My Writing Holiday Gift—Robin

Today we had our annual Children’s Writers Holiday Luncheon and book exchange. It’s always a blast to catch up with our local writer friends and then watch their mouths drop when you steal a book from them during the gift exchange. Ha! Just trying to keep it interesting, y’all!

Last year, I walked away with my own copy of Twilight. Which turned out to be a new favorite of mine. So I’m hoping this year’s book will turn out to be another.

I have (ahem, stole…sorry, Yvonne!) a copy of What I Saw and How I Lied, by Judy Blundell. Just the cover art and back flap got me excited to read it. Here’s a review from Publisher’s Weekly. Anyone else hearing buzz about this book? Can’t wait to dig in!

Review
Blundell, author of Star Wars novelizations, turns out a taut, noirish mystery/coming-of-age story set in 1947; it's easy to picture it as a film starring Lana Turner, who is mentioned in these pages. When first met, 15-year-old Evie and her best friend are buying chocolate cigarettes to practice smoking. Evie sheds that innocence on a trip to Florida, where her stepfather, Joe, back from the war in Europe, abruptly takes her and her beautiful mother, Beverly, and where Evie falls in love with glamorous Peter, an army buddy whom Joe is none too happy to see. But after a boating accident results in a suspicious death and an inquest, Evie is forced to revisit her romance with Peter and her relationships with Joe and her mother, and to consider that her assumptions about all three may have been wrong from the beginning. Blundell throws Evie's inexperience into high relief with slangy, retro dialogue: Peter calls Evie pussycat ; Beverly says her first husband kicked through love like it was dust and he kept on walking. Readers can taste Evie's alienation and her yearning; it's a stylish, addictive brew. --Publisher's Weekly

My Theory -- Eve

The question I get asked most often these days by non-writers is "How did Stephanie Meyer do it?" Of course, if I knew the key to exactly why Twilight became such an epic phenomenon, I'd be Stephanie Meyer-rich by now. But I do have my theory. I saw Bruce Coville give a speech once on why Harry Potter became Harry Potter, and his thoughts were brilliant. It was something like: orphan+average boy+magic+fantasy world+adventure+world is at stake = winner.

I cannot claim to have the brilliance of Bruce Coville, but I can jot down my ideas on this here blog and see if anybody agrees with me!

First, Twilight is the classic "longing for the love that can never be," but with a genius twist. The love could easily be changed into eternal love by only one method...killing Edward's one true love and turning her into a monster. The same monster Edward has been hating in himself for 100 years! So we, the audience, want them to be together so badly, but experience constant conflict and tension because we know what it would take.

Second, Edward is perfection personified. He is smart, worldly, musical, athletic, sensitive, mysterious, funny, protective, loyal, generous, a little dangerous and it-almost-hurts-to-look-at-him gorgeous. Girls want to marry him. Boys want to be him. He's the ultimate. Who wouldn't want to spend a few hours with the world's most awesome guy? Of course, he is anything but boring because he also has the biggest flaw in the universe...he's an undead murderer and deep down he yearns to kill you!

Third, Bella is the every-girl. Truly, there is nothing extraordinary about her. She is plain looking (at least in the book), not athletic, nice enough, of normal intelligence. She is so very average. She could be us. We could be her! So, we the readers can easily put ourselves in her shoes and "live" Bella's story. Which means we, too, could capture Edward's heart!

Take the perfect guy, the normal, average girl, the impossible love story, combine with a little magic and fantasy, toss in a tiny bit of violence and adventure, but keep everything "real" in terms of high school issues, friendships and hardships, and you've got yourself a winner.

I think the most appealing thing about Twilight is that it taps into our romantic ideal of true love. I don't care who you are, if you have two X chromosomes, you've fantasized about that one perfect soul mate at some point in your development. And in our dreams, that one perfect soul mate loves us unconditionally. He would do anything to keep us safe and make us feel loved and happy. He is gorgeous inside and out. He has nothing but interesting thoughts and hobbies and things to chat about. He listens to us. And he truly believes that we are the best thing that has ever happened to him. Oh, if only we could be that lucky!

Yep, I totally get why Twilight is such a phenomenon. Just wish I had the brains to concoct the new recipe for the next big thing!

- Eve

Bloggers, Listen Up! -- Jay

This past week, two posts from my past (PFMPs) were brought back to life. And while both situations were good, let this serve as a reminder that blog posts are forever. (Or at least until you delete them. But even then…)

PFMP #1: Razorbill asked if I would give an author blurb for the paperback version of Robin Benway’s Audrey, Wait! As you may remember, I love that book. In fact, all three Mermaids love that book. And last August, we wanted the world to know it! But we didn’t want to break our no-book-review status, so we decided to each give Audrey a few blurbs. (Y’know, pretending like we’d actually been asked.)

But Razorbill didn’t want me to write a new blurb, they wanted to use one of the blurbs I’d already written. Now, writing blurbs is very hard. You’re trying to convince someone, with as few words as possible, that they should spend some quality time reading this thing. You’re also trying to make the author feel really good because you, as another author, appreciate what they accomplished. Diff-i-cult!

Thankfully, that PFMP saved me several hours this week.

