Whew, guys, I have been BUSY. Not only am I finishing up a draft of Band Geeked Out (I like to think that I’m in the “herding cats” stage, trying to tie all these disparate elements together into something that makes sense which sometimes feels as easy as…well…herding cats), but I’m ALSO in a play that’s opening tomorrow night. It’s a hilarious piece (I play a perky telemarketer who loves her job a little too much), and the whole thing has been a ton of fun, but my time management skillz have been put to the test.
Fortunately, on Sunday I’m off to a yearly family reunion in the farthest remote reaches of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where they do not believe in internet or plays or telemarketers. The U.P. is one of my most favorite places on the planet and the area I’m headed looks something like this:
Actually, it looks exactly like this.
I plan to do nothing else but revise, eat pancakes, revise, walk to the lighthouse, revise, canoe around the bay, revise, sing some songs by the campfire, and then revise some more. With perhaps a few breaks to make my family read the Band Geeked Out draft and give me their opinions. And they are good at giving opinions, let me tell you. On just about anything. They are totally up for the job.
I’ll be back soon to report the excellent news that I’ve turned in Band Geeked Out!
Hope you all are having wonderful summers!
KLIATT had a very happy-making review of Band Geek Love in the most recent issue:
Ellie is obsessive, high-strung, and sometimes rather horrible. She’s touchy and domineering, and cares too much about what people think about her. Somehow, though, her behavior and attitude come off as refreshingly real and honest. Ellie is indecisive and makes mistakes, just like many teenagers. Her strong personality is nicely offset by Conner’s kindness, and their relationship, with all its twists and turns, is interesting to watch unfold. The unusual setting of marching band, a microcosm of high school not often seen in YA novels, helps this stand out.
It’s been interesting to see reactions to Ellie’s character - some readers have, uh, really not liked her very much. Which, as the writer who created her, is kind of disappointing…I’m not gonna lie. My characters feel like pieces of me and the urge to get defensive on their behalf is strong.
But if I’m being honest with myself, I’m not surprised that people have issues with Ellie. I didn’t write her to be that girl who everyone gets along with, who everyone likes, who is all sweetness and light and good manners. That would be a totally different story…one that doesn’t hold as much interest for me.
I think that a lot of readers, like the reviewer above, understand that. My goal was to make Ellie human, and all the humans I know make mistakes. Some of them are even kind of bitchy and unpleasant and occasionally hard to like. And if Ellie comes across as real and honest, despite her occasional horribleness, then I consider her a success.
Plus, most people grow up eventually. It’s not like Ellie is going to be that way forever.
Hope you all had happy long weekends! I know I did, especially since I walked (with a slight limp, on account of the fact my foot still sort of ached from my semi-famous tattoo) into my local Barnes & Noble and witnessed the below:
(Note: Not this blurry in real life.)
I couldn’t resist taking a picture and then putting a copy face out. And though I tried to do that as nonchalantly as possible, as if normal people do such things in bookstores everyday, the girl who was browsing next to me started shooting concerned glances in my direction. As I left to go stalk other sections of the store, I heard her whispering to her mom about how some people are so weird.
Girl in Bookstore, I totally agree! And by the way, are you in marching band? Because I have the perfect book for you…
I have a guest blog post over on Story Siren today in which I discuss (and quote!) the specific journal entry that I wrote on the last day of band camp when I was 17 which inspired Band Geek Love. Take a look! The Story Siren is also giving away a copy of Band Geek Love in her monthly contest.
Well, my friends, last night I followed through with my big pub day plans one day late. Please see below (and excuse the bad camera phone quality and lack of pedicure):
No one thought I’d go through with it. Including me. But it barely hurt! For serious!
When I told my mom what I planned on doing to commemorate the occasion of my first book being published, she sighed deeply. “I just don’t understand why it has to involve needles and pain,” she pointed out.
And I explained that I wanted something permanent, something that I’d take with me everywhere to remind me what I’ve accomplished with Band Geek Love and what I hope will happen in the future (I think I’m going to add to it with each book). I mean, I guess I could get a pet monkey and carry him around everywhere to remind me, but I don’t think monkeys are allowed in my apartment building or at my job.
And Mom said “OK, fine, I understand the concept. But why does it have to involve NEEDLES and PAIN?”
I suppose moms never like the idea of their children in pain, even if it’s self-inflicted
Anyway, it wasn’t that bad, Mom! It helped that the tattoo artist was extremely, distractingly cute and also the fact a tattoo that size takes, like, ten minutes tops. It stung a bit, but I just chattered away with my friend, who also got a tattoo (she is a bad ass doctor who is about to go away to learn how to fly planes), and then it was done! It made me happy…I see how it can become addictive.
And I think Ellie would totally approve.
