Done and Done

Posted on by scott

Well, after a very productive month in our Undisclosed Location, Justine and I have both finished our next books! Much wooting occurred.

Of course, there’s still all the rewriting, editing, cover designing, catalog printing, marketing and selling into stores that has to happen. All of which means these books won’t be published until, oh, about a year from now.

This is why Bogus to Bubbly is coming out on October 21, to make the long year of waiting fly past. (Zoom.)

In the meantime, I can get back to blogging a bit more often. Thank you all for your patience during crunch time! Sorry to have been away.

There are a few things I missed. First, here’s the cover for the Brazilian version of Peeps:

I really like this cover. It’s sort of like a graphic novel, with plenty of peeps-like images. As you can see, the title is Os Primeiros Dias, or “The First Days.” I guess “peeps” didn’t translate into Portuguese, so the publishers thought it would be cool to set up the sequel, The Last Days.

I wish I’d thought of that. Well, except that when I was working on Peeps, I didn’t realize I was going to write a sequel.

And if you’re a Peeps fan, you totally have to read this article in the NY Times. It’s about a scientist who infects his patients with hookworms (as in Chapter 5, aka “Bahamalama-Dingdongs”) . . . on purpose!

So here’s the story: David Pritchard, the scientist in the article, noticed that people in Papua New Guinea who were infected with hookworms were less likely to suffer from asthma and hay fever. Now, this was nothing new. As I point out a few times in Peeps, parasites are so intertwined with humans that we can get sick when we don’t have them around.

Basically, your immune system has evolved to deal with lots of parasites—our ancestors lived in a very dirty world compared to us. But these days, people in industrial societies have hardly any parasites, so our immune system gets bored and starts making trouble. Sort of like a third-world army with no enemies to fight, it starts trying to take over the government. Allergies, asthma, Crohn’s disease, and other auto-immune issues may be related to people being too darn clean!

Dr. Pritchard wondered if hookworms were suppressing the Panuan’s immune system, and helping them escape hay fever. So, in the proud tradition of mad scientists everywhere, he used himself as a subject. That’s right, he infected himself with hookworms, which sounds . . . itchy. He has since expanded to larger human trials, and so far the treatment seems to work well on allergy sufferers. Maybe one day it can be used for more serious conditions, like Crohn’s Disease.

Good luck to him. Plus, I love this last paragraph:

“I gave myself 50 worms, and I felt it,” he recounted. “I had stomach pains and diarrhea. But with 10 worms, we’ve ascertained a dose that does not cause symptoms. The patients are happy. They’ve kept their worms, and I get an e-mail a day from people all over the world who want to be infected.”

See? Everything in moderation.

Even worms.

81 thoughts on “Done and Done”

  2. Congrats, Scott! But I can’t wait a whole year!

    Eh…I’d rather keep my mild lavender allergy than be infected with hookworms.

  3. audrey-sensei,
    i am not a freak! i just so happen to come onto the blog comments at the right time… or maybe i have magical powers… the world will never know…

  4. i would never want some unneeded parasite in my body
    can we say eew? i dont even have any allergies and i rarely get sick(i live in the country, its really dusty out and i’ve lived here my whole life)

  5. I didn’t know scott-la and justine were doing stories together in an anthology(?) along with melissa marr and a few others. me and my sis saw it on Barnes and Noble. Love is Hell it’s called. wow, cool. =)

  7. YOU FINISHED!!!!!!!!1 WOOOTWOOOT
    i just got back from an island and i have bene cell phone less all week…it was horrible. but anyway now i am sitting here wooting away at this post 😀

  9. Ok, so i was on youtube and you know how they have that bar at the top that shows what people are watching? Well i scrolled over one and it said something about pregnant teens and i clicked on it (cause im weird like that) and the vid. was boring so i started reading the comments. All of them were from people who are teen moms and this one girl says something like ‘People say teen moms dont love thier kids but I’m 14 and i have two kids-‘ Okay, back it up. Your…14…and you have….two kids. …..Okay. Most people learn from their mistakes the first time but you know what they say…third times the charm! She said she has a 13 month and 1 1/2 year old kid. Wow. And why was she doing that at like 11? Weird.

    I just thought i let that out cause when i saw that….i seriously started laughing.

  10. Um, yeah. My allergies are bad, but they’re never going to be bad enough for me to VOLUNTEER to infect myself with hookworms. I learned about those in science class. They’re icky.

  11. Yay! Well done on your book!
    EEWWW that hookworm thing is GROSS, if i had hookworms, the whole day i would be jumpy and jittery, just YUK, i would just want to get out of myself, just so i wouldnt have to have WORMS touching me… gross! if u get what i mean.

    Anyway….

    If Scott, you read this, i met your friend Rachel Cohn the other day. I ran aftrer her after she left the place where she gave her talk thing, and talked to her a bit about her shered book, ‘Nick and Norahs infinite playlist’, and asked if she knew u cause she said that the writers in new york were all friends. She does, so just letting you know that i met a friend of yours… watev, i was exited!
    XX Dee

  13. siiiigh. it’s my last weekend as a free person….//starts sobbing hysterically//
    ookay that was weird. w/e.

  14. women in the 1600’s used to purosefully swallow tapeworms so that they could eat all they wanted without gaining weight.

    Just thought i’d throw that out there…

    Because I’ll totally make the Top 100 😉

  17. i’m bored. it’s like, 12:30 am here, and i’m not tired, and if i complain about being bored, mom’ll send me up to bed. so i’m in a precarious position. i’ve read almost all the books there are to read around here….except for the alias prequel novel called ‘sister spy’ it’s not my favorite. syd and francie join a sorority as a mission for syd, etc, but w/e. sigh. i’ll just look for more good moosic. and other ‘fun’ stuff….sigh. any book suggestions?

  19. mucho bueno job, ports, or portegueesers(hehe), or, whatever you guys are called. lol sorry but i dont know that one. but the cover is oober awesome. 🙂

  24. congrats on your new book. i know bogus to bubbly is going to come out soon, but i wish there could be another adventure as tally as the main charecter.i hope this isn’t the end for the series.

  25. AHHHH!!!! I am SOOOOO excited for Bogus to Bubbly. and remember a while back you wanted to know what the Uglies… guide thing… would be called? Did you ever pick a name? Also will you PLEASE write another adventure with Tally? Uglies fans all over miss her. BRING BACK TALLY-WA!!!!

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