tom Waits (who I also saw here in Chicago)
- released a third studio album, Clark Street Carols, which I think may be my best album yet.
- bought a bunch of new clothes. This is a pretty novel concept for me. My time in the retail/restaurant biz necessitated that most of my clothing purchases came from thrift stores (which I still haunt, of course).
- got some rudimentary health insurance (at long last)

Happy winter to all!

Had a productive day - hammered out a good deal on both current projects early in the morning. In the early afternoon, Mike came by to run through an edit of our screenplay and figure out what we would want from the producer. The screenplay is now ready to roll, eight years after the original draft.

1998 - wrote the original one act play version during class in high school. I forget which class.
1999 - expanded to full version
2000 or so - revised it and put it on my webpage
2006 (april) - thought Mike, who is a director, might like it, started work on a full rewrite.
2006 (may) - finished the rewrite in collaboration with Mike
2006 (november) - revised.

I had more or less forgotten about the thing. Now it's been recalled to life, as it were, and the chances of getting it filmed seemed pretty good. My main work on the project is pretty much over - though I'll probably be there for most of the filming, may have a cameo or something, and will probably end up with an "executive producer" credit or somesuch. In the mean time, though, a producer is interested, and it looks like the Old Town School of Folk Music (or people from it, at least) are interesting in pitching in.

This sort of thing isn't unusual - with How To Get Suspended and Influence People, I can trace a long string of events:

1994(!) - got the idea that sometime I should write a kids book dealing with censorship. I was about the age Leon is in the book at this point.
1999 - got the idea to write a movie about a guy making an avant garde sex ed film. The idea was really about a director who goes crazy trying to find a replacement for "Carmina Burana," which he decides is overused.
2002 - got the idea to open a short story with a line about a kid whose dad really sucks at being an inventor. Sketched out a basic outline for what became the first couple chapters of the book
2003 - actually wrote the first 3-4 chapters (or early versions thereof). The first two were initially a short story, 3 and 4 expanded on it, incorpoating the avant garde sex ed movie idea
2004 - wrote the rest of the rough draft, incorporating the censorship idea from 10 years earlier.

Similarly, an early version of the sequel (with very different, college-aged characters) was written in 2001 and revised in 2003-4.

But the thing is, these earlier things are just ideas that ended up working their way into the final. Sometimes they're central to the concept, but you don't need an idea to write a book - you need LOTS of ideas. The basic concept of the plot is, in the long run, a small part of it. If you work at it, you can probably base a whole book around just about any of the smaller ideas.

ANYWAY

Snow should arrive in a few hours - I'm listening to Bob Dylan concert I saw in East Rutherford two weeks ago. It was avery good show to see, but it's one of those where listening to the recording makes it sound WAY better than it sounded at the arena. The thing that made the Philadelphia show better was largely Dylan's visibile energy - he was jumping up and down between verses of Desolation Row! - and that gets lost on the recording. This East Rutherford show sounds GREAT on the recording, and holds up to repeated listenings MUCH better than some shows do. Even most of the better shows I see wouldn't hold up well as live albums on their own. This one would.

Working on two proposals at once - one of which requires a lot of research - right now. They're finally starting to shape into something workable now - I hope to have very rough drafts of each done by the holidays - but for a couple of days I was absolutely tanking. This is a lot of jokes to come up with all at once! To top it off, there's a one-act play I'd like to get written, and I'm supposed to revise a screenplay very soon. And I want to finish reading "Little Dorrit" in the next couple of weeks.

The best case scenario is that they both get picked up, which would lead to doing a full manuscript for each of them, probably due sometime late in the year or so. So, counting the other one that needs to be written by September, that would be three books to write this year.

The interesting thing to me is that I don't have an office or anyplace to punch into. There's no assistant manager threatening to write me up if I don't write 1500 words before noon (which is what I try to do when working on a new project, though I'm doing less now). It's all homework.

I remember the first homework that I ever had - I was five, so it would have been in 85 ot 86. Something to do with connecting dots on a worksheet. I'm not sure what the point of it was - I'm probably the only person from the class who remembers it at all. Mostly, though, what I remember is that I didn't do it. And it's a habit I didn't break - most of the homework that I did was scribbled off in the time between getting to class and having the homework collected.