End/Beginning
Date: Thursday June 26, 2008Posted in: Band Geek Love!, Band Geeked Out!, Real Writer
Band Geek Love is officially coming out next Tuesday, and I’m sort of in a distracted daze about it. I’ve been thinking about how strange and a little sad it is to come to the end of this process (not too sad, since I’m shoulder-deep in the sequel right now!) but my first book represents a lot to me both professionally and personally.
I started writing the book in June of 2006, and since then, my life has changed enormously. Mostly in good ways - I try to view all change as positive - but to the point that where I am now is wildly different from where I was in June ‘06. And through it all, one thing that remained reliably consistent was Band Geek Love . I’ll miss it…the anticipation.
(Thus ends the melancholy.)
Fortunately, I am just at the beginning of the Band Geeked Out process, which is going suspiciously well. And there’s my next book, which is always murmuring in my head like a movie that you have playing in the background while you’re doing other things. I’ve also really been enjoying writing and acting in plays (I adore dialogue, so this works well).
There is always something new and interesting to be immersed in…the end of one chapter is just the beginning of another.
Dudes, Band Geek Love is already shipping from Amazon! This is very exciting (has any step of this process not been exciting? Well…maybe not wrestling with the final rounds of revisions. That was less exciting and more just grimly satisfying. But I’ll take both.) I’m just happy to know that Ellie Snow is out there in the world, messing up trumpet solos and making out with cute guys.
Anyway, if you are inclined, you can order a copy of Band Geek Love and Amazon will send it to you because that’s what they do!
I’ve already been asked to sign a few copies, which has been a strange experience. It was eerily like signing a high school yearbook, and I found myself scribbling in little messages to my mom or my friend or whomever I was signing the book for because just writing my name seemed weird. At least I stopped short of writing in a purple sparkly pen You were a kick ass lab partner! Stay cool! along with my phone number and a request to Call me this summer and we’ll chill! That would have been kind of an odd thing to say to my grandparents.
Have you seen/read J.K. Rowling’s commencement address to the 2008 Harvard grads? If not, I highly recommend it…her words actually made me a little teary and inspired to go out and do Good Things, and I haven’t graduated from anything in years.
My favorite part is when she talked about failure, and how hitting bottom and ending up in a dark place you never wanted or expected to be can end up a blessing in disguise:
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
I would add to the above that, from my own experience, failing (spectacularly at times) and the things I learned from said failures have resulted in the writing that I feel is more true and engaging than anything I’ve come up with from the heights of (boring) contentment. I’d bet that is the case for a lot of writers, and artists in general (and definitely for songwriters)…disappointment and heartbreak and misfortune can be the best material.
Which, you know, kind of sucks sometimes.
Okay, guys, I was wrong. There was awesomer mail in store for me, and it was two genuine, like what’ll be on the shelves shiny copies of Band Geek Love (plus a lovely flat version of the cover that my editor suggested be framed…which I’m totally going to do).
I opened the package and was afraid to touch the books for a good ten or twenty minutes, convinced that they were actually holograms from the future or perhaps hallucinations born of too many Coke Zeros and yogurt covered pretzels consumed during the sequeling.
But it turns out they are real!
WTF!
There isn’t much that competes with holding one of your attained goals in your hands…it’s been a good week.
Hi all!
Sorry I’ve been so absent…I swear I haven’t been lost in a cave this whole time. I actually started a new job (which has been great! And I’m not just saying that because I know all my lovely new co-workers are reading this! I really mean it!) and have been busy wrestling with the sequel to Band Geek Love.
That’s right…there’s going to be a sequel, and it’s going to be called Band Geeked Out. (How proud am I of that title? I can’t really say because you’ll think I’m conceited). I was nervous because I didn’t know much about writing sequels, but fortunately I’ve found plenty of excellent advice on the internets…such as my personal writerly hero Maureen Johnson’s article on Inside a Dog.
Per Maureen’s helpful second suggestion (the first being to remember what you wrote in the earlier book), I’m currently trying to figure out how to introduce a zombie at Winslow High School. Do you think the walking dead could manage a musical instrument and/or a flag? Because I just watched “I Am Legend” the other day, and I’m pretty sure that brand of zombie wouldn’t be a terribly productive addition to a marching band…but maybe one of the more sedate varieties could be a drummer or something (oh, burn!)
Little Willow said nice things about Band Geek Love!
She also interviewed me last week with some of the most fun questions I’d ever hope to be asked. Thanks, Little Willow!
One of the coolest parts about this whole process has been meeting all sorts of people for whom band (even if not marching band) was or still is an incredibly important, formative experience. That’s pretty much the reason I wanted to write Band Geek Love…and there are so many more stories there to be told!
