Commit to the Action

I've been doing some revising lately and one of the "quirks" that I've noticed in my writing is how I almost do a lot of things.  He almost smiled.  I barely stood up.  She nearly stopped breathing.

I'm sure I had a perfectly good reason for writing like that but all phrases like that do is weaken the action.  If I'm in the middle of a tense scene and I nearly stop breathing, it's not as powerful as saying, "He stopped breathing."  So commit to your actions.  Take them all the way or don't do them at all unless you've got a rock solid reason for doing it.  I can see someone standing half-way if they've begun to stand only to be stayed by a shout from someone else, but at least in that instance SOMEONE is committing to an action.  "I began to stand when June screamed for me to stop, which I did.  Immediately."

Maybe I'm the only person who does this but I just noticed it and figured I'd share.  Also, my agent said something to me once that really stuck, so I'll add that here.  I'd done something, I don't remember what, and I'd intended one thing but he saw another.  I explained the intended effect and he told me that if I have to explain it, then I didn't do it right.  He was much more diplomatic, but it stuck.  I won't be standing behind my readers going, "See what I did there?  When he did that, I meant for you to understand that..."

I think as writers, we have to learn to forget the story.  Forget what our intentions were and try to read our books for the first time every time.

Accidental Marketing

Ohai, Monday.  You suck.  You should check out MasterBerk Theatre over on YouTube.  It's got deadly nipples, lots of Berk, and some Deathday.  It's frakkin' awesome.

A few months ago, I participated in a Twitter trend called #gimmeacall.  I saw a couple of my friends tweeting statements that began with "Dear highschool self:" and then they'd fill in the blanks.  People were writing things like, "Dear high school self: don't wear socks with sandals...ever. #gimmeacall"  At first I thought it was simply a meme that was going around.  I found out later that it was actually a promotional meme by Sarah Mlynowski, author of the book GIMME A CALL about a girl who drops her phone into a fountain and thereafter can only call her 14 y/o self.

When DEATHDAY came out, I was looking for ways to repeat that brilliant little feat.  I'd never heard of Sarah or her book before that meme went around.  With that meme, she managed to raise awareness of her book, and she got us to do it for her.  So I figured it should be a snap to do something similar.  My agent came up with a great hashtag and got the ball rolling.  The hashtag bombed.  Some friends picked it up but in the end not too many people cared.

On Friday, I got to work early and my brain was running.  This saying, "If at first you don't succeed, die, die again," kept going through my head.  I don't know why.  My brain is a scary place.  I decided to send it off into Twitter for fun and as I was typing it out, I appended the hashtag #zombieproverbs  Again, I don't know why.  It was silly and I was half-awake.

About an hour later, #zombieproverbs was all over.  People had picked it up and run with it.  Twenty-four hours later, it was still going.  How is it that my stupid throwaway tweet spawned a trend, but my carefully created Deathday meme bombed?

I think the most obvious thing is that with Deathday, we tried too hard.  We were trying to create a trend, trying to be funny, trying to be inventive.  That, I think, is something that people don't respond to.  The brilliance of Sarah's #gimmeacall was that I didn't KNOW I was being marketed to.  #zombieproverbs caught on because it was just fun.

The other reasons for its success was that it was short and easy to understand.  I didn't have to explain it to anyone, I didn't have to keep it going artificially.  In fact, if my agent hadn't alerted me to it, I would have missed my own thread completely.  And there were some really funny ones.  Whatever you choose, has to be like that.  I think the one we used for Deathday was #mydeathday.  What does that tag tell you about the meme?  Nothing.  You'd have to know about the book or what a deathday was to get it.  The whole tweet should be so easy that anyone can do it without needing to understand anything.  For example, maybe today I'd go on twitter and say, "Indiana Jones and the Vagina of Doom #vaginagame" and people will get what I'm doing without needing any prompting or explanation.

So what's the take away from this?  First and foremost, tools like Twitter are fun and silly and you should treat them as such and not use them solely for marketing.  If you have twitter, don't get on it and expect to be able to use it to promote your book.  Use it because you like it and the rest will follow.  If you're going to try to start a trend, make sure it's short, easily understandable, and retweetable.  Also, try not to be obvious that you're plugging something.