I got some good stories out of this. There was the time when we were presenting our papers about animals or somesuch, and I hadn't started. So, while other people presented their projects, I quickly wrote up a thing about tarantulas, drawing mainly from commercials I'd seen for a National Geographic video about them. Got an A.

Or there's the time in college when I got to class and realized that I had a 1000 word essay due. I ran back to my dorm, wrote it, and ran back to class, where I slipped it onto the bottom of the pile of essays that had been turned in. B+.

As far as my life as I student went, it would be fair to say that I "served without distinction." But I certainly learned how to bullshit when necessary, and to fly by the seat of my pants and come out in one piece, which I suppose is probably more important than being able to factor trinomials.

But now, in the real world of publishing books, I don't get to bullshit. If the book isn't funny, it's all over. Pressure's on. Pour me some more coffee.

Here are my current projects:

- Pirates of the Retail Wasteland - novel. draft finished, waiting on revision letter from publisher
- I Put a Spell On You - novel. same as above
- Leon 3 - novel - early writing stages. hope to finish proposal by Feb. Finally have an opening I like after a few false starts.
- I Put a Spell on you 2 - novel. note stage. Need to have a draft by September
- secret nonfiction proposal - book length. note stage. hope to get a good jump on it by New Year's. enlisting the aid of my brother in this one.
- At Last, Okemah - screenplay. Need to get going on the revisions, now that a producer is apparently interested
- The Lock - play. Just got the idea for this.
- The Ghost in Paul Hazuka's Attic - short book. will probably re-write from scratch eventually. ont he back burner for now.
- songs for a new filk album to record next year
- episode 2 of the Weird Chicago podcast (should be up shortly)
- more Weird Chicago business


Spent today writing an essay on censorship and a few 'discussion questions' for the back of the paperback of "How to Get Suspended and Influence People." And reading. And working on a suitable display/frame for an object I recently ordered from a memorabilia dealer. And listening to bootlegs of the Dylan concerts from last weekend. Off to Atlanta tomorrow - don't forget the filk on friday, those so inclined! And don't forget to RSVP - not many people are confirmed as of yet.

Flew into New York yesterday to check out my agent's new office in Brooklyn - the place is GORGEOUS, in a lovely 18th century neighborhood, with a view of the Manhatten skyline out the window.

Had lunch with my editor yesterday at a really great restaurant downtown, preceeded by a meeting with the publisher herself.

"We have a thing called the censorship emergency kit," she told me.

"I might need that," I said, half-joking.

"You will," she said, matter of factly.

Now, I wish to point out that my book is hardly obscene. But it contains the word "shit" once or twice, has some vague references to (though certainly no graphic descriptions of) masturbation, and takes a few hardy shots at authority figures who hide their own mean-spirit self-righteousness behind a shield of psuedo-religiosity(assuming that's even a word). Phone calls are expected. I might even end up on a bookmark listing banned books some day. I might have to deal with crazy types.

But I've been prepping for that sort of fight since high school. I worked as part of an organization called the Interfaith Alliance, a large part of whose purpose was going up a group called Family Friendly Libraries, whose purpose was to remove all sorts of things from the library. Specifically, they were going after "The Basketball Diaries," on the grounds that it glorified drug use (which it certainly doesn't). But defending the book wasn't the way to go, easy as it was. It wasn't really the book they were going after, it was the very idea of books being available of which they didn't approve. Had we beaten them on that book, they would have just picked another. In the end, their group disbanded. If I remember right, it was because one of them moved away, so it was sort of a win by default, but one can't always choose in these things. Today, my high school has been in CNN headlines several times in the last few months, due to a similar group's efforts to ban Harry Potter. They're apparently not doing so well there, though.

You must remember, this is also a town where a woman found one of the "adult" Austin Powers figures -the ones that were supposed to be at places like Spencers -at Toys R Us, and called the police. She issued a press statement saying her 11 year old son found it and asked her what "horny" meant.

That poor, poor kid. He probably never lived that down.


