Author: scott

BEA Fandango

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So a mere two days after we arrived back Stateside, Justine and I threw ourselves into Book Expo America, a vast mass of parties, free books, and publishing schmooze.

The first thing you realize about BEA is that it is big. Thirty thousand people big. Here’s a photo of a tiny part of it:

Do you believe me now?

The first day at the S&S booth, Simon & Schuster staff were handing out sample books of Extras (not advanced readers’ copies, just the first three chapters. Scotty was late). They were being extremely good sports and wearing t-shirts declaring themselves to be uglies, pretties, specials, and extras.

That’s my jet-lag expression. Note dark circles under eyes.

On Saturday, I had a signing, where more sample books were passed out. Here’s the vast and intimidating autographing area where about 20 authors sign at the same time.

And here’s a view from backstage.

On the left you can see the hordes of people lining up in the maze of stanchions (reminding this Texan of a cattle yard). On the right, the boxes of books waiting to be signed. I’m pretty good with crowds by now, but passing through that curtain at the beginning of your signing is rather nervous-making.

Here’s me in action . . .

I signed about 200 sample books in my hour. The jet lag hit about halfway through, so apologies to friends I didn’t recognize, people I was weird to, and for all the misspelled names. And thanks for coming! You were all very sweet.

And suddenly it was over with five minutes to spare, so I put on an “I’m an Extra” shirt to pose with.

By the way, Simon & Schuster will be giving away loads of these shirts as October 2 comes closer! And I’ll be giving away any spare Extras sample books. Watch this blog for details.

Thanks to everyone at S&S for the posters, t-shirts, party invites, lunches, and other kindnesses that made BEA loads of fun.

So very soon I’ll be doing the following:
1) Trying to put up the videos I’ve been taking.
2) Put up promised pix of Singapore, etc.
3) Blog some of the books I swagged at BEA.

And don’t forget that you can pre-order Extras now.

Stalking the Dead

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After 28,000 miles of traveling we’re back in NYC, jet-lagged and getting ready for BEA. Lucky for 24-hour dry-cleaning, or we would be sartorially doomed for the next few days.

Of course, my posting is so far behind that there are still tales of Paris to tell . . .

Around the corner from our hotel was this graveyard. It was old and pictaresque, so I took the new camera over to shoot moody graveyard shots. Like this one:

Blah, blah, blah. Very artsy-fartsy.

But suddenly, I started finding famous dead people!

That’s the Baudelaire, the dude who translated Poe into French. And he was not alone; I was in the midst of a host of defunkt French celebs!

Without hesitation, I threw aside all pretensions of art, and became a paparazzo of the dead. This turned out to be much more fun than artsy photographs.

There were even honorary French people buried there, like American Man Ray, the guy who made the world safe for Dadaism.

Another yank there was Jean Seberg, aka the cute chick from Breathless.

Check out her birth and death dates. Drugs are bad for you.

But on the positive side, beautiful actresses get more flowers than philosophers. Even philosophers in pairs . . .

Hey, here’s one of my favorite playwrites:

I directed his play The Lesson in my senior year in high school. It was all about an etymology lesson, but I changed it to a tennis lesson. (Dude, I was so Dada, it still hurts.)

Okay, I think that’s all the good Paris photos. Singapore comes next.

And by the way, I just finished the copy edits for Extras. Yay!

Tired. But. Can’t. Sleep. Or. Jet-lag. Will eat me.

Me Post Soon

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We’re at Reading Matters in Melbourne, Australia, having a great time. And yes, my posting has been pretty bad on this trip. So far so behind that there are still tales of Paris to tell!

Not to mention Singapore and Sydney. My apologies, but accessing the internets from hotels is expensive and painful. I will do better this summer. Promise.

Please speak amongst yourselves till we get back to NYC on . . . Tuesday!

Norton Win + Paris!

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No, not me. Justine just won the second annual Andre Norton Award for Magic or Madness!

We weren’t in NYC at the time, so thanks to Eloise Flood (dear friend and editor to us both) for picking it up, and to fellow nominee Maureen Johnson for being the first to text us.

Amusing Story 1: The actual Norton Award object was somehow melted in transit. They had to give Eloise an old Grandmaster Award as a stand-in.

Amusing Story 2: Holly Black won the first one last year for Valiant, which we’d bet her she would. So she had to take us out for a hugely expensive meal. Absurdly expensive, it turned out. But now we owe her one. (drat)

Speaking of good food, the reason I haven’t been posting is that we’ve been here:

Amusing Story 3: I was trying to get my cool new camera (b’day pressie from Justine) on the right setting to shoot the Eiffel Tower. And it turned out that the setting for Big Buildings was indicated by an icon of the Eiffel Tower!

Ah, Paris. What an iconic city.

