we hide in bunkers from animals set loose

Nice award. Thank you Children's Literature Council.

Tough part was I had to give a speech. Easy part was you have plenty to talk about when you seem to have a natural talent for throwing every planet in the goddamned universe out of alignment.

But I got to listen to Jacqueline Woodson speak and read. She is totally amazing.

You know what else I got to listen to? About a dozen people throughout the day saying how they were looking forward to seeing me speak at an event today in San Diego. But I kind of like shrugged it off, trying to be all diplomatic and stuff, like they had mistaken me for someone else -- like someone who had actually been invited to the party where it turns out I am scheduled to be speaking.

Today.

In San Diego.

So I'm out the door again.

I just don't know what it is with me these days, but everything has been getting so incredibly, colossally, screwed up in my life. And it is totally (I almost said the F-word) messing with the work I'm doing, not to mention my head and my unwaveringly sunny disposition.

But that's stuff for another blog post.

Probably not tomorrow morning. And you know why? Because I'll undoubtedly still be stuck in a fucking (there I said it) traffic jam on the Golden State Freeway coming back from San Diego.

Ahh... I can see it now: I'll nudge my son and say, "Hey, look! Big concrete boobs!" (you have to be from SoCal to know what I'm talking about)

But that's not going to happen.

You know why?

Because I will be alone.

In a fucking traffic jam.

Next to giant concrete boobs.

You know how long Google Maps said it would take to get to the event from my house if there was traffic? [Side note: Hello!!! Google Maps... It's the Golden State Fucking Freeway. There is no IF.]

Five hours and forty minutes.

I could fly to New York City and have a beer finished in five hours and forty minutes.

Okay. No more cussing.

Let me share some pictures:

This is me (on the right) and Mary Pearson yesterday at the Skirball Cultural Center. Note the name badges. They add a nice touch. Mary is so cool, and she's such a tremendously talented writer. And guess what, Mary Pearson fans? There IS a Jenna Fox sequel coming out...

And this is me (the highly reflective one on the left) and Hope Anita Smith, who I am totally in love with. We love her books, and she is so talented and remarkable. And I'll be honest -- she read a poem yesterday that brought the entire room to tears.

Okay. Out the door now.

I have things to do, planetary orbits to dislodge, universes to disassemble -- and the day is hungry for me.

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without game men prey on each other

I struggle with simple decisions like what to wear these days.

Today, I am heading down to the Skirball Center in Los Angeles to receive the Children's Literature Council's 2010 Distinguished Work of Fiction Award for my last novel, In the Path of Falling Objects.

Well, clearly it is not my last novel. The Marbury Lens comes out on Tuesday, and Stick will be coming out in 2011.

I have more, too.

But I'll be honest -- I have thought about stopping. When I was a kid, there were times when I would just disappear for long stretches of time. Go away.

Three days. You know the first thing I'm going to do when The Marbury Lens comes out? Well, after I send off a personalized copy of the hardback with a note inside for the winner of the Goodreads contest, I am going to vanish from the Goodreads universe.

That site can really depress me. It makes me feel like I've accidentally wandered into some room where there are all these people who've assembled to do some ambush intervention and I've never met any of them, and they don't care about that, and I'm just, like, am I in the wrong fucking place, or what? but I'm not allowed to interrupt my interventionists.

And they know everything about me.

Sounds like a terrible nightmare, or the plot of another excavation into darkness.

I'll post stuff about the award ceremony today or tomorrow, depending.

But I'm out the door right now.

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if i could only get to oceanside

So, coincidentally enough (and, like Jung, I believe all things are coincidentally linked), yesterday I mentioned a blogger named Brent Taylor for whom I had been answering a list of [very good] interview questions -- and then, in the afternoon, I received a particularly amused email from my editor in New York telling me I had to check out this linked review on The Marbury Lens.

The review appears on a blog Brent Taylor writes, and it has to be my absolute favorite review that my forthcoming book has received so far.

Yo.

If more reviewers wrote with the straightforward candor of young dudes like Brent, I think stony faces would break everywhere across the country.

He also included a cool picture of me and Jack at the bottom of his post. Yeah, we're from California. Deal with it. I'm proud of how the rest of the nation views California as some kind of free-sex-flower-child-running-around-naked-anachronistic-commune from the late 60s. Jack and I do support the Trevor Project and Human Rights Campaign, and if marriage rights, fairness, and human equality total up to liberal in the simplified calculus of political selection, then you can slap us both and call me Trotsky.

You can read Brent Taylor's review of The Marbury Lens here.

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the kids are all write

More housecleaning today.

I am excited.

Can you tell?

I wanted to clear something up about yesterday's post. I am afraid I may have made some people feel bad who've worked very hard and are very supportive. That wasn't my intention, and I do apologize. But let me be more specific: I don't get excited when my books come out because I find the whole thing to be terrifying. Especially this one. I could be more specific about why, but I'm not going to. It's like being the only kid on the carnival ride who's terror-stricken to the point of death when everyone around him is having a blast.

That's all.

The blogger Brent Taylor asked me some really good interview questions this week, and I've been spending some time answering them. I'll send them off later today, and I'll post a link here when he puts them on his blog.

One of the things he asked was what was the best part of being a published author (and my answer was obviously not "release week").

But I didn't have to think about that one. I know the best part of being a published author.

The BEST thing: talking to young people who love to read and want to become writers.

