Justin Matott's Blog, page 17

WORD PLAY WITH THE ALPHABET

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Alphabetically speaking

A Beautifully Colored Diagram - Entailing Funny, Gross, Happy, Ignorant, Jumpy, Kritters Laughable Musings Not Only Posing Questions Really - Studying Twenty-six Understandable, Valuable Ways Xamining Your Zeal

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Laurie McAdam is the illustrator of four, almost five of my books. She works in California for the Modesto Bee and does awesome editorial illustration. Laurie, Lauren McAdam is a professional in every way and a delight to work with.

She has illustrated four of my books and is working on the fifth. You may know her work with When Did I Meet You Grandma? and When Did I Meet You Grandpa? or Oliver Kringle and Aliens All Mixed Up OR you might have seen some of her work as Clay Aiken's portrait painter? Well, check out her website, she has some totally cool things to view! http://www.lauriemcadam.com/bookshelf.html

Skeleton Bob, next year's Halloween book

I have been writing a Halloween book with poems, short stories, recipes and just simply weird, Halloweeny kind of stuff. I am presently thinking it might be an eBook only, because of the seasonality of this type of book. Opinions are very welcomed!

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Skeleton Bob and Skeleton Fred

Were arguing about who was more dead,

"I'm telling you Bob you died of the flu!"

"Then how are we talking? Say it isn't true!"

"I fell down a stairwell and broke my neck off

That's why I have this bad, nagging cough

But you my friend Bob, you got really sick

And that is why you are as thin as a stick."

"But how are we talking if we are both dead?"

Bob scratched his skull and pulled on his head,

His head rolled right off of the top of his throat

"Help! Grab my head!" Fred caught it with his coat

Fred lifted Bob's skull and he started to dance

In circles he spun, then he lost his pants

He was standing there shivering in just underwear

When Skeleton Marge saw him standing there

"Give Bob his head back!" Marge growled through her jaws

and at the end of her fingers were curly old claws

Sam was afraid of the ghoulish Marge gal

And gave the head back to Bob, his best pal

They danced in the wind those skeleton guys

While Marge stared at them her coal black eyes

Then the three did a dance, which could raise any dead

And all three of them pulled off their own bony head!

What are you dressing up as this year?

Working on next year's Halloween book

A recipe to try:


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NIGHTCRAWLER COBBLER & EARTHWORM EYE STEW

3 cups of slimy nightcrawlers

2 cups of brown sugar

1 pinch of dirt from beneath a coffin

6 tweaks of a bat's earlobe

Mix all ingredients with bone flour and bake at 450 degrees for 12 hours.

Serve cobbler cold with the greasy stew from the nightcrawler gravy.

For my new buddies at Bell Middle School...

I am experimenting with a video blog. This one is for Bell Middle School as an introduction... It's weird, but so are Middle Schoolers!

What could be more gratifying to an author...

than to attend a Holiday Boutique event to meet, greet and sign books for little readers and be able to watch child after child literally plop down on the floor amidst busy shoppers to dive right in to the book they chose? I do this every year to remind me of just who it is I write for. This year's most popular titles have been the mix and match aliens and it's 1728 alien combination mix and match feature (next up Pooches All Mixed Up!) and for my older readers the new Gabe installment, The Gabriel Book of World Records is being VERY well received!

I am jazzed up by the responses and am busy at work at my next two to publish! Please watch my website www.justinmatott.com for announcements and add me as a friend on Facebook and Twitter!

THANK YOU TO YOU READERS!

Dads

FOR ERIC OHMY MITCHELL

It is hard to believe it has been a year since my Dad died. I have processed so much as one is apt to do when you lose someone so dear. I went through intense sadness and grief, then some anger, then more sadness, then some joy as I thought of the wonderful things my dad passed to me that makes me individual, creative and full of life. Dads have SO much power and influence on us. When my dad was alive, I always tried to make him proud of me. I continue to do so, maybe even more now. There is something about knowing your dad approves of you that drives each of us so much.

