Elise Allen's Blog, page 25

The Publicity Machine!

That picture?  The Spring 2011 catalog for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.  And inside?

Yup, Populazzi, in all its official glory!

Now comes the fun part: publicity!  Along with the catalog, HMH sent me a packet of publicity how-tos and help-us-help-yous.  In it was a list of all the marketing/publicity peeps, with my key contacts listed in bold.

Another sheet explains how HMH launches their children's books (YA is part of children's), including sending out review copies, conventions, and other ways of getting word out about the book.

Next I got something to fill out so I'll be in the HMH Author and Illustrator Brochure.  It asks about how many appearances, signings, etc. I'll do.  I'm of course so excited, I'll commit to pretty much anything.

Finally, there's the HMH Author/Illustrator Guide to Online Marketing and Publicity, in which they say — among many, many other things — that I need to be updating this blog at least three times a week.

And I was patting myself on the back for twice a week.  Clearly I need to step it up a notch.

Oh — and while all that came in snail mail, I also received a truly awesome author questionnaire by email.  It's so comprehensive that I feel like I should send in a urine sample with it, but it also makes me feel like the publicity team is going to work every angle to get the book out there, which I love.

Speaking of getting the book out there… I'm making a big ol' list of book bloggers who'd like a review copy of Populazzi.  The ARCs should be out soon, and I'll send right away so you have plenty of time to read before August.  If you're interested, just shoot an email to elise@eliseallen.com and let me know!

DAMN YOU, CLOTHES! DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!

Yesterday morning I cursed out my closet.

It really had done very little to deserve the verbal abuse.  I was in a rush that morning – I'd overslept, raced to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription (which they ended up filling out wrong), thrown together breakfast and lunch for my daughter, eschewed a shower and my contacts because I was so very late, and was sifting through my hanging clothes, trying to find a certain pair of jeans for a meeting I had, and nearly every time I pushed over one item to get to the next… it fell off the hanger and crumpled onto the floor.

Again and again this happened.  And when I'd try to take out the hanger to re-hang the kamikaze piece of clothing, the hanger would somehow have tangled with another hanger, and the process of detangling them led to more items falling.  One hanger ended up irreparably bent, and half my wardrobe rained down onto the floor.  I felt myself getting angrier and angrier until I finally exploded with rage:

"F*** YOU!!!" I screamed at an innocent-looking baby-blue shirt.  "F*** YOU!!!"

The shirt didn't reply.

It was about that point I realized I might be a little stressed.

I also realized I was very grateful my six-year-old likes to watch Dora with the volume waaaay up.

Me at my meeting yesterday, unshowered and un-contact-lensed. But taking pictures nonetheless...

I have a lot of stuff on my plate right now, but honestly, so does everyone else.  We all have our mishegoss, and for the most part, we handle it with great aplomb, especially since — at least speaking for myself — my blessings far outweigh my garbage.

But every now and then the garbage-o-meter slips into the red zone… and I find myself screaming obscenities to articles of clothing.

So here's my question to everyone out there: how do you know when your stress levels are getting absurdly out of control?  Ever had a crazy-out-of-proportion meltdown?  And when you do get over-stressed, what do you do to fix it?  Do you meditate?  Exercise?  Do you have a secret formula we all need to harass you for so we can use it to slide past every insane-o moment in our lives?  Whatever it is, I'd love to hear it!

And if you happen to see my baby-blue shirt wandering the streets looking depressed, please let it know that I'm sorry.

Me and Richard Simmons, Sittin' in a Tree…

I am seriously stuck in the 80′s.

I don't rollerblade, I roller skate.  At a rink.  In my own bright-white skates with purple wheels and laces.  (I know that sounds 70′s, but for me the craze extended well into the 80′s.)

The main decoration in my kitchen is a wall of old metal lunchboxes, and the best of the bunch is a Knight Rider lunchbox.  I can look to my left right now and see this image of David Hasselhoff staring back at me:

The above isn't the one in my actual kitchen — here's how the real one looks among its peers:

The last concerts I went to?  Duran Duran and George Michael.

