Month: August 2010

I’m famous!  I’m famous!  Okay, just a little.

Our local newspaper, which has a circulation around 50,000, ran an interview with me in Sunday’s paper. With a photo and everything.

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20100815/LIFE/8150308/1001/NEWS/A–Getaway–for-young-adults

I think it came off fairly well, though after doing a couple interviews now I’ve realized how easy it is to misinterpret something.  This isn’t the fault of the reporter, who I think did a good job, but more my fault for letting myself ramble a little too much and not realizing that, well, I was talking to a reporter.  For example, you might get the sense reading the article that I can take the whole summers off from my job at the university and loaf around my house in my flip-flops.  Alas, no.  What I meant was that I take more of my vacation days in the summer, when it slows down a bit at the university.    Hope the folks who sign my checks at the university understand that . . .

Speaking of that, it’s been interesting slowly losing my anonymity as a writer.  I’d gotten used to being something of a secret writer, preferring for the most part not to tell many people about my other life even as I started having some success, but the cat’s really out of the bag now.  Which is fine, I guess, it all comes with the territory as you take the next step up the publishing ladder, but it is something I’ve had to come to terms with.

Many of you have probably already heard about this through other channels (isn’t everyone on Facebook these days?), but in case you haven’t, I have big news to share:  I sold my second book!

It’s called WOODEN BONES, and though I sold it to the same imprint as my first book (Simon and Schuster Books for Young Readers), it’s a very different kind of story.  This one’s a fantasy aimed at middle grade readers, and the tag line is, “Becoming a Real Boy Was Just the Beginning . . .”

If you guessed that it’s the untold story of Pinocchio, with a dark twist, then you’re on the right track.  The twist is that Pino, as he’s come to be known after he became a real boy, has discovered that he has the power to bring puppets to life himself — and what happens to him because of this newfound ability.  Since the original story by Carlo Collodi is in the public domain, this gave me creative license to take that story and imagine what might have come later — giving myself free rein to go where the story took me and not be constrained by the original tale.  Rather than an homage to the original story, think of this as taking something firmly rooted in the public consciousness and giving it a twist.  It was a blast to write, a story full of adventure and heartbreak, so I’m hoping that comes across for the reader.

As to when it’ll be available, that’s yet to be determined, but hopefully it won’t be two and half years like my first book.  I created a little logo because I plan to do something fun with this book:  I’m going to do a little more “behind the scenes” posts as this book winds its way toward publication.  A lot of people don’t know all that goes into a book that sells to a major publisher — from coming up with the idea to seeing it in a bookstore — so I thought I’d use this book as a means to shed some light on the process.  Stay tuned.