PFMP #2: Thirteen Reasons Why made this week’s Publisher’s Weekly bestsellers list. Aside from just listing the top fifteen bestsellers, PW also picks a few of the books to highlight with a little extra wordage and a photo. This time, they chose The Maze of Bones (in The 39 Clues series), The Book Thief, and Thirteen Reasons Why. In their report on my book, they included a line from my two-year-and-two-month old post where I described speaking on the phone with the three editors interested in my novel. “I came away with the impression that children’s book editors are some of the coolest people in the world.”

The coolest? In the world? Yes, I still believe that. But if I knew PW was only going to use that one sentence, I probably would’ve spent a little more time crafting it. I mean, is that the best I could come up with? The coolest people in the world??? It sounds like when I was eight and used to say, “Pizza is my most favoritest thing on the entire planet!”

Well, I guess I’ll forgive myself. It was only the most awesome day. Of. My. LIFE!!!

- Jay

From Publisher's Weekly:
On the blog he shares with two other writers, Jay Asher posted a blow-by-blow account of the auction for his first novel, Thirteen Reasons Why. He said he found the process nervewracking but exhilerating. Three houses were in the running, and he spoke with all three interested editors by phone. "I came away with the impression that children's book editors are some of the coolest people in the world," he said. Razorbill won the auction, and Thirteen Reasons Why came out in October 2007. The book--which covers the issue of teen bullying and suicide--is still selling very strongly; 200,000 copies are now in print. Asher is at work on his second novel, also for Razorbill.

It's That Time of Year -- Robin

Yep, it’s that time again. Time for mistletoe and holly and candy canes. But when you’re a parent, it’s also time for…the questions.

Usually the questions come in groups of two or three and the answers are simple and we can move on quickly to eating our candy canes. But this year, my son is six-and-a-half, so the questions came fast and furious. And I was completely unprepared…

• Will Santa visit our house this year?
• And Uncle Buddy’s house, too?
• Even Georgia?
• How does he visit everyone’s house in one night?
• Is he magic?
• Was he always magic?
• Was he born magic?
• Does Santa have a mommy and a daddy?
• Does Santa have brothers and sisters?
• Is Santa married?
• Do they have kids?
• Why not?
• Why don’t they just have their own kids?
• Was Santa born from his mommy’s tummy?
• Right after Santa was born from his mommy’s tummy, what did she do?
• Why?
• But why?
• But…but why do we need to go to church more often now?
• Oh.
• Can I have some juice?

So I feel bad saying this, but I’m a little concerned about Easter now. (And if anyone out there knows what Santa’s mommy did right after he was born from her tummy, please let me know. I’m at a loss here!!!)

- Robin

A Mermaid Welcome

Our blog has been getting a lot of new visitors recently. Many of you are finding us through the recently updated Thirteen Reasons Why website. Now, before you go scrolling and clicking around…be careful. If you don’t pay attention, you might leave here thinking Jay has a severe multiple-personality disorder. And that’s not true. At least, it hasn’t been confirmed. There are two other authors (hopefully, soon-to-be-published authors) blogging on this site with Jay. Robin and Eve! So check 'em out while you're here.

And for those of you who stumbled upon us while looking for info on a li’l something going on in Iowa…welcome! It's come to our attention that the newspaper made things out to be a little calmer than they actually were. So we wanted to take a moment and say thank you to the students, teachers, and librarians who stood up to defend something much more important than this one book. As well, thank you for taking the time to remind people about context. Context is fairly important. Oddly enough, this ruckus caused so many people in Des Moines to buy Thirteen Reasons Why, it helped raise the book another notch to number 9 on the New York Times bestsellers list. So thanks for that, too!

Not by the hair... -- Jay

It's all about timing.

My chin has been covered up by either a goatee or a beard for nine years and I was beginning to miss that patch o' skin. But when you're an obsessive person, you think about way too many details before you do anything drastic. For example, what if I make a book-related appearance and no one recognizes me because I don't look like my author photo? (I know, I know, it's just a few square-inches of hair. It's not like I used a photo from twenty years ago...like some people!) Or what if eight years without sunlight makes it look like I painted my chin with Wite-Out?

So I put it off till there was a big gap between scheduled book events.

A couple Sundays ago, I sat on a panel with author Ron Koertge to discuss intellectual freedom and censorship in front of an audience of California teachers and librarians. The basic idea we were trying to get across is that censorship $%@&in' sucks! The next day I did my second book signing at Vroman's Bookstore. But this time, I teamed up with Jordanna Fraiberg, a fellow Razorbill author. Her debut teen novel, In Your Room, is a very fun and well-written love story that you absolutely must check out. For more info and pics of that event (including the last known photo of my pre-exposed chin), check out the blogs of Paula Yoo and Lisa Yee.

With those two bookish events concluded, my calendar was free till the end of January...which is plenty of time to cover my chin again if needed.

So my only other concern before shaving was whether or not the color of my chin would match the skin nearby it. And since the vampire look is in right now, no one seemed to notice when I let my never-very-present-anyway tan fade away from the rest of my face.

So out came the clippers and the razor.

And now, introducing, for the first time in nearly a decade...my chin!


- Jay