on the doorstep

First off -- and before I forget -- here are the blogs that will be exploding tomorrow with the cover art for my next novel, Stick:

The Naughty Book Kitties

Lady Reader's Bookstuff

I Read Banned Books

A Simple Love of Reading

The Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment

Okay.

Yesterday, lots of amazing stuff happened, most of which I am not allowed to talk about yet. But as soon as I can, I will.

I know... writers do that more than anyone else, but there are reasons why.

Anyway, I did receive a very small package of ARCs of Stick yesterday.

Relief.

Love.

They are here, and those of you who are awaiting one can rest assured they will be out there soon. Those of you who are anticipating reading it, you may as well clear your heads of anything you've come to expect from the YA mills of late, too. That's all I'm going to say.

I need to tell you about one of the nicest things ever:

So, last night, I was lying in bed (yes... with a copy of Stick) and my wife and daughter came home from the dance studio and said that another package had been delivered on the front doorstep.

Two deliveries in one evening. I thought it was kind of weird.

Then my daughter announced that it was a box from Random House. I thought that was weird, too. I mean... my first two novels, Ghost Medicine and In the Path of Falling Objects were made into audiobooks by Random House, but that was a long time ago... so I had no idea what could possibly be inside the box.

Also, as a side note, I have to say that the people who work at Random House must be some of the most thoughtful people anywhere. One time, they even sent me (by FedEx) a handwritten letter from a fan of Ghost Medicine that was only addressed to my name, care of Random House.

Anyway... as I've said before, I am a HUGE (well, I am reasonably slender) fan of the handwritten-on-paper note, and I always save them.

Okay, so, I open the box.

Score! -- a handwritten note.

From an author. And I don't think I've ever crossed paths with him, either.

Anyway, here's the inside of the box --

And the note reads:

Andrew-

MARBURY LENS IS INCREDIBLE.

I couldn't resist sending you this humble offering.

Please enjoy!

And it was signed by the author -- Daniel Kraus

Beneath the note was a copy of Daniel's just released novel, Rotters (about grave-robbing. LOVE.), a shovel and a rake (obvious tools of the trade), and a bag of honest-to-God dirt with "Body Parts" in it.

The book.

The tools.

The dirt and body parts.

Really, honestly... this was just about the coolest and most random (house) thing anyone has ever done for me.

I have a few things to say to you, Mr. Kraus:

1. Thank you for the note about The Marbury Lens. This will be framed and hung, my friend.

2. Now I have something to read this weekend when I take my son up to UC Berkeley for his freshman orientation and I'm sitting alone in a hotel room, rocking back and forth, in fetal posture because my 16-year-old son is going to leave and go to college.

3. Rookie Move! -- Dude, you didn't sign the book. I will hunt you down.

4. Thank you.

More on the big good news coming soon, and don't forget: the cover reveal for Stick is tomorrow (Friday, April 8), and the video trailer will debut on Wednesday, April 13.

I plan on blogging from my road trip with the son. There will be pictures.

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trailer in tow

Two days to the cover reveal.

I hope you're ready.

I'll re-post the blog links here tomorrow.

And I am supposed to receive my arcs of Stick today, as well. To top it all off, one week from today -- Wednesday, April 13 -- I will upload and debut the live-action video trailer for Stick, too.

So I wanted to tell you a little bit about the two-and-a-half-minute video before you get a chance to actually see it.

A couple of months ago, I met a kid named Dave Espinoza, who had just finished reading The Marbury Lens and really loved the book. We talked for a while. Dave had lots of questions, and, like most people, his own perspective on some of the things that happen in The Marbury Lens.

During our conversation, I learned that Dave is also a filmmaker. Coincidentally, at that time, I was communicating with some professional film crews about making a short trailer for my upcoming novel, Stick, and I learned a lot about the different approaches to making book trailers.