We were there to do press for Uglies, which came out last week in French. My adult sf is much more popular in France than the US, so I had tons of big papers inteviewing me: L’Express, Le Monde, Figaro, and a bunch of teen weeklies and monthlies.

Apparently, I am the Jerry Lewis of sf.

French interviewers are different from their English-language counterparts. More . . . philosophical. My favorite example:

What utopia would you fight for?

Gotta love the French. I said something like, “A chaotic utopia, with a thousand voices in tumult.” Because that’s what happens when I’m jetlagged and philosophical in France.

Especially enjoyable was being translated for six of the eleven interviews. It worked like this: The interviewer would ask something in French, Christian (my translator) would repeat it to me in English. Then I would waffle for a while, and Christian would translate my waffling back to the interviewer in French.

How Christian did this without head explodage is beyond me. A lot of my answers (and some of the questions) were a couple of minutes long. I can’t even repeat something of that length back in the same language, much less another one.

But it was way cool listening to my answers in French, trying to catch recognizable words flashing by. Christian and I got to know each other in a really interesting way. (That is, he saw me answer the same questions six different ways in some cases. This is something only Justine normally gets to do.)

I have a lengthy video of the process, which I’ll try to cut into uploadable form soon.

All in all, Paris was awesome. Great food, perfect weather, bars named after me, and everyone was supremely wonderful to us. A jolly birthday. (I’m 44! Ancient!)

Thanks to Christian, all the journalistes, and my Pocket publicist Christine.

More photos, etc., to come.

P.S. You can buy the Norton Award-winning Magic or Madness in fine bookshops everywhere or here.

The Crash of 2007

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So last Thursday there’s me, sitting and doing the final rewrites of Extras. And I do mean final, because the manuscript is due to copyediting on Monday. (Yikes!)

Sitting with me is writing companion and corruptor of youth Maureen Johnson. We have a conversation that goes like this:

Scott: Dang! My computer is acting funny. I better reboot.

Maureen: Yeah, mine was acting funny before. This is the evil computer table.

Scott: Heh, heh. Hmm, this is taking awhile . . .

Ten minutes pass.

Maureen: Still spinning?

Scott: Yeah. You know what? I’m just going to go for a walk. You mind texting me when it’s done rebooting?

Maureen: Sure.

Scott walks to Broadway Panhandler. Looks at the coffee machines. Looks at the knives. Ten minutes on, a text from Maureen appears!

You now have a mouse pointer.

Yay, comes Scott’s reply.

He looks at the knives again. Wanders over to the Games Designers’ Workshop store and looks at tiny goblins with laser guns. Many more minutes slowly unfold.

You have a task bar, but no dock, comes fresh news.

I hate the earth, he replies.

Scott, you see, has not backed up the manuscript today. Yes, he is good and backed up last night. But the last two hours were smooth, flowing rewrites! And he doesn’t have time to piss around. This thing is due Monday!

More time passes. And endless non-time, a frozen hour, if you will.

Desktop icons are appearing!

Argh. On my way.

But not before looking at the knives at Broadway Panhandler again. Knives may be needed.

Scott returns to find his computer almost booted. He launches Mail, which takes another twenty minutes to grind into existence. Sends himself the all important Extras file.

Scott: I can’t tell you how much this sucks.

Maureen: I made you an appointment at the Apple Store.

Scott: You are like unto an angel.

They head to the Apple Store.

Genius-Bar Guy: Nothing can be done here. This hard drive is totally pooched.

Is this the end of Scooter?


Dark days for Scooter. And yes, my hard driver is named Scooter.

Genius-Bar Guy: But wait! Here comes TekServe to the rescue! (Or rather, they are a short cab ride from here.)

One new computer purchase and a short cab ride later.

Scott: Can you save Scooter, TekServe?

TekServe Woman: We don’t know. Your hard drive is pretty pooched.

Scott: *sadness*

TekServe Woman: *Smiles wisely, like a veternarian who has put down many a pet, and has seen sadness before.* Don’t worry. We’ll try. Are there any files in particular you need?

Scott: Hmm, maybe a . . . folder called “Extras.” (In which the manuscript has been saved every single day, showing the entire development of the work! Argh.)

TekServe Woman: Don’t you back up, dude?

Scott: Yes, every time before I travel. Well, except the last time. So, maybe last October? You see, I was waiting until the day we leave for Paris. Which is Monday. By the way, um, can you get this back to me by Monday?

TekServe Woman: *raises eyebrow* We shall try.

Scott heads home, saddened. At least he has a new 15″ G4! With a cool new remote control for playing music! (But he has no music, unless he rips all his CDs again.) And a great new version of Mail! (That doesn’t know his addresses, and has lost all of his spam teachings.) And wicked fast Wifi! (But Safari has none of his bookmarks . . . )

It is not the same. Scott works doggedly on the rewrite for Extras, but the larger keyboard is maddening! Key rewrite notes to himself are gone! It is a time of pain.