I am reprising this blog entry for two reasons; one is to somehow commemorate the anniversary of my dad's passing and the other is because a young man who has been in my life for a long time is in the same place. Eric is one of my son's CORE friends and he lost his dad this week.

Eric is an awesome young man. He is a collegiate football player, has an incredible sense of humor (which I pray helps him get through this) and an infectious laugh. He is one of those people who simply is a joy to be around and he is one of my LOST buddies (meaning we spent hours watching episode after episode after episode together in my living room with my sons). Eric's dad was and is very proud of him, because Eric is PURE GOLD. Eric's dad did a good job of adding to the world with Eric and his brother, two very fine humans. Eric is only twenty-two and it seems very unfair that he will have to travel life's ups and downs without his dad. I know the burn of this, because I lost my mom when I wasn't that much older than him.

Sometimes God gives us good substitutes here on earth until we are reunited with those we love. I am more than willing to be a substitute for this fine young man. I would be proud to have Eric call me dad, so I will do what I can to fulfill a "dad" role for him in any way he needs me to.

We are in a club that neither of us would choose to be in. We are not orphans though, because we have another Father. The one that looks down with love on us and loves us no matter what we do.

If you are the praying kind, please pray for my buddy Eric and if you think about it, throw a few prayers skyward for the University of Wyoming Cowboys, that's football for those of you who didn't know, and especially for #36, who's father will now have the best seat in the house!

Here's to our dads Eric!


Dad, inevitably telling mom a story.

I lost my dad yesterday and my heart is heavy. My heart is also so full, because he was a good dad and a good man and in many ways believed in me and championed my life. My dad was an English professor for forty years and read many of my drafts and sent them to me with thoughtful, encouraging and great notes over the years (he also had a wicked, good red pen that he used liberally and gracefully to instruct).

I talked to my dad for hours every Saturday. He was literally one of the most interesting people I have ever known. It seemed he knew something about everything I mentioned. Well traveled, well taught, opinionated but willing to hear the other side too. I will miss our talks more than I even realize now.

My dad tried in vain for years to get published and wrote some four novels that have never been read. BUT, my dad was SO happy and proud of my success in the literary world, he felt as though he shared in my success and he did. Perhaps somehow my dad's work will get another look.

So what I do when I feel deeply is write, get it out, get it down and deal with it. My first published book, My Garden Visits, was a book I wrote after losing my mom. At first I wrote it for just me, to purge, to get my sorrow and memories down on paper and out of my body, my head, my heart. Soon the words turned into a book and traveled into many homes to help others to deal with the same. It liberated me to do what mom would have wished for my life. To use my passion and to live everyday as thought it might be my last. To leave a lasting impression, which I have tried and am trying to do daily.
Mom never got to see me as an author. She too was a professor of English and German and would love nothing more than to know her son went on in life to spread more entertainment, amusement and books into the world. I know she knows.

Last spring I was asked to submit the following for an anthology by authors. I haven't heard back from the publisher, so I can now assume they didn't choose mine. But, it seemed appropriate to post it, so someone could read it.


Mom, listening with rapt attention, or thinking, wow, when will this one end? Looks like she is asleep with her eyes open, lol. Dad could go on a bit... hmmm... is that where I get that?

Bit of enduring wisdom received as a child –
My Father had a mantra that he seemed to only repeat to me, never my brother who was a boy, and is a man of few words. My father would say to me, "There is a virtue in learning when to keep your mouth shut." It took me a long time to understand what he was saying. I now know that when my mouth is shut others are open and with the ratio of two ears to one mouth I learn twice as much as I teach.

Most people like to be listened to and some tell the same story over and over, assuming everyone is interested. People simply want to heard and often tensions, stress and in the most escalated case wars are caused by parties feeling they aren't being listened to or heard. Dad also said to leave the world much better than you found it. He did. He left me and I will go on trying to leave the world better.

