I’ve just finished my most grueling revision yet (mostly grueling due to time constraints, not to the actual work involved, although there was PLENTY of that, too), and THE BOOKS OF ELSEWHERE, VOLUME FOUR is back with the amazing editor.  This means that I get to return to my other work-in-progress.  I spent yesterday afternoon and most of this morning rereading the entire thing, and I’ve just started scribbling my way into new territory.  Moving to a completely different project at this point feels delightful.  It’s like I’ve been eating nothing but pineapple for the last eight weeks–and I love pineapple–but now I’m finally getting to eat raspberries instead.  And raspberries have never tasted better.

Red Wing’s own Soapbox Players has also just finished the run of Alan Ayckburn’s “How the Other Half Loves,” a 1970’s comedy with the trickiest blocking I’ve ever had to master, and it was a blast getting to work with such a passionate group of theatre-folk.   Tonight we strike the set, which always feels rather sad.  Here’s the cast, in all our tacky 70’s glory:

(Please note the fondue pot.)

In a bit of delightful ELSEWHERE news, I just learned that THE SHADOWS has been nominated for the 2013 Grand Canyon Reader Award, which means that young readers in Arizona can vote for it to win the prize. It’s in amazing company, and I am thrilled.  Thanks to all the educators and organizers who make programs like this possible.

As of yesterday, SPELLBOUND is available in paperback for your purchasing pleasure!  You can order it here via IndieBound , or you can find it/ask for it at your local bookstore, or of course you can find it on Amazon.  Yippee!

I let out an even louder ‘yippee’ when this arrived at my house yesterday: My sample copy of THE SECOND SPY, in hardcover.  The photo does not do justice to how shiny and wondrous it is in person.

Just 41 days to go!

And, because it’s Friday, here’s the Friday photo clue:

(This is called “Museum Cat,” and it’s by an artist named Jimmie Trotter.  But you all know who it really is…)

In general, I try not to rely on a thesaurus while I’m writing.  I’ve found that, unless you already have a very clear idea of the type of word you need, staring at a list of not-always-exact synonyms with all their sneaky connotations and roots and sounds will only lead you astray.  However, I do love the thesaurus for those moments when you know there’s a word that starts with “m” and it means something like fake or cheap, but your brain is refusing to give up the goods.

So, the other day, I fell down a thesaurus hole (and I would guess that thesauri would dig rather large holes) while I was on just such a quest, and I found a list of synonyms for “surprised” that were so strange I was sure that some of them must be fake.  Someone must have hacked into the online thesaurus and added these words, I thought to myself, like I saw my high school students do with Wikipedia. (The town where I taught was famous for being the home of several of my 11th graders.)  But it turns out that these wonderful words were real.  The first–anoetic–which actually means ‘unthinkable’ (and which isn’t recognized by WordPress’s spell check, apparently), sounded familiar.  The next, blutterbunged, had that too-perfect-to-be-true sound to it, and it’s an antiquated adjective that means exactly what it should mean.  A ferly is a Scottish adjective or noun meaning something strange and amazing and unexpected.  Best of all was gloppened–which is a form of the verb gloppen, meaning to surprise or frighten someone.  You can be a gloppener.  You can do something gloppeningly.  You can have said something gloppenedly.

For some reason, this makes me ridiculously happy.

And just for fun, here’s Brom on the porch, disemboweling a new toy.

Here’s the next visual clue to the contents of THE SECOND SPY…

(It will make sense if you read the book, I promise.)

Lots of other good news to share:

First, my twisted little story, “Miss Pipperman’s Parrot,” has just been accepted by The School Magazine, the oldest children’s publication in Australia!  No word yet on when it will appear, but I’ll be thrilled whenever it does.

Second, I received word that my poetry chapbook, Cherma, was selected as a finalist for the 2012 Eric Hoffer Award.

Third, I’ll be at the Barnes & Noble Galleria in Edina, MN for Concord Elementary’s book fair tomorrow — that’s Saturday, May 19 – at 11:00 a.m., to read, sign, and chat.

Now I’m off to water some lettuce seedlings.

