For My Birthday, Please Get My Dad Out of Jail.

As has been noted 115 times already on facebook, it is my birthday. In lieu of flowers, you might consider helping my dad make bail.

He's going to be locked up by the Muscular Dystrophy Association for a Muscular Dystrophy crime he didn't Muscular Dystrophy commit. There was a ridiculous show trial that lasted twenty-one hours, and Jerry Lewis stayed awake for the whole thing, and...anyway, I try not to ask for money very often, but if you have even a few bucks lying around we'd appreciate it.

Thank you. Here's the donation link.

There Are Pigeons Nesting in My Pigeon Spikes.

I feel obliged to tell you that I don't like pigeon spikes. I don't like the way they make every ledge and sign look like some Lilliputian Thunderdome.

And I actually like pigeons. Longtime readers of my blog will remember how delighted I was to discover that first nest of them on my porch. I even asked you to name the babies.

But nest after nest of chicks convinced me that this was not some rare and fragile miracle. This was not Pale Male nesting on Fifth Avenue. My porch was more like an especially unsanitary inner city maternity ward.

Unsanitary because I've learned, and I don't think there's a delicate way to phrase this, that pigeons produce an astonishing amount of waste. They'd turned the columns flanking my house into two abstract expressionist monoliths, like exactly the sort of crapcentric art installations that make Republicans want to defund the NEA.

So, pigeon spikes. And now pigeons nesting in what was apparently not the appropriate amount of pigeon spikes. Those chicks above were fledged a couple weeks ago, so I went up the ladder to install stronger defenses. But they'd already rebuilt the nest. And the mother in it would not leave. I didn't take this with any kind of zoom. I was this close.



Eventually I was too close, and the pigeon lunged at the brush I'd brought to clear away the twigs and droppings. So for a moment I could see that she'd been hiding two new and dandelion-yellow chicks.

So, back down the ladder. I'll try again in a few weeks.

Accidentally Joined Twitter

@MrAdamRex

An Open Letter to Everyone Who Thinks it Must be Easy, Writing Kid's Books

You should totally write one. Maybe the fact that it seems so easy is your brain's way of telling you that you'd be good at it. I really couldn't say if you'd be any good at it or not so soon after meeting you, and telling you what I do, and listening to you disparage my life's work and all.

Then again, if you notice you're often saying "I could do that" when confronted with all kinds of things that are easy to do but difficult to do well (non-representational art, haiku...kid's books), then it might be time to put up and get your hands dirty. Yes, anyone can smear paint around, anyone can count syllables, anyone can write a very short story about bears learning to share or whatever.

You may even think, having crafted a bear story with a beginning, middle, and end, that it's fit for publication. Maybe you'll ask me who to talk to about that. I could give you the names of a number of editors, each of whom literally rejects thousands of stories per year. Because she doesn't think they're good enough. Or she doesn't think they're sellable. Or she doesn't think they have anything going for them besides a beginning, middle, and an end.

I wonder if you like the NPR comedy news quiz show Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. I usually catch at least a little of it each week, but I missed the episode a couple Saturdays ago when children's book agent Brenda Bowen got to be one of the call-in contestants. Here's a link to the transcript if you're interested–it's what got me thinking about all this.

Anyway, one of the panelists kicked things off by essentially mentioning that she suspects it would be easy, writing kid's books; and Paula Poundstone, whom I must say I like, nevertheless trotted out a variation on an old chestnut that I assume every kid's book writer has heard at least as often as I have. It always goes something like this: these books are a snap to write, which I will now exemplify by mentioning a board book I saw once that contained only pictures of shapes or farm animals or the alphabet. Because surely the fairest way to evaluate any vocation is by its most rudimentary example. SpaghettiOs. An elementary school dance recital. US Weekly.

Or maybe it's a question of length? Certainly I've heard that often enough–"It's only thirty pages and there's, like, ten words on each page. How hard can it be?"
It's a high school composition approach to writing–if a 500-word essay is hard, then a 1,000-word essay is harder. A novel must be harder to write than a short story. A really long novel must be harder to write than a novel.

