Susan Beth Pfeffer's Blog, page 5

It's A Bird! It's A Plane! It's A Bolivian Hat!

I could, I suppose, tell you all about the excellent time I had in San Antonio at the International Reading Association convention. I could show you pictures of the San Antonio Riverwalk, where the
  flowers are blooming and late April feels like May and not March.

Yes, I could do all that. And maybe if I had a little more energy I would.



But instead, I'll tell you that at the convention, my very nice publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (who I'll love and cherish until I really go crazy waiting for my royalty check to arrive) gave me my very own Advance Reading Copy of The Shade Of The Moon.


Shortly after I came home, my friend the UPS man arrived, bringing me a package containing five more ARCs. Naturally I posed them in front of the forsythia Marci was nice enough to leave for me.
Just as naturally, Scooter came over to inspect them.

Since I already have an ARC and don't need five more, I've decided to offer them to you.

On the assumption that maybe more than five people will want one, I will choose at random five people to send them to.

Here's what you will need to do:

Email me over at susanbpfeffer@aol.com  and tell me you'd like one of the ARCs. If you are under 18, get your parent's permission to email me (a total stranger), especially since if you're selected, I'll be sending the ARC to your home, and we don't want your parent to be upset or concerned when the package shows up. If you're over 18, you're on your own.

Where was I? Oh yes. You email me, and then I copy your email address on a slip of paper and I put the slip of paper into the Bolivian hat, which my friend Christy bought me during our brief but memorable stay in La Paz, Bolivia.

 Oops. It will work better if the Bolivian Hat is upside down.  I'll select five email addresses extremely randomly (I even close my eyes while doing so), and if you're one of the five, I'll email you and ask you for your home address and who you'd like to have the ARC inscribed to (along with the "Accept the impossible" part, which works pretty well, except it takes a lot of space, so I have to remember to start it closer to the left side of the page). And then off the ARC will go. Since not everyone who reads this blog reads it the instant it gets published. I'll do the drawing on Monday, April 29, so if your email gets to me by then, it'll be in the hat along with everyone else's. And don't worry if you're from somewhere other than the USA. This drawing is open to everyone on the Planet Earth. I don't know if I'll be getting any more ARCs (the five that arrived yesterday were a very pleasant surprise). It could be that after the American Library Association conference in late June. I might be able to scrounge a few more, in which case, I'll do a second drawing then. But don't count on that, so if you're interested, email me before Monday. And if you're not interested, keep it to yourself. The Bolivian hat is very sensitive! ETA because I just realized I should ETA the following: If you get selected, there's no cost. I pay the postage. And don't expect to hear back from me unless your email is randomly selected, in which case you will hear back from me when I ask you where to send the ARC.  

Sometimes The Lines Simply Aren't Parallel

This has been a very difficult week for many people and places in America, the bombings in Boston, the explosion in West, Texas, the NRA's ownership of the United States Senate. Terrible things happen in the world all the time, but they don't hit us (or at least me) in the face the way these events have.

But as it happens, this was a really good week for me. A lot of nice things happened, and I've been reluctant to post about them for fear of seeming insensitive. But I'm off to San Antonio tomorrow, and when I get back, I'll probably be excited and exhausted and this week will seem like a long time ago.

So I'm going to tell you about the good things. I'll start with the personal stuff and then move to the professional stuff. If you're not in the mood for my good news, then wave goodbye and I'll see you next week, when I hope things will be calmer in the real world.

Okay. Personal good news.

Mostly it's my mother. Things are better with her. Things are never perfect with a 101 with dementia, but the situation which had my brother and Marci and me so concerned has definitely changed for the better.

Also, I saw my doctor for my official Now I'm An Old Person Visit (the sole purpose of which seemed to be to give me a pneumonia vaccine shot), and I talked to my doctor about my late lamented thyroid. She said it takes 6 months for the body to adapt to the loss thereof, and if my weight is still a concern to me, I can talk to Dr. Thyroid about changing dosages of medication. So I feel better about that (she also very sweetly claimed she couldn't see the weight gain on me).