Mockingjay - The Spoilery Edition

I'm going to attempt to put the bulk of my review under a cut here so that people don't accidentally come upon it and have their eyes burned out by the spoilers.  But I think this is going to be less of a review and more of an analysis.  So click on through for my thoughts.

Blog Chain - Ch Ch Changes

Howdy!  We've got another blog chain for you, this time brought by Mr. Awesome himself:  Eric.  He wants to know:

What do you find to be the most challenging aspect of being a writer? What is your greatest reward from writing?

I think the most challenging aspect of being a writer may actually be answering this question!  Kidding.  Promise.  Really though, for me the toughest aspect of being a writer is the collaborative nature of the biz.  One of the ways I get through writing a draft is by telling myself that it's the best story every written by anyone on the planet.  Sitting down day after day, week after week, month after month to work on a book takes heavy amounts of self-delusion.  I mean, who'd sit down to work on a book for that long if they thought no one would like it?  So to finish, I have to delude myself.  I have to believe that I'm writing the best, most important book EV-ER.

The challenge comes when my crit partners, friends, agent, editors read it and shatter my delusion.  Sure, it's got promise but here's how it could be better...  Then my job is to take all those different viewpoints, all the suggestions, and somehow figure out how to make them work with my vision of the book.  Sometimes it doesn't always work.  Sometimes it's frustrating.  But that's the nature of publishing.  Books aren't created in vacuums.  For example, in Deathday I resisted the idea of making Ollie and Ronnie's relationship more prominent.  I eventually grew not only to see the logic of the change but to love the way the relationship deepened Ollie's character development.  But it's not always that easy.  Sometimes it's a struggle to overcome the delusion that my book is perfect just how it is and take others' advice to make it better.

The greatest reward has to be the people I've met.  There are people whom I've never met in real life, that champion my work and talk about it and sometimes I'm so embarrassed when they say things that I don't know what to do.  There are people on the Internet that I've never even spoken to who read my book and talk about it and they get it...they get exactly what I was trying to say.  That slays me every time.  But the absolute most rewarding thing is when I get emails from people telling me how much the book meant to them.  I got this one email that left me smiling for a week.  I always said that I didn't want to be famous, I didn't need to sell a million copies (though my agent and editors would be really happy if I did), I just wanted something I wrote to speak to one person.  Seriously, that's the best reward.

Right!  So you're a dolt if you haven't already read the ever-amazing Michelle's greatest challenges and rewards, and an even bigger dolt if you don't head over to Abby and her amazing technicolor blog tomorrow.

Later!

Mockingjay - No Spoilers

I'm currently reading and loving (hating) Mockingjay.  I'm only hating it because I know this is the end and it makes me sad.  But I've only narrowly avoided spoilers being posted on-line by unscrupulous reviewers, so I'm avoiding twitter and Goodreads and any other site that may spoil it for me.  For the record, I hope Katniss ends up with Prim's cat Buttercup instead of Gale OR Peeta.

What are you all reading right now?

Oh, and I finished Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie.  I loved it.  I mean, really loved it.  The tone of it reminded me of Judy Blume's books Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Superfudge, but you know, with cancer.  Seriously though, it was a pretty amazing book and I will admit that I might have shed a tear...I also had a head cold at the time and was on heavy doses of Sudafed, so it could have been anything.

Okay, back to Mockingjay.  Go, Team Peeta.  Because who doesn't love bread?

Monday, Monday, Monday!

I haven't got much for this beautiful Monday.  I've been looking for inspiration, watching a lot of old movies. So here's what I want to know:  What inspires you?  What movies, books, music do you go to when your well of ideas feels dry?

Choices

Hey!  Back from San Diego and I brought a head cold with me.  Yuck :(

While I was gone, I read a couple of books.  Two of them made some really odd choices that made me stop to think.  The first book, UNWIND, which I wrote about, used a third person limited structure but then changed POV's in every chapter.  It was off-putting at first because I felt like it distanced me from the characters.  However by the end, I got used to it and, as I said in my review, loved the book.

