Susan Beth Pfeffer's Blog, page 7

It's A Lesson (Not) Too Late For The Learning

Remember that blog entry I wrote complaining about the copy written for Amazon's The Shade Of The Moon page? On the incredibly off chance you don't, here's the link and here's the copy:

The eagerly awaited addition to the series begun with New York Times best-seller Life As We Knew It. Four years ago, a meteor knocked the moon off its orbit and the world changed forever. Seventeen-year-old Jon Evans is one of the lucky ones…he ended up in a Tennessee "enclave" instead of a dreaded "grubtown," where the government doesn’t even bother purifying the ash-polluted air. Despite the fact that his own relatives live in a grubtown, Jon buys into the idea of the innate superiority of "clavers." His worldview is upended, however, when he meets a green-eyed girl who believes in equality and vows to help right the world’s wrongs. Can Jon afford to be as idealistic as she is?

As soon as I pressed the Publish button, I decided while complaining to you, oh lovely you, is a lot of fun, I might get a better result by letting my publisher learn of my dissatisfaction.

So I emailed my poor beleaguered editor and gently, very very gently, let her know what I thought. Only I didn't just say what I thought. I offered an alternative version.

My editor responded by asking all the people who needed to be asked, and by golly, they changed the Amazon copy to what I suggested.

Naturally I kept the eagerly awaited part. My publisher added the rest of the first paragraph, figuring there were people who might want to know what the setup for the book actually is.

The eagerly awaited addition to the series begun with the New York Times best-seller Life As We Knew It, in which a meteor knocks the moon off its orbit and the world changes forever.

But the rest is what I wrote, and I'm delighted that my publisher agreed to go with my version.

It's been more than two years since Jon Evans and his family left Pennsylvania, hoping to find a safe place to live, yet Jon remains haunted by the deaths of those he loved. His prowess on a soccer field has guaranteed him a home in a well-protected enclave. But Jon is painfully aware that a missed goal, a careless word, even falling in love, can put his life and those of his mother, his sister Miranda, and her husband, Alex, in jeopardy. Can Jon risk doing what is right in a world gone so terribly wrong?

So now I know how to render change. You don't just whine. You whine to the people in power and you offer an alternative suggestion that they can accept.

The world is about to become a better place, now that I've figured this out.

Oh Mr. Boehner? Mr. Cantor? I have a few suggestions for you!

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Where Ideas Come From (Thursday Night 8:00 PM On Turner Classic Movies)

I can't speak for all writers (although I do when I say we want more money and we want it now), but I know the question I'm most frequently asked is where do I get my ideas.

Ideas come from all sorts of places, but as those of you who read every precious word of this precious blog know, the idea for Life As We Knew It came from my watching the movie Meteor.

I love movies. They're my favorite form of storytelling. And I have a particular fondness for film noir.

This very Thursday night at 8:00 PM Eastern, Turner Classic Movies (or TCM as it's known to its crazed cult following) is showing  one of my all time favorite noirs,  Cry Danger . I'm particularly happy about this because it's not available on DVD and I'm generally awake at 8:00 PM (TCM that night is showing another couple of my all time favorites, The Breaking Point and The Prowler, but I'll be asleep by then which is okay since they're both available on DVD and I own them both and watch them regularly).

Back to Cry Danger. In it, Dick Powell stars as Rocky Mulloy, which is in and of itself not particularly interesting (nothing against Dick Powell), except that it's kind of fun to note how many noir heroes have names with "ck" in them. Rick, Nick, Mickey, Rocky. Anyway, Dick Powell is perfectly fine, but character actor
All right, you say (I can hear you saying it). Susan's a big movie fan and in particular a big film noir fan and most unexpectedly a big Richard Erdman fan. But what does that have to do with me?

Well, probably nothing, unless you too are a big Richard Erdman fan. But as it happens, I was "inspired" by Cry Danger quite a number of years ago, and kinda sorta lifted its premise and turned it into a middle group novel called The Pizza Puzzle.