On a sentimental note, today is Obviously, he has worked out his escape route.  Scooter is the most difficult, demanding, insecure, noisiest cat I've ever had. But as you all know, I'm crazy about him.  Onto the professional good news. I had a great time with the Kirkus interview. The young man who interviewed me had read The Shade Of The Moon. I realized that except for my editor, he's the first person I've had contact with who had actually read it, and my editor has never told me what she likes about it, just offered suggestions about what I could do to make it better. In a few months, any number of people will have read it (and, I hope, like it) but it was genuinely exciting to talk to a person who had. I'm having centering problems here. I think the best thing to do is ignore them and hope you do the same. I got an email from my agent's assistant telling me we had an offer for the audiobook rights for The Shade Of The Moon. I was delighted to accept. Audible will be the publisher and I'm curious already about how Jon is going to sound.  It occurred to me this week to check out the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's catalog page about The Shade Of The Moon and I was delighted to see what their promotion is going to be. I don't know what a "survival kit" is, but I must have one. And, there's going to be a display unit. My recollection is I tried to find one of those for This World We Live In and never did, but I love the fact the publisher thinks it's worth doing again.
   Finally, I got one of the nicest presents I've ever had the privilege of receiving this week, a truly beautiful painting by a young reader, inspired by Life As We Knew It.
I placed it where I can look at it all the time from my reading chair in the den.

I'm sure you think this is enough good news for anybody, and you'd be right. Besides, I have packing to do and a morning flight to catch.

I'll let you know how things go in San Antonio next week. In the meantime, I hope all your news is as good as mine, although without a mistaken for a scratching post sofa!

ETA: My editor just sent me the very first review of The Shade Of The Moon, from Kirkus itself, and it's a very good one!

Four years ago, a meteor crashed into the moon, altering the Earth’s gravity; the world is an ever-bleaker place in this fourth of Pfeffer’s gripping series.

Seventeen-year-old Jon Evans, the younger brother of Miranda, protagonist in two of the earlier novels, lives with his stepmother and half brother in an enclave called Sexton. After countless natural disasters and proliferating disease, humanity is now plagued by rigidly cruel class stratification, in which a person is either a respected “claver” or a disdained “grub,” a system so ingrained that Jon struggles to understand whether or not he thinks it is right. Featuring a plot that delivers twist after twist, this is a vivid take on the man-as-monster theme common to the genre. While the individual relationships depicted at times stray into melodrama, there is a persistent undercurrent of dread running throughout due to the novel’s realistic portrayals of mob violence and bigotry. Short, dated excerpts from Jon’s third-person perspective lack the immediacy of the epistolary style employed in the installments narrated by Miranda, but they do a fine job of illustrating a young man in a moral quandary.

Action-packed and completely unpredictable, this latest will be widely anticipated by the series’ many fans. (Post-apocalyptic adventure. 14 & up)
    

Traveling Through Time

A couple of nights ago, a story idea sneaked into my brain, and I lost a fair amount of sleep working on it. Thanks to Scooter's morning effusiveness, sleeping in has become a lost art, but since I refuse to get out of bed before 7 AM, and since after his ten minutes of ecstasy, Scooter falls back asleep and I can't, I played with the idea some more.

Playing with an idea is completely different from writing a book. I've been playing with an idea for a book that wouldn't even be all that hard to write for months now, and I haven't noticed myself scurrying to the computer and setting up a brand new doc.

But I do love playing with ideas, so I've been letting myself enjoy this one. I'll tell you this much about it- it's a time travel story.

I love the idea of time travel stories. I can't say I've read many of them. Actually I'm hard pressed to remember any I've read. Now that I think about it, I haven't even seen that many time travel movies, Back To The Future and Time After Time and I think I saw the Bing Crosby Connecticut Yankee a long long time ago. Of course there was the Star Trek episode where they go back to the 1930s, and I've probably seen some others I can't remember anymore.

Here are all possible time travel variants with the main character doing the traveling:

The main character travels through time from the present to the future.

The main character travels through time from the present to the past.

The main character travels through time from the future to the present.

The main character travels through time from the future to the past.

The main character travels through time from the past to the future which could be some other time in the past but not the past for the main character to whom what we think of as the past is the future to that character if you know what I mean. And I suppose a different main character could travel from the future to the past which could be our future but would be the past to the main character if the main character lives far enough in the future that the past for the main character is still our future.

