Happy New Year!

First things first: I am so pleased to have reached my goal of publishing Volume 3 of the SPOTD series this year. Thanks to everyone who supported this fun project! One of my 2014 resolutions is to market the books better so more people (especially kids) have the chance to meet Chase Cooper and his friends.

As I reflect on 2013, I realize that it was one of my favorite years ever. Here are other highlights that I shared with friends and loved ones in my Christmas cards:

* Organizing my sewing closet with help from my niece G. It looks spectacular.

* Best birthday present: My nephew E visiting for the weekend.

* Traveling to Sanibel Island in June with my college housemates. Paddling, reading, eating, shelling, shopping, and sharing time with great friends. 

* Traveling with my sister to Washington DC in July to see a good friend and the sights. Good food.

* Worst night of sleep: Camping in the rolling oven (AKA the Shasta) at Prairie Island Campground in Winona. Seeing performances of Henry V and Twelfth Night at the Great River Shakespeare Festival made the hot night worth it.

* Best. School photo. Ever.

* Directing Peter Pan and Wendy at MHS. Cast and crew of 46, an enormous pirate ship, actual swordplay, and all.

* Taking a voice class at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.

* Enjoying lots of family get-togethers at my parents' cabin.

And here is my list of favorites from the year:

Theater: As You Like It (Guthrie)

Music: Maroon 5’s Overexposed and One Republic’s Native

Cinema: No movie astonished me this year… It’s my goal to see more (better) films in 2014.

Movie on DVD: The Decoy Bride

Television: English teacher jokes on the new Michael J Fox sitcom and 80’s jokes on The Goldbergs

Young Adult fiction: Roth’s Divergent series

Adult fiction: The End of Your Life Book Club (Schwalbe), Cinnamon and Gunpowder (Brown)

Geek fiction: The Circle (Eggers)

Digital fiction: Half Way Home (Howey)

Web Series: Emma Approved

Graphic Novel: Stardust (Gaiman and Vess)

Prologue: Death Comes To Pemberley (James)

Binge fests: Orange is the New Black, early seasons of Supernatural and Breaking Bad

I neglected to share my favorite Marvel character of the year, Ming-Na Wen's Melinda May from Agents of Shield. The smartest, strongest, most well respected, least immature character on the series. And she's not only female, but in her 40's and still winning the affections of the requisite hottie. Without drama. 

Here's to a 2014 full of inspiring and entertaining books, movies, and poetry. In the words of the best new year blesser of all time, Neil Gaiman:

"May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself."

International Markets

I always knew that amazon.com has an online presence in various international places... I've had commissions for selling the kindle versions from amazon.co.uk, but could (feasibly) also see them from amazon.in (India), amazon.de (Germany), amazon.fr (France), amazon.es (Spain), amazon.it (Italy), amazon.co.jp (Japan), amazon.com.br (Brazil), and amazon.ca (Canada).

I was curious if the paperbacks were showing up on international (online) bookshelves... So I went searching. Here's where I found at least one of my books...

In Australia (see above):
angusrobertson.com.au
bookworld.com.au
coop.com.au

In Canada:
mcnallyrobinson.com

In Finland (see above):
suomalainen.com

In South Africa (see above):
exclus1ves.co.za

In the UK:
bookshop.blackwell.co.uk
waterstones.com
foyles.co.uk (see above)

And in the good old USA:
amazon.com
barnesandnoble.com
booksamillion.com
hpbmarketplace.com
powells.com
schulerbooks.com

It's fun to see the book show up in so many interesting places and to see prices in such diverse currencies.

It helps me the most, of course, to sell straight from vanilla-source amazon.com.

Proof

Describing The Avengers to James Hibberd in EW (8/30/2013), Joss Whedon said, "I don't think you'd look at it and go, 'This is a model of perfect structure.' You'd go, 'This is working.' I like it. I'm proud of it and I like its imperfections."

First, I love me some Whedon.

Second, I was conscious of Whedon's words when this arrived Friday:

Isn't the choice of black for the cover SOOOOOO pretty?

Whedon's last two sentences are how I feel about the S.P.O.T.D. series as a whole:
I like it. I'm proud of it and I like its imperfections.