The other is DRUMS, GIRLS AND DANGEROUS PIE.  I'm head over heels for this book, but the author does an odd thing.  Instead of using quotation marks around dialog, he italicizes it and then uses quotation marks around thoughts.  It was confusing at first because I never knew when he was talking or thinking.  Also, I notice that he didn't use dialog tags, at least not often.

It led me to wonder what makes authors break from convention and do things like this.  In Deathday, I chose to use the unconventional present tense because it seemed like the only way to avoid having Ollie narrate from beyond the grave.  I also felt like it gave the story an immediacy that past tense couldn't achieve.

So what are some unconventional things YOU do in your writing, and why do you do them?  Does it bother you when other writers do unconventional things?

UNWIND

The first thing I'll tell you about this book is that I almost gave up on it.  I'm glad I didn't.

UNWIND by Neal Shusterman is a book set in a future where abortion is no longer legal.  A second civil war was fought over it and the end result was a compromise calling unwinding.  It means that every child must be born, but any time between the ages of 13 and 17, should a parent decide that they don't want the child, they can have him or her unwound, a process that takes 100% of the child's parts and distributes them to those who need them.  Ears, bits of brain, fingers, lungs, everything.  In that way, they claim, the child does not die, it lives on only in another form.  The story itself follows three particular unwinds and their journeys.

Like I said, I nearly gave up on this book.  It was the narrative structure.  Shusterman opted to use third person limited and then jump from character to character in different chapters, often moving even beyond the three core characters.  At first, I couldn't stand it.  It kept me from fulling engaging with the story or the characters until I was more than half-way through.  And, to be honest, I'm still not sure it was the best way to tell the story.  But in the end, that doesn't matter, because this story made a profound statement that I won't soon forget.

Shusterman doesn't proselytize or lecture.  He presents the world as he sees it in all its brutal glory.  I was so affected by the scene of an actual unwinding that I had to put the book down.

I highly recommend this book.  If you're like me and find yourself having difficulty with the first half of the book, do yourself the favor of finishing.  I promise it will be worth it.

Blog Chain - Out of the Frying Pan

Hey!  Happy Sunday.  Welcome to another blog chain :)  This chain was brought to us by the ferocious Cole who wants to know:

Are you querying? Gearing up to go on submission? Writing? Revising? I'd love to hear what's new with you. And if you'd like to share a snippet of your WIP, even better!


Well I'm in a bit of an in-between place right now.  I'm revising my WIP BLINK based on some great notes that I got, except that I'm not really revising because I'm mostly working out how I'm actually going to tackle said revisions.  So mostly I'm giving it some breathing space.  When I come back from San Diego I'm going to tackle it, pin it, and claim victory.


I'm also starting a new story that I'm really excited about.  It's an entirely different direction...an experiment...that has been keeping me up at night.  It's obviously not a priority since I have BLINK to get into shape first, but I'm sneaking in whatever time I can to work on it.  Think Sherlock Holmes meets Dark City meets high school and you'll be in the same zip code as my idea.  


Other than that, I'm still trying to talk up Deathday.  It's a bit difficult as I don't really know how it's doing, but I'm really proud of it and people seem to like it, so I tell everyone I can.  My dad hasn't read my book (he's not a reader) but he travels a lot and tells everyone he meets about it.  The people sitting next to him in planes, the barista who serves him coffee, the stranger next to him at the urinal.  He called me the other day because he was in a bookstore pestering a bookseller (sorry!) about my book and wanted to know what a Newbery Award was and how he could get me one.  


And that's about it for me.  I've got a bunch of other stuff out there, some of it I can't talk about and some of it probably won't ever materialize.  So instead, here's a snippet of BLINK.

I blink and I'm laughing.  Laughing.  Laughing.  Falling to the pavement.  The laugh is so thoroughly entrenched in my chest that I can't dislodge it.  I don't know why I'm laughing, but I can't stop. 

I'm on my knees blinking through a heavy curtain of blood and my nose feels like a colony of pissed off fire ants and the gravel and glass dig into my bare legs but I can't stop laughing.  I'm so confused.  A thousand thoughts grapple in my head for dominance.  A swarm of daze.            

"I'll kill you, Ash."     

