...And It Was Good

Jump the Shark: A term to describe a moment when something that was once great has reached a point where it will now decline in quality. Origin of this phrase comes from a Happy Days episode where the Fonz jumped a shark on water-skis. Thus was labeled the lowest point of the show.

About three years ago, we put up our first post, describing this blog as an experiment. We immediately followed that with a Christmas-themed parody called The Twelve Form Rejections, which we’ve made an annual tradition on this site. Each time we come back to that tradition, it feels like we’ve come full-circle. In fact, we’ve come full-circle three times now, making the Disco Mermaids blog an official three-ring circus.

Like many experiments conducted by mad scientists, the results were beyond our anticipation. Here’s a brief list of things we never expected:

- The Newbery Jewels, our spoof on the Newbery Award’s scrotum controversy regarding The Higher Power of Lucky, led to a vague reference of us in Susan Patron’s Newbery acceptance speech…as well as a not-so-vague e-mail from lawyers for the American Library Association.

- The dePaola Code, our Tomie dePaola meets The DaVinci Code spoof, wound up being featured on Mr. dePaola’s own website.

- Jay was named one of the Hot Men of Children’s Literature even before he sold a book. (Hmm… Was that meant as a spoof, as well?)

- Robin was approached by, and acquired, a literary agent because of the writing style of her posts.

- Eve had a post reprinted in a book about writing.

- Some amazing logos were designed for us (scroll down and watch the right-hand column to see them all).

- We spoke at the national SCBWI conference in a workshop for bloggers, hosted by the always gracious Lisa Yee.

- We found ourselves illustrated in a picture book.

- We shared the joy and tears of selling a first book.

For us, this blog has been a wonderful way to document our struggles and successes as writers, and to meet so many wonderful people (both writers and readers). And while its dorsal fin hasn’t appeared yet, we know there’s a shark out there somewhere. So we’ve decided to jump off our water-skis, shake our Mermaid tails, and swim back to shore.

The Disco Mermaid experiment was a definite success.

When we get back to shore, we’re immediately trading our tails in for wings and flying independently into the blogosphere, thus beginning three new experiments. We consider these three new blogs like spin-offs, just like Happy Days spawned Laverne & Shirley, Mork & Mindy, and…Joanie Loves Chachi?

Robin, Jay, Eve: Not it!

This blog will remain up because we already know we’ll want to come back to it often for nostalgia’s sake. But you can follow us into the future at…

Robin: www.robinmellom.blogspot.com
Jay: www.jayasher.blogspot.com
Eve: www.eveporinchak.blogspot.com

Lots of love,
Your Disco Mermaids