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

I'm On the TeeVee.

I don't have an iPad, but I am typing this on a four-year-old MacBook–which I realize is so old in computer terms it's practically steampunk. But if I command my old-timey inter-net browsing soft-ware routine to visit the correct address, I can watch this national commercial for iPads, which features a shot of one of my books at the ten-second mark:



There it is, a Fat Vampire second from the upper left on the virtual bookshelf:

TGIP

I think this is it–the culmination of all my panda-related efforts this past week. A little cub wearing a t-shirt and a pilot's helmet and goggles. This is what it's all been for.



I hope the Home Office agrees that I can't responsibly get any cuter than this. What would they have me do? Draw a panda in a onesie? Or with...I don't know...wings or something? Or dressed up as an entirely different animal? Or even–and I hesitate to suggest this–a panda covered in smaller pandas?

Special Request

My Illustratophone started chugging away again last night, much to my surprise. This morning I had a special request from the Illustrators Home Office:



It's nice to see them showing an interest. I think the assignment must be going really well.



Brian Biggs commented on a previous post that he was disappointed with the Apple Illustratophone App. I've been thinking of getting an iPhone–anyone else have this problem? I love my landline Illustratophone but it goes through kerosene like nobody's business.

Pandamonium!

Big emergency this morning. I sat down to draw the day's batch of pandas and I guess I went into some sort of fugue state, and when I emerged I'd accidentally drawn Abraham SuperLincoln fighting an octopus on the moon.



And to think I almost sent this to the Home Office! This kind of thing doesn't usually happen to me when I draw, though I can tell you that I've often begun writing what I intended to be an international bestseller and mistakenly ended up with a book nobody wanted to read.

Anyway, I got back on track, and ended the morning with what I consider to be a passable panda-in-waistcoat sketch.



One reader asked about my Illustratophone, seen previously. I realize I'm lucky to have one of the nice old ones. I'm told it was formerly commissioned to Clive Lumley, who of course is best known for the popular "Lumley Girl" series of illustrated hosiery ads in the 50s and 60s.

I prefer to remember him for these, and not for his slow decline into pornographic album covers in the 1970s and beyond.

Stories that Soar!

I don't know if I mentioned previously that I'm on the board of a Tucson nonprofit called Stories that Soar! The exclamation point is part of the name–I'm not trying to convey that I'm really excited about that last sentence or anything. I mean, I AM excited about StS!, but I'm not really an exclamation point kind of guy. If I were any kind of punctuation it would probably be an em dash.

But the point is, Stories that Soar! visits Tucson-area schools and encourages kids to write and to feed the Magic Box, a hungry box that eats stories. Then StS! returns and puts on a stage show scripted entirely with the words these schoolkids wrote. And in case this sounds like it could come off as kind of squirmy and precious, let me tell you that the acting troupe is AMAZING.

Usually their shows are for the kids only, but this Thursday, the 20th, they'll be giving a public evening show. If you live in or around Tucson, I would love to see you there.

Jan 20, 2011 at 7:00 PM
STS! at AZ Schools for the Deaf and Blind
Berger Performing Arts Center
1200 W Speedway
Tucson, AZ 85745

The Illustrators Home Office Continued

Yesterday I mentioned that I'd gotten a new assignment from the Illustrators Home Office in Pueblo, Colorado. I'm pretty jazzed about it now. I don't know why they need all these pandas and I'm not going to ask. This offers a good lesson for the art students and up-and-coming illustrators who read my blog: DON'T QUESTION THE ILLUSTRATORS HOME OFFICE. The one and only time I asked for a little clarification they had me drawing hands and complicated Rococo furniture for a month.

Anyway, here's today's batch of pandas. I think I'm really getting somewhere.

The Illustrators Home Office

Late last night I got an assignment from the Illustrators Home Office. I hadn't heard boo from them in two years but then I'm suddenly awakened by the chugga-chugga noise of my Illustratophone. I didn't even know it was plugged in.

I hate that chugga-chugga noise.

Anyway, I checked it this morning and the assignment's a peach, so I must be back in their good graces:



Here's the first batch. They'll probably have me doing these all week. I won't know I'm done until the Illustratophone makes the pinging noise and raises the little flags and the tiny metal bird goes back and forth on the track with the yellow things, and you know what they say–a watched illustratophone never pings. So I may as well keep my head down.

