Guys Read: the #$@!! Cover

Pardon my language. The cover for this book, the first of a forthcoming GUYS READ Library, was a little slippery. Hard to nail down. Previously I showed you the cover we ended up with, today I show most of the ones we didn't.

Early in the process I was really attached to the idea that all of the GUYS READ anthologies might have the common element of an illicit black bar or box, possibly containing the GR logo, which could always be concealing an ostensibly naughty or terrifying or mysterious part of the image. Jon Scieszka and the good people at HarperCollins humored me for a long time about this.

Click to make big.



Then we all glommed onto the pie in the face element for a while.



What I'm not showing you at this point is a number of formal-looking portraits of a Little Lord Fauntleroy type with pie face or, alternately, Groucho glasses. That's because eventually Harper or Jon or somebody thought it might be better to pull back from this portrait and show a modern-looking boy admiring it in a museum setting.



Eventually it was agreed that the gallery was working but Fauntleroy wasn't, so we explored other options.



NOT SHOWN: about a half-dozen other concepts that were too superficially similar to these to bother including.

If I sound bitter or tired that's only because I enjoy complaining. I love this book and I like its cover.

Guys Read: Funny Business

In case you missed it when I posted this back in May, here's the...trailer? Sizzle? What are we calling these things now? Here's the moving talky thing for GUYS READ: Funny Business, which I mentioned yesterday.

Guys Read: Funny Business

For years now Jon Scieszka has been championing books for boys and encouraging parents and educators to just let the poor guys read what they want with his organization GUYS READ. He's even published a Guys Read anthology already, with a lot of great stories, but now he's getting serious. So to speak.

Later this month all good Americans will be reading Guys Read: Funny Business, the first of the forthcoming Guys Read Library. I had the honor to write a story for this anthology of humor, and to illustrate the whole thing.

So I thought I'd kick off September, which will inevitably be renamed Guys Read Month, with the uncropped cover of GR:FB.



This is what it'll look like in stores:



We went through a lot of iterations with this cover. I'll post all of them soon.

sketchbook: LIONS

sketchbook: DRAGONS

Largehearted Boy

Interested in the secret soundtrack to my new novel, Fat Vampire? No? Oh.

Well, then don't go to the music and book blog Largehearted Boy. Forget I said anything.

sketchbook: GIRLS

Show and Tell Me

Please click through to Amy Timberlake's blog Show and Tell Me to read the story (and see a larger image) of this terrible thing to the right. But suffice it to say that yes, it is a picture of a zombie throwing up a smaller zombie.

The Comic-Con

A Short Play by Adam Rex
Based on True Events

A hall in San Diego. An attractive woman dress'd and undress'd in the guise of slave Leia poses for photographs. Three rogues look on.

ROGUE ONE: Not hot, methinks this counterfeit of Princess Leia be.

ROGUE TWO: Forsooth, my friend speaks verily: not so hot is she.

ROGUE THREE: FAIL.

Rogues Exeunt.

FIN

Comic-Con Signing

Previously I mentioned I'll be participating on a panel at Comic-Con. I just want to say today that I'll also be signing in the Autograph Area after my panel, and giving away FAT VAMPIRE t-shirts to the first fifteen people in my line (who want one).

The t-shirt graphic looks like the image up left. My signing is in AA1 from 12-1 pm. See you there!

Okay, I'm Back

Just a quick note to say that I'll be at the San Diego Comic-Con in support of my new book, FAT VAMPIRE.

On Sunday from 11-12:00 I'll be participating in a panel called Entertaining One's Inner Child in room 24ABC. Also participating will be Matt and Jennifer Holm (Babymouse), David Steinberg (Daniel Boom), Jimmy Gownley (Amelia Rules), Sina Grace (Among the Ghosts), and Greg Van Eekhout (Kid vs. Squid).

I'll also just be wandering around most of Saturday and Sunday, so if you see me please say hi. I'll be the guy who looks like me.

Sorry.

Okay, it seems I owe some of you an apology.

Ever since Adam died I’ve been insisting that he absolutely is NOT one of the legion of the undead, but then he stopped by last night and sort of broke it to his mother and me. It’s not a choice he made, it’s just who he is now. I think we’ll get used to it, in time.

And I guess he really has written a vampire book. He gave us a copy, which he insisted we begin reading immediately while he watched us with those smoldering eyes of his. I like it all right, but it’s not really his mother’s cup of tea.

Maybe you people will like it better. Here's an excerpt.

Adam’s mom wants me to take down that last post, but I can’t figure out how. She wants everyone to know that her son was very successful. Maybe not as successful as he would have been had he followed his father into engineering–ask me how many homicidal goth copyeditors have visited me lately at Honeywell–but I guess that’s water under the bridge.