Anyway, last night my agent and I went to see Bob Dylan in East Rutherford - first show I've seen on the "Modern Times" tour, featuring a stunning rendition of "Nettie Moore" and a fantastic "Things Have Changed" that sounded like it was coming up through the grating in the street from an underground middle eastern carnival. Seeing him again tomorrow in Philadelphia.

Had a dream last night that I got my first two reviews on amazon.com - one was a two star review from some guy who admitted that he'd never read it, and another was a three review from a guy who said "the book was great, except that Selzer simply cannot write about cinematography convincingly. The stuff about lenses was so off that I just couldn't read it." Please note that I don't mention lenses ONCE.

This is, of course, the kind of review I expect to see now and then - something I notice time and again is that message board reviews tend to say a LOT more about the reviewer than about the product itself. Go to the Simpsons or Bob Dylan message boards and you're hard-pressed to find a single nice thing said about either The Simpsons or Bob Dylan (respectively), and anyone who DOES say something nice will be attacked by trolls. I worry about this sort of thing a lot.

In this case, I mostly expect to get hit by people saying they were horrified by the content after buying it for a 12 year old or something. I don't think there's anything in the book that's inappropriate for a kid over the age of about 10, but times are different now. Many of the movies I watched as a kid couldn't possibly get made today - "Little Monsters," an early Fred Savage film, featured mild innuendo, a few "oh my gods," several uses of the words "piss," "ass," and "damn." You can't have that in a PG movie today. Lots of people say that they wouldn't show "A Boy Named Charlie Brown" to their kids today, since the other kids are so mean to Charlie Brown. I wonder if they ever would have got E.T. past the MPAA, due to the immortal phrase "it was nothing like that, penis breath." It may be the best "family" movie ever made, if you ask me, but it'd probably be PG-13 today.

I would say that we are, in fact, going through one of those periods in history when very minor things become huge taboos - they come around every now and then, and are often plenty worse than this. Sure, we can get anything we want on the internet, but showing a butt on TV is a huge no-no today (similarly, the Victorians were notoriousy shy about sex, but brothels were remarkably easy to find). But one thing worth noting is that these periods are ALWAYS followed by periods in which anything goes.


In better news, I'm now at the cafe, starting outline work for a new book!

This occurred to me last night, and it's really bugging me:

Is the plural form of Daddy-O Daddy-Os or Daddies-O?

On the tour the other night, I invented a new game, which is entitled "Starbucks." You play by looking around for a Starbucks while driving - when you see one, you call out "Starbucks!" and buck the person next to you in the arm. I really must work this into the revisions of "Pirates of the Retail Wasteland." It was especially fun on a bus full of students last night.




Between tours today I picked up the new Bill Bryson book, which is memoir of growing up in Des Moines in the fiftied. I myself embarked on the adventure(?) of growing up in Des Moines, albeit some years later, so I've really been looking forward to this one. You can put me down for anything Bryson writes, really. In his first book, The Lost Continent, he mentioned the mall at which I used to hang out with the memorable phrase "Jack Kerouac, of all people, said the prettiest girls in the world are in Des Moines, but apparently he was never at Merle Hay Mall on a Saturday." My main hope for this would be some mention fo George the Chili King, a fine diner still in existenve, and he mentions it on page 21, this time with the memorable phrase "A George's chili burger was gone in minutes, but the farts went on forever."

No matter where I live for the rest of my life, I'll never be able to get away from being an Iowan. And that's okay.

Finished a draft of a book yesterday - a full three months before the deadline, which gives me time to work on it some more if I feel like it. But a time comes after a month or so of daily editing that one has to say "enough!"

Of course, now I find myself at loose ends. For the last few months, I've had one writing project or another to keep my occupied every morning. Typically, I get up a bit before 7, grab some cereal, then take the laptop down to the cafe, where I write until I'm done (1500 words minimum if I'm working on a rough draft, editing just goes til I need a break). Spent this last month on "I Put a Spell On You," the month before that editing "Pirates of the Retail Wasteland," and the month before that editing writing "The Ghost in Paul Hazuka's Attic" and editing "The Ultimate Hot Dog." June was a mixture of "Spell" and "Pirates," and May was spent working on the end of the draft to "Spell."

