Author: scott

Listed! Times! Bestselling! (now with proof)

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Well, that headline pretty much says it all.

This morning (it’s Thursday here) my editor emailed me to say that Specials has appeared at number 6 on the New York Times chapterbook bestseller list!

I believe the word is . . . w00t.

Thanks to all of you who told your friends and librarians, made your parents drive you to the store, and forced some poor bookstore employee open a box early (you know who you are). You have been counted! Thanks to Rodrigo Corral for his ace cover designs. Thanks to S&S for being an excellent publisher.

Oh yeah, and thanks to J.K. Rowling, who single-handedly forced the Times to create a set of children’s bestseller lists. Because, like, they got sick of Harry Potter books getting all up in Salman Rushdie’s and James Patterson’s face. (Hah! YA rules!)

That little story reminds me to mention that all bestseller lists are mysterious and kind of fake. No one really knows what books are selling everywhere in the country (much less the world), so it’s all done by polling a hundred or so bookstores. And every list picks stores that tend to sell the kind of books that they like. And of course putting things into categories is always fraught; like, Specials is a chapter book and the latest Potter is a series book? Huh? The USA Today list doesn’t even bother with categories, just goes by raw Bookscan data, which misses non-bookstores like Target and K-Mart.

But you know what? I’ll take it. Because the NY Times is the list everyone’s HEARD OF! And that’s all that really matters, this big fat banner of credibility:

What’s REALLY annoying is that it’s not online yet, because the Times has this crazy system where they don’t publish lists until a fortnight after the end of the week in question. (Why? Why?) This news came from my editor (who must have some sort of Secret Publisher Decoder Ring) leaving me half wondering if a Terribly Embarrassing Mistake has been made.

But probably not, so once more . . . w00t!

Also, Midnighters fans will note that Specials is my thirteenth novel! Trideca-liscious!

(By the way, this little surprise is STILL not the big news I’ve been talking about. Soon, baby, soon.)

UPDATE: I have proof! (Thanks, Shana.)

Specials in Paperback

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First off: We had a great time in the Blue Mountains, which are exceedingly beautiful. Thanks to Justine for a view-tastic birthday!

So I’ve been getting a lot of mail asking about the infamous Uglies series format shift. The first two are in paperback, but due to the great success of the books, Specials is in hardback. See, it’s your fault for telling your friends about them.

Granted, most people don’t care, but some folks don’t like the extra expense and some collector types really seem to hate the inconsistency. (Me, I love small hardbacks, and the more money is nice too. But it wasn’t my idea, yo. Me write words only. Publisher all else do!)

Fortunately, there is a solution, at least for the collectors among us. The Canadian and Australian version of the book is soon coming out in trade paper, in an edition that exactly matches the first two USian books. It’s a bit cheaper too, but probably not after getting it shipped to America. That depends on your source.

This non-US paperback comes out on June 1. The only place I’ve found it available online is Amazon.ca. But I know that at least one Canadian bookseller reads this blog, so comment away, and I’d be happy to update.

Now if you live in Canada or Oz, of course, this is all moot. Moot, I say! And if you live in the UK, mootness also graces your shores. Because you will eventually have a lovely trio of books with entirely different covers in totally matching format. Same goes for all translations. It is only us Americans who suffer, so it probably has to do with the metric system, writing our dates wrong, or affordable health care.

Me, I blame soccer.

And so to add visual interest to the most boring post in the history of this blog, I present the SOCCER PLAYING ROBOTS of MR. SOCCER!

(Oh, and that really, really exciting news? Yeah, it’s coming. Any. Day. Now.)

Me in Locus

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This month’s Locus is all about YA fantasy and sf, and that’s me gracing the cover with Holly Black and Kenneth Oppel!


Inset picture of me by Liza Groen Trombi

As you can see, tons of cool people have written essays for the issue, including Garth Nix, Nancy Farmer, Graham Joyce, Jonathan Stroud, and Ursula K. Le Guin! There are also reviews by Gary K. Wolfe of the entire Uglies series as well as Blue Noon.

