A few days ago, I got an email from Lauren Myracle, author of the TTYL series and a very scary horror novel called Bliss. It was a challenge . . .
to a Scare-a-thon!

Now, a Scare-a-thon is possibly the scariest thing you can be challenged to, at least in modern times. To survive it, you must face your greatest fear, and then blog it.

If you succeed, you’ll have learned something about yourself, something rich and squishy from your subconscious. But on the other hand, you could die of fear!

So don’t try this at home.

Also challenged were M.T. Anderson, Holly Black, Libba Bray, Meg Cabot, Cassandra Clare, Melissa De La Cruz, John Green, Shannon Hale, Maureen Johnson, Stephenie Meyer, Kirsten Miller, Sarah Mlynowski. I link to some other Scare-a-thon entries below, and will update them as more appear on the interwebs.

Here’s my entry:

Ahhhhhhh!

Okay, not so much scary as disgusting. But it was scary to me.

As for my fellow Scare-a-thon members, I dare you to watch this scarifying video entry from Shannon Hale, in the spirit of Blair Witch Project.

And here’s Meg Cabot’s blog entry, for all you fairy-phobes.

Not to be outdone, Lauren herself met the challenge by learning the dance to “Thriller”.

Finally, here’s where we discover that Melissa de la Cruz is afraid of . . . dentistry!

I’ll be updating as the other entries in Scare-a-thon 2008 appear.

Still to come:
M.T. Anderson
Holly Black
Libba Bray
Cassandra Clare
John Green
Maureen Johnson
Stephenie Meyer
Kirsten Miller
Sarah Mlynowski

Let’s get going, dudes.

UPDATE
Click here for my election-eve post on YA for Obama!

UPDATED SCARES
Kirsten Miller faces her fear of eggs.

Have a good, safe Halloween, everyone.

Don’t forget to take pictures of any Westerfeldian costumes you wear tonight. And feel free to send them to me for posting here.

I’ve met my Scare-a-thon challenge, and will be posting video proof this weekend! (The fear. The fear!)

Now go out and scare people.

R2D2 and Vampire photo ganked from Dollar Bin’s flickr stream.

First: I have a new post up on YA for Obama, in which I discuss one of my favorite subjects: science! (Guess who’s being lame about it.)

And next: Speaking of science, below is a survey from academic Clare Snowball. She studying teens’ online activities, including you guys. This is all anonymous, by the way, so your answers won’t be used against you. They’ll only be used in the support of . . . science!

Here’s an introductory note from Clare:

I love Scott Westerfeld’s books, especially Uglies, Pretties and Specials. I live in Australia so I might have to wait a bit longer for Bogus to Bubbly, but I’m looking forward to it.

I’m a librarian and that’s how I discovered his books. I used to buy them for my library and read them before anyone else. But I don’t work in a library anymore; I’m doing a research project about teenagers and what they think of reading. Right now I’m writing my thesis, which is like a really long essay, 80,000 words, pretty much the size of a book.

I’ve been reading Westerblog for quite a while and when I noticed that some of you used names from Scott’s books when you posted and some of you added “–wa” and “–la” to your names, I thought that was very bubbly. Because I’m researching teenagers, I wanted to find out more about all of you. I’ve set up a survey that I’d like you to answer. The survey questions will be online for four weeks, so if you don’t read Westerblog every day, you’ll still be able to tell me just how bubbly you are.

I want to hear from people who comment on Scott’s Westerblog, people who don’t comment and just read Westerblog, and those who visit every day, or only visit every so often. Diversity is what makes the world bubbly.

I’m going to write about what I find out from your answers for an article in a magazine for librarians. So I can write about you as a group, I need a name for all of you. I thought of the Bubbly Army. I wondered if you really are an army, but I thought of it because you’re fighting (through non-violent action of course) to change all those non-thinking pretties of our world into thinking pretties or uglies or crumblies, and maybe even a few specials! What does everyone think of calling you the Bubbly Army? One of my questions asks this and if you don’t like it, you can tell me a better title for all you bubbly readers and commenters.

I’m pretty busy writing my thesis right now, so I won’t be able to write about your answers until next year, when I finish my thesis. When I do, the article for librarians might be a bit too bogus for you guys to read—if I use the words bubbly and bogus in it, the librarians probably won’t know what I’m talking about. So I’m going to write a version for you to read. When I’ve put it online Scott will blog about it, so you can all read it, and you might even read something that you wrote when you answered my survey questions.

Click here to do the survery.

Happy answering from the Chief Philosopher of the Bubby Army,
Clare Snowball

Enjoy.

Some Halloween-related posts:

1) A lot of people have written me about costumes lately, asking questions like, “What do Specials wear?” “How do you do flash tattoos?” and “Would Dess wear this?”

But you guys would know better than me. A lot of you have done excellent face paint jobs, as shown here. Please use this comment space to share your acquired knowledge and new ideas for Westerfeldian costumes.

The power of psycho-kitty commands you!

2) Vampire fans may be interested in this: A teacher in North Carolina is planning to use Peeps (and two other sf books) in her biology class, if she can round up enough money to buy copies. Click here to read more about the project, and donate if you can.

3) I have been roped into a Scare-a-thon! Lauren Myracle, author of the TTYL series and the amazing new Bliss, has challenged a passel of YA authors to face their fears. So between now and October 31, M.T. Anderson, Holly Black, Libba Bray, Meg Cabot, Cassandra Clare, Melissa De La Cruz, John Green, Shannon Hale, Maureen Johnson, Stephenie Meyer, Kirsten Miller, Sarah Mlynowski and I will all be doing something that we’re horribly afraid of.

Will we survive?

Click here to read the challenge. I’ll be revealing my greatest fear on this blog. Be warned!

