Susan Beth Pfeffer's Blog, page 4

I Got Plenty O' Nuttin Much To Write About

Of course, when did that ever stop me?

Life is peaceful and quiet and surpremely uneventful, which makes for a pleasant enough time, but doesn't give me much blogable material.

You know (well, most of you don't) I have a very good friend who calls me on average once a week, and she always asks me what's new, and 9 times out of 10, I mumble and stumble and change the subject by asking what's new with her. There is always something new with her, and by the time we're through, either we've spoken long enough that we need to get off the phone, or I've remembered something that's new with me. This has been our ritual for decades, so I guess it works, but probably not here.

What I've been doing a lot of lately is reading, which is about as peaceful and quiet and supremely uneventful thing to do as I can imagine. It got to the point where having read 3 library books in 4 days, I decided I was reading too much, so I pulled back by reading Nightmare Alley by William Lindsay Gresham. I own the movie edition, which Scooter was more than willing to rest under
 but not at all eager to pose with. I never would have guessed that the author of Nightmare Alley was in any way connected with C. S. Lewis. Wikipedia is a wondrous thing.

After I read Nightmare Alley (which, for a short book, took a long time to read), I watched the movie. Here are three things that are different between the book and the movie:

The movie has a softer ending (well, that's not a surprise).

In the book, he's guilty of manslaughter. In the movie, it's really just an accident.

In the book, he had a mother and a father and a dog named Gyp. In the movie, he's an orphan and he grew up in an orphanage, but he still had a dog named Gyp. I find that wildly funny.

I'm currently reading Shadow of the Titanic by Andrew Wilson. I never knew that Elinor Glyn had a sister who was a Titanic survivor. I'm about halfway through, so who knows what other things I'll learn by book's end.

So now you know everything that's new with me, and you truly understand why when my friend asks me, I have nothing much to tell her!

My Upcoming Schedule At The American Library Association Conference (AKA ALA)

Upcoming is a little premature, since it's not for two weeks and a couple of days, but I figured I'd tell you everything I know now, on the assumption nothing much is going to change in the next two weeks and a couple of days.

So here's my schedule:

Tuesday June 25: Get my hair cut.

Wednesday June 26: Fret about my haircut. Possibly do an emergency shampoo even though I will have just gotten a very professional one the day before. Also debate for an absurdly long time about my choice of shoes. Print the boarding pass. Do some prepacking. Unpack everything because I'll become convinced I forgot something important. Prepack again. Check the 10 day weather forecasts to confirm no blizzards are scheduled (for some reason, there's always a blizzard when I have to flight to or from O'Hare). Discover in lieu of blizzards, massive thunderstorms and tornadoes are anticipated. Shrug philosophically and prepack and unprepack again, this time with umbrellas.

Thursday June 27: Pack frantically. Tell Scooter he won't miss me one little bit. Feel guilty because I'm lying to him. Drive to the airport. Spend many hours in the airport because my flight is delayed, thanks to massive thunderstorms and tornadoes in Nome, Alaska. Maybe a volcano there too; it hardly matters. Search desperately for anyplace that sells ice cream. Go to the ladies room two or three times (depending on volcanic activity), dragging my suitcase with me as I go. Read an entire junky novel while I wait. Eventually get on the airplane and even more eventually, arrive in Chicago. Take a cab to the hotel, where no one is awaiting me. Discover there's nothing on TV that night, but channel flip for a couple of hours anyway.

Friday June 28: Eat a huge room service breakfast, if the hotel still has room service. If it doesn't, feel disappointed that I won't be able to eat a huge room service breakfast. Instead, scurry to wherever I can eat breakfast and do same. Hope my hair looks okay, since there was no time to wash it. Get picked up at 7:30 AM in the hotel lobby (fortunately for me, that'll feel like 8:30 AM). Get escorted to:

Ten Years of YALSA’s Teens’ Top Ten

When: Friday, June 28, 2013 - 8:30am to 12:00pmLocation: McCormick Place Convention CenterS106a Description:  Join YALSA for a half day preconference to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Teens’ Top Ten (TTT)! The Teens' Top Ten is a "teen choice" list, where teens nominate and choose their favorite books of the previous year. Learn about the program from current TTT groups, receive tips on how to run a similar program in your library, and meet authors who have appeared on the Teens’ Top Ten list (Susan Beth Pfeffer*, Cory Doctorow, Sarah Dessen, Marie Lu, and Laurie Halse Anderson).Meeting Type: Preconference/InstituteContent Area: Books & AuthorsInterests: Young Adult LiteratureYoung Adult ServicesYouth ServicesSponsors: YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association)  Be certain to say hello to  Marie Lu, since we were just on a panel together at the IRA convention, where she was a good deal smarter and more articulate than me, but I, on the other hand, maneuvered it so she had to share a microphone and I had one all to myself. Then, once the program is over, if no one else wants or needs me, scurry to the Art Institute Of Chicago, which is a fabulous museum. It's been years since I was last there, but paintings don't go bad. Return to my hotel. Fret some more about my hair. Deal with the room service/ no room service issue (at least by then I'll know). Channel flip obsessively. Try to read my emails, and hope there's one from Marci telling me Scooter is doing all right (while tactfully leaving out any mention of his act of protest on the living room carpet). Finish reading another junky novel. Curse myself right before falling asleep for forgetting to print the boarding pass. Saturday June 29: Eat a very big breakfast somewhere. Empty out my enormous pocketbook into my suitcase and throw all my clothes in there as well. Get my boarding pass printed. Find my way to the convention center. Walk through all the booths taking as much free stuff as my enormous pocketbook can hold. Focus in particular on pens, pencils, and notepads, ignoring the fact that I still have pens, pencils and notepads from the last ALA conference I went to four years ago. Justify taking all the free candy I can get my hands on by the fact my flight will undoubtedly be delayed for a week or two and who knows if I can get any food at O'Hare Airport. Hide all the candy and most of the pens, pencils, and notepads from the fine people at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Get to their booth well before I'm supposed to, and try to stand there inconspicuously until they're ready for me. Sign books (including ARCs of The Shade Of The Moon) from 11:30-12:30. Hope someone is there who wants me to sign their books. Make social chit chat with the fine HMH people, so they won't notice if no one wants me to sign their books. Regret having passed up that extra Reese's Peanut Butter Cup at the booth way at the other end of the convention center. Say goodbye to the fine HMH people, who will now be fully focused on the next of their autographing authors, and grab a cab to O'Hare Airport. Spend the requisite number of hours hearing rumors about volcanic activity in Hawaii holding up our flight. Finally get on the airplane. Finish reading my third (or maybe fourth) junky novel. Pick up my car, drive home, and inform a noisy and aggrieved Scooter, that I missed him considerably more than he missed me. Clean up his Saturday protest. Put away the pens, pencils, and notepads, where they can keep company with the ones from four years before. Throw the clothes out of the suitcase onto the chair in my bedroom, because I don't have the energy to hang them up. Notice that I left the umbrella somewhere in Chicago Eat all the candy, so I won't be tempted to on Sunday. Go to bed, trying not to fret about the haircut I'll get for the Decatur Book Festival Labor Day Weekend!   *My guess on why I'm listed first is Age Before Beauty.

The Yankees Won 6-4 Even Though They Didn't Score After The Second Inning

Todd Strasser and I went to our annual New York Yankee game on Wednesday. C.C. Sabathia pitched a complete game for the victory.

C.C. Sabathia warming up before the game
Our seats were close to the right field foul pole. I was very pleased when Ichiro Suzuki was put in right for defensive purposes.
Ichiro is bigger than this in real life  I asked Todd if I could take his picture, and he agreed, but didn't bother getting up.
When he asked to take my picture, I had no choice but to agree. You can't tell, but I'm wearing my Hudson Valley Renegades cap.
 One of the best things about going to a baseball game is that, unlike figure skating or tennis, you can talk all the way through the game. We talked about Todd's newest book, Fallout . I have a rule never to read books written by people I know, but I'm going to break that rule for Fallout, when it comes out on September 10.  Fallout should satisfy my reading needs that day!

I Have 609 Pages Left To Read (And The Print Isn't Getting Any Bigger)

I was very mopey this afternoon, but not for the standard reasons.

Actually, I was feeling quite happy. Mopey was more what I felt I should be feeling. In fact, I told myself if it weren't for the fact that I was feeling contented and happy, I might even be depressed.

Still, it's hard to diagnose oneself as depressed when one is feeling contented and happy. So I settled for mopey as my adjective du jour.

I wasn't feeling mopey because I'd cleaned my apartment this morning. No, it wasn't a case of, "I mopped, therefore I moped." I wasn't feeling mopey because it was 55 degrees on Saturday and it's going to be 90 degrees tomorrow and one could get whiplash from the weather around here. I wasn't even feeling mopey because a couple of nights ago I lost 2 hours sleep playing with an idea for a book that I realized within 12 hours was really a ridiculous idea. I haven't been writing for months now, except for the occasional blog post and email, and I can't say I've missed it.