And yes, you will be tested on that.

My idea involved the main character traveling from the future to our present, or maybe a year or two after our present, but basically our present, which would be the main character's past.

One of the tricky things about plotting a story where the main character (hereafter to be known as MC) travels from the future to our present is that anything MC does could change everything that happens in the world afterwards, which is fine for you and me, since we're here already, but could really mess up MC's genetic code, ultimately rendering MC not MC. This is a variant of traveling through time to keep Abraham Lincoln from getting assassinated, which sounds like a good idea on paper, but who knows what happens to the good old US of A without the fabulous presidency of Andrew Johnson.

So if MC travels from future to present and swats the wrong mosquito, then MC would cease to exist, at least in the world MC originally came from. In which case, if MC has gone back in time for a specific purpose, MC can never return to MC's present (our future) to find out if the mission was successful. Which is a darn shame.

Now I'm not opposed to writing darn shame endings, but even I can see how frustrating that would be for readers, especially since MC could succeed in the mission and things could become much worse as a result, but we'll never know.

The story I've been playing with MC is definitely sent on a mission intended to change the course of history, so swatting the right mosquito is an absolute requirement. But swatting that mosquito would guarantee changing MC's genetic code, so there's no MC unless MC stays in the traveled to time. I suppose there's a way of transforming that into a happy ending, but to me it would feel like being marooned, since I really like being home where I know things are and can master new skills like cheating at FreeCell. Then again, my home is much nicer than MC's, so maybe readers would be happy for MC after all.

I sincerely hope you've followed all this, because it's getting very close to my bedtime and I'm not going to reread this entry. The odds on my writing the Saga Of MC are about 1 in a 100, but if I do, I'll let you know. In the meantime, it's fun to think about while Scooter is sleeping, which is what I intend on doing any minute now myself.

Good night, past, present and future!

Other Words Rhyming With Fall Include Stall, Crawl and Maul

I woke up Monday morning, and I said to Scooter (who was the reason I woke up Monday morning at 4:30 AM, 5:30 AM, 6:30 AM and 7:30 AM), "It's Monday morning. I wonder what good news I'll hear this week."

Scooter's idea of good news is, "The human is alive and going to feed me, and I only had to wake it up with my obsessive purring four times."

One of us is never disappointed. I, on the other hand, was forced to acknowledge that I hadn't had a single piece of good news the week before.

Now, by good news, I don't mean things that are actual good news for many, like an uptick in the stock market or the Knicks' 12 game win streak. I don't even mean Scooter forgetting to wake me up at 4:30 AM, although trust me, that's cause for celebration. No, I mean professional good news. Unexpected checks are the best of the best good news, but I'm not fussy. I gladly accept good news in small, medium or large formats.

I'd had a streak of one piece of good news each week for a few glorious and unexpected weeks. There was learning I was going to go to IRA and learning I was going to go to ALA and learning I was going to go to the Decatur Book Festival. There was learning my Chinese publisher was going to publish The Shade Of The Moon. Now that I think about it, those pieces of good news didn't exactly happen one week, then the next, then the next, and then the next. They were spread out, and maybe there were a few weeks without any good news at all, but I had the holidays to blame for that. And the weather. I can always blame the weather. It's almost replaced George Bush as my go to blame station, what with March lasting about 7 and a half weeks around here.

There were no checks in the mail on Monday (no bills either, which was good, since I'd spent many hours on Sunday paying bills and it would have been a tad aggravating if a brand new bill had shown up). I did get my hotly anticipated box of DVDs from my formerly beloved Deep Discount, who I reconciled with when I found its prices were lower than Amazon's for the DVDs I absolutely had to have once I found out they existed*), but a check would have been nice.

But before I had a chance to mourn the lack of checks in the mailbox (a Monday tradition), I found an email from my publisher. A good news email, telling me that Kirkus wanted to phone interview me next week for an article about 12 different writers and was I willing?

Willing? Willing to be interviewed for an article in Kirkus?

Yes, yes, I emailed back. Yes, yes, yes. I might have even thrown in a Yes! in my excitement. Here was my good news for the week, and on a Monday to boot.