The movies and TV shows I quote on a regular basis?  All 80′s, and I quote them as if they're as much on the tips of everyone else's tongues as they are on mine.

So when I heard Richard Simmons was actively teaching aerobics classes in Los Angeles, I knew I had to go.  I expected pure kitsch, especially when I heard the name of his studio: Slimmons Studio.

Oh hell yes.

I met a girlfriend at the studio last Saturday, and was ecstatic from the minute I walked in the door.  The lobby is covered in Richard memorabilia.  Not just the requisite Sweatin' to the Oldies tapes (pretty sure they were actually VHS), but also buttons — ridiculously huge buttons, keychains, and every other imaginable trinket emblazoned with his smiling face.  I had forgotten to bring a workout towel, and thank heavens I did, because it gave me the perfect excuse to purchase one featuring a giant-size picture of… yup… Richard Simmons' face.  It came in pink and blue.  My girlfriend went with the blue, I chose pink:

Before the Saturday aerobics class, Richard does a motivational seminar.  I had to use the bathroom before class, which meant I had to walk through the seminar.  My plan was to skulk in, so I wouldn't interrupt.  I wasn't even planning to look at Richard — I'd save that for the class.

I was halfway to the bathroom when he called me out:  "HI!"

I was embarrassed for all of a split second, because once I looked at him, I was nothing but happy.  He looks the same as he always did.  The poofy hair's a little thinner, he's clearly older than the image in my head from the 80′s, but really, he looks the same.

And he was wearing a bright pink tank top covered with rhinestone spangles.  And tiny shorts.  And flesh-colored tights.

Awesome.

He asked me what was in my gym bag, and I said it was a book, and he asked what book, and I pulled out my fellow Debutante Ball blogger Eleanor Brown's The Weird Sisters and plugged it hard, but he had already launched into a monologue about a Michael Connelly book he was reading, and the way he always has to write every character name down in the front flap of a book so he remembers it.

I ducked out of the conversation and into the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, Richard cranked the 70′s music, and people packed the class, jumping and kicking and bouncing in ways that would make Jane Fonda swoon.  I couldn't wipe the smile off my face.  The music was fantastic, and it was impossible not to love watching Richard dance, scream at all of us, and mug for the woman taping him with her videophone.

I was singing along and loving it from the start, but the third song in I knew I was in heaven.  It was YMCA, and Richard pulled a vest and hard hat over his workout clothes.  This was only the first of many costume changes, including boxing gloves for No More Tears (Enough is Enough),  a black dress for I-can't-remember-which-song, and Groucho nose and glasses for the Just the Way You Are cooldown.

No stand-up comedian has as solid an act as Richard Simmons.  He has his bits down, and he nails every one.  When we started with arm weights, he said (shouted — he's always shouting) toning was vital, and asked, "Do you want to be jell-o, or do you want to be rock-hard polenta?"

"I want to be rock-hard!" a man in the middle of the room called out.

There is no way I can properly convey the perfection of Richard's take at that point.  I guarantee some guy shouts that at nearly every class.  I don't mean the guy was a plant — I once had a friend who was a master magician, and he played the crowd so well, he'd make you say the perfect set-up, even though you'd swear it was your own original thought.

After 45 minutes of high-impact aerobics and 30 minutes of toning, class was over, and Richard posed for pictures.  Even that, he has down to a science.  He told people how to pose, and from what I saw on Google Images, he's been posing people the same way forever.  That's not a complaint — it totally works.  Check it out:

Awesome, right?

Here's the thing, though… for all the kitsch, Richard Simmons kicked my ass!

I'm no hardbody, but I'm in decent shape.  I run marathons, I do hard-core interval training… and I could barely keep up!  Yes, the class is made so everyone can work at their own level, but there was no way I could listen to that music and not go all out.  At the very least, I wanted to keep up with Richard himself, who bounces like a maniac, while singing, while screaming, while executing a comedy routine, and while changing clothes a gazillion times over.  I mean come on, he's 62!  His class couldn't be that hard, right?