Need a Recommendation

An elementary school teacher friend of mine, who teaches 2nd and 3rd graders, needs age-appropriate books about toy design. Design, invention, toy testing...anything along those lines, I think. All I could come up with is Marla Frazee's Santa Claus: The World's Number One Toy Expert, and it's a little lean on real-world information.

Little help?

Odyssey Award

Well! This is nice.

The ALA Youth Media Awards were given this morning–a big batch of medals that includes the Caldecotts and Newberys (Newberries?).

So I eventually emerge from my bedroom this morning to discover a bunch of congratulatory emails, because the audio production of The True Meaning of Smekday (read by Bahni Turpin) has won the 2011 Odyssey award for best audiobook produced for children or young adults. Which was a complete surprise. That's not to slight the production or Ms. Turpin, but I just didn't go to bed last night hoping the ALA Santa might bring me something in the morning. It hadn't occurred to me that the audiobook of Smekday was in the running.

I'd have a celebratory drink, but it's only two in the afternoon here.

Thanks to Bahni Turpin and producer Dan Musselman at Listening Library!

DNA

Recently I received a mailing from A. Bitterman at Reading Reptile in Kansas City, MO. The people of KC already know that Reading Reptile is the greatest kids' book store in town, if not in all of these United States. But they may not know that it is also the world's largest repository of genetic material culled from authors and illustrators.

The mailer contained a pair of tweezers, nail clippers, two cotton swabs, a collection dish, a SASE, and a letter which I excerpt here:

It is our intent to become the preeminent DNA bank for the children's book industry. Students of the art will now be able to study not only the work of the great masters, but their genetic make up as well. In this way, aspiring writers might determine whether or not they have "the right stuff" to make it in this competitive, and oftentimes unforgiving, profession, before they inflict their misapprehensions on an unsuspecting public.

Your samples will not, under any circumstances, be used in government research, or for cloning purposes, without your expressed permission in writing.

I'm going to go ahead and give you that permission, Bitterman. I can't imagine what could possibly go wrong.

The letter also details the extraction procedure, which includes tweezing 2-5 hairs (with roots) from any part of my body (I chose head), paring at least 4 nail clippings from my fingers and/or toes (I chose toes), and using the cotton swabs to collect saliva from the inner cheek of my choosing (I chose face).

Then I packaged up my samples for their return back to Reading Reptile.

Anyone who visits my samples might drop me a line to let me know how they're doing. And if anyone in the greater Kansas City area happens to notice a lot of new residents who look like me at various ages, please encourage them to get in touch. I might be wanting a new kidney at some point.

Tucson-Area People!

I'll be signing at the Barnes and Noble on Broadway this Sunday, the 12th, from 1-3. I'll be there with a bunch of other local authors, too.

Also? I recently learned that my novel Fat Vampire will be on the Washington Post's list of the best books of the year. I understand the list will be printed in this Sunday's section.

Finally, I present a photo of what's on my work bench right now. Hands.

Previously, heads.

Three-Minute Fiction

Some people swore that the house was haunted. Enough so its listing came up first in her Google search.

“I’ve found one I want you to look at,” she told her husband. She often had real estate listings to show him, or upholstery samples for recovering her college-era couch, or fun ideas for their upstate vacation. He often had hilarious videos to show her, or pictures of people’s cats. He liked to say that they each brought something important to the marriage.

He hoisted baby Max up to his shoulder and leaned over hers. She clicked through different views. “It’s…awesome,” he said, as if there must be some mistake. “That’s really the square footage?”

“I know.”

“How can that be the price? What’s wrong with it?”

She turned and looked at him squarely. Her expression and the pause that followed announced this as an Important Marriage Trust Moment, like when he’d asked to spend four hundred dollars on a theremin.

“I got an idea from that horror movie we watched last night,” she said. “People are always finding great big houses they couldn’t normally afford that turn out to be haunted. So now I’m only searching for haunted houses.”

“…Um,” said the husband.

“And it’s fine because there’s no such thing. If people want to be stupid and superstitious it’s not our fault, right?”

Max needed a diaper change. Their entire two-room apartment smelled like diaper. The husband glanced back at her laptop.

“Show me the granite countertop again,” he said.

The front yard was immaculate. As they approached, Janice the realtor pointed out the carved duck mailbox with whirligig wings, as if it couldn’t point out itself. The husband and wife shared a smile. Ghosts did not haunt places with novelty mailboxes. They did not haunt ranch-style split-levels.

The first walkthrough would have gone beautifully if not for the baby’s fussing. Max upshifted abruptly from squirmy to tantrum, then cycled through seven or eight distinct wailing screams like a car alarm. They all agreed to try again the next weekend.

“Another couple’s shown interest,” the realtor warned them, but then you could almost see the delicate lie fall apart in her hands. “Not…not really though,” she admitted.

Their friend Jeff had been a house inspector before the market tanked. He agreed to have a look as a favor on Tuesday, and so Tuesday evening both husband and wife glanced at the phone as they nursed Max through some kind of croup. But it didn’t ring that night, or the next. Finally, reluctant to press a favor, the husband emailed Jeff and received a reply–just a spare list of concerns, no niceties:

shingles missing
flashing needs repair
cracked window
walls of half-bath bleed the curses of the damned

Jeff was the funny one in their group.

On Saturday they returned to the house. As they walked through empty rooms Max again threw a fit, but now they were determined. The realtor smiled sympathetically and walked them through the bedrooms, baths, dining room, kitchen. In the kitchen was a door to the basement, and they descended the sharp stairs, Max squealing, with only the light of a bare bulb to guide them.

The basement was large. The floor was unfinished dirt. Faint sunlight filtered in through mesh slits in the corners.

“What do you think–?” the wife began, hopefully. But she faltered when she realized Max had grown silent and perfectly still.

The lightbulb burned out. In the thin blue of the sun Max turned.

“We’ll take it,” he said.

Nothing was ever the same again after that.


NPR's Weekend All Things Considered has a regular contest called Three-Minute Fiction. Round Three submissions had to be inspired by a photograph. Round Four were requires to contain the words "plant," "button," "trick," and "fly." Round Five started this past October, and had the following stipulation: that every story begin with the line, "Some people swore that the house was haunted," and end with the line, "Nothing was ever the same again after that." And, as in previous rounds, it could be no longer than 600 words.

When I heard those lines an idea came to me right away. So I set aside my work and spent a day writing my submission. I sent it off, and forgot all about it. I don't listen to Weekend ATC religiously, so I missed it when the winner and twenty-five runners up were announced last month.

Needless to say, I didn't win. But something reminded me of the contest today, so here I am digging up my entry for a blog post. Maybe you people will like it. Go check out the winning story though, too, and the runners-up (which are listed in a sidebar).

Manners Mash-Up

Whoops, I forgot to post anything for three weeks. Naturally I have been very busy–those funny cat videos don't watch themselves, you know.

Also I went to the conference of the National Council of Teachers of English in Orlando. And I had a free day whilst there, so of course I visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, just to get a sense of what to do and what not to do when all of my own books are invariably turned into theme parks.



Thanks to my editor Donna for those pictures. I don't want to sound like a commercial, but I was pretty impressed with the aesthetic of the place. Unlike the rest of the Universal Studios Islands of Adventure (which featured, among other things, a theme park based on the books of Dr. Seuss, and a theme park based on Marvel Comics), the Potter section didn't feel like a theme park at all to me. You could tell that the philosophy there was that you ostensibly were in Hogwarts, or Hogsmeade. That it just happened to be Muggle Day or something. I liked that.

I also want to share my contribution to a new picture book titled Manners Mash-Up. 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.

All Souls Procession

Every Dia de los Muertos Tucson holds their All Souls Procession–a community parade of costumed volunteers who walk down one of the city's historic thoroughfares to an empty lot downtown, where a celebration is held to honor the dead. I realize that for probably ninety percent of the participants the Procession is just an opportunity to play dress-up and watch people eat fire, but here and there the true spirit of the day comes through–in a projected display of portraits of people who have passed, or in the little personal shrines that are carried or trundled past. Here are some photos from a few days ago. Click to enlarge.