"A laughing minute is one well spent, for time has up and gone and went..."

Wisdom to a child

Time is fleeting,
Time is short,
Laugh every day until you snort...
A minute gone,
And then another...
And soon your older;
A dad or mother.
You only get so many days,
So spend each of them well.
So you'll have stories
to someday, sometime tell.




Thank you Dad!
Thank you Mom!
Goodbye...

HALLOWEEN IS CLOSE, SO A SCARY STORY IS IN ORDER

Before I was a writer, I was a reader and the VERY BEST thing for me as a boy was MAD MAGAZINE. I was fortunate to have a mom who had one rule about room cleaning and that was "If your door is shut, I don't care how you keep it!" That meant Mom never ventured in to throw away my Hot Rod Cards or Mad Magazines, which are now stored safely in my basement. In 1974 I had the Mad Magazine (pictured here) which began quest. To see the movie it parodied. Being a Catholic boy, there was something very, very dangerous and delicious about pondering the evil potential within the story. I was SO scared of it, it was like a single lamp in the backyard that draws and destroys the moth who continually bangs against it. I HAD TO SEE IT! But Mom said "ABSOLUTELY NOT!" For you younger readers, please bear in mind that at this time our black and white television showed four channels and a test pattern of an Indian in a head dress. The point I was trying to make was that this was a much more innocent time, when there were NO slasher movies on tv, just the black and white Creature Features with The Werewolf, Dracula and The Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman. I have always loved scary stories and for some reason because October is the month of Halloween, I always watch scary movies during the month and read a book that is in the Horror genre.




So last night, after the lights were out in my house and everyone was in bed except me, I sneaked into my office and watched THE SCARIEST movie I have ever seen. It pulled me back to the year 1975, the year I was born. Ahem... okay, not exactly, but a year that would lodge itself in my memories because of ONE fateful night, and ONE fateful movie and ONE fateful error in judgment. It all came flooding back to me last night in such a real way that I literally know what it feels like to have the hair stand on end on the back of your neck.


First; the MORAL OF THE STORY - MOM IS ALWAYS RIGHT! The way to live a better, saner, fuller life - LISTEN TO MOM!

In 1975 I was a boy emerging into the decade of impending teenagedom. My parents were fairly, to be honest, really liberal and a bit lax in their parenting skills. Both were college professors and somehow the space they gave their students translated to the way they parented.

However, I must say it was an easier time. We ran in packs and no one messes with a pack of kids, especially in a then country neighborhood! No one was worried about a kid barely in his double digits staying out 'till two in the morning on a hot, summer night because everyone slept in their backyards (kids anyway)in the summer. There were a few rules of course: NO LAKE OR POND after dark (unless there were at least five of you together). No crossing the highway after dark! Stay off the railroad track after dark. SOMEHOW everything cool happened after dark and I wasn't supposed to have any of the fun.

I was sitting up in my tree house with a couple of my pals and down below us there were some teenagers (they didn't know we were up there.) They were smoking cigarettes and talking in loud whispers about how terrifying the movie they had seen the night before was. Blow by blow they talked about The Exorcist, which to that point I only knew about through the view of Mad Magazine. They talked about the scenes everyone who ever saw that movie has been unable to erase from their minds.

When the three teens jumped in their hot rod Mustang with a "Let's go see it again!" Me and my two buddies made a pact. We were going to go see it. We made a plan which would require us to break SO many rules. We knew our Moms would NEVER let us see the movie and that we would be grounded FOREVER if we walked down the highway at night, so we made an alternate plan, which would break even more rules.