But it was brutal.  In the best way.  My girlfriend had the same stunning experience, and she's in great shape (Richard even told her so during class, which made her day).  Moreover, when he gave his sermon at the end of class about seizing every single hour of your life because each moment is precious and we have no idea how special each one of us is… it was inspiring.  My girlfriend almost cried.  After class, she and I immediately declared a pilgrimage to Slimmons Studio would be a once-a-month outing for us.

I can't wait until December.

Fan-Tasm

This whole fan mail thing is very new to me, and I think I might have already blown it.

I think I scared away a fan.

Here's the deal — I tried to stay up late last night to work, but got really tired (this need-for-sleep thing is seriously cramping my style…), and instead woke up in the wee hours of the morning, like 4am.  I start working on a Dinosaur Train outline, and up pops an email in my elise@eliseallen.com folder.

How exciting — a chance to procrastinate!

Things got even more exciting when I realized it wasn't spam, but a genuine fan letter from a 10th grader in Australia who said she was never into books, but she had always adored Hilary Duff, so she picked up Elixir.  She read it cover to cover, loved it, and now considers herself a reader, ravenous for more material, including the new Elixir book and Populazzi.

How cool is that?

I of course wrote back immediately.  I thanked her for her enthusiasm, and told her I'd be happy to recommend books to tide her over until the other ones come out.  I also told her that a friend of mine had recently come back from Australia with pictures, and the country looked beautiful, especially the kangaroos.

She wrote back right away that she'd love book recommendations, and told me a little about her life in Sydney, mentioning something about the educational system, and of course more about kangaroos.

Here's where I went wrong: instead of just giving her some book recommendations and being done with it, I got all chatty.  After all, my friends are considering relocating to Sydney for a little while, and if they do, they'll be looking for a school for their daughter.  So naturally I had to ask more about the educational system — what does and doesn't she like?  And what in general does she like best about being in the Sydney area, since it seemed clear from her email that she'd lived other places?  And how about those kangaroos — are they really like the squirrels of the Outback?

She did respond right away, but I could almost hear the frightened quaver in her voice.  "This is all very overwhelming," she wrote, "I never would have thought you'd have actually replied…"  She even added a "ha ha ", which even in writing translated as the kind of nervous laughter you'd use when backing out of a room away from a crazy person, just before running for your life down the hall.

I only realized after how weird it probably was for the girl.  If I'd been in tenth grade and emailed Stephen King (not that I'm comparing myself to Stephen King, believe me), then had him write back instantly and get all chatty with me like we were long lost pals, I might have been a little wigged out too.

Or maybe I'd have been psyched — I bet Stephen King writes awesome emails.

Either way, I'm wondering if I need to temper my enthusiasm for anything shiny that shows up in my inbox, and maybe rein it in a little.  Or at least tone down the kangaroo rhetoric.

Maybe I should, but it's highly unlikely that I will.  I get too excited about people who reach out to me, all of whom have been amazingly cool.  And if I get an email when I'm in the middle of yanking out my hair over a tough scene?  Forget it — I'll gleefully chat until we're besties.

Has anything like this happened to other writers out there?  Have you gotten so charged up about people who reach out and say hello that you come off a little too over-eager?  Have you been on the other side — a blogger or fan who reached out to a writer and was startled to find just how gabby they really were?

And in case anyone reading this is from Australia, like my freaked-out fan friend… tell me more about these kangaroos.  My friend who visited the country said she saw ones at a wild animal preserve that rolled over and showed their bellies like dogs, waiting to be rubbed.  Can you attest to this?  Because if so, this is seriously something I need to experience.

What The F*@$ Is That Noise?!?!

So about a week ago I was in the office at Dinosaur Train, and my fabulous office-mate all of a sudden looked up and said, WHAT THE F@*$ IS THAT NOISE?!?!

It was my jaw. I was chewing gum.

I have TMJ, so I should never chew gum at all, but sometimes I'm tired and stressed, and it's either a pack of sugarless gum or a box of Panda Puffs. For better or worse, the sugarless gum usually wins.

Now, I've worked solely freelance (translation: all alone, unshowered, and in my pajamas) for almost ten years, so I've grown completely unaware of some of my more annoying while-I'm-writing quirks… such as chewing like a cud-lovin' cow with my jaw clicking out a fierce flamenco beat.