Heh. Water under the bridge. You know some legends say vampires can’t cross water? I read it on Wikipedia. A little dead son vampire humor, there.

God, you people are getting to me.

Adam's Dad Again, and This is the Last Time.

You people. You people with your sick rumors. For the last time:

Adam has NOT returned from the dead to shop around a new vampire novel. I don’t even know where to begin telling you what’s wrong with that idea. To start with Adam simply would not write a vampire story–it’s not his style. And with the YA and Adult market already oversaturated with other people’s vampire stories? It would be ridiculous.

Please show some respect for the dead.

We’ve heard about the book too, but I’m sure it’s just by another author with the same name, or else some sicko trying to cash in on our boy’s death. The joke’s on you, mister sicko. None of Adam’s books ever made any money.

Adam's Dad Again

Hi, Adam’s dad again.

I’d like to say right off the bat that Adam’s mother and I don’t appreciate all the rumors flying around the internet about Adam being killed in some supernatural way. I’m a man of science and I don’t believe in such things.

Yes, he was found in his car yesterday, nude and completely exsanguinated. On his chest there was a message in blood that read “YOU USE TOO MANY COMMAS,” so of course police are looking for that copyeditor gal.

I thank all of you who posted thoughtful emails and comments. To the rest of you I say: knock it off with all your “advice.” We are not going to cut Adam’s head off and fill the mouth with holy wafers. We’re Presbyterian.

Message from Adam's Dad

Hi, this is Adam’s dad.

If you read this blog then you’re probably already aware of some of the stories getting around about him, but I want to set the record straight.

Adam was last seen at the Phoenix Book Festival in the company of what I’m told was “a fair-skinned and darkly beautiful young copyeditor.” She approached him after his signing and professed to be a big fan and brushed her slender hand against his. Phoenix in July is pretty warm, and Adam was heard to whisper that he could not account for the fractal chill that spread in his breast.

He’s always talking like that–you should have heard him when he was a teenager.

According to eyewitnesses he walked off with the beautiful copyeditor after she remarked that she wanted to share with him her “dark embrace.”

“Ha!” he was heard to say as they left. “For a moment I thought you said your ‘dork embrace.’ Huh…that would be a funny premise for a book.”

He hasn’t been seen since.

If anyone has any information, we’d appreciate it. He was supposed to come over last night for Jenga.

The Queen of the Quail

Baby gift for my friends Phil and Angie, and brand new friend Phinneas.

5x7, oil on paper.

Guys vs. Vampires

HarperCollins has created a facebook page for my new novel, FAT VAMPIRE: a Never Coming of Age Story. I'm sharing it with Eric Luper's excellent new book Seth Baumgartner's Love Manifesto, hence the name GUYS VS. VAMPIRES.

FAT VAMPIRE Trailer Three–Vampire or Teenager?

Inkpop Live Chat

If you're a member of the online teen writer community Inkpop, or know someone who is: I'll be having a live chat there Wednesday, July 7th, at 5pm eastern time. HERE'S THE LINK

FAT VAMPIRE Trailer Two–Vampire Hunters

FAT VAMPIRE Trailer One

Starring Mac Barnett and featuring Jon Korn. Directed by Shawn Harris. Written by Mac, Jon, and Shawn.

Clock Without a Face Update

Remember Clock Without a Face? If you don't, click here to see my previous posts about the book. Click here to visit the official website, and read stories about real treasure hunters who studied the book and were rewarded with emeralds. It occurred to me that I never posted my portrait of the world's greatest sleuth, Roy Dodge, so there he is on the left. Click to make bigger.

What I'm really excited about, however, is listening to authors Mac Barnett and Eli Horowitz talk about the book this morning on NPR's Weekend Edition. Listen to the story here. You'll also hear from one eighteen-year-old in southern Wisconsin who describes her successful search for the number eight.

There are still three numbers left in the ground! Including the twelve, which contains as many emeralds as all the other numbers combined! Emeralds! Okay, that's all.

Interview!

I couldn't think of a better title than that. Pretty good though, right? It's punchy, it says what it is.

Anyway, the anonymous editor of Editorial Anonymous conducted an interview with me recently and it's up right now on the blog. Go find out what I was talking about when I said "my own amateurish blindfolded plate-spinning might actually be a legitimate means to an end."

They Grow Up So Fast

Previously, I presented the pigeon nesting on my porch, and later the one-week-old results of her efforts. Here they are again, now no older than three weeks.

Mugwort Jon Smelly, and Bert Lane Rasputin.


And here they are again, a day later and with a different camera.


I also shot this of the parents, Penelope Van der Pigeon and Andrew Toodlewinks de la Xavier, who are now nesting on the other side of the porch.
Thank you all for the naming help.