blogs from ala

Well, I have a foot out the door and I am ready to leave for the Midwest and the ALA Annual in Chicago from Friday to Monday. I am bringing my laptop (duh... I'm already writing something new, anyway), and I'll be blogging maybe more than once per day.

Sorry, just can't get into the whole Twitter thing.

Now... don't get all sensitive, but to me, doing Twitter is like walking around with one of those "HELLO! My name is fucking loser!" paste-on name badges. And now, I read that there are apps and methods for harvesting followers. Ugh.

Back to ALA...

Oh. And I'll be posting pictures, too. And let me just say right now that I completely vouch for their authenticity ahead of time... if that's any indication of what I plan to shoot.

Hint: If I tell you, "I promise not to post this on my blog or Facebook!" I am possibly being sincere.

I'm going to be at a "Blogger's Party" that will be set up so that guests can blog on the spot. But that isn't even close to the coolest thing about that particular event.

In fact, I am going to host my own "Tweeter's Party" in my suite. It will last from 10:00 PM until 10:02:20 PM on Friday night, July 10. Drinks and everything are completely on me, but you only have 140 seconds to cram it into your mouths.

Tweet freaking tweet.

Just like cute little baby birds.

Damn my ADD...

The coolest thing is that this particular "Blogger's Party" (or, I should say Blago's Party) is going to be held in the Governor's Suite of one of the nicer Chicago Hotels. So I will be getting there early -- before anyone else -- just so I can look under the sofa cushions and between the mattresses for any cast-off relics of the former occupant of that political office in Illinois.

And I looked at the guest list, too... mighty impressive. And let's just say the XY to XX ratio means Drew's dance card will be full. And I've actually met and talked to a couple of the guests at other events.

My prediction: They will have to squint and lean in to the name badge I will pharmaceutically sedate myself into wearing, just to see who I am because they will not have the faintest recollection of ever having met me.

And then, maybe, they'll cock their heads, bird-like, and get a faraway look in their eyes and say, "Oh! I remember! You follow me on Twitter, don't you?"

Yeah.

That's me.

monday excerpts

When I was an undergrad, I think the best course I took was a very intense American Lit course with a huge syllabus. We were required to read about two novels per week, and some of those titles would definitely be on my list of Best Books Ever.

The funny thing about the class, though, was that the professor was a complete pervert (at least, in my mind he was), because he interpreted EVERYTHING we read as having intense and explicit underlying sexual themes.

Everything.

You know the drill. When you're an undergrad, the best way to get an "A" in any course is to completely parrot and agree with everything the professor says.

Duh.

I actually knew morons who attempted to disagree with the old creep.

Anyway, this particular professor became a model for a character named Mr. Wellins in my novel Winger, which is set to come out in 2011. As I dash out the door to pick up some goodies for ALA this week and make an eye doctor appointment, I thought I'd throw out a couple excerpts where Ryan Dean, the narrator of Winger is talking about his Literature Professor:

In Lit class, we had finished reading Foretopman, Billy Budd; and I was convinced by that time that Mr. Wellins was some sort of pervert because he believed that everything we read had something to do with sex. According to him, Rappaccini’s Daughter was about incest, and, he argued, Billy Budd was about homosexuality. Mr. Wellins said that it didn’t matter what a writer intended his work to mean, that the only thing that mattered was what it meant to the reader, and I guess I could see his point, but I still thought he was a creepy old pervert. Anyway, I just thought Melville wrote a good story, but what do I know?

And, later on, while Ryan Dean is having a bit of a distraction, counting up his own dirty fantasies...

So, of course it was next to impossible to concentrate at all on schoolwork while keeping meticulous tallies of my impure thoughts, much less for me to listen to Mr. Wellins blather on and on about sex, because, now that I look at it, every single thought in my head – Annie, Megan, Chas, the game—all, in some way, had something to do with sex. So maybe Wellins was right, after all, that everything does have something to do with sex, even though I found his argument about the underlying sexual themes in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court to be a bit of a stretch, and totally perverted, too.

I mean, come on!

Art imitating life as an undergrad.