I am a failure at this daily blogging thing.  However, my failure is making this countdown to THE SECOND SPY go a lot faster.  (Only 51 days left? It seems like just one entry ago there were 55…)

Today’s F.A.Q.: How old were you when you started writing?

This is my very first rejection letter.  It came from Highlights Magazine, and I just rediscovered it last fall, glued into my oldest scrapbook amid a lot of My Little Pony and Care Bears birthday cards.  Of course, Highlights handles submissions from kids very kindly, so it wasn’t so much a rejection as a “Don’t call us; we’ll call you” sort of letter, but the outcome was the same.  I’d sent them some little four-line rhyming poem–I think there were cows in it–and I was trying to write something that the magazine would like, not that I liked. 

You can see the date, typewritten at the top: December 30, 1987.   The day after my eighth birthday.

The poem I sent to Highlights is the first poem that I can recall putting on paper outside of school, on my own, just because I wanted to.  I started writing my first “book” not too long afterward: It was a lavish mess about a rebellious princess who ran away from her kingdom and ended up in a valley full of unicorns (as one does, if one is a rebellious princess).  I didn’t show that story to anyone.  And I didn’t show anyone my next story (which was probably also about unicorns), or my next poem, or the story after that, or the poem after that.  And I didn’t submit my writing to any kind of publication for another eight years.

By then I had written dozens of poems and stories.  And I had gotten a little bit better at it.

The wait time is dwindling…

And here is the first visual clue of what to expect within THE SECOND SPY.

Today’s accomplishments: Typing and cleaning up more than 4,000 words of the current version of Volume Four, and smacking a wasp that had gotten into the house before Brom could eat it.

Today’s frequently-asked question: How many books have you written?

If the questioner means, ‘How many books have you written that have been published, the answer is: 2, with #3 coming soon (or #4, if you count my chapbook of poetry.)

If the questioner means, ‘How many books have you written, published or not, the answer is: I couldn’t possibly count them.  I’m currently revising two books, and I have two more waiting in the wings with their early chapters and notes.  And, back in my practicing days, I wrote an adult novel, a series of graphic novels, and dozens–perhaps hundreds–of novels that end at Chapter 3, where the writing started to get hard, and I gave up.

Here’s a picture that I sometimes show at schools:

All of those binders and notebooks are full of my writing: hundreds of poems, dozens of short stories, and many novels — some finished, and some that never will be finished. There is another row of binders that can’t be seen on the shelf up above, and another stack of currently-in-use books and folders sits on my desk.  I’ve never counted to see when and where I reached a million words (Ray Bradbury once said, “If you want to be a writer, write a million words,” which I think is pretty good advice) but I’m sure that most of those first million are here, in these folders.  And I’m grateful that no one will ever get to read most of them.

I spent yesterday having an amazing time with the 4th graders at Mosinee Middle School in Mosinee, Wisconsin (thanks again, students and teachers!), and hurried home to Red Wing just in time to be late for rehearsal with Soapbox Players.  This is my excuse for yesterday’s postlessness.  Today’s will have to be a short one too, as I’m squeezed between revisions and appointments and more rehearsals.  As an apology, here’s a picture of Brom, in the sunniest corner of the couch.

So, as promised, I’m trying to blog at least once per day as THE SECOND SPY’s release date (July 5 – Have I repeated that enough yet?) approaches.  Consider this one giant, wordy drumroll.

I am neither very good nor very comfortable with talking about myself.  When someone gives me a big, open-ended prompt like, ‘Tell me about your books,’ or ‘Give us some stories about you,’ I begin to fold over and curl in on myself, as though I am trying to climb face-first into my shoes.  Therefore, for this series of rapid-fire entries, I am going to use the help of others by answering the questions that I am most frequently asked when I speak at schools, libraries, conferences, and bookstores.

And, at the end of each week, I’ll give a visual clue about what is to come in THE BOOKS OF ELSEWHERE, VOLUME THREE: THE SECOND SPY.

Let’s start with what may be the biggest question of all:

Why do you write?

All sorts of poetic, crazy, wonderful answers have been given to this question by all sorts of poetic, crazy, and wonderful people, but if you boil them down, it seems to me that all writers’ answers are variations on these three simple ones: 1. Because I want to.  2. Because I need to.  3. Because I’m good at it.