The next night we would each tell our moms that we were sleeping in the other's backyard tent (FIRST BROKEN RULE, LYING). Then right before dark, since The Exorcist was the second feature and we didn't want to be spotted in daylight, we would head down the railroad track (SECOND BROKEN RULE, RAILROAD TRACK AND DARK)which would take us the threeish miles to the outdoor Drive-In Theater past a lake and a pond (THIRD BROKEN RULE, AFTER DARK BODY OF WATER) and then we would have to cross the highway (FOURTH BROKEN RULE, CROSSING THE HIGHWAY AT NIGHT) to sneak into the drive-in theater (FIFTH BROKEN RULE, STEALING BY NOT PAYING TO GET IN) Where we'd stand out in the middle of the gravel lot, next to the speakers and watch the forbidden movie (SIXTH BROKEN RULE, DIRECTLY IGNORING A SPECIFIC RULE MOM SET DOWN) We'd all been there before with our respective parents, but this time we were hoofin' it!

At the last minute one of my buddies chickened out and so it was only going to be the two of us. Me and a kid we called PeePot because of his propensity to wait too long to go to the bathroom and then frequently wet his pants (not exactly a guy you wanted spending the night in your tent). Both of us wanted desperately to beg off the dare, but neither wanted to lose face. So we stuffed our pockets with candy for the movie and headed out.

It took us forever to walk down that dark railroad track. The only time there was light to keep us from tripping on almost every railroad tie was the time the train came, sending us both hurdling down the incline, getting a bit scratched up from our overreaction. It seemed with every step it got darker as we ventured further out into the middle of nowhere.

Where was the moon? All I remember is with every passing half mile the terror began to grow to the point where neither of us spoke, because we couldn't. We both had FICM, fear-induced-cotton-mouth and we weren't even there yet. Just when I thought I would panic I realized we were where we needed to turn up a gravel road that would run directly into the old outdoor movie theater.

Even though not technically a highway, several cars came over hills catching us like deer in the headlights and we would hear voices yelling at us to "GET OUT OF THE ROAD STUPID!" and stuff like that. We began to jog and I swear I could hear something sloshing when Pee-Pot was running next to me. We both breathed a huge sigh of relief as we secreted our way across the highway and then slipped under the fence, finding our way to an empty spot where the speakers hung on the post, far enough away from cars that no one should notice two kids standing at the DRIVE-in.

And then it happened, the credits rolled and suddenly we were in ancient Iraq at an archeological dig. "WHAT GIVES? THIS IS LIKE A NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MOVIE?" I complained loudly, but secretly a bit relieved that this wasn't going to be quite as terrifying as I had thought.

Soon enough young Regan's head was spinning like a top and floating around her room with the scariest face I had ever seen. By the end of the movie I wasn't sure if Pee-Pot was the only one who would have that nickname from that night on. I WAS T E R R I F I E D! Pee-Pot's eyes were so wide I thought he would never blink again. I was sure the whole place was going to go up in smoke for showing such a movie.


I have never been that scared in my life and we had threeish miles of dark road ahead of me, which we totally hadn't counted on when we made the decision to go see the scariest movie ever made.



EVERY twig that snapped or coyote that howled convinced me with every step that I was becoming possessed like poor Regan. Pee-Pot completely lost the ability to speak and even though it was too dark to see his face, I was sure he was crying most of the way home.

I had never noticed how comforting the streetlight across the road from my house was at night, but seeing it as we crested the hill was like a beacon leading me home. Neither Pee-Pot or me said a word, we both just knew there was NO sleeping in our tents that short night (by now it was around three in the morning).

I sneaked up the metal ladder that was below my window and pulled the screen off, slipping down into my bed and pushed myself deep down under a cover in my bed. Suddenly my bed felt like it was moving. I lay there wide awake, totally terrified until the sun came up. It was the first night in my life I had stayed up ALL night. Though it was comforting to see the sun come up on the darkest night of my life, somehow I knew night would be sneaking up on me again soon.