Anyway, I asked Dave if he'd be interested in making a trailer for Stick, and if he thought it was possible that we use only kids (everyone on the entire cast and crew was 16 or 17 years old... um... except me). So, Dave cast the actors, arranged for the equipment, sets, crew... everything... and, over the course of what turned out to be several weeks (for a two-and-a-half-minute film), we made a trailer, using a script that I wrote (that was entirely taken from lines in Stick, so it was an easy adaptation).

Okay. So, here are the kids who worked on the film:

Dave Espinoza was the director and cinematographer. Camera work was also done by John Denny and Trevin Smith (yay... my son). Grips and lighting were Zack Latade and Trevin Smith.

Sound recording was done by Dave Espinoza and Jonathan Halterman.

Still photography was shot by Kaija Bosket, a very talented young photographer who also shot an author photo of me that is going to appear in the June issue of VOYA. That photo was taken on one of the sets with the actors.

The three sixteen-year-old kids (what a shock! actually using teenagers to play teenagers) who played roles in the video are all talented actors with extensive credits in local theater groups and even some film work.

Demetri Belardinelli plays the part of Ricky Dostal, the "bad kid" who gets beaten up by Derrick Deakins, who plays the older brother, Bosten McClellan.

Stark McClellan ("Stick") is played by James Marino. James also does the voiceover narration that runs through the film (he wants to do voiceover professionally, and you'll see how good the kid is at doing it). And James also composed and recorded the original musical score for the Stick film, too (he wants to study composing in college).

So, next week, when you see the video, you may have to remind yourself that this was actually done by a bunch of kids.

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arcs and facts

I received word yesterday that the ARCs for Stick have arrived in the Macmillan offices.

I haven't seen them yet, but I will be honest and admit that I am a little anxious about a few things. I am set to receive mine tomorrow, and I will be waiting.

But I won't post a picture of them here or on Facebook for a while... because of the big cover reveal happening in just three days (see yesterday's post for a list of participating blogsites) and also because I'll be out of town.

But I am a little stressed about the product.

So we'll see.

The ARCs should be available at the TXLA (Texas Library Association) Conference this week, too -- so to all you terrific, incredible librarians in Texas, head over to the Macmillan/Feiwel and Friends area and grab one while you can. I was also assured that if they run out, if you leave your name and address at the Feiwel and Friends booth, they will send you one. Yes. An ARC. Of Stick.

Attention Texas: I expect a massive line, a civilized mob, or, at the very least two disgruntled librarians camping out in front of the Feiwel booth because they thought that was the place to get a freebie copy of City of Fallen Angels.

But, in honor of the ARCs coming out (and I have already sent a list of names and addresses of people who asked for one to Macmillan), I thought I'd share two random facts about the book, which you may already know, anyway. But here goes:

1. I wrote the book in 6 weeks. First words to submission time to Liz Szabla, my editor. I wrote it in November, 2009, in an attempt to write a novel for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal of NaNo is to write 50,000 words in November, which I did. But I didn't finish the novel until mid-December. The finished word count was just under 75,000 words (my shortest novel ever, but still not at all "short" by YA standards).

2. Sara Zarr (Story of a Girl, Sweethearts, Once Was Lost) got to read it first. Well, after Liz Szabla did, that is. And Sara really liked it. In fact, a little blurb of hers is printed on the cover. Here's the incredibly flattering thing Sara wrote:

Andrew Smith is one of the most courageous and compelling authors I've read. Stick moved me deeply.

So... Friday. The cover. And I also want to talk about book trailers in general, and then, specifically, about the trailer that was produced for Stick.

Then I'll be debuting that, coming up very soon...

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and the boy in the crow's nest will cry

Okay. Well, the big surprise for this week is that the cover for Stick is going to be revealed by the Friday Five -- 5 bloggers whom I've chosen not-so-randomly, just because they cover things in their own ways and they're located all over North America.

So I'm pretty sure the revealing is going to kick in at a fairly early hour, regardless of what time zone you live in.

I'll be blogging from a remote location that weekend, as my son and I take a road trip up to the Bay Area so he can visit his school of choice for next year, UC Berkeley, and hang out in one of the coolest areas on the planet.