Now Cry Danger is about robberies and ex-cons and beautiful women and alcoholics and night clubs and gangsters and trailer camps and the post-war period., all in 79 minutes because film noirs don't waste time. The Pizza Puzzle is about middle school friendships and family problems and teachers and pizza, so unless you know that the latter is directly "inspired" by the former, you'd never guess it, and the only way you'd know is if I told you, which I just did, but I trust you'll keep it to yourself, and don't tell the folks who made Meteor about Life As We Knew It either, because I'd prefer if they never found out.

Sadly (well, I'm sad about it) The Pizza Puzzle never earned out its advance (although it sold 100,000 in paperback, which should have helped). But I did get a $15,000.00 advance for it 18 years ago, and I'm sure the money came in handy at the time (to be honest, it feels like a lot more than 18 years ago, but the date on the contract is Feb. 1995 and my calculator assures me that's 18 years ago give or take a couple of weeks which my calculator didn't care about).

So if you happen to be free Thursday night at 8:00 PM Eastern, my recommendation is you sit back, relax, watch Cry Danger for 79 noir heaven minutes, and have a couple of slices of pizza while you're at it!

Triumphs Great And Non-Existent

In a rare fit of megalomania, I went googling about the other day and came across Life As We Knew It vocabulary lessons.

I want you to know I knew the meaning of every single word, although I'd say 98% of them are not in everyday use around here.

Sadly though, I stank at the Life As We Knew It vocabulary games. My timing at Scatter was a world's worst, and I couldn't even master the rules of Space Race. But then again, I was never good at fill in the blanks. Give me an essay question and I could breeze through to an A (my handwriting was a lot better in those days, which also helped). I always had a 50/50 chance at True/False, and I could generally outguess the test maker in multiple choices. But when I was actually supposed to know something...well, the odds were I didn't.

But who needs vocabulary when one is a brilliant financier (one of seven words that violates the I before E rule, and I can name all of them, should you ever ask), such as I (before or after E).

Yes, at long last, I have found my true calling. I am a financial whiz kid (okay, a very elderly kid, but a whiz none the less and whiz senior doesn't have quite the same ring to it).

You want proof? Well, don't expect visuals, because I forgot to take pictures. But here's what happened.

Towards the very very very end of 2012, I got my last and thankfully smallest royalty check. It was for $7.11.

Now what does one do with a check for $7.11? One cashes  it and, and buys 7 scratch off lottery tickets (pocketing the 11 cents as a commission).

I wanted to buy the 7 lottery tickets at a 7/Eleven, only it turned out the one we had around here had gone out of business when I wasn't looking. So I bought them as a gas station/convenience store instead. Seven bucks, seven tickets.

I scratched off one a night for a week. And three of the seven were winning tickets.

Yes, out of the initial $7.00 investment, I made $9.00. I know this for an absolute fact, since I went back to that very gas station yesterday and cashed those suckers in.

According to my calculator, this gave me a 29% rate of return on my investment, assuming dividing 2 by 7 is the way to figure these things out.

Given that I'm getting 0% interest on money in the bank, and my bond funds aren't doing much better, and the stock market goes up and down with dizzying regularity, I think it's safe to say my lottery ticket purchases were the best investment I made all year (and maybe in my entire life, except for that once when I bought a dollar ticket for one of those multi-million lotteries and I got four of the numbers right and won $23.00, but that was a once in a lifetime sort of thing, unlike this shrewd scratch off investment). So I am now planning to take all the money I have in the bank and all my bond funds and all my stocks and buy scratch off lottery tickets from that very same gas station and live off the proceeds for my much anticipated extremely long life.

And because I hate to be selfish, I'm offering you the exact same chance at a 29% rate of return. Yes, send me all your money, and I'll buy scratch off lottery tickets for you as well.

Send your checks or money orders or even better, cash to:

Susan Pfeffer
@ Bernard Madoff
Butner Federal Correctional Institution
Federal Bureau of Prisons
North Carolina, USA

Don't hesitate a single moment. Who knows how long that gas station is going to have winning tickets!

Something I Could Have Done Better

Among the many resolutions I fail at is my resolution to stop complaining. Most of my other resolutions I break in the privacy of my apartment, where only Scooter notices, and as long as I keep my resolution to feed him whenever he wants, he overlooks the breakage.