But then I thought about it. Why would Kirkus want to interview me? Granted, I'm not the queen of modesty, but fabulous as I might be, I didn't see why Kirkus would be interested in me just now. Or ever, if you want to be technical about it.

So I emailed my publisher and said, Are you sure Kirkus meant me? I figured that was a good way to word it, in case what had happened was Kirkus had said to my publisher, "We want to interview that incredibly famous author ______ ______," and my publisher instead of hearing the incredibly famous author's name, heard mine, or maybe hadn't heard mine, but sent me the email meant to be sent to the incredibly famous author by mistake.

No, no, my publisher emailed me back. It's you they want to interview, along with the other 11 writers, because they're writing an article about the big books for fall.

That's what the email actually said, "big books for fall." Not "big books that fall" or "big books that fail" or even "formerly smaller book writers that bawl because they've gained 6 pounds since the tragic loss of their thyroid."

My good news for the week promptly doubled up. Kirkus wants to interview me and it regards The Shade Of The Moon as one of the big books for fall. And next week is already covered, because being interviewed is exciting and flattering and I'll be off to San Antonio for IRA that Saturday, and the week after is covered because that Sunday I'll be in San Antonio for IRA, and by the time I get home from San Antonio, it'll be royalty check season, and I'll have several weeks of obsessing over the size of the where is it already royalty check to keep me occupied.

Now, if I can only get Scooter to sleep like this at 5:30 AM, life will truly be perfect!



*Naked City 20 Star-Filled Episodes, The Man In The Net, Inferno, and Heaven With A Barbed Wire Fence

I'm Alive. Crazed But Alive,

I would have let you know yesterday except I haven't been able to get onto BlogSpot. I don't even know if this will post, but at least I got this far.

We can thank the fine folk at Road Runner and the even finer Marci for this level of success.

I'll keep things brief and to the point*. I'm here. I'm alive. Tuesday I went to the movies and saw Admission, which I definitely enjoyed. Yesterday I went to New York City and saw a preview of The Big Knife, which I definitely enjoyed (all the women in it were great, and all the scenery chewing guys were also great).

Today, Marci and Carol and I are going to have lunch with my mother. Then my brother is coming up and he and Marci and I are going to the quarterly Meeting About My Mother. Usually I go by myself to these things, because usually they're kind of routine. But we've had some concerns that we don't feel are being properly addressed, so we're all going to be there. My wildest hope is I'll keep my big mouth shut and let Alan (beloved son) and Marci (beloved friend) do the heavy shrieking. Given that neither of them are shriekers, this is putting a lot of faith in them. But we're all on the same side (my mother's nursing home isn't the enemy- they do a wonderful job- but we think certain things need to be handled differently, and I can't make the case without shrieking).

Earlier today, I uninstalled whole bunches of things from the computer (at Marci's suggestion), which I hope will enable me to keep this computer and my sanity just a little while longer. I don't know what's going to happen with the printer, since I slammed it a few (dozen) times, and it seems to have gotten into quite a snip over it. No Rhianna, my printer.

Last night, after gulping a sleeping pill or two, I came up with what I sincerely hope is the absolute final decision on what I'll inscribe in each and every copy of The Shade Of The Moon. Before then, I'd been favoring: Reach for your goals, which I kind of liked because Jon plays soccer, so there was a clever play on words there. The problem was multifold. First, it doesn't mean anything. Secondly, it sounds like "Reach for your gun". But most importantly, it turns out my small "g" looks like an "s" and when the "a" and the "d" and the "s" run together, it looked like "Reach for your soda" which isn't what I mean at all, and Mayor Bloomburg wouldn't like one little bit.

Anyway, this morning I remembered having come up with something last night, and because even under the influence of a sleeping pill, I know to write these things down, I found what I'd written and I still like it: Accept the impossible

It doesn't have enormous amounts to do with the book itself, but it's better than my fabulous generic Take time to dream, which is a really bad idea with this book, since all of Jon's dreams are nightmares.

But "Accept the impossible" covers all four of the moon books, and since the other three inscriptions involve hope, faith and trust, acceptance makes a lot of sense. And except for my "the" problem, which looks like "Xe" it should be relatively easy to read. So unless you hear otherwise, that's what I'm going with.