The punch comes from above and lands across my jaw.  It cuts my laugh mid-stream and despite the pain, I'm glad for the relief.  My mouth is a rising tide of bile and blood and possibly one of my own teeth.  I try to spit it out but most if it drools out my lip and down my chin, where it hangs for dear life.           

A thick, callused hand grabs me by the hair and tilts my face up.  I blink away the grime and tears and try to see where I am.  I should be on the sidewalk on my street.  But I'm not.  Oh, God, where am I?  I cling desperately to reality.  I try to find a grain of calm in this storm of confusion.          

It's night.  Deep night.  I'm definitely in the shit.  There's a guy staring down at me.  Where'd he come from?  Who the hell is he and what does he want with me?  He's my age I think, possibly older.  Maybe eighteen or nineteen.  But he's rougher, worn out in the eyes.  He's lived hard and on the raggedy edge of life.            

There are other guys around me but the guy gripping my hair has my full, unwavering attention.           

I'm like, "Who are you?" and the words, they slide out of my mouth the same way my bloody spit did.  I struggle to put the words back together but everything in my head is broken.  It's not like waking up from a dream; it's like opening my eyes and being in hell.           

"Quit playing games, Ash."            

"Ash?"  That's like my last name, Ashton, but why is he calling me that?  Only my baby brother ever called me that.  Everything hurts.  "I don't kno--"           

The next blow is a kick to the stomach that folds me like a paper napkin.  I heave and try to catch my breath but my breath is faster than I am and it gets away.          

"I'm serious!" I scream.  "Who are you?  What's going on?"  I plead.  This guy, he's got to be human.  He's got to understand he can't beat answers from me I haven't got.  "I...I don't know...I was jogging and now I'm here and I can't think straight.  I swear to God I don't know you."  Every thought in my mind is fractured.  It's all broken windows and empty rooms.           

"Ford," says a guy in a soft, Hispanic tinged voice.  I can't see him but I swear he sounds almost concerned.  "Quizá él está diciendo la verdad.  You know what Violet said."          

"Don't talk about Violet," says Ford.  He says the name like it's hemlock and letting the words pass his lips is certain death.  But the name is familiar to me.  It might be.  I try to remember but there's nothing in my brain except smoke.  Her name is smoke.

And there you go.  It's still a work in progress.  So if you haven't checked out Michelle's blog you're missing out on awesomeness and you need to go do it now, then tomorrow we'll find out what brilliance is going on in Abby's brain.  Until next time!

Vacation of Sorts

I'm off to San Diego!  I missed Comic-Con last month but I'm heading to San Diego for a few days for a work related conference (a thousand geeks with relational databases...no lie.)  Luckily I have some free time so I'll be checking out the sights, stopping in at bookstores to see how Deathday is doing, and hopefully getting some work done.

Two years ago I went on one of these trips.  It was out in Phoenix and it was where I began a huge chunk of Deathday.  It's strange to think about. There's something about a new city that stimulates my creativity.

I'll be posting a blog chain entry on Sunday but other than that, I'll write again next weekend.  Have a great week!

Boys will be Boys

The first thing you need to know is that I probably have no clue what I'm talking about.  I have no scientific basis for anything I'm about to say.  It's all anecdotal or gained from my own unique perspective.  I'm totally open to contrary perspectives.

That said:  I don't think boys are the problem in today's society, I think we are.

I started thinking about this yesterday after I read an article in Slate that implied that in this decade, a boy like Tom Sawyer, whose exploits most of us grew up reading and loving, would have been punished, medicated, and possibly jailed.  I followed the article up by reading the comments, most of which were surprisingly cogent.  There seemed to be two distinct arguments:

1.  Boys should conform to the standards of society and good behavior.
2.  Boys are fundamentally different than their female counterparts and are misunderstood by the primarily female educational system, and thus should be cut some slack.