I complain about my publisher a lot. It doesn't matter which publisher (and in the many decades I've been working, there have been many publishers). They do something I don't like, I complain about it. Since I have friends who are writers, I complain to them and they complain to me about their publishers and it all works out. If my complaints veer on hysteria, I complain to my agent, and if need be, she complains to my publisher, thus earning her 15%. And now, thanks to our friend the internet, I complain to all of you, without having to listen to your complaints or pay you 15%.

Since starting this blog, I know I've complained about waiting to hear from my publisher and waiting to get paid by my publisher. Those are traditional complaints, not worth anyone's 15%. I also probably complained about the jacket copy for This World We Live In, since it gives away a major portion of the last part of the book, for no reason except to make it easier for students to fake their book reports based on book jackets, if they still do that sort of thing, which they probably don't, thanks to our friend the internet.

But I don't remember ever complaining about the copy that my publisher sent to Amazon before. I do believe this is going to be a brand new complaint. A heartfelt brand new complaint.

It's the copy for The Shade Of The Moon, and to put it in simple, easy to understand, language, it stinks.

Book Description

Release Date: September 3, 2013 | Series: Life As We Knew It Series (Book 4)

The eagerly awaited addition to the series begun with New York Times best-seller Life As We Knew It. Four years ago, a meteor knocked the moon off its orbit and the world changed forever. Seventeen-year-old Jon Evans is one of the lucky ones…he ended up in a Tennessee "enclave" instead of a dreaded "grubtown," where the government doesn’t even bother purifying the ash-polluted air. Despite the fact that his own relatives live in a grubtown, Jon buys into the idea of the innate superiority of "clavers." His worldview is upended, however, when he meets a green-eyed girl who believes in equality and vows to help right the world’s wrongs. Can Jon afford to be as idealistic as she is?

Well, I admit I do like that eagerly awaited part; that was pretty good. And the copy is kind of okay through the dreaded "grubtown," although I don't see any great need for the quotation marks (which get dumped a sentence later anyway).

But the rest. Oy, oy, and double oy.

Nasty government, not even purifying the ash-polluted air. Of course, the nasty government doesn't purify anyone's air. It's just in the enclave, buildings have air purifiers.

Nor does Jon buy into the idea of the innate superiority of clavers. He's not a Nazi. He accepts the concept that people who do more essential work are entitled to greater rewards. Nothing innate about it.

Then we bump into the green-eyed girl. While it's true, Sarah's the only character in The Shade Of The Moon whose eye color gets mentioned (most likely, she's the only character in any of my books whose eye color gets mentioned- you know me and descriptions), I don't think the color of her eyes is all that essential to the story. I gave her sandy hair too, but you don't see them mentioning that.

All right. The green-eyed girl believes in equality etc. It's not quite that simple, but I'm not going to argue. But couldn't the anonymous person who wrote this tripe come up with anything more dramatic than asking if Jon can afford to be as idealistic?

It would give away nothing of the plot to start (well, after that eagerly awaited part) by saying it's been four years, yet Jon Evans is haunted by the memory of people he has lost. Haunted is a nice strong word. Then you throw in the lucky one stuff, leaving out the purified air nonsense. Instead of casually saying his family lives in a grubtown, stress the difficulty of his living away from his family (and you know, it might not hurt to mention that family includes his sister Miranda, to remind people who exactly Jon is). Leave out the innate superiority, and put in something about Jon's insecurity, his knowing that he doesn't really belong in the enclave. Keep the green-eyed girl if you must, but instead of asking if Jon can afford all that idealism, mention that his family's lives would be at risk if he allows himself to believe as she does.

The cover shows burning buildings, for goodness sake. The copy should reflect some of that drama.

Hmm. Maybe instead of complaining to you, I should ask my publisher to let me rewrite the copy.

As the saying goes, it's better to burn a building than curse the darkness!

