David Lubar's Blog, page 43

Vicktim

Q. Why did the Eagles hire Michael Vick?
A. They didn't think Charles Manson could get work release.

I had a ball

Who knew baseball was so much fun?
I'll give the short version. The park is beautiful. We had amazing seats, right behind home plate. The hardest thing I had to do was the part I thought would be easiest. There's a two or three second delay in the PA system, which makes it hard to read a story, but I managed to ignore my own voice. (I think my wife could have taught me that technique.) I was standing on the dugout when I read, with my back to the Jumbotron, so I didn't see the display.



It t

Imperfect pitch

I had a chance to practice pitching yesterday. I have a good friend who used to catch for her high school softball team. She took pity on me and let me whip some knuckleballs in her direction. I eventually discovered, with a bit of help from her, that the secret was to avoid any attempt whatsoever to put any speed on the ball. I also got some great tips from Doc Stimey in yesterday's comments. I'll bet the combined wisdom of you folks out there could probably answer just about anything.

I'v

T-2 and counting, or take me out of this ball game

It's T-2, where T = total humiliation. Let me explain.

I've been asked to read a short story and throw out the first pitch on Tuesday for The Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs a triple-a Phillies affiliate. It's Iron Piglets night, so this will be a special event for the kids. It will also be my biggest audience ever, with about 10,000 people in the stands. I'm cool with the reading part, and I figured throwing a baseball 60 feet 6 inches wouldn't be all that hard. But yesterday, I went to my back

Repressed Weenies

Repressed, as in back to the presses again. This is the fourth printing, which is somewhere between amazing and unbelievable, given how far down the food chain story collections sit. I'm grilled. I mean, thrilled.

In other news, awesome Laurie Halse Anderson is encouraging people to write for fifteen minutes a day every day in August. She gives prompts and inspiration each day. This is a very cool exercise since writing is the only real secret to writing. Check it out if you need a prod

He got it right

I was saddened by the death of John Hughes. The Breakfast Club was brilliant. It plays as smart and fresh today as it did on the day it was released. I had the thrill of turning Home Alone into a video game. It was an easy task, given the richness of the material.

Some quick thoughts on book-business stuff

Scanning blogs and following suggested links this week (which is what I always do when I'm on an impossible deadline), several trends and popular topics caught my eye.

1. One briefly hot topic was about how you should ignore bad reviews. I totally disagree. I love reading bad reviews, as long as they're abount someone else's book.

2. The powers that be (or in one case, the power that bores) are starting the search for the next US Kidlit ambassador. I say we nominate whoever is the most prolifi

shroom without a view

Launch day is history. I celebrated it yesterday by working on book #3. Big thanks to all the folks who posted the trailer.

I just wrote a scene involving a mushroom on a toilet. (Little mushroom grunts and all.) I love my job.

In other news, (presented without comment, because you folks can come up with plenty of responses on your own and every comment I can think of is just too tacky) the listing for Pepper Weenies on Audible.com briefly had the title as The Battle of the Red Ho Pepper Weeni

Let's do launch in my trailer

What a nice surprise to wake up and stumble across this. I love my publisher.

In 5 months, I'll be out of my teens

My 19th book launches tomorrow. Number 20 will come out in January. I'm out of my teens in another sense. My next five books are all for younger kids. So I can watch the drama and angst surrounding the future of Best Book for Young Adults with total dispassion. (Along with a bit of amusement, since when I suggested some changes might be in order, the reaction was as if I'd proposed making mittens from the flayed skin of newborns. But I digress.)

In one sense, as Eric Luper brilliantly poin