What was making me feel so vexed (there's only so many times one should claim mopeyhood) was there was nothing in the house I wanted to read.



Shelves With Books I Ought To Want To Read

 
Shelves With Books I'm Not Going To Read Because I Wrote ThemYou would think with all these books, there'd be at least one around that would have appealed to me this afternoon. But here's the problem:
The past year or so, I've been reading books pretty much for the sole purpose of getting rid of them. They're books I bought a long time ago, that have been sitting on my shelves waiting to be read, and I've been pretty good of late in reading and ridding. But I've made my way through most of the ones that had even limited appeal to me, and the ones left (no insult intended to them), I think of as homework. So what's on my shelves now are books I know I ought to read so I can get rid of them, books I'll get rid of at some point whether I read them or reread them but what's the hurry, and books I know I'm not going to get rid of, so there's no point reading or rereading them.Sometimes, when I'm in this kind of mood, I read a mystery novel by Patrick Quentin, but I did that on Sunday, and I must have read it once before (although I had no memory of it), because I figured out who did it, and ordinarily I'm terrible at that. But a Patrick Quentin novel takes 3 hours maximum to read, and I didn't think I should read another one quite so soon after the first. Finally, after several hours of stomping and pouting, I pulled Fatal Vision by Joe McGinness off the shelf. See the bookcase with the big German poster on the floor, and the shelf above that has the two black and white photographs of my father? Fatal Vision was on the next shelf up. According to the copyright page, it came out in paperback in August 1984, and my copy is a First Signet Printing, which most likely means I read it in August 1984, and have been thinking about rereading it for the past 29 years give or take. It had been on the No Point Reading Or Rereading Because I'm Not Going To Get Rid Of List, but you know, if it's taken me 29 years give or take to get around to rereading it, maybe a reevaluation is in order.  So far, I've read 44 pages, spent 7 minutes on Google, catching up on the case, and one hour 12  minutes writing this blog entry (including taking pictures of the bookshelves, which was harder than you might think because I'd forgotten to put the memory card back in the camera from the last time I'd used it, so I had to take the pictures all over again). As Stephen Sondheim once said, "Art isn't easy." I bet he has plenty in his house to read though! ETA: Picture of Scooter hogging the bathroom sink when I wanted to brush my teeth and go to bed which was why I forgot to put the memory card back in the camera.  ETDoubleA: If any of you can make the connection between Patrick Quentin and Stephen Sondheim without benefit of Wikipedia, I'll be very impressed!

Bringing You Up To (Cough Cough Hack Hack Achoo!) Date

The Ladies' Home Journal says I have a cold.

I got it either at the movies last Tuesday when I saw Mud or Wednesday when I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and saw lots of pretty paintings and dresses. I don't recall being sneezed on at either place, but they are the most likely culprits.

I returned the favor by first noticing my sore throat at a showing of The Great Gatsby 3D (1 D too many for me- those 3 D movies give me eye strain), so who knows how many people I infected. My apologies to them, and I hope they don't blame it on spring allergies, the way I did before my Ladies' Home Journal consultation.

Whenever I get a cold, I ask myself if my mother would have made me go to school. I would have been able to convince her through yesterday that I'd be better off at home (lots of very impressive coughing yesterday), but today even I would have sent myself. So after running some errands, I returned to the computer for something more constructive than Freecell. Like bringing you up to date.

Monday, when I would have stayed home from school, I went to Poughkeepsie to participate in the Marist College Center for Lifetime Study Meet The Authors Day. Technically, I was one of the authors, and felt no particular need to meet me, but armed with cough drops and tissues, I went anyway.

The first author I met (although I didn't actually meet him, but I did hear him talk about Dwight David Eisenhower) was Michael Korda. His talk was very interesting, probably more interesting than Dwight David Eisenhower, who in my childhood perception, was one dull president (although he was the only president from Franklin Roosevelt on who had no daughters, a topic of endless fascination to me, albeit only me).

The second author I met was Steve Hamilton, who I did sort of meet, since we sat next to each other when we signed books. But more to the point, I went to his talk. In preparation, I'd read his novel, The Lock Artist , which I definitely enjoyed, even while sneezing and coughing.

After Mr. Hamilton spoke, he answered questions (that's what us writers do), so I raised my hand and got recognized, just as I would have in school, although the way I felt on Monday, I would have been able to convince my mother not to send me.