Yesterday, I posted a short status update on Facebook, proclaiming my love for Los Angeles (In my reckless and swooning passions, I included the <3 emoticon). I didn't do it to try to sway my son into choosing UCLA over Cal (he got into both), I only did it because I really do love L.A.

That's a hard thing for people to wrap their heads around, I think.

In the same way that the "standardized" mass psyche buys into the concept of bashing certain common targets (I can think of a few celebrities, for example), it seems like it's totally okay -- especially for outsiders -- to bash on and spew hatred for Los Angeles. And, yes, I'm calling you out AGAIN, Colin Meloy, and my offer still stands -- you can review my book, and I will continue to review your music.

After all, parts of Stick do actually take place in Oregon and around Portland.

And I may as well tell you now, Stick is a kind of love-letter for places that I... well... love. Like the Puget Sound and coastal towns in Washington, the small beach communities of Ventura County, California, and, especially, Los Angeles.

No spoilers here, but the ending of the book takes place in downtown Los Angeles. When I was writing the book, I wandered around the streets in L.A. taking notes on what I saw happening around me -- scribbled-out snapshots that bump into Stark McClellan as he's searching for his missing brother, Bosten.

My son, who taunted his friends with the fact that I actually allowed him to read the unbound, typeset pass pages of Stick (and... no, I do not know when the ARCs are coming out), tells me that his favorite part of the book is the part that takes place in Los Angeles.

As dismal and strange as I tried to make L.A. seem in Stick, I guess there's no masking my love for the place.

And, with that, here are the five blogs who will simultaneously be revealing the cover for the novel on this Friday, April 8:

The Naughty Book Kitties

Lady Reader's Bookstuff

I Read Banned Books

A Simple Love of Reading

The Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment

...By the way, any of you out there who are just starting out, working at the craft of writing, and maybe in the process of looking for a literary agent, I can't recommend Matthew's Query Blog highly enough. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

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writer's window

I wrote a book.

It has a lot of Ernest Hemingway references in it.

When I was in college, learning how to write, I thought there would never be anyone who could write like Hemingway, and for a very long time I refused to read anything that post-dated him.

I got over it when I grew up. But I still love his writing.

Like a lot of writers, I keep re-thinking his quote, The first draft of anything is shit.

And I wish I lived in the day when drafts were actually done his way, when people wrote letters, and phones were attached to your wall and not your skull, or you had to find a gas station and pump dimes into them.

I mean, I can see what Hemingway is saying, but I don't even have first drafts. Technology means you don't have to sit down and write everything out (on paper) and then come back to it, clean it, gut it like a fish, and do it all over again.

So I can stay on a schedule and predict with reasonable accuracy when I'll actually be finished writing a book. And when I finish, I finish. Because, as I write, I find myself rewriting, frequently chopping up, every single sentence at least a hundred times or more.

And then doing it again.

So my first drafts end up being my final drafts, which are, on the average, my thirtieth drafts.

Technology has changed what we write and how we write it.

The bad side of it is that with the interconnectedness of readers and writers, publishers, marketers, booksellers and so on -- there is a heavy force that herds writers like cattle toward the abattoirs of markets and content; our human stories and real experiences, trend like celebrity faux pas on Twitter.

Just look back at some of the fiction bestseller lists in America, pre-bastardization of culture via technology, and compare the breadth of their content to recent years.

As douchey as it is to paraphrase McLuhan, in writing, the medium is definitely casting a massive shadow over the message.

Standardization is like God and Facebook. It's everywhere.

Yesterday, a friend (Sarah) wondered about the inclusion of a prologue in a manuscript -- if doing such a thing would be perceived negatively. It's a topic that comes up frequently with writers (when I talk to any of them).

When I wrote my first book (way back in 2008), Ghost Medicine, I included a prologue on the novel. I even called it Prologue (I know... the horror). But I was very "disconnected" at the time, so I didn't know that you weren't supposed to do such things; that readers sometimes assume that prologue equals self-absorbed essay by boring scholar about the author or something like that.

