tomatoes and radio wires

Yesterday, apparently, was Rock the Drop day, a subject I know nothing about.

Evidently, it was an organized campaign to leave books in conspicuous places, with little notes attached to their dust jackets explaining the day and inviting people to pick up free -- and hopefully enjoyable -- books.

Well, the guerrilla Rock the Drop monkeys from Macmillan did a stellar job, dropping a copy of The Marbury Lens at the 23rd Street Subway Station in New York City.

This was a particularly perfect drop because, as you may know, one of the more emotionally-draining scenes from The Marbury Lens takes place when Jack finds himself on a subway platform, disoriented, alone, and wearing a stranger's clothes.

At first, the photo taken by the Macmillan Rock the Drop monkeys was posted on Twitter. I copied the picture and uploaded it to my Facebook wall, and, after that I suppose, the social-network-media gauntlet had been dropped, resulting in thegreatbiggiantme, Andrew Smith, being "tagged" in a series of marginally staged Rock the Drop photos of books from Egmont.

I am a terrific fan of Egmont and their authors, but... sorry... the Macmonkeys ROCKED THE DROP.

Here's the first shot across the bow:

You just can't argue with Jack.

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these are the words

So.

How are things in Texas?

I've been looking at all the rubbing-it-in posts from friends about how great the TXLA Conference is, how it is made even better by the presence of a stock of Advance Review Copies of Stick.

Lots of folk are telling me about getting one, and that is really nice to hear. I am very happy that the people at Macmillan have been so enthusiastic about getting this book (well... advance copies of it, at least) into the hands of certain readers.

So... please enjoy.

And, now that it is springtime in Southern California, we also have the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books to look forward to.

This year, the event will be held on the campus of USC.

I'm scheduled to be speaking as part of a panel called Brave New Worlds: Writing the Unreal at 11:00 a.m. on Saturday, April 30. This is a great topic, and very fitting, especially in light of The Marbury Lens being named to Booklist's "Top 10 Fantasies."

Should be a really cool discussion.

After the talk, I'll be signing in the, duh, author signing area.

Later that afternoon, at 5:00 p.m., I'll be participating in the very fun and audience-participation-ish LAYAPALOOZA! with a bunch of other Los Angeles-based YA authors.

At that event, I'll also be giving out some cool prizes... You'll have to be there to find out what they are, but, trust me, they're cool.

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all these pills and powder

Yesterday -- duh! -- I didn't post anything.

You know what's the most distracting thing for me, that gets in the way of productivity? It's not noise. It's the business part of writing. I don't like having anything to do with that stuff, which is why, to me, having an agent is so important.

So... the couple-week-long distraction has pretty much ended and now I can go back to doing what I'd rather do.

And, in a couple days or so, I'll let you know about a couple new books that will be coming out (written by me, naturally) that I haven't said anything about on here.

I'm not really one who discusses things that I'm writing publicly (or even privately, come to think of it, because the way I live makes a Mongolian nomad's life seem hectic and metropolitan), anyway -- except to say something very general and vague like "I am currently writing something new," which is something (ugh! I used the word 'something' three -- no four -- times in that tirade) I haven't been able to NOT say since, like, 2008.

Or something.

(Needs a break, and will take one. Eventually.)

But, let me share some OTHER great news with you while I am in the process of suspending your attention.

My most-recently published work, The Marbury Lens, is going to be featured on the cover of Booklist magazine, for their May 15 issue.

On.

The.

fuckingcover.

Go get that 'zine.

Inside, Booklist is listing The Marbury Lens in their Top Ten Fantasies for Youth.

Pretty freakin' cool.

I'll tell you another thing that distracts me: It's that sometimes... no, a LOT of times... I wonder whether or not I should keep doing what I do. Usually, I get all pouty and say to myself I-am-never-writing-again (like, at least ten times per day).

Here's a typical event from my life:

PERSON A: I read your latest book.

GREATBIGGIANTME: Oh. Thank you.

PERSON A: Yeah. It's NOTHING like your other book(s).

Duh.

I know it's shocking. I keep writing different shit.

The nerve of some people.

Well... very few, actually.

The thing is, when people like Booklist do stuff like what they're doing on May 15, it kind of softens the distraction of my near-hourly I-am-going-to-quit-writing paroxysms.

Not that I won't have one again. Like, in 45 minutes or so.

But it kind of makes me feel like writing again.

That, and wrapping up this business nonsense.

Thank you, Booklist.

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the video day

You can read about the kids who made the video here.

road trip 3

Today we get to head back home.

I suppose that if you're ever going to drive the length of the state of California, the month of April is the time to do it.

So, back to my golf story. So, on my first night here, this place was totally empty and quiet. I decided to have some tea and sit for a while in the hotel lounge, where they had this big flat-screen television that was showing the Masters Golf Championship.

That's pretty much how uneventful the first night was. But I noticed something about the televised program: on every break, there was a commercial -- sponsored by one of these huge oil companies (I think it was Mobil -- and how nice of Mobil to sponsor such encouraging commercials as a means of lessening the burden of taxation on an entity that makes more money that most countries in the world). The commercials all pretty much showed the same things: nice looking, optimistic young students, whose lives were completely transformed by taking AP (Advance Placement) Math and Science classes in high school.