I also have a driving need to work barefoot… and I sometimes put my feet up on the wall. At the office I suddenly noticed there were now large black footprints on the wall next to me.

Allison Winn-Scotch had a great blog post yesterday about rituals writers like to do before they start writing.  My question is similar, but different:

When you write, do you have any have irritating habits?  Things people tend to notice and maybe not appreciate?

For example, in addition to the cacophonous gum-chewing and the nasty footprints, I've gotten complaints from strangers because I tend to act out on my face what I'm writing.  I don't even know I'm doing it, but apparently it's a little disturbing to have a shoeless weirdo in a corner of Panera making bizarro faces while she stares at her computer.  Apparently it put some people off their bagels.

So what do you think?  What are your weird quirks that serve you when you're writing alone, but might raise an eyebrow when you work in public?  Have you gotten any complaints?  If so, are you trying to work on them, or are they just part of your process and you're stickin' with 'em?

WE HAVE WINNERS!!!!!

CONGRATULATIONS to the three winners of my first giveaway!

I'll be sending copies of Elixir to…

Megan Stacey

Kathryn Niles Hickle

Beth Weaver

Megan, Kathryn, and Beth, please email me at elise@eliseallen.com with your mailing addresses, and I'll get your books out as soon as possible!

Thanks so much to everyone who entered.  Thanks for the RTs, the FB posts, joining my FB author page, and following me on Twitter.  Most of all, thanks for all the great tips on your favorite Hilary Duff movies and songs.  I'm excited to check them all out.

And as a final thank you, allow me to share with you what I'm wearing to work today.

Happy Halloween, everyone!

WE'RE NUMBER TEN!!!!

Yes, that would be me posing with two-thirds of my daughter's First Hundred Days of Kindergarten art project from last year.  But it's for a purpose!  Elixir, written by Hilary Duff with Elise Allen, is Number Ten on the New York Times Bestseller List!!!!

But hey, don't just take my word for it, check it out! (You have to scroll down to "Chapter Books.)

This is insane-o thrilling.  My grandmother swears I blushed when I got the email about the news.  We were at her doctor's for a checkup at the time, and she apparently saw my face burst into pure pink.  I'm guessing she was worried about my health (luckily we were at a doctor's office), because she seemed very concerned and asked what was wrong.

When I told her, she screamed like a prepubescent at a Justin Bieber concert.  Now she was the one flushing bright red.  She held her hands to her face and said, "I can't believe it… this is so wonderful… I don't even know if I can take it!"

Again, good thing we were at a doctor's office.

As a lifelong ravenous reader, the New York Times Bestseller list is just the coolest thing imaginable, which means I can't help but work it into many a conversation.

"How are the stories for next week?" as exec asked as she sat down next to me for a Dinosaur Train production meeting.

"They're going great!  In fact, right here on my laptop I have… Oh wait, that's not a Dinosaur Train story… that's the New York Times Bestseller List with Elixir at Number Ten!!!!"

My grandmother doesn't even try to be subtle about her raves.  When the doctor walked into the room that day we heard the news, she cried out, her face still flushed: "Guess what happened!"

Judging from her face, I'm fairly certain he thought she was going to say she was having a heart attack.  I think I even saw him reach for the paddles… but instead she kvelled about The List, as she has to anyone and everyone who will listen (or won't listen — where she lives they can just turn down their hearing aids if they're not interested).

It's pretty awesome, and clearly it couldn't have happened without everyone out there who's reading (and hopefully loving) the book.  Hilary and I had such a good time writing it, she's incredibly talented, and she has terrific ideas for Book Two.  I'm excited to help her continue the saga.

Thanks to everyone out there reading, and by all means let me know your thoughts — I'd love to hear them!

Dude, Free Stuff!

Hey!  So in honor of Elixir hitting the New York Times Bestseller List (#10!  I've already scheduled a blog post about that for tomorrow), I'm doing my very first giveaway.

Look -- even dogs love Elixir!