May I suggest you try something?–write a brand new, memorable quote. Something we'll still be repeating a hundred years from now, like people are always doing with Twain. It should be easy, shouldn't it? It only needs to be, like, ten words.
Or is it hard to think of something worth saying? And hard to think of the perfect way to say it because, with so few words, each one has to really count? My stars but that's interesting.

And then you have the audacity to say I'm "lucky" to be doing what I do.

No, you're right about that, actually.

On deck for tomorrow: another post about how hard it is to be me. Maybe something about the headaches of having a beautiful, intelligent wife.

Mick Again

But painted a bit this time. Yeah, I know–it's unsettling. Stupid uncanny valley.

Mick

New character model for my next novel. For my next three novels, come to think of it.

Tucson Art Show at Lulubell

Lulubell Toy Bodega here in Tucson has a new art show opening this Saturday called "Creature Feature," so I've contributed a couple paintings–one was a Magic: the Gathering card, the other (below) a book cover for an M:tG tie-in anthology.

I'll be there at Lulubell (on Toole and 7th Ave.) from 6-9 this Saturday for the opening. So will a lot of other artists. Come say hi, maybe.

It Continued to Happen on a Train

Yesterday I shared some of the sketches and steps–the station-stops, if you will–needed to arrive at Successful Book Cover Terminal. Previously I mentioned that we'd gotten to a pretty good place with the sketches, but certain people were uncomfortable with A) showing a knife on the cover and B) showing a boy in a towel on the cover.



So the knife became a lead pipe (which, if also rejected, would have been replaced with a candlestick or some business), and then I made the towel a robe:



Which everyone liked, but now they were disturbed by the placement of Steve's hand.



There, now. We have arrived at Successful Book Cover Terminal. All passengers must exit.

It Happened on a Train

I don't make a habit of illustrating books I haven't read. But it's happened a few times, typically in cases where the cover was needed before the book itself was actually written. The forthcoming Brixton Brothers #3: It Happened on a Train was such a book. Mac Barnett was getting a late start writing it–he had the mystery mapped out but not a lot in the way of action set-pieces, so he and I talked on the phone about what could conceivably go on the cover.

Of course there had to be a foot chase on top of the moving train at some point. But this alone wouldn't convey the slightly off-center atmosphere that all the BB books have, and which I like the covers to reflect. I asked Mac if it would be possible for main character Steve Brixton to be wearing a bath towel. If memory serves, I was sort of kidding.

"Actually," said Mac, "I think I could make that work."



I think you should read the book, so I'm only going to say that it makes perfect sense in context. But the above cover sketch isn't very good. I struggled early on with how to show both the train and the action in an engaging way. I could pull back and show more of the train, but then the action would suffer for lack of tension. I could close in on the action, but then everyone might look like they're fighting atop a Tuff Shed.



Ooh, better. But at this point Mac let me know that there could only be just the one masked goon.



And that he needed to be left-handed.



And this image-flopping killed two birds, actually, since the train needed to be shown traveling south down the California coast. So now everything was perfect, except that the publisher decided that they couldn't show a knife on the cover, and also that Steve in a bath towel was stirring up some...confusing feelings.

TOMORROW: The finished cover.

블로그

Sorry the blog's been so fallow lately. Too busy. But I had to come up for air a moment and share this, the Korean edition of Billy Twitter and His Blue Whale Problem.



I haven't had a lot of translations of my books, and there's always something cool about Asian editions, isn't there? Maybe it's just me.

Anyway, I hear from Mac Barnett that the title actually translates as IF YOU DON'T LISTEN TO MOM'S WORDS, I'LL BRING A LONG WHITE MUSTACHE WHALE TO YOU. Isn't that nice? Tells you everything you need to know. I look forward to collecting other Korean editions such as THE CAT IN THE HAT IS THE CAUSE OF AND THE SOLUTION TO ALL OUR DIFFICULTIES and maybe WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS THERE IS POETRY AND ALSO A FUTURE SITE FOR FURTHER SIDEWALK DEVELOPMENT.