So, here's October - and what do I do now?

I'll be pretty busy with ghost tours and weird tours all month, of course, but that 7-10 part of the day is tough to fill. I have projects I could work on - a "Pirates" sequel is in the early stages, and I have 11 months to do the "Spell" sequel. But that's PLENTY of time for both of those. I could edit "The Ghost in Paul Hazuka's Attic," but I don't really feel like it at present - still have no idea what to do with that series. Maybe I can rewrite them as graphic novels or something?

Also not really writing any songs right now, so I can't spend my mornings working on that. It looks like October will be a month off from writing, except for taking notes on the two that I definetely need to write next year.

Maybe I could learn to sleep in....

Just finished the draft of "The Ghost in Paul Hazuka's Attic" (or title to be named later). It's the sequel to "The Ultimate Hot Dog," the middle grade surreal mystery that I wrote last October - these ones go by fast. Neither are sold at present, but I hope to make a series out of it. I have titles and brief descriptions of about half a dozen of them, including "Garage Sale of Doom," "Sell Your Soup at the Crossroads," "Spring Heeled Dave," and "Vampires of Suburbia." This one was a lot harder to do than "Hot Dog," which sort of roared out of me, and will need more editing, but it's a fun series to play with.


Pretty much nothing but editing from here on out until the end of the year - a few more tweaks on Pirates of the Retail Wasteland, then the Ghost and Hot Dog revisions, then some other revisions. Hey, this is my day job nowadays. Gotta keep myself busy!

My editor has confirmed that, at the moment, we're not counting on any support for my book from Wal-Mart. I figured as much when we had the word "smartass" in back letters on the back cover. I'm not certain whether Wal-Mart's big problem will be with the word "ass" or "smart," but, one way or the other, it didn't seem like their cup of tea. My editor notes that we probably lost them at the first mention of masturbation.

Now, sure, being at Wal-Mart might've raised my sales a bit, but, on the other hand, it would have made money for them, too, and I sure didn't want that on my head. My thoughts on Wal-Mart are well known - they aren't just offering those low prices out of the goodness of their hearts, they get them by cutting corners and threatening retailers to within an inch of their lives. In Georgia they actively encourage employees to put their kids on medicaid. As a toy merchandising rep, I've been in the backs of several Wal Marts over the years; it reminds me of the death star back there. Both visually and because it's full of propaganda supporting the empire.


I may very well plaster "Look for How To Get Suspended and Influence People whereever books are sold. Except Wal-Mart" all over my webpage.

"Pirates of the Retail Wasteland" - book. Editing the draft.

"I Put a Spell On You" - book. Finishing the draft.

"The Ultimate Hot Dog" - book. editing the draft.

"At Last, Okemah!" - film. Working on the new script and preproduction stuff, though my role in the production outside of writing isn't yet clear.

"Untitled Musical Project" - writing songs and co-writing the story. on a back burner at the moment.

dragitthroughthegarden.com - Chicago Hot Dogs website.

(top secret name) - historical real estate restoration company. Paperwork coming in.

(untitled) - recording vocals for a techno project of some sort.


So, yeah. I keep reasonably busy.

Been digging through old files in attempt to find stuff that might help re-create a song I wrote circa 1987, and came across an old diary. It has an entry about once every 3-4 months - apparently, the only days I thought were worth writing about were the days I went bowling.

jan 1, 1989:
todam I finally got to the first guardian on Zelda II. We went bowling and I broke my record with 63 points. We had a special breakfast it was french toast. Almost all day my foot hurt but at about 4:00 it stoped.

next entry: Apr 22, 1989:
My first baseball game got rained out an a severe thunderstome. Tonight me and dad went bowling and I broke my record with 71 points in game 2. In game I I got to strikes. I had a good time.

Jan 1, 1990:
It's the beginning of a new decade. It's pretty hard to believe it's 1990. last night I went bowling and broke my record in game 1 (a complete copy of the scorecard follows - total score was 98).

Feb 11, 1990
Today I feel a little drunk for some reason. I got to watch Robocop I on TV. it's still going on now.

