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.