Tomorrow, assuming the computer is still working and the printer either forgives me or can be ignored (I don't print all that much), I'm going to clean the apartment and buy groceries, and do some final final final, I sincerely hope final, rewrites on The Shade Of The Moon which my editor emailed me about yesterday, only I explained that I was going to NYC to the theater and today was to be devoted to mother stuff. I didn't mention writing this blog entry, but I knew I wanted to, and now, I hope, oh how I hope, I've succeeded.

If you hear some Hall Of Fame shrieking from around here, you'll know I failed!

*It could be argued this has been neither brief nor to the point. But, if you think about it, believing that I will ever be brief and to the point is definitely accepting the impossible!

Happy Passover, Etc.

That Etc. is there to cover a multitude of holidays, but mostly Easter, in case I don't blog again this week.

None of these spring celebratory holidays should be happening so early and in such a wretched miserable awaiting still more snow March like this one.

But I don't make up the calendar, and in spite of what you might think, I have no control over the moon.

Speaking of the moon, the one fact I've learned this dreary winter is that February can't have a blue moon even in a leap year. Talk about unfair (and as a younger child, I frequently do).

I'm still trying to figure out how to inscribe the upcoming copies of The Shade Of The Moon. Thank you all who have offered opinions, in comments or emails or by voting in the poll.

My current thought is You are the future. I like it for a few reasons. It's pretty easy to remember, and since the vast majority of the books I'll be inscribing are for people younger than moiself, it'll be true. Technically, I, a quintessential baby boomer, am the future and all of you will be paying for it, but it's better if I don't point that out on a regularly inscribed basis.

The only problem with You are the future is the "the," which remains a word I handwrite funny. But I might be able to keep that under control if I'm not in a hurry, and if I am in a hurry, it'll mean there's a long line of people waiting for me to inscribe copies of the book, either at IRA or ALA or the Decatur Book Festival, and long lines of people will make me so happy, I won't mind that they're going to have to figure out what my "the" scribble actually means. Which they should be able to from context, and a nice little puzzle like that will exercise their brain cells and guarantee them a happy old age.

So the inscription would go something like this:

To _______________

You are the future

Susan Beth Pfeffer

_______, 2013

It makes as much sense as Trust In Tomorrow, which I just realize I capitalize. Hmm... If I capitalize You Are The Future, I might not have that "the" issue. And it looks very profound, all nicely capitalized. It's easier to write without caps, but it might be worth the extra effort.

Ooh, ooh. And it would be an act of rebellion. Remember Life As We Knew It? It has perfectly nice capital letters, like titles generally do. Then came the dead & the gone, and I favored small letters for that one. But without asking my permission (or if they did, I've forgotten), my publisher went with small letters for this world we live in, when I would have preferred the traditional capital letters. They're doing the same for the shade of the moon, and the next paperback reprinting of Life As We Knew It will be life as we knew it.

So every time I'd inscribe The Future Is Yours, it'd be my way of saying, All those titles should have capital letters.

It's a shame no one is ever going to write a biography of me. Because all this inscription business is worth at least two chapters.

Meanwhile on a completely different and much better subject, my goddaughter and her wonderful cheese company Lakin's Gorges Cheese, got a great writeup.

I can only hope the reviews for The Shade Of The Moon, whatever its inscription, will be half as good!

World's Semi-Easiest Poll Question To Your Right*

Last night, instead of sleeping, I pondered inscriptions for The Shade Of The Moon. I still have about a month before I'll be going to San Antonio for the International Reading Association convention, which will most likely be my first opportunity to inscribe copies (in this case, ARCs) of the book.

But I'd like to get some sleep during that month.

Anyway, I came up with The future is yours. There are some specific good things about it. I can write the word The with a capital "T" and it looks like The. My small "f"s are respectable, and my small "y"s are practically my favorite small letter to write ever. My absolute favorite small letters to write are "usan eth feffer" on the backs of checks I'm depositing, but that's neither here nor there. And I like the little do it yourself grammar lesson- no apostrophes in yours- just a simple "s" right where it belongs.