New Year's Greetings

Wishing a happy and reasonably calm new year to: aap (April & Kate), Abigail, alter emi, Amanda,  Anna Heart, Anonymous, Anonymous C:, Anonymous Fish, Anonymous Santa Fe, Anonymous WS, Another Susan, arcos, A said,  Ashna, Aurora, Becky, becky, Bonnie Jacobs, Bookaholic 007, Brianne Turner, Brynne, C, Cailean, Caroline, Catalina L. L., Claire, Corrine. said, Christy Rush-Levine, Crystal M Billings, Danielle, Deirdre B., Eating as a Path to Yoga, Eclipsed, emi:), Emily, eraleta colson, Esther Pfeffer, Everette, exBFF, Fabiola C., Fear Death By Water, Friendly Neighbourhood Bookseller, Gamesatservice, Gil, Gillian, Glen, Gretchen, Heather, Heather_Wick, Hotdog 12, Hunter MD, iko, Ing (Ingrid Kalchthaler), Jacquekh, Jacqui P99, Jamie Cline, Janet, Jason, Jeff Vincent, jjchase 11, Jennifer in Wisconsin, jennie moo, Jenny Rae Rappaport, Jen Robinson,, jess, jessica, jessiemc82, JMCooper,jnifr. Johanna, Jonathan, Jon C. Hackathorn, Jordan G., Julie B, Julie Robinson, Jude Rosenberg, Kaitlin, karen, Karis Jacobstein, Kate, Kats, Kelley, Kelly, Kelly Tompkins, Kelsey, Kevin Harris, Kiera Ball, Kiralys, Kyra, Lee, Liana, Linda, Linda Jacobs, Linda Joy Singleton, Lindsay, Lisa Mandina, Lisa-Marie Jordan, lizzie TC, Lizzy, Lulume, Maddie, Marci, Margaret, McQ, Melissa, Miss Gardiner, Miss Mint, Morgaine, Mr. Cavin, mykake, myst7,  Nina, Nina Ruit, Nora Durbin, Olivia, Paige Y., Pascaline, Pat P., Rachel Keller, Rae, Rebecca, Rebecca Herman, Renee Carter Hall, Robyn, rose, rowster,  Sandra Sasal, Sandy C, Sarah, Sarah Mayer, Shadow, Shauntrice Art,  Shelby, Sriharsha Jayanthi, Susan, Susan from Michigan, Tara, Tayler Clements, Tez Miller, thelostgirl, tigerlily*, Timo, Timoliere, Tori, Tracy, Twilight's Dawn, Unknown, Verity, veyroniqa, VKR, Wanda Vaughn, Wendy, Your Youngest Biggest Fan!!!!! and all others who might visit.

With love and gratitude from Scooter and me.

My 2012 Booklist

My goal for 2012 was to read an average of one book per week, and I surpassed that.

My other goal was to read or reread books that have been sitting on my bookcases for decades. I did a good job with that, although many still remain. And since I have money these days, I indulged myself by buying books that sounded good in their New York Times reviews.

I think my favorite non-fiction books this year  were Catherine The Great: Portrait Of A Woman by Robert Massie and The Catcher Was A Spy by Nicholas Davidoff and my favorite novels were The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. My favorite story of how I came to read a book goes like this:

I was at the library and saw Clarence Darrow by John A. Farrell. I took it out and read it.

Darrow was of course a brilliant lawyer. It turns out he quoted poetry during his jury summations.

One of the poems he quoted was by A. E. Housman, and it ended with the line: "There's nothing but the night."

Wow, says I. Nothing But The Night. What a title for a noir.

So I zipped on over to Amazon and looked up Nothing But The Night. I found a Bill Pronzini novel by that title. I then went online to my library's catalog and found they had it. So the day after I returned the Clarence Darrow biography, I went back to the library, found the Pronzini novel, took it home, read it that afternoon (and enjoyed it), and returned it to the library the next day.

If I hadn't read the Darrow biography, I wold never have known about the Pronzini novel. When the weather warms up, I'll go back to the library and take out some more by him. He's got a new fan thanks to Clarence Darrow.

I'm going to divvy this year's list by fiction and non-fiction, alphabetical by title. Expect to see a lot of The(s).