Does anyone out there read Korean? I'm curious which part of that cover is my name.

Toy Story 4

Finally got around to seeing Toy Story 3 yesterday. Whatta movie.

I have a pitch for Toy Story 4 now: the toys go on a quest to confront God and demand to know why they were given sentience and free will when it can only cause them pain.

Goblins

A couple minor characters from my next novel, which is written but not illustrated yet. It'll be the first volume of a new middle-grade trilogy (by which I mean it's for middle-grade readers, not that it's a mediocre, utility-grade trilogy), and will be in stores some time in the winter.

These guys are goblins, and are described in the manuscript thusly:

They were each perhaps just a half-foot taller than Mick, with milky-white bodies but startling red faces. Red as if they’d been dipped to their chins in blood and the stuff had dripped some foreign alphabet all over their necks and collars. From top to bottom they had: bald pates, all the worst features of both toad and bat, little wool grey suit jackets with ties, short pants, and chicken feet.

So I just wanted to point out that I was right.

A little while back I worried publicly about my review of The Ring of Solomon, which I decided to advance over Sugar Changed the World in this year's School Library Journal Battle of the Books. I just learned that TRoS went all the way to win the title!

So, that's comforting. Here's my review, in case you're interested.

BRONZE.

Say! The cover design for my book Fat Vampire won third place in the Children's Trade category at the 25th Annual New York Book Show!

Though I didn't photograph it myself (it was photographed by Dan Saelinger) and I'm only partially responsible for the finished design (Carla Weise collaborated), the whole thing was based on my sketch. So.

A Poem I Don't Think I've Shared Here Before:

E.T.MAIL

We assumed it was the case

that in a place as big as space

we’d find some trace of other races

with our scientific bases.

When a signal was detected

it was not what we expected.

In the subject line it pleaded,

PLEASE REPLY–ASSISTENCE NEEDED

SALUTATIONS TO YOUR HEALTH.

PLEASE HELP ME TRANSFER ALL MY WEALTH

INTO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT ON EARTH–

ELEVEN MILLION DOLLARS WORTH.

I NEED YOUR ANSWER RIGHT AWAY.

PLEASE SEND A LETTER BACK TODAY

(ALONG WITH FIFTY DOLLARS, PLEASE,

TO PAY THE MONEY TRANSFER FEES).

We gasped–a message from the stars!

And then another came from Mars:

NEED BIGGER, YELLOWER ANTENNAE?

HAVE TO FEW OR HAVE TOO MANY?

LOSS OF VIGOR? LOUSY SLEEPER?

OUR PRESCRIPTION DRUGS ARE CHEAPER!!!

We were noticing a pattern,

when a bunch arrived from Saturn–

FANCY WATCHES! CLICK AND SEE!

and GET YOUR HYPERSCHOOL DEGREE.

At SINGLES IN YOUR SECTOR!!!

we disabled our detector.

Then we emptied out the cache

and dragged the letters to the trash.

So that’s the fact we had to face:

there’s no intelligence in space.

But that’s okay–for what it’s worth,

there isn’t much of it on Earth.

Copyright 2008 Adam Rex

From Frankenstein Takes the Cake

So I wrote this a few years ago, and always thought its natural habitat was the internet. Of course I control the rights to this poem–there's a copyright notice and everything following the verse. But I am curious to see if people like it enough to share it, and if so how long it takes before it's forwarded to me or someone I know. I also understand that all creative writing on the internet eventually gets attributed to Kurt Vonnegut, so we'll see how long that takes.

Rotten Tomatoes may be Addressed to Me Care of my Agent

I'm anxiously awaiting the blogosphere's reaction to my entry in the School Library Journal's Battle of the Books, which will be posted tomorrow morning. It's a bracketed March Madness-style competition between various YA and Middle Grade titles, and I was asked to advance either The Ring of Solomon or Sugar Changed the World. And no, I'm not going to reveal my decision–I'm not allowed yet.