I've read a lot of articles that argue that boys and girls aren't really wired differently and that any differences are nurture rather than nature.  I've read even more articles that argue that boys and girls are completely different and respond to different teaching strategies.  I'm not sure we'll ever know who's right, but I'm betting the answer is somewhere in the middle.  My own experience is that I'm an intelligent, rational, well-educated man who, as a boy, couldn't sit still, hated to learn, and was somewhat aggressive.  I learned best in a competitive, hands-on environment, which is simply not the type of environment fostered in most classrooms.  Most classes are lecture format, and I found myself bored to tears.  I don't know if that has anything to do with me being me or with me being a boy, but despite being an intellectual, I was fidgety and had difficulty paying attention in the traditional classroom setting.

Part of what struck me in the Slate article was that it wasn't trying to excuse the bad behavior of some boys, but instead pointing out that boys like Tom Sawyer used to have an out.  The boys who would now be labeled aggressive or ADDHD didn't have to sit in classrooms or force themselves to conform to standard norms.  They could blaze their own trails, set off for sights unseen.  In short, they had options that boys in this generation don't necessarily have.  They're labeled "bad" and given a handful of pills to take.  Boys today can't really leave home at 14 and head west to make a living up in the mountains.  The societal standard for success if fairly narrow and extremely isolating.  School, college, job, family, death. It leaves very little room for outside the box movement.

Boys are falling behind at alarming rates.  Our educational system is failing them by failing to understand them.  Yes, it's easier to drug them up and get them to sit up straight, but it's hardly doing them any good.  Again, I'm not trying excuse bad behavior, but I think that by forcing boys to tamp down on their natural tendencies and conform to ways of learning that aren't right, is stunting their growth.  Instead of forcing these square pegs into round holes, more effort needs to be taken by parents and peers and educators to find alternative ways of reaching these "bad" boys.  What would the world be like without Tom Sawyer?  It would be a boring place indeed.

PS:  Before I'm lambasted for leaving girls out of this equation, please, please don't take it to mean that I don't care.  It's just that they have their own unique set of problems that I feel completely unable to tackle.  I don't think the education of girls should be sacrificed for the sake of boys.  Quite the contrary.  I think that single-sex classrooms would probably benefit both genders.  But my point is that girls do matter, I simply don't feel in any way qualified to speak about the problems that they face.

Change Your Point of View

I've been working on a story that I thought was done.  I mean, not done done, but done with all the major stuff.  Then someone came along and poked some pretty big holes in my story and, after beating my face on my desk, I set about the work of addressing the issues.

The problem is that I'm having difficulty seeing how to make some of the changes.  This weekend I realized it came down to my inability to see beyond the constraints that I've placed on myself.  I've been telling the story from this one point of view for so long that I am having trouble seeing the world through fresh eyes.  I'm trapped by my inability to change.  I sat at my desk for hours trying to figure out how to make my main character see things differently.  But that's the thing:  maybe he can't.

So the logical solution seemed to be to look at the story through another character's eyes.  I'm not necessarily going to change the point of view from which I narrate the story, but when I look at the story through my antagonist's eyes or the eyes of a love interest or even a secondary character, the world inevitably looks different and I'm able to see some possible solutions to the problems that I'm having.

Characters, like people, have their own sets of beliefs, ways of thinking, and methods of doing things.  More than once I've sat and stared at a problem for DAYS and then someone comes up and says, "Oh, yeah, why don't you just do..."  and then they hand me the simple solution to my problem.  Looking at your story through the eyes of another character can force you to do the same thing.  The answer might be right in front of you if you know how to look for it.

As for me:  I'm going to beat my head on the desk a couple more times and then get back to work.  Happy Monday.

An Interview with Matt Myklusch

Yesterday I reviewed Matt Myklusch's awesome new book (on shelves TODAY!) JACK BLANK AND THE IMAGINE NATION, and today I have the pleasure of posting an interview.

Welcome to the blog!  You and I are both represented by Chris Richman, so I've been hearing about your debut novel Jack Blank and the Imagine Nation for some time.  I also had the immense pleasure to read an early copy.    

You're going to get asked this question a lot, but where did the idea come from?

With Jack Blank, I wanted to showcase the comic book world that fired my imagination as a kid, and introduce it to an audience that hasn’t seen it before. 

