The Skinny

Because life is just a little too complicated for my brain right now, today's blog will be a quickie with just a few updates.

• I had an AMAZING time speaking at a school yesterday where the students actually read GET WELL SOON for their English classes.  I will blog about that this weekend.
• I am now one of the authors of the fabulous Teen Book Festival on May 14 in Rochester, NY.  So cool!
• Check out this picture of me, Matt, James Kennedy, Stephanie Kuehnert, and our moderator, Kate Hannigan on publsihersweekly.com from the panel we did last Friday at 57th Street Books.

Happy Friday! 

This Book Scares Me

I'm sure every parent has to deal with the fact that their kid is going to like books that they don't like.  Romy has recently become very opinionated about which books she wants to hear.  We have her standards: King Bidgood's in the Bathtub,

Little Beauty,

and, of course (and thankfully), Madeline.

We go to the library once a week, and I pick books and she picks books that she hopefully will like.  This week, one of us, in some crazy, jacked-up bad decision making moment picked this:

There is nothing really wrong with this book.  It's an author-devised elongation (that sounded fancy.  Or pretentious.  Or grammatically incorrect.) of the song "Rock-a-bye Baby," which is messed up in itself.  And while the rhymes in this book are a bit clunky to sing, they're not horrible.  But the pictures...

...are terrifying.  Click on this link to visit the author and illustrator's page (they are a husband and wife team).  There, you will find such pictures as this:

and this:

Scary, right?  I'm not knocking this book.  Romy really likes it.  Over and over again.  But there is something about the pictures that really scares me.  The realism, mixed with the way they sort of jump off the page.  Romy woke up this morning at 5:30 with a nightmare.  I'm not saying it's this book's fault.  But maybe that's why I didn't sleep very well last night.

[Funny aside: Romy did definitely have a nightmare over this book,

{look inside on Amazon here}
which I know because she was pointing at it in horror on her bedroom floor when I went in to see what was wrong.  I don't blame her at all.]

Write-O

Have you seen SLC Punk?  I love this movie.  I saw it in the theaters when it was out, with a friend and her date and his friend.  I don't think it was supposed to be a date for me.  Geez-- maybe it was.  I didn't sit by the guy or anything.  Or talk to him.  But the movie-- I was so pumped when I left the theater.  Matthew Lillard, probably best-known as Shaggy from Scoobie Doo (anyone remember him from SkateTV?), was brilliant.  The role was perfect for him.  Just like he was perfect as the reader of the audiobook for KL Going's FAT KID RULES THE WORLD (one of my all time favorite audios).  I have heard he bought the rights to make FAT KID into a movie.  That was a long time ago, though.  Anyway, I have a Roku player in my basement, which is a little machine that streams the Netflix movies straight to my TV.  It's cool because we don't have cable in the basement, but we can watch all of this great stuff when we're on the treadmill because of the Roku.  Actually, Matt doesn't do the treadmill because it's boring.  He makes up some workout using the stairs.  I haven't watched him.  Yet.  During my last three treadmill workouts, I watched SLC Punk.  And it's still amazing.  If you haven't seen it, you should.  It's a little juvenile and stylized, but the characters are well-defined and the acting is excellent.  Plus the music?  Soooo inspirational during a workout.  Or an ass-kicking. 

The GET WELL SOON sequel is chugging along.  Over 100 pages now.  I realized this morning that I may have an issue.  That is, I started writing the book (the first 100 pages, actually) in a similar format to GWS, in that it's first person and written in chunks of Anna's days.  But I don't think, coming up, that I want to include every single day of her life.  I want to skip some, to get to the more dramatic bits.  So can I change it up?  Is that awkward?  I am not even technically writing it as a letter or diary this time, so I'm not exactly sure how to acknowledge that it's a different day.  Or do I just say a few days later?  It will all work out, as it does, but it will be interesting to see how.  It may take me forever to get there.  This morning I spent an hour writing five pages about the outfit Anna was choosing to wear for the day.

The TV Show Post

I am trying (not very hard) to get my schedule together.  But so far, no schedule.  Which is one of the reasons I am feeling a little off.  Another may be this insurance debacle, but I'm not going to go on about that again (at least not today).  So instead, here's what I'm watching on the tube these days.  As you may recall, I finally ponied up for the good cable and a DVR so that Matt and I can watch what we want when we want it and not have to have those pesky commercial interruptions.  The DVR truly is a brilliant invention.  Too had we use it for these not-always-impressive shows:

True Blood - Last night, Matt said True Blood made him feel unsettled sometimes.  I can understand that in terms of a TV show; when we would watch Deadwood (RIP), I almost always felt nauseated.  But I like the silliness in True Blood.  Last night was super gross (someone had their head bashed in!), but it didn't bother me.  Maybe that makes me unsettling.

iCarly - Matt and I watch the crap out of iCarly.  It's funny.  And light.  And I love that Sam, a GIRL, eats a ton of food and kicks ass. 

JONAS LA - I would not recognize a single JoBros song, but dang if I don't think their TV show is adorable.  The new LA version isn't nearly as Monkees-like as the original, which I am not digging.  And the DZ annoying surfer neighbor is awful.  But I'll still watch.

Cake Boss - Matt and I are going to see Buddy, the Cake Boss, live in the fall.  I'm not sure what he will be doing on a stage, but we are suckers for his Jersey-ness.

Bethenny Getting Married - I do not like Bethenny very much at this point.  She cracks mean jokes about everything.  And she keeps pretending that she didn't want to be pregnant- it just happened.  Lady, you are over forty, and as I recall were all blubbery when it came to the fact that you weren't married with children back in the ol' Housewives of New York days.  I think she takes a lot for granted.  Yeah, I watch the show.  Although On Demand, not on the DVR.  That's a statement of some sort, right?

Work of Art - I hated this Bravo reality show about finding an artist when we first started watching; Matt liked it.  Now it's the other way around.  Matt has a completely different perspective, being an artist and going to art school and stuff.  I can't stand the cast of characters in the same way I am so over arrogant, pretentious hipsters.  Matt keeps getting frustrated by the challenges because we're not actually seeing the artists represent their own style.  Whatever way you look at it, this show is very entertaining.

Top Chef - This season is insanely boring.  I don't know names, and I don't care who wins.  I still watch.  But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

I think that's it.  Not a very exciting line-up.  Add to that Season 9 of 90210, with the ridiculous return of Dylan plotline (and the plotline that should happen but never will: the romance between Dylan and David Silver).  Perhaps the fall will bring more television excitement.  The biggest fall television news would be that they are filming a pilot for INTO THE WILD NERD YONDER.  No news on that yet.  All I can do is wait.  And decide when it is time for me to harass the TV people again about where we are in the process.  If anywhere at all.

Time to turn the TV off and start my day!

Robert Redux

I am still reeling from the total bag of ass that is our country's insurance situation (that is now affecting me veeeeery directly.   Although, really, it always has been affecting me, even when I had insurance through work because they were still picking and choosing what they would and would not cover, and were charging out the ass for it while doing so).  So, to lighten up this party, here is something I had been wanting to post but forgot about.  It is connected to my series of hilarious book cover posts, called "Julie's Most Awesome Book Covers" (see label category on the right side of my blog).  The book?  That Quail, Robert. 

See my original write-up of the cover here.  But what I really wanted to share was this brilliant review of Robert from Amazon:

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quails are smart and lovable, March 24, 2002

By	Elizabeth Rosenthal - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: That Quail, Robert (Paperback)

That's what "That Quail, Robert" amply demonstrates. Although ornithologists apparently eschew the assignment of human thought and emotion to animals and birds, this book convincingly shows that quails are capable of love and having hurt feelings, and are in need of companionship, just like humans. Quails are also intelligent enough to play games and critique the slightest change in home decor! Of course Robert the Quail was very lucky to have "parents" as loving and doting as the Kienzles and benefited from the fact that they were a retired couple who enjoyed rearing a new "child" after their other children had long since...flown the coop. 

You can't make stuff like this up.  Eschew.

Casting Call

I feel like some of my blog posts about writing of late have made me sound like the Richard Lewis of YA Lit, so I am going to move on to some lighter fare.  Behold: 

Head Over Heels: Literal Video Version - watch more funny videos

This is from Funny or Die.  The crazy part of it is that I was IN LOVE with Roland Orzabal (the dude carrying the books) when I was a kid.  What kind of kid is in love with that guy?  We're talking when I was like 9 years-old.  And here he is, in my all time favorite Tears for Fears video, professing his love to a librarian.  I'm a librarian.  Do you think subconsciously I became a librarian because someday I hoped Roland Orzabal would come in to my library?  The mind boggles.


This blog was originally going to be me trying to cast the potential INTO THE WILD NERD YONDER TV show, but I realized I don't have the first clue where to find a bunch of photos of young actors in order to cast them.  IMDB is just a bit random for this assignment.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  For cast members or where I can select my own?

The Guilt of Writing

As I write this, my insane fourteen year-old cat is screeching his way upstairs.  My daughter is talking to herself over the baby monitor.  And my husband is, well, sleeping until I wake him up (a serious example of NOT a morning person).  My mornings are when I am supposed to be writing my book.  Technically, I could be writing while Romy takes her afternoon nap.  But by then I have been awake so long, I can't think enough most days to write coherently.  Plus, I love having maybe an hour to relax.  Or blog.  Or read.  Or watch TV.  But instead, I usually have the pangs of guilt because I didn't write enough before everyone in the house started to wake up (except my husband), and I should, therefore, also be writing in the afternoon.  That, on top of the guilt of not exercising in the morning, or at least, not exercising as much as I should or could, makes me a constant mass of guilt.  It's useless.  What does it matter if I complete everything I'm supposed to every single day?  And yet, I hate myself when I don't.  Yesterday Romy napped for over two hours.  I could have used the time to writewritewrite my novel, but instead I tweaked all of these little things on my webpage that have needed tweaking for a long time.  I sort of didn't feel guilty about it, but looking back, now I do.  My goal was to write ten pages a day on my novel, which I can do if I write for a little under two hours.  But I seem to be writing only one hour a day, which equals five to six pages.  Which means I won't be finished with the novel in six weeks, as thought.  Which doesn't even matter because no one is even expecting this novel in six weeks.  I don't even have the contract yet, and I am feeling guilty about not finishing in this non-existent amount of time.  What is wrong with me?  How do I exorcise this guilt from my body?

There is some sort of animal scratching its claws against my patio door.  I wish that were as freaky as it sounded.  Or maybe it's a zombie!  Now that would be scary.  Did I ever mention that I save clothes and other various things just in case there's a zombie attack?  Now that I do NOT feel guilty about.