Wendelin Van Draanen's Blog, page 11

Beet Soup

When I taught high school, I had a student with the last name of Borsch.



There was also a Keyes.



And an Acosta.



You get the picture.



I didn't fashion the characters after the students, I just lifted their names out of my grade book. It's a good source. Way better than 10,001 Names For Baby.



UNTIL I got published and my former students started hearing rumors about the names in the Sammy Keyes series.



That's when the questions (and the rumors) started.



And now that my former students have children of their own, well, I have some explaining to do.



"No! Officer Borsch is NOT your dad! Your dad was a good student. Very nice! He just happened to have a great name for that particular character. Did you know that borsch(t) is a type of soup? Made of beets? Usually served cold? With sour cream? No, really! Your dad never told you that?"



(Whose face is beet-red now?)



"And he's a great character! How far have you read? Oh, just through Sisters of Mercy? You have to read a few more books, but you'll see! He's one of the BEST characters in the series. I love Officer Borsch!"



At my talk at the "Santa Martina Public Library" I confessed that I was a little worried about the whole naming thing, but it turned out that none of my former students were there to call me out on that. They just wanted to say hi after so many years and have their kids meet me.



Plus they thought it was pretty cool that their names were in books translated into a whole bunch of foreign languages. Even if you can't read the language, you can pick out the names!



So overall, it was a big relief, and a wonderful experience. Still, it's probably a good thing that my grade book is closed for good.

Bathroom Break Interrupted

A guy hurried past my table as I was signing stock for a bookstore event that had just finished.



(Whoa, I wrote that like I'm telling a joke. I'm not. This happened yesterday. Promise.)



He was on his way to the bathroom.



(I'm not making that up, either.)



He was tall, and had dark, up-combed hair with a wide blonde streak. The fingernails on one hand were painted black. The others were not.



Interrupting his beeline toward the back of the store, he came skidding to a halt in front of my table.



Then he just stared at me.



"Hi?" I said with a little wave.



"Are you...?" he asked, looking at all the evidence on the table. "OH MY GOD! You're the Sammy Keyes lady?"



"I am."



"You came to my school when I was in FOURTH GRADE. I loved these books! And you sang a song....?"



Painted nails snapped as he tried to remember.



So I helped him out, "Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy..."


"YES! OH MY GOD! THAT SONG WAS STUCK IN MY HEAD FOR YEARS! I'm an ENGLISH MAJOR now!"



(He was not hard of hearing, he was just...excited.)



"I really gotta go," he said, obviously swimming. But as he started away, he said, "I CAN'T BELIEVE IT'S YOU! I'm an ENGLISH major now!" and as he disappeared across the store, I could hear him singing, "Sammy Keyes and the Sisters of Mercy..."



There are some moments in life I'll never forget.



This was one of them.

Epic Road Trip Update

You should see our office. It's like a Rock 'n' Roll Road Trip war room. Only this time we'll be packing books and pens, not music gear.



Well, okay, maybe we'll bring along a cajon, so Mark has something to tap on besides my shoulder. Or the dash. (The tapping can get very annoying, as Sammy will attest.)



And maybe a guitar. So I have something to do when it's his turn behind the wheel as we drive across Texas.



(Have you ever truly considered how wide Texas is?)



So yes! This means the plan is coming together.We have independent bookstores in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado who are onboard for the "southern half" of the states. (The "northern half" we'll do next Fall.) On our wall, there's a big ol' map with little pink and green dots all over it as the yesses come in and the plan starts shaping up. On my desk, there's a fat binder with correspondences, notes, and pictures, and a massive spreadsheet draped over a mound of smaller maps and bookstore lists. There's also my master list of notes from requests people from the blog have made. Highlighted! Scribbled on with stuff like, Work this in! and Must go!



(There's also a teacup somewhere in this mess.)



(And a $10 off coupon for World Market.)



(And I could swear Mark brought me a cookie earlier.)



*I ate it*



You ate it!?



Anyway, yesterday I also had the wild idea that we need to have Nancy (my editor) join us for a few days on the road. Or a week, if she can stand it! Get out of NYC and into our van as we blaze across Mississippi! Yes, it's adventure time, city girl!



(I really need to stop having random conversations in the middle of my posts, sorry.)



If you want to be part of this and you haven't yet chimed in on a place (state, city, bookstore) you'd like us to visit, do so! If you have some wild (or, okay, even tame) idea you'd like to suggest, speak up! I'm really looking forward to meeting some of you in person. It's one of the reasons we're going as far east as, say, Georgia.