And of course I got an "A" in the class.

ala chicago

So I'm going to be spending a lot of time over the next few days getting ready for the American Library Association's Annual in Chicago next weekend.

I've only been in and out of Chicago changing planes in the airport there, but I am told it's a remarkable city so I am really looking forward to going. I will try my best not to be the walking disaster that I am... but just put me in a badge-wearing situation and you know things are just bound to happen.

If you are going to ALA, I'd like to hear from you. Maybe we could hang out and see who gets arrested first. Besides the parties and dinners, here's where I am under obligation to be found:

Sunday, July 12, 8:30 - 10:00 AM -- YA Authors' Coffee Klatch (or YA authors' Coffee Cleavage as I like to call it. And yes, I plan on wearing something a little bit daring... think plunging neckline)

Sunday, July 12, 1:00 PM Book signing of advance copies of in the path of falling objects at Feiwel and Friends/Macmillan Booth 1813 McCormack Place West

I have some cool stuff to give out.

Hope to see you there.

a conversation about dreams

Okay. So, the other day I had this terrific email conversation with Allison in New York, about my next-next book, The Marbury Lens that went something like this:

Allison: You. Scared. The. Hell. Out. Of. Me. I was totally blown away. The only negative thing I have to say about it is, you really have to stop turning in your scary books right when I move into a new apartment. This time, I was reading it in a bigger apartment that actually has rooms, and it was unbelievably terrifying.

Me: I am happy I scared you.

Allison: Do you ever scare yourself?

Me: I have scary dreams frequently.

Allison: I once read an article that said if you’re still having vivid nightmares after you turn twelve, something is weird/wrong about you.

Uh oh.

I never thought about that. But I have intense dreams, like, every night. Usually three or four totally separate ones (I wake up a lot). And I always remember them, too. I'm frequently not even in them; they're about other people -- sometimes, people I don't even know.

So I followed a comment that Allison made in our virtual conversation, and I started asking other people if they had dreams at night. Most of the people I asked said they didn't have them -- or didn't ever remember them.

To me, that's pretty sad. It's like giving away a third of your life to nothing. Sure, I may have creepy dreams (a lot of the story of The Marbury Lens was from a very vivid dream I had), but at least they're worth sitting -- or lying -- through.

Last night, had a dream about ice.

Happy Independence Day.

independence day for horses

I got up this morning at the usual pre-dawn hour. When my coffee had finished brewing, I went downstairs and poured a cup, then back upstairs to my office.

The sun was just coming up, so I paused a moment and looked out the doors onto the upper balcony, across the paddock to the hills south of us that were just getting hit by the sun. The roosters were crowing, and I stood just about even with a very noisy nest of hawks in a cottonwood about 35 feet up from the ground.

And when I looked across at the hills, I saw two of my horses, Dusty and Arrow, grazing. They had broken out of the paddock enclosure and were probably about a half mile away. I took a couple quick pictures with my iPhone.

At 5:30 in the morning, probably the last thing most people want to do is chase down runaway horses. Especially ones as strong and fast as Dusty and Arrow.

Crap.

I woke up my daughter (the horses like her more than me -- they probably think I'm a bad dad, too), we grabbed some ropes and a halter, and set off on our expedition.

I thought it would be easy. I had a plan. Reno, our good, mellow horse, was in the barn. I figured if I let him out (because he's the leader horse, even if he is very slow and very old), the other two would come back down to the paddock.

Reno, on the other hand, fully realizing that it was Independence Day for Horses, immediately took off and joined the other two up in the hills. No, he didn't just join them, he led them off... like, in the direction of Mexico, I think.

Crap.

Oh yeah... and I never even got the first sip of my coffee yet.

So my daughter and I, ropes in hand, followed those horses way back into the hills. I'll be perfectly honest -- and it may be hard for some people to understand -- but it's impossible for me to feel angry at those animals. As frustrating as the situation would appear on the surface, there is something incredibly liberating and uplifting in seeing naked horses (no ropes or halters or anything) just running and kicking in the cool morning under the first rays of the sun.

I know... I'm weird. I kind of wrote about that in Ghost Medicine, but it never gets old.