June 20, 1990
(can't quite read this, but I was clearly pissed off, and appear to call my sister a "luckey butt.")

June 21, 1990
Today I bought the Illustraated Classic of Oliver Twist and a pack of Dick Tracy cards. I'll write more later.

next entry - Sept 15, 1990
Matt and I counted 802 monarch butterflies flying past the yard. Right now my eer hurts. On the pogo stick I got 176 jumps. My new enemy is matt pittman he's a nerd.

Sept 19, 1990
Mitt Pittman is more of a nerd than ever. On pogo I got 1012 jumps! Then Denise made me put it away. I thought I was in America!


There you have it, folks - all I did in those days was bowl, pogo, read Dickens, and make enemies. Haven't been bowling in years, haven't gotten on a pogo stick in a decade or so, but it's nice to know my Dickens obsession started early.

I sort of felt silly when I bought a laptop last month. I mean, I don't travel much, and I already have a computer. The absolute only function a laptop would serve is that I could work on my books at the coffeeshop or on the occasional plane trip. But it turns out to have been the best couple hundred bucks I could have spent.

For one thing, I get WAY more done. Normally, the "writing process" involves getting online, checking the setlists of every band that played anywhere the night before, checking all my usual news sites, blogs, and comic strips, reading a few articles, getting distracted, and maybe, just maybe, opening the word processor in the first place.

Now, I get up early in the morning, as always, quickly check my e-mail, and then take the laptop to the coffee shop. It doesn't go online, so all I can do there is sip coffee and work.

As burned out as I felt last night, I sort of planned to skip work on either book today, but I woke up even earlier than normal (my phone rang early on with someone wanting to check the balance of their credit card - apparently, my number used to be a bank or something) and found there were flurries in the air, and they were expected to continue for an hour or two, and scrapped all plans to rest - instead, I'd go work on the book at the cafe while it was snowing. I got close to 3000 words in a couple of hours (at a rate like that, you can have a full-length YA draft in about two weeks)

One thing I've found is that sitting in a cafe, working on a book and sipping coffee while looking up at the window to watch the snow falling on the city, is about as sublime a pleasure as there is.

It's up there with reading Dickens on a brown line el train on a cold wintery day, which I enjoy so much that I nearly called my new album "Dickens on the Brown Line," though I scrapped that on account of it sounding WAY too much like a punchline to a dirty joke.


Tomorrow: free performance of "Love's Labour Lost" at the Newberry Library, across the street from my favorite park. I love this city.

Writing a sequel is harder than I thought.

I've had the basic idea for what'll happen in the new book down for some time, but more and more of the little details have required experimentation. How long after the events in the first book to these events take place? The earliest drafts took place a few years later, the more recent ones were about a year later, and now I'm trying out a two-months-later draft. I got one draft about 1/3rd of the way finished, then decided it wasn't nearly funny enough, and scrapped most of it. I've written about a dozen opening pages. All this is in contrast to the first couple chapters of the first book, which were done very quickly. There was some lag time between writing the first 30 pages and writing the rest of the rough draft, though. And there was some workshopping. I miss workshopping.

The first time I felt old was when I realized that I was older than Peter Hatcher, from Judy Blume's "Fudge" series. Of course, if he'd aged normally, he'd be about 43 now, but he's only aged about a year per book, on average, and the books came out 8-10 years apart.


Think I'll write a bit about the trend of revising kids books to make them more "modern." I've noticed this quite a bit; a lot of books that were popular when I was a kid are now on shelves (if they ever left) in new "updated" editions. There's an "updated" version of Skinnybones, though the only change I noticed was the TJ Stoner says his brother plays for the Braves, not the Cubs. Gordon Korman's delightful "Macdonald Hall" series has been released as a "series" with hideous covers. Some titles are changed, and some things are updated a bit (In "the War with Mr. Wizzle," Mr. Wizzle had a fancy, enormous computer called the 515. In the new version, now called "The Wizzle War," it's a software program called WizzleWare.) The chicken catcher in Pinkwater's "Hoboken Chicken Emergency" has an e-mail address instead of a cable address (which is about the only change in that book, and made good sense until he released the sequel, "Looking for Bobowicz," which made the original take place 30 years ago).