I got out of bed and wrote "The future is yours" a couple of times, to make sure I wouldn't forget it. This morning I looked it over checking my capital "T"s a few times. But then I thought, Maybe it should be "The future is ours." That's friendlier, and it's a little more in keeping with the book.

For those who've forgotten, I've inscribed the previous three books this way:

Life As We Knew It: Always have hope

The Dead And The Gone: Never lose faith

This World We Live In: Trust in tomorrow

So "The future is yours" or "The future is ours" should fit in reasonably well.

Let me know which you think is better. Or if you prefer, send me a check, and your bank will show you my "usan eth feffer" just as soon as I deposit it!



*The world's easiest poll question would be: Who is the bestest author ever? with only one choice.

I Wouldn't Mind If April Got Moved Into March Either

Under any circumstance, March is my least favorite month of the year, but this March is just ridiculous. It's like the calendar got stuck somewhere in January. There's snow, followed by the beloved January thaw, followed by more snow, with a little sleet thrown in for good measure.

The beloved January thaw is a little less lovable in March. As are the snow and the sleet.

As you undoubtedly recall, since you remember every single word I write and if not why not, I reported before the January thaw that Amazon had The Shade Of The Moon available for pre-order, with a publication date of September 3. On the off chance you've forgotten the exact wording, here's my entry with the exact wording.

Yesterday, I got an email from my publisher asking if I would like to participate in the Decatur Book Festival. You betcha, replies I, delighted at the opportunity.

But there's a little oddity in the email invitation. My publisher mentions that The Shade Of The Moon is coming out in August.

The last I'd heard, August and September were two different months. Of course I used to believe the same of January and March. So I did what all up to date writers do. I zipped on over to Amazon and Barnes and Noble to see when my book is scheduled to come out. And while there isn't much they agree about, they both felt strongly that The Shade Of The Moon has an August 13 publication date.  See? See see?

I have no idea why my publisher has moved the publication date up by three weeks. Maybe it's because they're so darn excited about the book, they can't wait to have their very own copies. Or maybe they're so darn concerned about the book, they want to get it out there in August when no one is around to notice. Or maybe they did it simply to confuse me.

Whatever their reasoning, it's a good thing I never got around to putting a countdown clock over on the right side of the blog. Although now that I've learned three weeks can vanish in the blink of an email, maybe I'll do it now.

It might help April get here a little sooner!

The Shade Of The Moon Is Going To Get Its Very Own Family Reunion

I got an email from my agent, which conveniently arrived after the Pairs championship ended and before the Men's began, saying Sharp Point Press, publisher of the three moon books in Complex Chinese, have made an offer to publish The Shade Of The Moon.

Needless to say, I accepted. I accepted faster than a Patrick Chan quad toe loop.

So at some point, American The Shade Of The Moon will get to party with Complex Chinese The Shade Of The Moon.

And no doubt, Scooter will crash the party!

Without Zamboni Breaks, I'd Get Nothing Done

Even with them, I'm not getting much done this week. It's World Figure Skating Championship time, and while I don't have access to watching them on American TV, it turns out Latvian TV is showing them in their entirety.

We're talking about 35 women's short programs. Well, I'm talking about them, but not to you.

Anyway, it's Zamboni time for the short dance programs, so I figured I'd pop in here and give you links to the work I did last week.

For starters, here's a whole bunch of writers talking about the appeal of post-apocalyptic fiction. I think it's safe to say the whole bunch of writers know considerably more than I do on the subject, but I go first, perhaps because my entry is the shortest, or more likely because I submitted mine first because it was the shortest.

Oh, maybe it's because I'm the oldest. It's certainly not because I'm the best speller (heck, I'm probably not even the best seller). I had to go back to find out how to spell post-apocalyptic. The "post" part I was pretty sure of, but "apocalyptic" renders me apoplectic.

Meanwhile, in preparation for my upcoming visit to the International Reading Association convention in San Antonio, I wrote a guest blog post about my dream panel. See all the pretty pictures? Not the one of me. The other pretty pictures. I learned how to put pictures into a Word doc just for them.

Okay. Enough of last week's accomplishments. I hear Latvian in the background. The third flight of ice dancers is about to Yankee polka their way into my heart.

I sincerely hope I'm already in yours!