I very politely pointed out that according to my casual count, ten characters in The Lock Artist got slaughtered, and did Mr. Hamilton possibly think a book might be more powerful if only one or two characters got killed?

His answer was very interesting (to me at least- I didn't conduct a survey). He said he thought all the deaths were justifiable in terms of the plot, and that single murder books were the kind Agatha Christie wrote, and what he had cut down on was the use of what he called "the F bomb." Lots fewer "F bombs" in his books nowadays.

It was a very good thing that Mr. Hamilton hadn't read any of my books, because by my casual count, four named characters get slaughtered in The Shade Of The Moon, not to mention countless unnamed extras, whose bodies littered the streets whenever I felt like it. But I didn't drop a single "F bomb."

What I did drop was my old camera. Or technically it dropped me. I guess I took one cute picture of Scooter too many for it, because it simply stopped working.
The last cute Scooter picture my camera took
 So before infecting the entire audience of The Great Gatsby 3 D, I bought a new camera.

Scooter thinks that's just about as exciting as Dwight David Eisenhower!

Promotion Is Always Better Than Demotion

As I'm sure you remember, because I know for a fact you commit to memory every single word I write here, my lovely publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (yes, the royalty check has arrived at my agent's, so my publisher is lovely once again) created survival kits as a way of promoting The Shade Of The Moon.
I got my survival kit a couple of weeks ago, but I've been too distracted to tell you about it. Here's what it looks like.

 My favorite part was the Attention! Life As We Knew It Survival Kit enclosed! label on the outside box, which I put it into the bag, and then removed it for this photograph.


Scooter was considerably more interested in the color coordinated green whistle and flashlight.

It's been Scooter's life's dream to star in a revival of Anyone Can Whistle.


My lovely publisher sent the Survival Kit to independent bookstore owners as a way of announcing the upcoming publication of The Shade Of The Moon.  I can only imagine their lovely reaction to this extremely lovely blog entry at Publishers Weekly about the the fabulously lovely survival kit.  The reality is (or at least my reality is, and I don't think I'm alone with this reality), it's genuinely exciting to see promotion for you book. It takes time and effort and money on the publisher's part and I'm very grateful.  And Scooter thinks it's an excellent new toy!

There's More To Life Than Writing And Books

There's a day in May at the Orange County Arboretum.



     





And there's Scooter, who enjoys his greenery indoors! 

Just For Fun: Who Would You Put In The Children's Book Writers Hall Of Fame If There Were A Children's Book Writers Hall Of Fame?

I was channel flipping yesterday and I noticed that Vinny Testaverde had been admitted to the College Football Hall Of Fame. That reminded me of a vision I'd had a number of years ago for a Children's Book Writers Museum, Hall Of Fame and Gift Shop.

I would have kept my vision to myself except later on, additional channel flipping led to my hearing a reference to the Mustard Hall Of Fame.

So I decided the time had come to write an entry about who I would put in to The Children's Book Writers Hall Of Fame, and more to the point, to ask you who you would put in to this wonderful non-existent joint (by the way, if any of you have a spare $15 million you'd like to spend on it, I have plenty of ideas and only a minor taste for embezzlement).

I decided to limit my own list to The Masters Room, writers whose primary works predate 1950. Here's the list I came up with between the Mustard Hall Of Fame and Scooter waking me up at 7:14 AM. They're in alphabetical order for those of you who take umbrage if someone is listed before someone else for any other reason:

Louisa May Alcott
Horatio Alger
Hans Christian Andersen
L. Frank Baum
Lewis Carroll
Mary Mapes Dodge
Rudyard Kipling
A. A. Milne
Lucy Maud Montgomery
Robert Louis Stevenson
Edward Stratemeyer
P. L. Travers
Laura Ingalls Wilder

All right. The rest is up to you. Add to the Masters Room (I'm certain I forgot people). Debate whether Jules Verne should be in there, or whether Harper Lee should be in the Hall Of Fame (I couldn't decide myself on that one). Let me know if Mary Mapes Dodge should be in the Editors And Agents Room, rather than the Masters Room. Make your Hall Of Fame Lists long or short, contemporary or just past 1950 (it killed me not to put Dr. Seuss in the Masters Room).

Your only restriction is to leave me off your lists. Don't worry. There's a permanent exhibit devoted to me:

Susan Beth Pfeffer: Her Books, Her Cats, Her Vision

Put up the $15 million and you can have your own permanent exhibit too!