Fiction first:

Before The Poison- Peter Robinson
Bread Upon The Waters- Irwin Shaw
Defending Jacob- William Landay
Gone Girl- Gillian Flynn
House Rules- Jodi Picault
Nothing But The Night- Bill Pronzini
Passing Strange- Richard Sale
Rebecca- Daphne du Maurier
Skating Shoes- Noel Streatfield
The Big Clock- Kenneth Fearing
The Blue Zone- Andrew Gross
The Child Who-Simon Lelic
The Chill- Ross MacDonald
The Cocktail Waitress- James M. Cain
The Connoisseur- Evan S. Connell, Jr.
The Forgotten Garden- Kate Morton
The Good Father- Noah Hawley
The G-String Murders- Gypsy Rose Lee
The Green-Eyed Monster- Patrick Quentin
The Intruder- Helen Fowler
The Magician's Wife- Brian Moore
The Pact- Jodi Picault
The Poisoned Chocolates Case-Anthony Berkeley
The Prophet- Michael Koryta
The Unsuspected- Charlotte Armstrong
The Wheel Of Fortune- Susan Howatch
The Winter Sky- Susanna Kearsley
What The Dead Know- Laura Lippman

Now here's the non-fiction:

Alexandra- Caroly Erickson
A Magnificent Obsession- Helen Rappoport
A Smattering Of Ignrance- Oscar Levant
Belles On Their Toes- Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Catherine The Great- Robert Massie
Clarence Darrow- John A. Farrell
Complicated Women- Mick LaSalle
Dark City- Eddie Muller
Every Picture Tells A Story- John Hedfield
Five Sisters- James Fox
Galileo's Daughter- Dava Sobel
Jack London And His Daughters- Joan London
Lonelyhearts- Marion Meade
Lost Prince- Jeffey Moussaieff Masson
Mary Boleyn- Alison Weir
Murder Plus- Marc Gerald ed.
Nutcracker- Shana Alexander
On The Verge Of Revolt- Brandon French
Party Line/ Out On A Limb- Louise Baker
Queen Of The Conquerer- Tracy Borman
Sins Of The Son- Carlton Stowers
The Astaires- Kathleen Riley
The Beauty And The Sorrow- Peter Englund
The Bronte Myth- Lucasta Miller
The Catcher Was A Spy- Nicholas Davidoff
The Gershwins And Me- Michael Feinstein
The Life Of David- Robert Pinsky
The Lost Empire Of Atlantis- Gavin Menzies
The Loyalists- Christopher Moore
The Medical Detectives- Berton Roueche
The Moose That Roared- Keith Scott
The Making Of The Wizard Of Oz- Aljean Harmetz
The Mormon Murders- Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
The Quiz Kids- Eliza Merrill Hickok
The Secret Life Of Houdini- William Kalush and Larry Sloman
The Wages Of Sin- Lea Jacobs
The Witch Must Die- Sheldon Cashdan
The Women Of The Cousins' War- Phillipa Gregory, David Baldwin, and Michael Jones
The Youthful Queen Victoria- Dormer Creston
Things I Did And Things I Think I Did- Jean Negulesco
To Hell And Back- Meat Loaf and David Dalton
Under The Banner Of Heaven- Jon Krakauer
Vertigo The Making Of A Hitchcock Classic- Dan Auiler
What Happened To Their Kids- Malcolm Forbes and Jeff Bloch
Without Lying Down- Cari Beauchamp

Amazon Just Put Up The Cover For The Shade Of The Moon

It's the first I've seen it.


I'm not quite sure what that big building is supposed to be, but it's got fire and I like it!

You Can Always Count On Mom For Two And A Quarter Pages

LOOKIT!

Let me try that again.

LOOKIT!

Did I get your attention?

I sure hope so. I want you to notice that over on the beloved right side of the blog, there's a link for pre-ordering The Shade Of The Moon at Amazon.

They say publication date is Sept. 3. Of course they also say the book is 352 pages long, which is about 52 pages longer than I remember writing.

As of the moment, it doesn't have a ranking number, which either means no one has ordered a copy (waah), or Amazon refuses to let me know someone has ordered a copy (waah). I suppose I could order a copy just to find out, but I've had other things on my mind, like FreeCell.

Today, after playing approximately 1,000,000,2435 hands of FreeCell, the computer finally dealt me the perfect hand. Since there was an off chance I might forget, I recorded it for posterity.