Then on Saturday, TekServe calls!

TekServe Guy: We have your computer. Your data has been rescued, and a new hard drive with that data installed!

Scott: The crops are saved! If by “crops,” I mean hours of hideous work!

Scott plunges back into the rewrites, full of joy. He is finished just in time to pack for Paris. The world is happy again.

Except . . . why are people banning Maureen? Stupid school boards who haven’t even read her book?

Don’t they know she made me an Extras-saving appointment at the Apple Store?

I am so calling TekServe about this crap. Maybe they can fix it.

First amendment good. Maureen’s book good. TekServe good.

Plus: Everyone go back up their computers. Now.

International Pixel-stained Technopeasant Day

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In honor of pixel-stained technopeasant day, I’ve posted part of a never-to-be published novel of mine. I ghost-wrote it for a celebrity whose name I cannot divulge, but the deal fell apart. (Causing great poverty—for me, but alas not him.)

So without further ado, here are the first two chapters of Crossover Dreams.

Feel free to guess the celeb’s name—I will neither confirm nor deny . . .

Parasite Saturday*

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I’ve been blogging about Extras sort of non-stop lately, and have been thinking it’s time to talk about some other series.

Luckily, this new cover treatment came in the mail today from my pals at Atom Books:

Very splashy, huh? The colors (or colours, as this is the UK edition) are actually better than this, which is just a photo taken on my floor. An electronic version has been requested!

It’s more like the Aussie covers than the US ones. See?

And speaking of which, the Australian The Last Days is out now!

In more parasite news:

One of my librarian pals at TLA told me about these parasite plush toys. Squeezable. (Thanks, Kerry!)

Boingboing just blogged Who Is Sick?, a site that allows you to post your illnesses for amateur epidemiologists to track. Sort of a GoogleMaps for symptoms. (Warning: site runs slowly.)

This is a post from Carl Zimmer’s blog about “Corydceps, a parasitic fungus that drives its insect host up a plant before growing a spike out of its head.” With video! You may remember that Zimmer’s book Parasite Rex is the inspiration for my novel Peeps.

And here’s a very amusing and fictional Powerpoint presentation for Peter Watts’ book Blindsight, a novel with a very Peeps-like scientific explanation for vampirism. It’s available here in PDF for free!

Anyway, I’m not sure when TLD comes out in the UK, but the US version of the The Last Days is available here.

*Sunday in Australia.

Us in Austin and Tyler

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Hey, sorry for no posting. (Just. Finished. BOOK.) We’ve been having a great time in Texas.

All the folks at TLA were so amazing and welcoming, and as I’m a native Texian, there were some cool surprises. One of the librarians from my past brought my ancient 8th Grade yearbook. Two things about that:

1) Go Warriors ’77!
2) Picture of me = ouch.

Also, my own high school librarian showed up! She’s still at good old Booker T., and we had lunch and talked about old times.

Here’s my schedule for the next three days:

Monday
Appearance in Austin
April 16, 7PM
Justine Larbalestier & Scott Westerfeld
BookPeople
603 N. Lamar (at Sixth)
Austin, TX

Tuesday
Visit Grandma

Wednesday
Appearance in Tyler, TX
April 18, 1:15 p.m.
Justine Larbalestier & Scott Westerfeld
Bishop T.K. Gorman Middle School
Open to public! Click here for directions.

That is all.

Last 100 Hours

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In one hundred hours, I have to turn in the first draft of Extras. In the unlikely event that this fact slips my mind, this piece of paper on my wall will remind me:

Note the word counts scrawled (by a madman, apparently) at the bottom of every day. As you can see, Extras has already surpassed Pretties (81,250 words) and Specials (77,500 words) in length. It may even reach the brick-like thickness of Uglies (87,625)!

But things are getting tight on the time front. For this reason, I have taken to writing in strange new environments. Including this hotel room:

Clockwise from far right: me, Lauren McLaughlin, Maureen Johnson, and John Green. Justine is being the hovercam.

Why this hotel? Well, a small collective of us have been writing together, I found a random deal on a suite, and decided that a new spot might be stimulating. The views were cool.

John Green, who makes a video for his brother every other day, documented the event. You can watch that here. It shows you exactly what a writer’s life is like. (No, really.)

For more evidence of my deadline insanity, here’s Maureen’s interview with me while I’m trying to write.

I think I’m the only one still writing. The others just blog about writing. It’s all very self-referential.

If you’ve written me fanmail in the last few months, this approaching deadline is why you haven’t heard anything. I’m sorry!

In 100 hours I will be free . . .