In the movies, it’s always just one super hero versus one villain, and the hero is usually the only super hero in the world.  It’s not like that in the comic books.  In the comics, Iron-Man, Thor, Spider-Man, Captain America, the X-Men… they’re all running around the same city fighting an endless supply of bad guys.  It’s normal for people there to see heroes fighting villains in the middle of the street on a random Tuesday.  That fully-developed super hero world really doesn’t exist outside of comic books. 

In this novel, I wanted to create my own super hero world, and show people who might otherwise never pick up a comic book how much fun it could be.  That became the Imagine Nation.  For me, the best way to introduce readers to it was through the eyes of a child going there for the first time.

Well you did a great job of bringing the comic book sensibility to a novel format.  Did you or do you read a lot of comic books?  Which are your favorites?

I was a huge comic book fan growing up.  I still am.  I love the classic super hero books like Batman, Spider Man, The X-Men, The Avengers… but I also like gritty crime books like 100 Bullets, Scalped, and Criminal.  And then there are just out-there concepts like Fables, The Unwritten, and Planetary.  I strongly recommend checking some of these out.  There’s so many great writers and artists working in comics right now, and the medium really never gets old because these guys keep digging deeper and turning concepts on their heads.

I agree fully.  Watchmen was the first comic book I really read and it blew my mind.  I see you're an artist too (and I'm quite jealous since I can barely draw a straight line with a ruler).  Is there a Jack Blank comic in our future?

That would be amazing, but nothing is planned right now.  I don’t know that I could draw it either.  I never taught myself to draw sequential art that tells a story, which is why I never became a comic book penciller (my first career choice).  I love the idea though.  It could make for a great comic adaptation or ongoing series.  Maybe someday…

I hope someday is code for soon.  Let's talk about the character of Jack Blank.  He's a pretty modern, rad main character.  What did you set out to accomplish when you wrote him?

Thanks!  With Jack, the main goal was to create a character that readers would care about and root for.  Everything in the story is filtered through Jack’s perspective, so I knew that for people to really buy into this thing, they had to want to go to the Imagine Nation and explore it with Jack.  Any road trip you can take is only as good as the people you’re travelling with.  Jack has a real courageous underdog quality to him that I think people can’t help but like.  All Jack’s life, people have been telling him “no you can’t,” but he hasn’t let that beat him down. 

After that, I just tried to keep Jack honest.  I wanted everything he said and did to feel genuine and believable.  Jack is an orphan with no idea where he comes from.  He doesn’t even know his real last name, so the overall question of “who he is,” drives a lot of what he does in the story.  As it turns out, the answer might be more than he bargained for. 

So I hear there's going to be a sequel.  How many Jack Blank adventures can we look forward to?

This is the first book in a trilogy.  I’m hard at work revising Book Two right now and I have a lot big plans for Jack’s future.  Can’t wait to share them with everybody.

Neither can I.  I'm trying to figure out what I can bribe Chris with for a copy of book 2.  If you could have any super power, what would it be?

I have a 20-month old son with a limitless supply of energy, so I would want the power to stop time… so I could sleep.  Oh, how I miss sleep.

Ha ha!  You and every parent on the planet.  Tell me, what are some of your favorite books?

The Count of Monte Cristo is my favorite book of all time.  I also really liked the following (in no particular order): The Lord of the Rings, the Harry Potter series, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan novels, Presumed Innocent by Scott Turow, The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe, Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, The Green Mile by Stephen King, Company by Max Barry, and Oh! The Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss.

On the comic book side, the list is too long to get into here, but I think the best graphic novel ever created is The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller.

Great picks.  Who influenced you as a writer?

I think my biggest influences were writers who did big, epic tales and created rich, fully realized fictional worlds.  George Lucas’s Star Wars galaxy, Tolkien’s Middle Earth, and J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world top the list.  They’re all so incredibly well thought out.  There’s an infinite amount of stories that can be told from any one of those places, with or without the main characters from the original works.  I was absolutely inspired by those creations, as well as all the comic books I’ve read over the years.

What are some upcoming books that you're excited to read?

Very interested to know what J.K. Rowling has been working on since the Harry Potter series finished.  Whatever it is, I’m in.  Also, there is a great writer by the name of Michael Harvey who does these pitch-perfect, hard-nosed detective stories that I love.  I’m excited to see whatever comes next for his Michael Kelly character.  He is one to watch.