Kindle Edition Available

It's no Target endcap, but it still makes me happy to see...

The print version should be available soon, as well.

A Final Dilemma: To Swear or Not to Swear

This happened about a week ago.

I had the entire text of SPOTD: The Final Face-Off revised, copy edited, proofread, and ready to export with Adobe PDF Presets [PDF/X-1a:2001]. Yeah, that's pretty much 5 minutes away from being ENTIRELY done (upload to LSI, order my proof copy, done).

I was stuck on one word.

I'll be vague enough to avoid spoilers. There's a short scene where Chase eavesdrops on some older kids. The older kids are angry. Older kids swear and use impolite insults and rough language when they are angry. I was writing dialogue. The dilemma: to swear or not to swear.

On the one hand, Stephen King says in On Writing that “if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway.” 

On the other hand, my books are for elementary kids.

So, I brainstormed swear words and insults that would fit the sentence in question, and settled on the word asinine. It has a nice forbidden sound, without being a four-letter word per se. I could hear the speaker in question using the word.

Then I imagined my elementary teacher friend Karinda Groothuis reading the sentence aloud to her class. Would she hesitate and possible skip over the word? Um, yeah. I imagined 10-year-olds bringing their copies of the book to their parents for a definition. Would they wonder what on earth their precious little ones were reading? Um, yeah. I imagined the word finding its way onto the school bus or out to the playground. Would it be repeated? Possibly. Would that make the word a better place? Probably not.

In short, was it worth it to write the scene as I heard it, with the language the characters were screaming in my head? Again, no.

I finally decided that I would regret insulting readers and parents and teachers more than I would regret a small lapse of writer's integrity. Integrity to the dogs, I worked around the rough language by stating, "He swore." I did include the insult "stupid," which is an accurate description of the action in the scene. It took me 45 minutes to decide on this one word. I'm satisfied.

Done.

Kill Your Darlings

During my big college scholarship interview, I was asked what (who) I liked to read. My answer? An honest one: Stephen King. I had fallen for his short story and novella collections and moved on to The Stand (still my favorite Stephen King novel, tied with It) and the first book of the Gunslinger series. I credit my success (I won the scholarship) to my impassioned answer. So I trust the guy.

In his book, On Writing, King says to “kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings."

Designed by Chris Ritter

The phrase "kill your darlings" is generally attributed either to Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch or William Faulkner. It has been in the news recently, as it is the title of Harry Potter's next film. Erm, I mean Daniel Radcliffe's next film, based on the lives of the beat poets, due out in October.

In any case, it is good advice. Way back in 2007 or so, Sandra Scofield recommended the same drastic chopping to my summer writing class at the University of Iowa. What she said was, "Oh, you have a full manuscript? I suggest you throw it all away. Start over."

Harsh.

At the time, I did not have a manuscript to delete. But I scoffed at the idea that some day, when I did have words on paper, I would willingly hit the backspace key or send the file to the trash.

My mind has changed on this matter.

In the past three weeks, I have copy edited (again) and proofread volume 3 of Super Power of the Day (both print and digital versions), which means I've read it through several times, quickly. It turns out that when I "catch" on a line or phrase that I want to smooth over, it's usually in a sentence or section I've already revised and just can't get right. When this happens, I have found it most productive to simply cut the sentence. After all, my revising mantra is"simplify."

So the past few weeks have been replete with the killings of darlings. The voice at the back of my head saying "But I love that line!" has been comforted, and then hushed. The red pen has ruled the day.

Thanks, Uncle Steve.

Eating Words

I've been delving into a little detective fiction lately. Among others, I read my book club's August choice: Janet Evanovich's hilarious One for the Money.

One thing that struck me in a visceral way was all the coffee the characters drank. Perhaps I was fixated on coffee because I've recently given up caffeine, and a decent decaf is a bear to find. Reading as characters gleefully slurp away at their java? Distracting.

But the truth is, I am sensitive to food in novels. I find myself craving whatever it is they happen to be eating. This is probably why I cook a nice seven veg curry stew to feed to my students whenever I teach Chinua Achebe's Things Fall Apart.