Of course, my life isn't all FreeCell. I made my way through the copy edited version of The Shade Of The Moon, and added the five pages I needed because of my massive goof up (see below). I mailed (real mail, the kind that costs money) the manuscript to my editor yesterday, but I thought I'd share with you and Scooter the brand new two and a quarter page scene between Jon and Mom.



Scooter saw them first, and you'll see them second, and my editor will see them third, since she won't get the manuscript before Friday.

I hope you like them as much as Scooter seems to have!

Santa's Gonna Find Me With My Hair Pulled Out

I thought I would zip through the copy edited version of The Shade Of The Moon, get it all read and polished by the end of the week. Not a job I was looking forward to, but not one I was dreading either.

Well, that fantasy is out the window.

It turns out the copy editor (whose name I don't know but whose praises I will sing forevermore) realized I had totally totally totally screwed up. I mean totally.

You'd think I, of all people, would know that an asteroid knocked the moon out of orbit on May 18. It says so in Miranda's diary in Life As We Knew It. The Dead And The Gone starts on May 18. In This World We Live In, Miranda and Mom and Syl have a ceremony a year later, on May 18.

Let's look for a common theme here. MAY 18!

But in The Shade Of The Moon, I make the anniversary day May 20.

Why? you ask.

Because I'm stupid and careless and stupid, that's why.

The anniversary day is very important to the plot of The Shade Of The Moon, and so is the action right before the anniversary day.

Here's how things are now.

Sunday May 17: Jon visits his family
Monday May 18: A little scene with Jon and Sarah
Tuesday May 19: A lot of important stuff because the next day is the anniversary day.
Wednesday May 20: Anniversary day

Only anniversary day is really Monday, May 18, and all that important stuff that has to happen the day before can't happen the day before because Sunday May 17 Jon is visiting with his family and not doing the important stuff, which he has to do the day before the anniversary day because roughly 1/4 of what follows in the story is because of that important stuff.

I've pretty much figured out what I have to do. I'm going to change all the dates up to May 18 to make them a week before (so Jon will visit his family on May 10 instead). Of course that leaves the book with nothing happening between May 10 and May 16, when Jon and Sarah have their little scene. But I think I can take a little bit of action that currently happens before Jon visits his family and make it after he visits his family. I'll also write a little scene (don't ask me about what), and a moderately significant scene, because some of Jon's motivation for the important stuff comes from his visit with his family, and it won't feel right if that motivation is a week old. So I have to give him more reason for the motivation, which will make that new scene moderately significant.

And then I'll go back to all those copy edited pages (about 20 of them) that there's no point looking at now because I have to add so much before them, and see what the copy editor has suggested. I just finished going through a batch of post-anniversary day pages, since they aren't affected by the date changes and the unwritten new scenes. I'll get back to them tomorrow.

The deadline is January 2 and I know I'll be finished by then. But while Santa's saying Ho! Ho! Ho!, I'll be saying Howl! Howl! Howl!

The Copy Edited Version Of The Shade Of The Moon Has Arrived

Usually I hate dealing with copy edited manuscripts. A great deal of whining and cursing goes on when I work on them.

But this version doesn't seem bad at all. The comments are typed in and there aren't a lot of them, and a very quick skimming of the manuscript didn't reveal any that provoked me.

I don't even have to mail the manuscript back. Just email my editor to let her know what I think about the various suggestions.

Both my editor's email to me about the manuscript and the handwritten note I got with the manuscript mentioned that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (aka my publisher) wants to have ARCs of The Shade Of The Moon available for the spring conferences, ALA and the suchlike.Which is fine by me. So we're moving along swiftly (at least by publishing standards).

For those of you who have dreamed of seeing a copy edited page of The Shade Of The Moon (and who amongst you hasn't), I've scanned one into my handy dandy computer just to bring you joy and happiness and anything else you might feel upon seeing a copy edited page of The Shade Of The Moon. If you hate spoilers and yet are tempted, don't worry. It's not a plot revealing kind of a page, but if you don't care to read it, feel free to look for joy and happiness somewhere else.

I'll go looking right along with you!