But nobody ever questioned my inclusion of an actual, named, prologue in that novel. And I like prologues anyway. My next three novels, In the Path of Falling Objects, The Marbury Lens, and Stick all have prologues to them.

I just don't call them "prologue" and they happen to be very short and punchy.

And the novel that I wrote with the heavy Hemingway/American Literature references also has a prologue, too -- with a title (but it's not called "prologue").

My way of fooling the prologue-bashers out there.

But, go figure, the novel that I am finishing THIS MONTH (I need to keep repeating that to myself so I can feel the pressure), has no prologue. It just goes.

Okay.

Tomorrow, I'm going to post a list of the blogs that will be participating in the great cover release for Stick this coming Friday, and I'll tell a little bit more about that novel, too.

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cover band

So, finally... yesterday I received the cover artwork for Stick.

I'm certain I've said it before, but the cover is absolutely beautiful. Rich Deas, the creative director who was responsible for the brilliant cover on The Marbury Lens came up with another masterpiece for Stick.

I can't wait to show it off.

But I will.

The cover for my next novel, Stick, is going to be revealed on Friday, April 8 on the web. But not here. It will be revealed on a few other blogs out there, and I will post all the relevant links to them coming up in the next few days.

So be patient.

Patience is something that is rarely mentioned when it comes to the writing business. If you're just starting out and working on your first "real" project... and if you think it's tough enduring the wait-time to get a response from an agent... you haven't seen nothin' yet, kid.

Just wait.

You'll see.

I'd tell you about all the other tests of patience and periods of agonizing waiting, but I wouldn't want to spoil the natural maturation process of an author.

So, on Friday, April 8, the cover will be blown. I'll tell you a little about why I like it so much, though. I think Rich really captures some of the essential elements of the book -- without giving away too much. It's a cover that I could see myself flipping back to and looking at during various moments in the story -- and that's what you're supposed to do with a book's cover, right?

Also, there's a really nice blurb about me and the novel from Sara Zarr, whom my editor sent the manuscript to many months ago -- before we were even finished with the copy edits. Needless to say, I guess Sara liked the book.

And on Friday, April 8 I will be heading up to San Francisco with my son, who just got in to UC Berkeley and will be doing a weekend freshman orientation thing there. I plan on blogging from Berkeley that weekend, and I'll undoubtedly post the cover art here on that Saturday or Sunday.

And now that the cover art is ready for mass consumption, that means the live-action video book trailer can finally be revealed as well. It's been ready to go for a while now, but we were just waiting to splice in some images of the book cover and now that's done.

So I anticipate opening up the video (which has a really amazing story behind it) in the week following the big cover reveal, coming up on Friday.

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the season of insects

I suppose the whole thing wouldn't have been so surprising if I paid more attention to things going on in the writing business; maybe if I spent more time on Twitter or something.

But I am so easily distracted, which is why I have to live so far away from everything, out in the mountains with my horses, reckless dogs, and occasional cats.

I can't keep the internet running and write at the same time.

I can't even listen to music and write at the same time.

So I never know anything about what's going on in "the business" (I despise all things business-y, anyway), and, unlike just about every writer I know, I don't hang out with other writers. As a matter of fact, I don't hang out with anyone. I can't just pop open my laptop at a Starbucks and sip coffee and write and visit at the same time.

In fact, if anyone is even near me at all, I can't write.

So, yeah... I am really bummed out. And, yes, I did drag that entire file into my trash and hit delete. All 17,000 words of it.

There's something really liberating in destroying something you've worked so long creating. It's kind of a rush.

Now, all these novel folders on my hard drive are eying me suspiciously... like they're saying please, please, please don't kill me.

I also had no idea that March was NaNoEdMo -- National Novel Editing Month. And now it's over. I would have had a lot to say about editing and editors, too. If only I'd pay more attention.

To stuff.

And so here we are at the threshold of National Poetry Month. I actually wrote a poem for this post -- about insect time, as a matter of fact. But I deleted that, too.

What a rush.

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