That's all for tonight! As always, thanks for checking in. See you in the comments!

The Freaky Coincidence

8th Graders Doing the Wave!

We drove over 8 hours to get to a middle school that was supposed to be only 4.5 hours away.



That constipated beast, Los Angeles, was in our way.



It was dark (and late) when we finally rolled up to what the GPS told us was the location of our hotel room.



As fatigue would have it, it turned out not to be our hotel room. It was, instead some swanky villa estates. But we couldn't tell for sure that we weren't in the right place because...well, did I mention it was dark? And late? And that we'd been driving 9 hours?



I flagged down a security guard at the swanky villa estates and was given directions. They involved going out the way we'd come, turning right, and right, and right again.



No, we couldn't shortcut, or believe me, we would have pulled a Sammy Keyes.



After three rights we almost blasted past the hotel entrance because it was dark. And late. And we'd been driving for 10 hours. Did I mention that?



Sure I did.



And in case you're wondering, the dark part is true. I don't know whether this desert town's residents are into the green aspect of starry night lighting, but the roadways were just...dim.



And, seeing how it was late and we'd been driving for 11 hours, I'm sure we were a bit dim ourselves.



The hotel room may not have been inside a swanky villa estate, but it still turned out to be way too much luxury for two weary travelers. Unfortunately, the restaurant was already closed.



Luckily, the PTO prez had left a gift bag for us



FOOD!



Which was a good thing because there's no way we wanted to venture out for dinner and we were famished. It was late. And dark. And we'd been traveling for 12 hours!



Sorry. My intention was not to go on and on for hours about the trip. The traveling to do school visits is always the hard part. And I shouldn't complain. At least Mark was with me this time!



No, my intention was to tell you about a freaky coincidence.



This middle school in the starry night desert booked me almost a year ago. They have Swear to Howdy as part of their core curriculum. I will just come out and say that I am an instant fan of any school that has STH as part of their curriculum. Not because it's my book specifically, but because of all my books it's the one that takes courage to adopt. It's meant to be a discussion book. It serves its purpose well, and in the process has been known to make a certain type of educator uncomfortable.



So knowing that this school loved and taught and discussed Swear to Howdy, made the 13 hour drive seem worthwhile. A frog stranglin' rain couldn't have kept me away.



Anyway, sorry. Right. My intention was also not to talk about STH. My intention was, as I said before, to tell you about a freak coincidence.



In anticipation of my coming to visit, the school encouraged kids to also read Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief, or Flipped, or The Running Dream.



A lot of teachers read The Running Dream.



The freaky coincidence? Last week, the elementary school adjacent to this middle school was struck by tragedy. An elderly man hit the gas instead of the brake and rammed his car through the fence and into a metal box of some sort, causing metal parts to go flying onto the playground. One boy's leg was so badly injured by flying metal parts that doctors wound up amputating his leg below the knee. "It's the same leg as [TRD's main character] Jessica," the vice principal told me.



He also told me that in the one week between the accident and my arrival, the schools had already done bake sales and raised $12,000 dollars.



In a very odd way, it felt like my book had come to life. For the boy's sake I would erase every page if it meant what had happened to him could also be erased, but that's not possible, so the goal's got to be to get him, like Jessica, to a new starting line.



After my presentation--which contains slides of an amputee putting on his prosthetic leg--I asked the students to include the boy when he attends their middle school next year, and I think they will. It's a really good school, with a brave staff. I think maybe I'll go back someday.



Even if it's a 14 hour drive to get there.

Odds & Ends & A Wave.

Hello there, faithful blogettes.



Hm. That's kinda close to baguettes, huh?



Whatever. The point is...



Hi!



I hope you had a fun week, and lots of adventure on Sammy's favorite day. I have e-mailed all the book winners and want to thank everyone who participated. Loved the pictures and the creativity involved. The prize for "funniest" goes to a submission for "Lady Lana" on a tabletop holding her cheeks, with a mouse in the foreground. Cracked me up!



Our Halloween: We live off the beaten path, so Mark and I have taken to doing reverse trick-or-treating in our neighborhood. We head out with a bucket of candy and stop cars and adults and kids trick-or-treating and give them candy. And since it was a nice night out, we also threw handfuls up at people sitting on balconies sipping their adult beverages.



That was quite entertaining.



Switching subjects, I know there are questions out there.



Here are some answers.



Sammy movie news: Hope to have something for you by the end of the year.



Shoelaces: I haven't forgotten.



Contest for name in last Sammy: I haven't forgotten.