Awww... thanks for telling our kids what they need to do, Mobil.

This is going to guarantee a shiny, happy future.

Now, let me admit, I am not a Math/Science basher. As a matter of fact, my son (remember, I'm up here in Berkeley because he's an incoming freshman at Cal) got 5s (perfect scores) on every one of his math and science AP exams. He even got a 5 on AP Biology when he was 13 years old.

Conversation, yesterday:

ME: How many kids were in your program at Cal?

SON: About a hundred.

ME: Did you meet any other English majors?

SON: There weren't any English majors. They were all engineering or science.

The thing is, lots of kids do well in Math and Science. I personally know hundreds of them, and a lot of them end up getting denied entrance into overcrowded universities -- or they can't afford to go. And universities, like Berkeley, are completely filled to the rafters with kids pursuing math and science-related degrees. They can't possibly take any more kids.

Yesterday, we had coffee with one of our favorite Berkeley authors, Yvonne Prinz, whose novel All You Get Is Me is up for a Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Book Award today. I gave her my only extra ARC copy of Stick. Then, we went in to San Francisco and had dinner with Josh, another life-long friend and San Franciscan.

All in all, it's been a very nice three days.

Back to decision-making time.

And, remember... the video trailer for Stick will be posted here tomorrow.

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road trip (2)

Okay. Now, I may as well get it over with.

Here:

I love it. And, since I love it so much, I've decided to bump up the debut of the book's video. I will post it here on Monday morning.

Look out.

So... the road trip. Of course, as these things happen to work out, it started snowing at my house the morning we left. A lot. Unplowed roads, lots of snow, having to drive in 4WD to get through the mountains toward the freeway.

I realized something, too, when we left. My daughter (who will be starting high school next year) got up from bed to say goodbye to her brother when we left. And I thought... well... you never think about these things too much, maybe, when you're a dad. But, as brothers and sisters go, my kids are, like, best friends. And I guess it's going to be like this now that the boy (who's only 16, goddamnit) is going to be going somewhere like Berkeley.

But we made it. For Jonathon, a playlist (when we weren't listening to the wheels in the snow): we listened to some Tamaryn, Wolf Parade, Smith Westerns, Girls, the entire album of The Moon & Antarctica (underrated greatness), and I'll make a couple other references below.

Because, naturally, after arriving in Berkeley and getting some pizza in his mouth, my son wanted to go here:

Amoeba Records. Where the kid bought the lone Neutral Milk Hotel EP he needed to complete his collection, and a great Pixies CD, too.

While we were there, driving through Berkeley and walking on the campus, I got about three phone calls from my agent and a whole bunch of emails about some exciting news that I'll probably be sharing in the coming week (after the book video -- don't forget).

It's all really great, exciting, life-changing stuff, but as nice as it all is, stuff like this makes me not sleep at night. I don't sleep well in hotels, anyway, and, to top it off, I had to drop my son off for his dorm stay at Berkeley.

So I have to make some decisions.

My son and I went in to a used book store, too. He walked out with what I told him were two of the greatest books ever written by American authors: In Our Time, by Ernest Hemingway, and Light In August, by William Faulkner.

I wrote a whole novel that bounces around and makes tons of references to In Our Time. I'll tell you about that book soon.

Anyway, as we were walking away from the bookstore, we were passed by a chanting band of Hare Krishna folk.

My son said, "That is so cool!"

We don't see too many Hare Krishna folk in the mountains.

And I told him (this is the truth) about how when he was just days old, a group of Hare Krishna folk played drums and chanted a blessing to him in the jungle on Maui.

Now, here we are: he has to make decisions, and I have to make decisions.

Okay. Well... I need to tell you about how I watched golf (The Masters) on television last night in the hotel bar. But I'll save that for next time...

The bay from my window:

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road trip

Can't really say too much about the road trip yet, because my son and I are just about to depart.

But you may have already popped over to the five blogs (linked at the bottom) that are revealing the cover of Stick today.

Hope you like it.

Here's one more thing I'd like to say about Stick:

Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting up in my office, working on my latest novel, and my wife was downstairs reading an ARC of Stick. [Yes... it's true... I do not EVER let anyone in my family read my stuff until it is actually published. There's no point in it. Trust me. Attention all other authors out there: Stop letting your mates and offsprings read your stuff as soon as you hit the "print" button. They can't possibly know what they're talking about and they will lead you straight off the nearest cliff.]

Anyway, I heard her laughing. Out loud.

That's a good thing.

It would be something else, entirely, if she were reading The Marbury Lens. Then, I would think she's insane.

But Stick is a kind of human-being test, in my opinion: There are going to be parts of the book that will make you laugh (as evidenced by the spouse on the lower floor), and there are going to be parts of the book that... well... if you don't get at least a little choked up... then you're not a human, and you've failed the test.

Now... off to the endlessness of the Golden State Freeway.

Here, again, are the blogs revealing the cover of Stick today:

The Naughty Book Kitties

Lady Reader's Bookstuff

I Read Banned Books

A Simple Love of Reading

The Quintessentially Questionable Query Experiment

...more to follow, from Berkeley.

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