Seriously.

That is the BEST thing.

It’s not about hero-worship, it’s about letting kids know that it’s totally okay to want to write, to love doing it, to embrace books and wonder at the magnificence of written human expression. There aren’t too many of us believers left in this country, and the educational system is succeeding at killing the attraction toward creativity, inquisitiveness, and human ingenuity in young people today.

But that's another topic entirely.

Kids: It is okay to want to write, to be creative, to be un-standardized.

Actually, it's better than okay. If the world is going to be saved, it will be the creative, un-standardized young people of today who'll keep our ship from sinking. You may not believe me, but I know this is true.

I coach a group of teen writers. I'm not in charge of them. We sit in a circle and listen to things the kids write, and then we talk about them. Some kids don't want their stuff read aloud (let me tell you how much I can empathize with that feeling), so they'll give it to me to look at away from the group.

I have a lot of reading to do.

But it's a really cool obligation.

One of the problems I had with Teen Read Week, and a lot of the outreach types of programs that well-intentioned writers and publishing professionals do (and all for good reasons, keep in mind) is that they're so prescriptive. They like to tell kids what's good for them. Make lists of what kids should read. Tell schools and libraries how to get kids involved in reading. Tell teachers what kids like. Have grownups come to classrooms and read THEIR books to kids.

I don't like that stuff. Kids have had an awful lot of people telling them "shoulds" and "good for yous" and expecting them to sit quietly and listen to what grownups want kids to want to read and think.

Personally, I'd rather let them show me what they've got.

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all king horse

The Marbury Lens comes out on Tuesday.

Yesterday, someone asked me if I was excited.

I said no.

They said, really?

I said really.

They said, well, did you get excited when your first book came out?

I said no.

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mom was right, your face will get stuck like that

This is the last Tuesday in the world before The Marbury Lens comes out.

So, the other day, Jessica Tedder from Square Fish sent me a box of brand-new paperback copies of my first book, Ghost Medicine. They are set to come out on the same day as The Marbury Lens, which is kind of interesting and weird to me.

Even though Ghost Medicine came out in 2008, just two years ago, looking through the book is kind of like looking at class pictures from when I was a kid. I was thinking about this the other day: how all the books I've written (more than a few) are kind of like snapshots of me from different times.

It's like when you go see a band like the Stones, or U2, and they sing Satisfaction or I Will Follow. I wonder if people like Mick Jagger or Bono feel weird -- like, after all, they are definitely NOT the same people who came up with those songs. They're kind of like parodies of themselves now, who they were -- likely opposites of who they imagined would be singing those words.

Maybe I over-think things. I have a hard time remembering the stuff I wrote in the past, so when I look through the words of something like Ghost Medicine, it really is like I'm hearing someone else talking.

Maybe I should just write the same stuff over and over.

Maybe I should use more exclamation points.

Whimsy.

That's it.

I need to get in touch with my whimsical self.

Whimsy is easily maintained, and doesn't shock you when it revisits in a paper binding two years after you've let it out.

Kind of like kookiness.

I need to find that.

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ante luctus

Here it is, the Day of the Dead, and there are a few things I need to brush off the plate of October.

• First, good luck to all the people I know who have already started cranking out the words for NaNoWriMo. Here's a tip, for free, to up your word count and get that 50,000-word brass ring by November 30: adverbs and adjectives. When you're going to use one, try using them in a string of, say, three or four. Trust me, it's a remarkably, obscenely, and oft-overlooked [and who can overlook the use of the prefix oft ?] method to vastly, easily, and descriptively enhance your manuscript.
• I have a few things coming up, the details of which you can read on my website. First, on Saturday, I will be at the Skirball Center in Los Angeles, where In the Path of Falling Objects will be receiving the Children's Literature Council's 2010 "Distinguished Work of Fiction Award." The following week includes LAUNCH DAY, a reading (ooooh!) and signing at Mrs. Nelson's in La Verne, a trip up to (I hope a post-series, sedated, tranquil, and kind-hearted toward Los Angelenos -- woo-hoo! three adjectives!!!) San Francisco for another reading and signing at A Great Good Place for Books. This last event will be amazing. Not only will I get to hang with my great (and hopefully sedate, tranquil, and kind-hearted) friends Lewis Buzbee and Yvonne Prinz, but my super-amazing, talented, and gracious editor will also be there.
• How's my word count?
• Sorry. I'm not picking on my NaNo peeps. I'm a little insane from overwork. Still haunted by the ghost of multiple, simultaneous, concurrent, oppressive projects. (Four!!! I am a pro, after all...) Hear that sound? Somewhere, in New York City, someone is ripping up my contract. That happens when you're three-fourths in to a blog post and you've used more than a dozen adjective/adverbs.
•  One last thing: Last week I wrote a few posts about Team Marbury, all the people who had a hand in getting a book like The Marbury Lens onto shelves and into people's hands. I didn't neglect to mention one very important team member -- a kind of offensive coordinator whom I'd been saving for last. My agent. I realize that I must be one of the most challenging clients a literary agent can ever have, and everyone in this business will tell you that getting an agent -- a super one at that -- is more difficult than getting published. Well, nothing I've ever done would ever have gotten anywhere if not for my agent. I never forget this, too. She is mentioned in the two lists of acknowledgments I have in my last two books, and (he reveals this now for the first time) is also the person to whom my 2011 novel, Stick, is dedicated.

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