The picture on this post: Mark and I are playing around with images to wrap the van on our Epic Road Trip Adventure. We're thinking this would look good / funny / interesting on the back window. It would be in color, but Mark cobbled this together for tonight's post to give you an idea. Comments?



[OMG which way does our wiper go? I have to look. (You know, the wave?)]



That's all for now. As always, thanks for checking in. I'll see you in the comments!

Treat, No Trick!

Okay, here's the deal. I've got 5 hardcover copies of Sammy Keyes and the Night of Skulls sitting on my desk. They are "turtlebacks" or library editions--which are very durable (and even more expensive than the book-jacket version of the hardcover).



I'm pretty sure everyone here knows that Night of Skulls is a Halloween adventure, so in the spirit of Sammy's favorite holiday, I'm going to sign them and give them away.



Ready?



Here's the drill:



Send a picture of you in costume as one of the Sammy Keyes characters* to this e-mail address and include answers to the following questions in the body of your e-mail:



What character are you? 
What book is the character's from? (Or hold the book in your picture, if you want to.)
Is it okay to post your picture on the internet? (Yes or No)


(Yup, that's me!)

Do you want to be identified? (No / First name only / First + Last Initial  / Tag me!)



In the e-mail's Subject Line put: COSTUME CONTEST




DEADLINE: Sunday, 11/3, before 5 PM Pacific time.




RESTRICTIONS: Books can only be shipped to addresses in the United States. (But that doesn't mean you can't send a picture if you just want to be part of the fun.)




WINNERS: I will consolidate all the photos (without names) and let Mark pick the 5 entries that he thinks are the best. (I hate picking because I always want to give everybody something...) 




NOTIFICATION: We will e-mail the winners before next Sunday's blog entry is posted (and ask for best mailing addresses via e-mail). 




You never know how many people are going to participate in something like this, so don't think you'll never win! And let me remind you--it's easy to dress up as Sammy. Or Casey! Have a chicken hat? You're Billy Pratt!




Hope you'll play along!  Regardless, have fun, safe, and Happy Halloween!




*Here are a bunch of costume ideas, in case you didn't see them on the Sammy Keyes FaceBook page:

The Incredible Human Plateau

I've been busy helping out a friend in need. At first I thought I'd be doing one thing, but it turned out there were lots of additional things to do and ways to help, so I dove in and became a full-service friend.





I love feeling useful.



At one point my friend's mother asked, "Is there anything you don't do?" and in response I talked about my parents. How their immigrant position on Things-Needing-Doing was if you could figure out a way to do it yourself, you did it yourself.



Their approach was very "Nike", too, (and way before there was a Nike): Don't complain--just do it.



What I pondered on the long drive home from my stint as a full-service-friend was the lifespan trajectories of knowledge, ability, and means. When we're young, we're soaking up knowledge, we're gaining in ability, and we're figuring out how to pay for what we want. Our goals are all ahead of us.



As we get older, we (hopefully) get smarter, more skillful, and acquire financial balance, but at some point the benefits of what we've gained become compromised by what we're starting to lose.



They call middle age "over the hill" for a reason.



And once we're well over the hill--when we're achy and old, with wobbly legs and bad eyes--how do we apply all we've gained in life? People won't even listen to your wisdoms, and you can't really enjoy your money. Money's role becomes to make you as comfortable as an achy oldie with wobbly legs and bad eyes can be.



So where is the sweet spot? That hilltop where the view is great? That point on the graph where you've acquired skill and knowledge, and are comfortable enough financially to enjoy some of the perks of all your hard work?



My breakthrough with this mental graphing was to switch from hill to plateau. Instead of being a point, I mused, why not stretch the "spot" into a "line"? Maximize the time you're on top before you lose the ability to do the things you love to do. I started seeing that the trick in all this is to stretch that plateau out for as long as you possibly can.



So how do you do that?



Well, there are a lot of variables, of course, and everyone's situation is different, but I think the length of that plateau is largely tied to one's physical well-being. It's what allows us to still do when we finally have.



I'm not a fitness fanatic. People assume I am because of The Running Dream, but running (and now weight training) is something I do for my health (both mental and physical). I do need tricks to keep me sweating. I need encouragement, just like most people. Exercise is work. But graphing the trajectories of knowledge, ability, and means on my drive home encouraged me. Especially when I visualized stretching the plateau.



I am so gonna stretch my plateau!



They'll call me the Incredible Human Plateau!



Yeah, that's me!