I even understand that there's a new version of "Superfudge" full of laptops and mp3 players.

I'm not sure what to think of this - on the one hand, I can see the logic of it. On the other, I wonder if they think kids are stupid or something, like they won't be able to relate to a book without an mp3 player in it. Or that they can't get into Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys or the Babysitters' Club if it isn't in manga form.

Superfudge is an interesting case. Having re-read the Fudge series a couple of years ago, I noticed that it was quite different in tone from the other books. In fact, it was practically a young adult book. The language seems more "realist" and less simplistic than the other three books. The other three seemed a bit goofier. It was certainly grounded in the late 70's/early 80's - they go to see "Superman," Fudge watches "The Muppet Show," the idea of parents switching roles (dad suddenly changing diapers, which he hadn't done before) seems more novel to Peter than it probably would now - but doesn't seem especially dated, except when you consider that "Double Fudge" takes place just a year or two later, and they've gone from "Superman" to listening to the "Harry Potter" audio book. Oddly, I don't remember any pop culture references that would need updating in "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing" or "Fudge-a-mania." There is something decidedly early-70s about "Fourth Grade Nothing," but it's hard to put your finger on what. Maybe I wouldn't notice it if I didn't know when it came out.

So, are these revisions really necessary? Probably not, from a literary point of view. Kids today might not know what the hell Peter's doing when he tries to use a Kreskin's Crystal to get to sleep (neither did I when I read the book in first grade, matter of fact), but they'll survive. On the other hand, Dickens always made revisions in updated editions of his books. Shakespeare's plays surely changed over time. So, well, I'm on the fence. On the one hand, seeing as how the Fudge series is supposed to take place over the course of just about three years, not thirty, it makes sense to change things for the sake of continuity. On the other hand, are they just doing it because they think kids are dumb?

note: In my book, I made a really bif effort not to mention any kind of technology. The internet gets a passing mention, videos are edited on a computer, and it's briefly noted that the main character has a phone in his pocket, but that's about it. The only thing I think I'd want to change in 20 years is a reference to a Metallica song. Most of the other pop cultural things in the book are decades old and treated as such.

ETA: In the couple of years since I wrote this entry, I have not ONCe run across a revised version of Superfudge anywhere, and am not sure it's even real.

It was about five years ago, early in college, that I started work on a book called "The Ultimate Hot Dog." I'm not really sure if it was in 1999 or 2000 at this point; my records are a bit shoddy. The "file properties" on the early chapters says they were created in July of 2000, but I think that may be just when I got a new computer. I know it wasn't July - I wrote the early chapters in a dorm room.

Anyway, after a few chapters, I decided that this was the sort of book I should really write after I moved to Chicago (something I planned to do for years), where the hot dogs are practically gourmet (pure beef, served on a poppy seed bun, steamed, not boiled, with mustard (NO KETCHUP!), onions, tomato slices, two tiny but spicy peppers, bright green relish, a pickle spear, and celery salt).

Anyway, last week I finally remembered the book, dug out the chapters, cannibalized what I could, and got to work. The last few days, I was averaging over 6000 words a day - and now the first draft is done!

Party time!

It's official.

I've taken the offer from Delacorte (Random House) on the book; publication is set for Spring 2007 (my goodness...I'll be OLD by then!).

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Just got an offer on my young adult novel. For a hardcover edition. From a well-known publisher.


Not signing anything yet, because two others are still interested, which could drive the price up a bit, but this is good news indeed - whatever else happens, the book is going to be published.

I'm still digesting this.
Think I'll go down to the Gallery Cabaret, play some songs, and party down.

Since the book will be going to editors next week, I need a new title fast, since "We Were Weirdoes Once. And Young." was deemed a bit cumbersome (as I expected). Here's a list of possibly alternates; comments welcome.

Bury My Heart In the Media Room
I Am Curious (Leon)
Leon
Miscreant
How To Corrupt The Young Kids
Full Frontal Art
Smartass
How To Get Suspended
Revenge of the Gifted Pool