They knew we were following them, too. It was their way of playing with us. Eventually, they stopped, and Arrow, the big and most powerful one of the three, led them to where my daughter and I stood waiting for them. We got a halter on Reno, and they all three, happy to have proclaimed their independence, willingly walked with my daughter and me back down the hills and to our enclosure.

It was a great morning.

Like I said, they were about a half mile from me when I snapped these pictures, which accounts for the graininess from blowing them up... but here's what it looked like at 5:30 this morning.

the bad daddy

I guess I'd been warned. Oh well.

And I am going to really try to control myself and not cuss in this post.

I was recently accused of being a bad father because of some of the content elements in my books actually inflict harm on my kids and other people's children, too.

Wow. There's just not a lot you can say about that to try enlightening the opposition, so I guess I'll shut up.

And, on the same lines, this brings me to my recent separation from a popular MySpace-like site where readers compare the length of their booklists and try to post coherent reviews. Lots of librarians on that site, I guess.

One person had apparently received an Advance Copy of in the path of falling objects. The person posted a review (with spoilers -- and anyone who can't review a book without spoiling the plot turns is a complete moron), and, very nicely said that the book was "magnificently written." I like that.

But the person went on to give the book a fairly low rating, explaining the rating because terrible things happen to completely innocent people in the novel. Not the perfect, wrapped in vanilla-scented satin bows ending.

Welcome to Earth, cybertard.

[Is "cybertard" a cussword? I just made it up, so I don't think it actually counts as one.]

Maybe the reviewer didn't actually live through things like some kids have been going through for the past eight years -- or like what I went through as a very young kid when my older brother -- with whom I'd shared a bedroom every night of my life -- was fighting in Vietnam -- and some nights, when they'd play particularly gruesome footage on the evening news, I'd hear my mom crying, but she'd still manage to come in and tuck me in and kiss my forehead as though that in itself would prevent a seven-year-old boy from dreaming about his brother burning to death in some jungle for a lie, because I would be safe -- she'd say -- and America was helping the rest of the world fight against evil.

Evil, like dads who write about things that kids aren't supposed to know exist.

So they can sleep peacefully.

I'm a bad daddy.

musical words

So, the other day I did find myself apologizing to Mike Chamberlain (the actor reading in the path of falling objects for the audio version) about how long and convoluted some of my sentences can be at times.

He said (of course) he didn't mind, and that before he received a copy of the book, he "warmed up" by re-reading Ghost Medicine.

Okay. Well, remember the other day how I'd said "Words on a page are words on a page. They are presented in that medium for a reason." What I mean by that is that I really do consciously LOOK at the words and the sentences -- not just for the content of their meaning -- but for their actual appearance on a page, kind of like they're musical notes that holistically contribute to the "sound" of a book. Again, though, that sound is only playing in the mind of the reader.

I know. That's crazy. But I do that.

In that case, I think Mike was right in "practicing" as he did, because if Ghost Medicine and in the path of falling objects were songs composed by a musician, they'd have a lot of similar musical elements.

But in the path of falling objects has these short, staccato bursts of words that make false borders between some of the longer and more descriptive sentences. Like this passage:

I watched the door close behind them.
And I wondered if my brother would ever come out.
I almost wished they’d both just vanish.
So we sat in the back of the Lincoln in silence for the longest time, me just staring at that peeling green door, trying to find what to say first, afraid that as soon as I said anything, Mitch and Simon would come back out again.
“I’m sorry, Lilly.”

And with that structure-rhythm in mind, when I wrote The Marbury Lens, I'd decided that, if this one were music, it wouldn't even be on the same aisle in the record store. For example:

Sweat.
I’m shaking.
Nickie wipes her hand through the wetness down along my chest and says, "You're trembling again. You're sick."
"You heard him."
"Yes, Jack. I heard him."
"I need to do something. Need you to help me, Nickie."
She rubs the side of my face gently, says, "Jack, I'm scared."
"I'm scared, too, Nickie. Don't let me do anything bad."
"Like what, Jack?"
I can't answer.

So, yeah, I think about stuff like that -- where this would belong in a record store -- when I'm writing.