Anyway, some of the judges so far are drawing criticism for being too nice, and for doing essentially the same thing I did–explaining why both books are great, and then kind of arbitrarily choosing one over the other. Rather than actually explaining why the winning book is BETTER than the other, you understand. So I admit that in this sense I wimped out (as Roger Sutton has put it), choosing instead to write a review designed to divert attention away from these two great books and back to ME.

I've been feeling a little neglected lately–my wife's in Switzerland.

Koo Koo Ka Choo

My new novel has 41 instances of the word "egg." My new novel which is not, I should be clear, about eggs.

This seems like a lot to me. Fully .06% of my novel is the word "egg." For reference I should tell you that my novel is in many ways actually about magic, but the words "magic" and "magical" only appear a combined total of 106 times.

For continued reference, I could add that my novel contains 75 mentions of cereal, and this is not accidental. But it also contains a whopping 2,502 instances of the word "and," YET IS NOT ABOUT CONJUNCTIONS.

No doubt some of you have a favorite word and are now wondering how many times it appears in my novel, and whether I could be persuaded to slip it in there if it doesn't. I invite your comments.

Tucson Festival of Books

The third annual Tucson Festival of Books is coming to the UofA mall this weekend (the 12th and 13th). As in past years I'll be appearing on panels and at signings and just generally walking around and knuckle bumping Dora the Explorer and so forth.

Here's my schedule:

Saturday, March 12th

12:00-12:30 Teen Author Lounge (reading of Fat Vampire)

1:00-2:00 COE 351 – Adam Rex -- Digital Painting Workshop: Illustrating Books with Photoshop. I'm going to actually give a live demo of this I guess, God help me.

2:00-2:30 Post-workshop autographing

3:00-3:30 Signing at the Mysterious Galaxy booth, #429-251

4:00-5:00 COE Kiva – E. B. Lewis, Wendy Watson and I will be on a panel called "I Didn’t Write It, But….Illustrating for Other Authors."

5:00-5:30 Post-panel autographing

Sunday, March 13th

12:00 Signing at the Heroes and Villains booth. It's #240, I think.

Ongoing Evidence That Aaron Zenz is the Best Dad Ever

Can be found here.

If There Isn't, I Want to Nominate "Dissynonym."

I've been curious lately if there's an official term for a word which, colloquially, is used to mean the exact opposite of what it actually means. And I'm not referring to intentionally ironic slang, like the way people used to say "bad" to mean "good." I'm more interested in cases where the speaker is likely not even aware of what they're doing, as with the word "literally," say. In fact, I could include just about any word or phrase which is intended to assert the veracity of something but which, in informal usage, doesn't. As in the example below:

I swear*, this burrito last night was literally** like a hundred pounds. Seriously***, it would have taken fifty people to finish it, I shit you not****.

*I don't swear.

**figuratively

***Not seriously

****I totally shit you. Figuratively.

I don't normally like to swear on my blog, but if any young kid made it past the phrase "intended to assert the veracity," he's earned it.

So does anyone know if there's a term for this? Can anyone think of other examples?

**UPDATE** CONTRONYM! A word which is its own antonym. Apparently "literally" may just be on its way to becoming a solid contronym. Like "cleave," which can mean both "cling to" or "split."

I love that I know this word now. Thanks, internet! Specifically, thanks Aaron Zenz, who pointed me toward a great Slate article. An article which points out that while I'm bugged by this use of "literally," I've been ignoring the same misuse of "really."

Manners Mash-Up On Sale Today!

I know I mentioned all this before, but I just learned that a collection to which I contributed called Manners Mash-Up is officially on sale today. This book also features Bob Shea, Sophie Blackall, Dan Santat, Henry Cole, and many others. Kirkus says it's "Good advice waggishly packaged and not completely tasteful—a winner."

I did the spread about table manners. Click to enlarge.



You know, I don't think I follow any of these commandments except the ones about feet and napkins. It's like my mother didn't raise me right. But I know that could not possibly be the case, because my mother is classy and beautiful and reads my blog.

Happy Belated Lincoln's Birthday

A day or two ago you may have seen this feature of mine in your local paper:



Click to make it bigger.