Okay, stick with me here, because this next part gets complicated.  However, PR guru Crystal Patriarche tells me it's totally doable, and I won't need a math degree to accomplish it.

I will be giving away three beautiful copies of Elixir. I will be selecting the winners randomly from among a pool of entrants.  To enter, you can do the following — the more you do, the more chances you have to win:

Become a fan of my brand spankin' new author page on Facebook.  (If you're already a fan, you're already entered.)

Follow me on Twitter (again, if you already follow, you're already entered)

Comment below on this blog post with your favorite Hilary Duff movie or song.  I actually know Hilary primarily as a writer, so you'll be filling me in on her best stuff to see/hear.

Share the contest: post it on Facebook and tag my FB author page in the post, or RT it on Twitter and tag me.

If you do all the above — voila! — you've entered five times (#4 encompasses two ways to enter)!

Good luck — I'll post the winners Friday night!

My Hypocritical Love of Twitter

I have this awful tendency to scoff very loudly and openly at things I later become obsessed with.

I used to sneer at runners because they always looked miserable to me.  I swore that if I wanted to cover miles, I'd do it on wheels: skates or a bike.

Now I run marathons.  15 of them at last count.

I used to make terrible fun of my sister-in-law because she edited Disney movies, fast-forwarding past anything scary so her kids wouldn't be freaked out.  These were DISNEY movies!  They were specifically engineered to coincide with children's psychic needs!

My daughter is six years old, and only just found out Mufasa dies in Lion King.  I'd been saying he retired.  She still doesn't know about Nemo's mom — she thinks the movie starts with Nemo screaming "First Day of School!"

I guffawed when I heard about Twitter.  I understood Facebook; those are your friends.  Even if they're friends you'd never otherwise hear from, they're still friends.  But Twitter?  Why would I want to follow a bunch of random strangers?  And why in the world would a bunch of stangers want to follow me?  It's an idiotic time suck!

I had a whole rant on the topic that I loved to unleash at a moment's notice.  I was positive I would never never NEVER go anywhere near Twitter.

I started Twitter back in August.

I'm completely obsessed.

What I love most about Twitter is that it's like going to a fabulous cocktail party… without the hassle of dressing up, putting on makeup, or even changing locations.

I recognize that this very comparison is what makes some people think Twitter and other social networks are the downfall of real social interaction, but I completely disagree.  I go out as much as I did before, but I get to connect with many more people.  And they're people with whom I have something in common — that's how we found each other.  I've met incredible authors and book bloggers through Twitter, plus fellow marathoners and Eagles fans.

And I don't know about you guys, but I suck at approaching people I idolize at a real cocktail party.  One of these days I'll share my story about meeting Carrol Spinney, who plays Big Bird.  It isn't pretty.  But on Twitter, I was able to make conversation with the greatest YA writer of our time, Laurie Halse Anderson… and I did it without embarrassing myself beyond comprehension.

A really thrilling development has been all the Elixir fans I've met on Twitter.  It's beyond phenomenal to have someone read the book I helped Hilary Duff write, then shoot me a tweet to tell me how much they liked it.

I'm sounding like an ad now, but my point is that I have once again proven myself a complete hypocrite, proselytizing for the very thing I held in complete contempt.

Ever done something like that?  I'd love to hear your comments below.  Or better yet… Tweet Me!

OMG! PEREZ HILTON

So I had a post all laid out about my insanely loud jaw and my office mate who was violently disturbed by its Tell-Tale-Heart-like incessant clicking… but then I got this email from my trainer.  And by "my trainer" I mean Josh Carter, the guy I pay every month so I can NOT work out at his gym, because my Dinosaur Train schedule doesn't work with his boot camp schedule (but I'll go back — he's amazing).  He sent this:

"I just saw your name mentioned on Perez Hilton.  How cool is that?"

The answer?  It's very cool.  I'm a total Perez Hilton dork — I think he's fabulous.  I love that Elixir is on his radar, and I hope he reads and loves it!

I'm crazy-thrilled about the shout-out, and I totally had to share it with everyone.

Maybe I'll get to the teeth-clacking thing tomorrow…