George Orwell said, “Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness.  One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.”  I guess that falls into the need category.  (Also: Ouch.)  Here’s how Ray Bradbury put it: “If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy or both – you must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”  I suppose that’s a combination of need and want. (I love you, Ray Bradbury.)  Anne Sexton–one of my favorite poets–said, “When I am writing, I am doing the thing I was meant to do,” which sounds to me like all three.  Flannery O’Connor said, ‘Because I’m good at it.’ (Of course, she was Flannery O’Connor, and she could say things like that.)

We actually discussed this question over lunch one day during the Endangered Authors tour, and I blathered something about writing being the lens through which I see the world.  It’s the way I take in and transform everything around me and within me: All the memories, emotions, daydreams, questions, the images that I know will fade.  Changing these floating, fragile things into written words is the most exciting, most challenging, most absorbing thing I’ve ever done.  (Adam called it ‘reifying the ineffable,’ which is a much clearer way to put it.)  When we write, we take something that is completely immaterial and transform it into actual ink on an actual page (or virtual ink on a virtual page, which counts).  And that, to me, is magic.

There are things I’ve written just for myself–like journals and letters and certain poems–because I needed to shift the thoughts out of my head and onto a page, to take them from being something that controlled my mind and my emotions into something I could construct and change and even love.

There are things that I’ve written–like THE SHADOWS–for someone else.  I started that book because I’d had the image of Olive’s house lurking in my brain for a decade, and I wanted to turn it into a story that my brothers would have liked when they were kids.  When I finally finished it, I realized that other kids might like it too.

There are things that I’ve written because I wanted to challenge and stretch myself; because I wanted to share something strange or beautiful or frightening or funny with people I’ve never met and never will meet.  I never get tired of that effort.  I never feel 100% satisfied.  I always want to make the next thing better.

When I sit down to write, I have a swarm of motivations whirling around me.  I have a story that I want to tell.  I have characters I can’t wait to visit with, to hear what they’ll say and do next.  I get to practice the magic of turning thoughts and senses and emotions into words on a page.  And, these days, I have deadlines and contracts and (wonder of wonders) actual readers who are waiting to hear what will happen next.

So I guess my answer is: I write because I need to, because I want to, and because I’d like to get better at it.

There are now exactly sixty days until the release of THE BOOKS OF ELSEWHERE, VOLUME THREE: THE SECOND SPY.  Not that I’m excited or anything.

Last May, an artist named Tiffany J. Vincent got in touch with me.  Tiffany creates amazing, one-of-a-kind art objects inspired by works of fiction; for examples, check out her Harry Potter and Narnia pieces at her website, Curious Goods: www.curiousgood.com.  I drool over Bellatrix’s necklace.  Her niece, Anna (Hi, Anna!) is a fan of THE BOOKS OF ELSEWHERE, and Tiffany is currently at work on a full-sized replica of the McMartin grimoire, as described in SPELLBOUND.  As a preview, she sent me her smaller-scale test version of the book’s leather cover, and her gorgeous interpretation of the McMartin family tree on the frontispiece.

Here’s a closer look at each:

How lucky am I?  (I’ll answer that myself: Insanely lucky.)

The news has already spread via many writing and publishing blogs, but just in case a writer between the ages of 18 – 25 hasn’t heard about it yet and happens to be reading this: Hot Key Books, in cooperation with The Guardian, is launching a truly incredible prize for young writers of children’s/teen’s fiction.  You can get an overview here and find specifics at the Hot Key Books website.

Publishers Weekly just ran a piece on the Endangered Authors Tour.  For photos and on-the-road stories from my fellow Endangered Authors, read on.

I promised that I would try to post here every day for the two months leading up to the release date.  I already missed yesterday, so I’m not off to the most auspicious start, but I have Good Intentions and a Plan.  There will be more blogging.  Soon.  I swear it.

And thanks for sharing your excitement about THE SECOND SPY, everyone.  Knowing that readers are out there waiting to dive into Volume Three is an awfully welcoming feeling.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.