It was only one oddly-shaped piece of this week's installment of The Goods, a bounty of games, comics, puzzles and more that's distributed by McSweeney's and Tribune Media. Upcoming contributors will include Carson Ellis, Laurie Keller, Jon Klassen, Sean Qualls, Jon Scieszka, Bob Shea, Lane Smith, Dan Santat, and Mo Willems.

UPDATE: Fellow President's Day contributor Brian Biggs just posted his maze over at his site. Go look at it! It's hair-raising! You'll understand why it's hair-raising if you go look at it.

Not getting The Goods in your paper?

Oh my gosh I'm so sorry.

Well, maybe write to your paper's features editor, then, and request it. You can direct him or her to this link.

For Her Birthday My Friend Wants Two Libraries.

My old high school friend Stephanie is about to turn 38 (Which I suppose means I am, too. Shoot.), and she's doing something really excellent. She'd like to raise 700 dollars in 7 days–which is apparently just enough to establish two libraries in rural schools in Guatemala, where Stephanie was in the Peace Corps. She's doing this through her late mother's charity, Books for a Better World, and I'm going to help. I thought some of you people might like to help, too.

To earmark your donation, please add 38 cents to the dollar amount. Make it $5.38, $20.38, whatever. I'll have her report back in a week to tell us how much she raised.

I know you have a lot of people asking for your money, but can I just reiterate: for her birthday Stephanie wants two Guatemalan libraries. Isn't this exactly the sort of person we want to encourage?

Tucson People! Tiny art show

New show opening tomorrow night at Lulubell Toy Bodega. More than 20 artists, and all artwork is to be 7 inches by 7 inches or less. I'll have three very affordable paintings in the show. David Christiana will have something like eight pieces. Phil Hilliker painted on Scrabble tiles. You should probably go. Click this for info, and make sure to click "next" in order to see some samples from the show.

This green girl is a detail from one of mine. Her head is maybe an inch and a half across.

FAT VAMPIRE Banned, Somewhere.

Yesterday morning I awoke to find I had an email from someone about my Teen/Adult novel, Fat Vampire. People email me all the time. Sometimes they write to say they like my books. Sometimes they even write to say that they like my other books, but that they didn't like this one or that. I have a policy about not reading reviews, but it's hard to stick to your guns when reviews are coming straight into your inbox like that. But yesterday's letter was different.

I'm not going to print it, because a person who emails me should not have to expect that his private message is going to be published on even this tiny public forum. But I'll summarize: Fat Vampire is smut. The emailer went to his daughter's principal and convinced her to remove it from the school library. He promised to tell everyone about Fat Vampire and requested, in the future, that I please keep my books out of schools.

The following was my response. I have not yet heard back.

I regret that you were offended, [Name Redacted]. And in monitoring your daughter's reading and requesting that she refrain from books you don't find appropriate you were doing exactly what all parents should do, if they're able. You'll understand if I don't agree with censorship, however. The other parents at your daughter's school also have the right (some would say responsibility) to regulate their kids' reading, and you've taken that right away from them.

I think you're mistaken about my role in all this. I didn't put my book in your school, nor do I decide where they're sold. I merely wrote a story I wanted to write, and was grateful that my publisher published it. Ultimately my publisher is the entity that decides how my book will be marketed, as well, and with thousands of Young Adult titles to their name they decided that my book, too, is a Young Adult title. Mind you, I'm not saying I disagree, though I tend to describe it as a Teen/Adult title myself (which essentially amounts to the same thing). Regardless, I don't put my books in your or any other school, so I can't be entreated to keep them out. You could only ask me to stop writing, and to that the answer's no.

I don't envy you your task these next few years–you're going to have to be very vigilant. If you consider my book to be smut then you'll find that there are a great many Young Adult titles that are just as bad, and a fair number that are worse. Anyway, though I don't like book-banning I defend your right to tell anyone and everyone you know just exactly how you feel. You may want to temper your enthusiasm, however, with the knowledge that it's a rare censorship campaign that doesn't increase a book's sales.

Sincerely,

Adam Rex