The worst part of my disobedience was that I couldn't tell anyone that I was so scared. I had to suffer in terror for about a month before the raw, scary emotional response to seeing something I was WAY too young to see with not parental comfort.
I learned one of the most valuable lessons of my life that night about listening to people who know a bit more about things than I do. I also decided that for the meantime, the parodies of movies in Mad Magazine were more my style and didn't feel compelled to go see something that I couldn't handle. If Mom said NO, then that was an answer I would listen to more.

I confessed to the activities of that dark and scary night when I was in high school and enough time had passed. Mom told me Pee Pot had ratted me out back then because he was so scared he had slept with his parents for about six months. When I asked her why she hadn't confronted me about it back then she said something like, "Are you kidding me? You were the most compliant, helpful, obedient kid I'd ever seen and I could see you were punishing yourself enough. I didn't have the heart to do more."

I said it before and I will say it again: The MORAL OF THE STORY - MOM IS ALWAYS RIGHT! The way to live a better, saner, fuller life - LISTEN TO MOM!

I had all but forgotten this horrific chapter in my early life until I once again watched The Exorcist all these years later and it all came back to me. I literally remember exactly how I felt the first time I dipped my toe in terrifying story telling.

Now all these years later, I write stories and have been working on a scary one for years. But, generally, in my GP series, something from real life sparks my inspiration for my character's activities. This real life incident will surely show up in book 5 or 6 as something either Gabe and his friends do or something their older brothers do. Either way, it will have a similar backfire effect.

As a Catholic schoolboy I knew Thou Shalt Obey Your Mother and Father was one of the big TEN. Believe me after that experience I did a bit more obeying!

CATCH THE READING BUG!

THIS IS A READING BUG! I'LL EXPLAIN...

So, I was having a meeting at The Tattered Cover and as I prepared my stuff, in my overstuffed vehicle, one of my new books hurtled to the ground. I had to put a bunch of stuff together so I just left it sitting there on the ground (actually three moms and four reading age kiddoes were heading down the sidewalk right toward the book and I thought, "Hmmm subtle marketing technique! They will see it, pick it up and realize I dropped it!", since it looks just like the case full that was sitting still opened up in my car trunk and maybe ask why I had so many of the same book."
I continued to ready myself for the meeting, pulling things together when one of the kids yelled, "WOW, HOW COOL!!"



I started to smile and my eyebrows wiggled up and down as if to say, "OH YEAH, THE NEW BOOK'S A HIT!" I closed my car door and said, "Pretty cool cover huh?" The four kids looked at me like I had two heads. "LOOK MOM!" The sole girl pointed down at a Praying Mantis slowly walking across the sidewalk. Soon it was walking right over my book, seemingly pausing to admire the artwork by the stellar David Schiedt! I wanted to say, "Well, the bug IS cool, but check out the book!" But I didn't. No, instead I whipped out my iPhone in modern fashion and started to snap pics of the beautiful bug and the beautiful book. The green beauty held my attention long after the kids walked off far enough now behind their moms not to worry that I overheard, "Jeez, you'd think that dude'd never seen a bug before."


Well, at least my initial reader paused long enough to see the cover. After the Mantis' long journey, it, he, she, headed toward the parking lot. I picked it up and carried it to a nearby grassy knoll, thinking it would have taken it the rest of the day across the hot, busy parking lot and set it on a nice clump of flowers. I walked back to my car where the book was still sitting squarely in the middle of the sidewalk and people were just walking around it, not really giving it much of a look... I shrugged my shoulders and went into the great coffee shop at my neighborhood Tattered Cover and had a great meeting. I kind of forgot the whole incident until I plugged my phone into my computer and the photos uploaded.







That very night as I came home in the twilight after a nice evening walk with Andy and Tootsie, right next to my front door was this dude. Apparently the Praying Mantis had spread the word and the other eager readers were trying to get a glimpse of my new book. At least someone had caught the reading bug!
THIS IS A READING BUG.

What are you reading?

It's coming... If you have a reluctant reader, check this out!