Tweet And Retweet Were Walking Down The Street

Let me start by saying I still haven't warmed up to Facebook. I know I should make use of it, both professionally and personally, but I just can't make myself.

On the other hand, Facebook, that sneaky devil, mentioned to me that many of the most popular kids from my high school class were right there, and suggested, in that quiet understated Facebook way, that I remind them of our lifelong friendships at absolutely no cost to them or me. So I did. And I must say my already healthy ego skyrocketed when the vast majority (or maybe all of them, since I no longer remember who I reminded of our lifelong friendships) eagerly acknowledged our lifelong friendships by "friending" me on Facebook for the world to see. Either that, or they always "friend" anyone who asks, which might be why they were the most popular kids from my high school class in the first place.

Most of these most popular kids, by the way, spend as much time on Facebook as I do. But it's a thrill to see Jimmy Steinman posting links to Meatloaf interviews, for me and his other 325 best friends to watch.

Twitter, on the other hand, I find quite entertaining, even though I don't tweet as often as I should, mostly because I have nothing to say and that actually holds me back (silly me).

For example, this afternoon, I almost tweeted: When I'm tired I nap and when I nap I have trouble falling asleep and when I have trouble falling asleep I get tired and nap.

I decided against it because it has taken me approximately forever to break the 500 follower mark, and tweets like that could easily plummet my total to the low 200s (which it also took forever for me to get to).

I don't follow a lot of people on Twitter and some of those I do follow I question why I follow. For example the New York Yankees, who feel obliged to tweet after every base hit, walk, or stolen base. If I'm watching the game, I already know about those base hits, walks, and stolen bases, and if I'm not watching, the odds are I'm not interested in those base hits, walks and stolen bases, and even if I weren't watching and I was interested, reading about them on Twitter isn't all that exciting. Or John Lithgow, who after two weeks of not tweeting (and I must admit, I didn't notice he was gone) tweeted 13 times in a row so we could catch up with what he'd been doing during those missing two weeks.

In the immortal words of Winnie the Pooh, "Do we care (to rhyme with where)?"

The person on Twitter who fascinates me the most is Lawrence Block. I've read a lot of Lawrence Block novels over the years, so I decided to follow him. And I'm glad I do, because he tweets just the right amount and he almost never tweets about hits, walks, or stolen bases.

But what he does, which totally intrigues me, is retweet favorable tweets about his books. Every time he does, I check to see if the person who tweeted in the first place is famous and I simply don't happen to know who said person is because I'm not up on who's famous these days.

But based on how many followers these people have, no, they're not famous. They just happen to mention liking a Lawrence Block novel, and Lawrence Block thinks that's worthy of letting all his fellow followers know.

Frankly, I think his ego would be better served by reminding the popular kids from his high school class that they're his lifelong friends on Facebook. And I wouldn't have to read all those retweeted compliments, which really don't improve the quality of my life one bit.

There are people on Twitter who take the time to announce they like one of my books. Yes, I have to search hard to find them, but they're there and I enjoy reading their intelligent, thoughtful, extremely well written tweets on the subject. But the tweets I'm always tempted to retweet are the ones that hate my books. I mean really really hate my books.

The only reason I refrain is because Lawrence Block never retweets those kind of tweets. Maybe everyone loves his books, or maybe he's too smart to let the world know that's not the case.

But let me tell you, it's hard to resist retweeting something like this:

     
life as we knew it was terrible and the WHOLE SCHOOL was suppose to read it and then we didnt do s...* with it that year Or my current absolute favorite (and I bet it would be Lawrence Block's too):        EVEN OUR TEACHERS HATED LIFE AS WE KNEW IT. MOST OF THEM GAVE US THE ANSWERS FOR THE REQUIRED TEST WE HAD TO TAKE BECAUSE F...** THAT S...*** Now that's what I call tweeting! *Spelt in its entirety on Twitter ** Also spelt in its entirety on Twitter, but in big capital letters *** Likewise and then some      

Scooter Picked The First Name And I The Other Four

The Bolivian Hat drawing of April 2013 is now history.

Okay, that's excessively dramatic, but I did want you to know the names have been drawn and the emails sent out.

I was pleased (and startled) to receive 85 emails. Thank you to everyone who contacted me. And know if I get any more ARCs of The Shade Of The Moon, I've saved all the names (they'll leave the hat in a moment and go into a sandwich bag for safekeeping) and will plop them back in the hat to see who comes out next.

Scooter will want to know too!