4) Okay, this is not Halloween-related, but if you live in or near Toronto drop, by Bakka Phoenix Books at 697 Queen Street West. Not only are they a great sf bookshop, but Justine and I just signed lots of stock for them. Go buy it!

Psycho-kitty photo ganked from io9.

1) Thanks to everyone who came to the Toronto event, especially those who made special T-shirts:

Kelly, whose shirt features one tridecalogism each for Extras (extraordinary), So Yesterday (consumeristic), Midnighters (numerological), Uglies (beautifulness), and Peeps (zombification)!

And Katie, whose shirt speaks for itself. (Though she confided to me that she actually had done her homework before coming.)

Justine was voice-missing from too much touring, and let me do the talking. But I had lots of great, and tricky, questions. Thanks again!

2) If you’ve been following YA for Obama, you know about the Action Hero prizes. Well, tomorrow’s prize is a signed copy of Bogus to Bubbly. Go here to find out how to win.

3) Watch this space carefully, because in a couple of days you will all have the chance to participate in a PhD thesis about online fandom. Because you must be studied! (Dissection optional.)

One of my favorite chapters to write in Bogus to Bubbly was the one about nanotechnology. It was great to finally hand over the spotlight to those wondrous tiny robots that melted the Armory, “cured” Zane’s brain, and built half of Aya’s city.

But since I handed in B to B a few months ago, there have already been some cool new developments in the world of nanos. Here’s a three-legged, crab-walking microbot developed in South Korea. It’s made of a polymer (like plastic), but it’s powered by rat heart tissue. (Eww. But you can’t beat evolution for power sources, I guess.)

Watch it go:

You can really see the heart tissue dynamics in the way it moves.

Pros: It managed to walk for more than a week on one charge of rat heart.

Cons: It only went 50 meters in that week, giving it an average speed of 0.0002 MPH. But if your nanobot was walking around inside something really tiny like, say, a brain cell, this would be plenty fast.

Note that this robot isn’t proper nanotech, because it’s more than a millimeter across. (Your fingernail is about a millimeter thick.) Proper nanobots will be between 1 and 100 nanometers across, at least a thousand times smaller.

But from big things, little things grow.

For more about nanos, you can buy Bogus at at your friendly neighborhood indie bookstore, or at Powell’s, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble.

And don’t forget that Justine and I will be in Toronto, Ontario Monday night:

Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld
Indigo Bookstore
Toronto, Ontario
Monday, October 27
7:00pm – 8:00pm
Yorkdale Mall
3401 Dufferin Street

Story ganked from io9.

Bogus to Bubbly: An Insider’s Guide to the World of Uglies is out today!

Bogus to Bubbly is somewhere between a giant FAQ and a vast blog post. In it I try to answer every single one of the most common questions that I’ve been asked by fans over the years. It includes the following sections:

An illustrated hoverboard manual!
Notes on the science of beauty, mag-levs, and nanos
A History of Tally’s world, starting with the Rusty Crash
Maps of Tally’s city and her continent
Illustrations of various gadgets from the books
A complete series glossary, plus an essay on slang generation
Mini-histories of all the cliques
Character names and how I came up with them
Where I got the big idea for the series

You can buy Bogus online at Amazon, Powell’s, or Barnes and Noble. Or at bricks and mortar bookstores everywhere!

I hope you enjoy it, especially because it’s dedicated to a whole bunch of you who read this blog.

Also, thanks to all of you who voted for Extras in the ALA’s Teens’ Top Ten for 2008. I’m at #8 on the list, with some pretty impressive company.

And finally, we hope we see you in Toronto:

Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld
Indigo Bookstore
Toronto, Ontario
Monday, October 27
7:00pm – 8:00pm
Yorkdale Mall
3401 Dufferin Street

Bogus to Bubbly: An Insider’s Guide to the World of Uglies will arrive in stores two days from now! That’s Tuesday, October 21.

The guide starts with a Hoverboard Manual from Tally’s era, which gives you tips on riding, repairing, and caring for your very on hoverboard. The manual and other sections of Bogus were illustrated by Craig Phillips, an Australian cartoonist.

Here’s a sneak preview of one bit of manual art:

And here as an added, blog-only bonus, is the rough sketch Craig sent me beforehand:

Actually, he pretty much nailed it the first time. But still, BONUS MATERIAL!

Here’s his website, if you want to look at other stuff he’s done.

One more piece of news: Justine and I will be appearing in Canada next Monday! I’ll be promoting Bogus and she’ll be talking about her new book, How to Ditch Your Fairy.

Indigo Bookstore
Toronto, Ontario
Monday, October 27
7:00pm – 8:00pm
Yorkdale Mall
3401 Dufferin Street

Hope to see some of you there!

You guys may remember that last year I was a judge for the National Book Awards. Sherman Alexie’s excellent Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian won, and you should still check it out, and the rest of that year’s nominees too.

But we have a new crop for 2008, just announced this morning, and here they are:

Of these, I’ve only read The Disreputable History of Frankie-Landau Banks, which is totally and completely amazing. By E. Lockhart, it’s about a girl at a posh boarding school who infiltrates a secret boy’s-only club, wreaking havoc on their brains. You guys may see similarities between Frankie and the chaos-making heroes of So Yesterday. But it’s less about marketing and advertising, and more about boys vs. girls and rich vs. not-rich.

Emily (which is what the “E.” stands for) also wrote two other books I loved, Fly on the Wall and Dramarama. if you’ve ever been to a summer drama camp, you simply have to read that last one.

I highly recommend Disreputable History, and I’m sure all the other books on the list are awesome too. Our pal Holly Black was among the judges, as was Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), so you know those were some interesting conversations.

Anyway, here’s what to look for in your friendly neighborhood bookstore or library: