I Saw David Sedaris

This may or may not make you think I'm a moron, but I do not read books written for adults.  The exceptions would be a) Stephen King, although I haven't completed one of his books in a while and b) travel guides.  So last night when Matt and I went to see David Sedaris speak, I hadn't read any of his works.  Nor had I listened to him on the radio.  Not for any reasons except that I am often fighting against the fact that I am an  adult and I enjoy adult things, and David Sedaris always struck me as having a very adult audience.  Plus, I'm a very slow reader.  Ridiculous thoughts, I know, being that I am a mom living in the suburbs and I'm closer to forty than thirty.  Whatever.  I very much enjoyed seeing Mr. Sedaris speak, sometimes relating as a child to his family stories, sometimes as a parent, and sometimes as an author.  Not an author who is flown all over the world and has books translated into a billion languages and, you know, speaks at theatres where people pay to see me, but, still, an author.

Part of his presentation was a reading from his journals, where he writes down humorous observations from his day.  For some reason it made me think of Seinfeld, also an observationalist (observationist?).  Later in the show, Sedaris mentioned that his mother had passed away years ago, and that was one of the good reasons to keep a diary: you can see that on June 8, 1982 you had a phone conversation with your mom about X. Some of you may know I wrote about journaling in Get Well Soon, where Anna talks about how depressing it is to look back at all of the crappy things you said about yourself, and I recently talked about this in regards to my own high school diaries when I spoke at a school.  So when Sedaris said this, my thoughts were conflicted.  I do love the idea of looking back and recalling a conversation with my mom (who is, gratefully, still alive), but think of all the journal reading and other content that I would have to wade through to get there.  Maybe Sedaris only journals about pleasant or observational things, not how he ate too much or embarrassed himself at a staff meeting.  Maybe I should keep a journal like that...  Tonight, just as I tried that Oprah thing years ago where you make a list of all the positive things that happened in your day, I will start an Observation Journal.  It will probably be more like, "Kids say the darnedest things," but I might as well try it.  In any case, it's the perfect excuse to buy a new notebook.  Anybody want to join me?  In the journal writing, not the notebook buying.  But feel free to buy a new notebook, too.

Bubbles Beware

Romy and I went to Target yesterday and bought these:

because I had a two dollar off coupon, and it was slightly nice outside and looked kind of fun.  Luckily, I opened one of the bottles and realized the paint-like consistency.  I put a hold on the bubble-blowing until after naptime, when we changed into grungy clothes and parked ourselves in our backyard.  If I hadn't, where would all this have gone?

Actual Romy hands and bubbles!

The packaging does not imply at all that this will be messy, although there is a hilarious, tiny warning not to use the bubbles at weddings.  Can you imagine?  The kids on the package are all clean and smiley, obviously enjoying their digitally created bubbles.  Here they are:

I called Crayola this morning, in a nice way, and a woman in a freakishly soothing voice tried to explain that they were meant for outdoors.  I told her what I told you, and she issued me an $8.00 refund. 

This has been Julie Halpern, YA author and bubble consumer, reporting for duty.

Medieval on My Ass

I don't like my last blog post, so I'm going to make a quickie happy post about how much I'm enjoying the Sims Medieval.  It's SO much fun.  I like it better than the regular Sims, in that there is much less inanity (ie: Medieval Sims don't have to go to the bathroom.), and there are way fun quests.  There are many glitches, though, that I know the good folks at EA Games are working on.  The EA boards are a pretty funny place to visit.  People have problems with the craziest things.  I especially enjoyed a board I visited because of a glitch in the game that directly affected me.  You see, I was playing a quest where my queen Sim needed to find her king and then have an heir.  The problem was, she couldn't get pregnant.  She woohooed a million times, and no baby.  So I went to the boards.  People are hilarious.  Apparently, whoever programmed the game decided that Medieval Sims can only have two children, and since my queen already had two illegitimate ones, she couldn't have any more.  How could I possibly win the quest?  One woman on the boards pointed out that IVF was not an option.  I thought that was great.  Also great?  Everyone on that chat was a woman.  Right on.  The Sims knows its audience.  Anyway, my queen was recently killed in a quest of assassination, so maybe my new queen (who, I have to say, is kind of a dullard) can woohoo her way to a new heir.

Anyone else out there playing this, or have I made myself sound like the biggest author goober in the blogosphere?

I Contest

First off, don't forget the contest to win a paperback copy of Into the Wild Nerd Yonder.  I only have three entries so far!  (Thank you to those who entered.)  I am so confused by the blogosphere.  I am assuming that my publisher recently mailed out copies of Don't Stop Now to book bloggers because it was on a number of "In My Mailbox" features this week.  For a little bit, I started getting all nervous again.  Does that mean the reviews will be coming in soon?  Then I started getting all panicked, like what if they think it sucks, and what if no one buys it?  But one question that I know a lot of us authors have is: is there a correlation between the two?  If book bloggers hate my books, does that mean other people won't buy them?  Or just those who know there are book bloggers?  Do teens, my main audience and the people I am writing for, read book blogs and take note?  I think of Get Well Soon, which has really sold well and continues to sell well in paperback.  I'm not talking best seller material, but according to the Amazon sales scan thing that authors can now look at, I'm selling at least 100 copies of it a week two years after the paperback release.  And I receive emails and letters on a regular basis about the book from readers.  All good.  So what sparks YA book sales?  Word of mouth?  Teen bloggers?  Librarians pushing titles?  A combination?  With Into the Wild Nerd Yonder, I have had such a positive reception from book bloggers, but I have only heard from a handful of teens (I'm referring to direct email hellos or by searching and finding blogger reviews).  Will all that change with the paperback?  Or is it a different title from Get Well Soon, so who knows what will happen?  I'm  not making a whole lot of sense, just asking a whole lot of questions.  Sometimes as an author these questions feel frustrating, like when you see other authors getting big pushes from their publishers or somehow getting mass attention.  It makes me think, why not me?  But sometimes it feels more confusing, like why am I writing in the first place?  If I were independently wealthy, then sure I could say something like, "I have to write for my soul" or "I couldn't do anything else" or "Teens need me."  But, really, I wouldn't feel the need to write with such frequency or worry what others thought about my work if I didn't need it to be my career.  Oh, and I'm still really bothered by the fact that the Don't Stop Now ARC is quite different than the final version of the book.  Not really in story, but I made changes to almost every single page that will end up in the final book.  What if those are the changes that would have made some reviewers change their tune (see, I'm already assuming the worst)?  Aargh.  I hope a bunch of teens find and love the book. And then buy lots of copies.  That's all I ask.  Well, that and a million other questions.

History of Cheese

This past weekend (last weekend?  Why do those things always trip me up?), my family visited the most excellent Milwaukee Art Museum for their Art in Bloom event.  People (florists?  And maybe others with floral gifts) design flower arrangements based on works of art, and the flowers are displayed near their inspiration.  Romy's favorite part was eating at the museum.  Here's a sweet picture of the two of us from the day:

On our drive to and from the museum, we passed by the Mars Cheese Castle.  For anyone who has read an ARC of Don't Stop Now (out June 7!), you know that the characters visit the MCC, and one of the funny bits, that even travels further in the book than just that chapter, is that the MCC does not look like a castle.  The narrator, Lil, sort of goes on about it.  It's funny, and it was true.  WAS.  The Mars Cheese Castle must have finally got the memo because on the same plot of land as the original, non-castle-like building they built a gigantic (wait for it...) castle.  Poof.  That's not the only castle in the book that is wrong.  Lil references the MCC when she visits another castle, the Enchanted World Doll Museum in Mitchell, SD.  As I wrote the book I learned the museum, a favorite of mine when I visited Mitchell several years ago, had closed the previous year.  Now TWO locations in my book are wrong!  Who knows?  Maybe there are more.  I have decided right now that the book is historical fiction, set in the ripe, ol' year of 2006.  I think that's going far back enough.  That way, both of the castles are as they should be.  I hope no one calls me on it.

And now for a contest!  The paperback of Into the Wild Nerd Yonder comes out in stores on April 7.  Why do you need this paperback?  Because:

1. It has a purty new cover!
2. It contains a hilarious (I totally laughed when I read it) interview with me!
3. You can read the first chapter of Don't Stop Now at the end of the book!

If you'd like to win a copy of the paperback, comment on this post (with your email addy, please) by this Friday, April 8 with the nerdiest thing you do.  I'll randomly select a winner some time on Friday.

Soiled Doves

I am in love.  With a TV show.  Well, maybe not in love, and I don't even know how long it will last, but I sure enjoyed watching it last night.  Perhaps I'm behind in my new found adoration of Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel, but better late than never.  Usually after I put Romy to sleep, Matt and I either watch a rented movie or something off our DVR.  For some reason, last night I flipped around and found this show.  We watched two episodes.  Ghost hunting shows can be repetitive, the same guys running around with night vision goggles, jumping and yelling when they think they hear or feel something.  There are generally two types of shows: one approaching ghost hunting in a very scientific manner, and the other with your average Joe off the street screaming their head off.  Ghost Adventures is like Zoolander gone ghost hunting.  The main guy of the three is Zak Bagans, who takes everything extremely seriously.  And not in any sort of intellectual way.  He plays the tough guy and has the most gigantic arms to back it up.  I can't quite explain why he's so awesome (and awesomely hilarious) because you have to watch this guy to really get the full effect of his douchiness. No, that's not the right word.  He's not a jerk, and maybe I don't really know him from just two episodes.  It's, as I said before, that he takes himself so seriously.  Not that I don't believe the ghost aspect of the show (I do, maybe), but isn't it funny to be running around in night goggles, claiming the random sounds you pick up on your special recorders are words?  Just a little?  He doesn't think so.  The best episode, of the two, took place at a theater in Tombstone, Arizona, where a whole lot of Wild West people were shot.  Zak and the boys moseyed all around the place, after they were locked in for the night, looking for ghosts of gunslingers and, as Zak would not stop saying, "soiled doves" when referring to the supposed ghost prostitutes that resided there.  It was embarrassing, yet slightly endearing.  I don't know how many more episodes I can convince Matt to watch, but you can be sure I'll be watching more.  Beats the heck out of the crap that is Celebrity Ghost Stories.

Local Elections

This morning I spent about an hour looking up names of candidates in our local elections.  What do other people do?  It's like there's so little information out there, if you don't count the barrage of hideous signs on peoples lawns.  Our local newspaper conducts interviews and posts them online, which is where I found most of my info (except, of course, for those candidates who didn't return their interviews.  Nice going, peeps.).  It makes me wonder how many people actually read up on the nominees or if they just vote for people they know.  Do they know people?  Do most people vote?  One of the hot topic issues in my town's election this year is repealing red light cameras.  I think this is freaking ridiculous.  The argument is that having red light cameras makes our town less welcoming.  As if people won't visit our town when they find out we have red light cameras.  Really?  Who gives a shit about red light cameras if they're catching people who are breaking laws?  I don't get it.  If they stop people from running red lights and, oh, I don't know, killing other people, why would they be such a bad thing?  People are weird.  These aren't the kind of lights that record all the time; they just snap pictures of cars running lights.  I'm sure the red light freaks will win, though, since the other candidates don't have a platform.  They should have made a platform like, repeal morons from our town.  Was that mean?  Elections always make me sad.  Unless they make me happy.  But they really show off the people who I completely disagree with in the world.  Ug.  No more negativity.  Next week-- a contest to win a copy of the new paperback edition of Into the Wild Nerd Yonder!  That's positive, right?

Have a great weekend!