I don't mind getting old. I just want to be able to put all the knowledge and skills I've worked so hard to gain to good use for as long as I can.



It really feels nice to be useful.

Finding My Inner Fiona

The interesting thing about being a writer is that over time you realize how much the characters you create give back to you.


How much they teach you.



It's an odd realization, because you're the one who created them. It's not like an actual child whose life you initiate, who goes on to absorb the world and then reinvigorates your life with new knowledge and ideas. Everything a character is - on the page - is something you put there.



And yet...



I have learned so much from my characters.



It's astounding, really, how much I have learned from my characters.



Being a writer makes you define what you think. It makes you explore your views and those of others. It makes you face your sense of life and either redefine it, or support it. You move your fictional people around in heroic ways. And although all credible heroes are also flawed, those flaws are forgiven in the end because the hero's intentions, their direction, their purpose is ultimately good.



I have learned much from Sammy Keyes about determination and friendship, about compassion and forgiveness. From Holly in Runaway I've learned about survival (and I don't mean all the stowing away and living off abandoned movie theater popcorn). From Rusty in Swear to Howdy I've learned about courage and holding on with all your might. From Nolan in Shredderman I've learned to look at the root of hate and ask myself why? Why is this person so mean? From Juli and Bryce in Flipped, I've learned to have patience...with myself and with others...and I've learned that a parent's role is to lead by example.



These are all main characters, but it is not the protagonist in The Running Dream who serves as a model for me at this time. It's the best friend, Fiona.



I'm not at liberty to say anything more, but for those of you who look for my posts every Sunday night, please forgive this tardy entry. Know that I haven't been slacking. Far from it. I've been very busy, finding my inner Fiona.



I've learned so much from Fiona.

The Literary Pumpkin Patch

I am between trips, so today's entry is a little photo journal of the special lunch Central Middle School hosted for me when I visited them last week in Oklahoma. Those of you who know me (and Sammy!) know that Halloween is my favorite "holiday" so you can imagine how giddy I was when I saw all these painted pumpkins and decorations on display at the school lunch tables.



There was Sammy Keyes and the Dead Giveaway...









Sammy Keyes and the Killer Cruise....











Then Night of Skulls, front and back...











And the Curse of Moustache Mary!







 They did some "stand-alone" titles too! Like Flipped (book and movie versions)...























































And The Running Dream...










Swear to Howdy...








Confessions of a Serial Kisser...









And The Gecko & Sticky!








So much work went into putting these table decorations together ... and I don't know about you, but painting even one of these pumpkins would have been a monumental effort for me!



Then there were skits, put on by faculty and kids, including 3 different "Sammys". I wish I had a picture of the three women who played the Bandito Brothers from The Gecko & Sticky. They were dressed up like the characters (in full mariachi regalia, plus mustaches) and were hilarious! "Ms. Krockle," the fierce science teacher from The Gecko & Sticky, was also present (played by the assistant principal), as was Elvis.



This school really knows how to make an author's work "come alive" for the students, and I feel so lucky to have my books as part of the whole Central Middle School Experience. As a kid, how could you not want to read when teachers dress up as Bandito Brothers (Bandita Sisters?) or your teacher walks out with an Elvis swagger and gives you a taste of what the story's about?



I wish I could have magically transported all those pumpkins home in my carry-on, but I'm glad I've got pictures to remind me what a special place CMS is, and how lucky I am to be part of that school experience.



Thanks for checking in--see you next Sunday (and, of course, in the comments)!

A Little More from Oklahoma

It's been an interesting few days in Oklahoma, and we've been going non-stop. By we I mean me and a few other authors: Ruta Sepetys (Between Shades of Gray), Gennifer Choldenko (Al Capone Does My Shirts. And Laundry. And Homework) and Sonia Gensler (The Revenant).



The thing about children's book authors is that they're nice. (Well, most of them are, anyway, and all of these were.) And it was fun to get to know each other a little bit and spend time together.



We all participated in a conference, but also did assemblies and presentations at schools in the towns that were hit by tornadoes. Between school visits we toured places where houses and stores used to be, and heard stories from kids and teachers about where they'd been and what they'd seen and how frightening and devastating the experience was.



To the left is an image of what the gym at Highland East School school looked after the tornado. Yes, that's the basketball hoop, upside down. "Loud and terrifying" was the way the tornado was described by most people, which is probably an understatement if you were part of the group gathered in the gym.



I'm getting picked up to travel to Edmond, OK to do two more days of visits, so I'd better pack up! Just wanted to check in with a little more info--see you in the comments!