Oh to be a fly on the wall in J.K. Rowling's writing room.  Okay, so you have 24 hours to live.  Give me the rated PG version of what you'd do.

My dreams have already come true, so I could die happy right now.  If I had 24 hours to go, I’d spend it with my family.  Doesn’t even matter what we’re doing.  If my wife and son are there, and we’re all laughing (and we would be, because I am very, very funny), I’m going out on a high note.

Awesome answer!  Okay, now for some fast questions:

Coffee or tea?

Coffee. 

X-Men or Batman?

My editor is going to kill me, but I gotta go with the X-Men.

Favorite Band?

Favorite band is Pearl Jam, but if you want my favorite music, I’m all about Sinatra. 

Who wins in a fight:  Chuck Norris or Betty White?

Betty White, hands down.  She fights like an unhinged woman.  I have the scars to prove it.  (Long story).

Smurfs or Thundercats?

Definitely Thundercats.  While we are on the subject, how is a Smurf movie getting made before a Thundercats movie?  What’s happening here?

I don't know.  I think live-action Thundercats are way creepier than live-action Smurfs.  Which cast member of Glee do you think is Chris Richman's favorite?

These days, the only TV I get to watch is Sesame Street and the Yankees, so I am going to have to say Chris’s favorite is either Grover or Alex Rodriguez.  Actually, I know his favorite baseball player is A-Rod, so I’m going to go with that here too. 

You heard it here, people.  Chris Richman thinks A-Rod is awesome.  Prospective clients should be sure to mention that in any and all queries.

You may be looking for a new agent after that answer!  Thanks for being a good sport, Matt! If you're not

Thank YOU!  

If you're not following Matt, here are some links.  He's a great guy and an awesome writer and his new book JACK BLANK AND THE IMAGINE NATION is a classic in the making.  Get it now.

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Simon and Schuster

Jackblank.com

Goodreads

JACK BLANK AND THE IMAGINE NATION

Tuesday, August 3rd marks the release of a book I've been super excited about since I had the pleasure of reading an early copy.  JACK BLANK AND THE IMAGINE NATION by Matt Myklusch is absolutely one of the best books I've read in the last year....and I'm not just saying that because we share an agent.

Here's the official blurb from Matt's website:

Jack Blank doesn't know who he is or where he comes from.  He doesn't even know his real last name.  All Jack knows is his bleak, dreary life at St. Barnaby's Home for the Hopeless, Abandoned, Forgotten, and Lost.  Everything changes one morning when Jack receives two visitors.  The first is a deadly robot, straight out of one of Jack's favorite comic books, that tries its best to blow him up.  The second is an emissary from a secret country called the Imagine Nation, where all the fantastic and unbelievable things in our world originate- including Jack.

Jack soon discovers he has an amazing ability- one that could make him the savior of the Imagine Nation and the world beyond, or the biggest threat they've ever face.

JACK BLANK AND THE IMAGINE NATION is a pretty thick book but I gobbled it up in just two nights.  Most of that has to do with the exceptionally vivid world Matt's created.  The Imagine Nation is filled with colorful characters, politics, schools, and ideas.  It's a fully realized country where super powered people live and breathe.  Much like the wizarding world of Harry Potter, the Imagine Nation is so detailed that I could easily imagine it existing right off my own coast. It's a remarkable feat.

But beyond that, Matt creates a character in Jack that I rooted for all the way through.  His story is a pretty neat version of a hero's journey, but with a twist that keeps the story fresh.  It's never clear whether Jack is going to swoop in and save the day, or inadvertently destroy his new home.  Either way, Jack is relatable, fun, and pretty darn awesome.

The pacing is swift and never dull, the writing is detailed and sharp without ever bogging down in unnecessary description, and the conclusion was satisfying but with just enough threads left over for the other two books in the proposed trilogy.

Mixing superheroes and aliens and ninjas and robots, JACK BLANK AND THE IMAGINE NATION is a great read for kids and adults alike.  It'll leaving you checking the horizon, looking to find your own Imagine Nation.

Pick it up now!