I didn’t write anything, but I did sit for a multi-hour interview (back during the round the world trip) and tried to sound wise and smart. Then I posed for those photos trying to look rockstarish. Then they fed me and I got to see the awesome Locus collection of, like, every sf book ever published.

You can read excerpts of the interview here soon, as well as Kenneth’s and Holly’s interviews. But for the whole thing, you can buy the issue or subscribe. Locus is a great magazine, with interviews of sf and fantasy authors and tons of reviews every month. It’s also full of insider stuff, like what books are coming out, or have just sold or been optioned for movies. Highly recommended if you want to geek out on the publishing world. Sorry to sound like an ad, but we do actually live by Locus here in the Larbfeld household.

And the cool thing is, the editors are offering you guys free shipping on this issue (it’s $5.95), or the issue completely free with a year’s subscription. If that appeals, just click here.

And now Justine and I are headed for the Blue Mountains to celebrate my birthday (May 5, same as Michael Palin, Karl Marx, and Uda, the 59th Emperor of Japan). Happy birthday to me.

Specials Spoiler Zone

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Zane or David? Ugly or pretty? Wild or city?
Special or sane?

How does it all end?

Well, the final volume of the Uglies trilogy is available now, and this is the place to discuss it. That’s right, it’s the Specials . . .

WARNING: Do not read the comments of this post
until you have read all three Uglies books.

Unless you really want to know about Dr. Cable dying on page 596.
(No, wait . . . that’s Dumbledore.*)

Let the spoilage begin!

*I slay me.

UPDATE: Most of the conversations here have moved over to westerboard.com, the forum for all things westerfeldian.

Specials Is Shipping! (updated x 2)

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Okay, this isn’t the big news, but it is big:

Specials, the final volume of the Uglies series, is shipping from Amazon right NOW!

Tell your friends! Tell your cats! Tell your friends’ cats!

It was “officially” supposed to go on sale May 9, but there’s always some gun-jumpage in the crazy world of bookselling. I’m still in Australia, so you guys have to do the in-store spotting for me. Anybody seen a copy of Specials in the wild yet? (I hope they have them in stores soon, because it’s just not fair otherwise.)

UPDATE: Copies of Specials have been spotted in stores, at least in Canada. They should be everywhere in Canada and the US soon, and in Australia in a month-ish. Just call ahead! (The UK version comes out in October, but you guys don’t even have Pretties yet.)

And yes, this is the hardback edition of Specials. I don’t know when the paperback will be out, or if hardbacks of the other two books will appear. I’m only in charge of the words! UPDATE ENDS

Also, I will be putting up a Specials Spoiler Comment Thread soon, for those of you who’ve read the book and want to divulge and discuss. BUT THIS IS NOT IT! Do not engage in spoilage here.

And in celebration, here is some fab fan art, a hoverboard-a-rific illustration by Kate:

I love the blue lines and faded math homework in the background, the true sign of fan art direct from study hall. (Um, because nobody draws in class, do they? Unless it helps you listen, of course.) The crash bracelets are bigger than I imagined, but I kind of like the hugeness of them. These look big enough to actually work, and maybe even help you guide your way through the air, sort of like wings.

Check out the rest of Kate’s work, including headshots of leather-jacketed David, slightly gothoid Zane, pretty vacant Tally, and ugly-befreckled Tally.

In the meantime, rest assure that the previously alluded to news will be announced here . . . shortly (-ish). And apologies to anybody whose fan mail I haven’t answered yet: I’ve been snowed under with work.

Now go and read.

One More Update: Specials got to 393 291 224 today on Amazon! (I know, looking at one’s Amazon rating is pretty lame, especially as independent bookstore sales are really more important. But some days it’s all we authors have got, okay?) That’s the best rating any of my books have ever achieved, even Evolution’s Darling the day it was reviewed in the NY Times way back in June of 2000, which was merely 692-ish. Let there be w00ting, and let it be loud.

Reading in Sydney (updated)

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For those of you on the east coast of Australia, a quick heads-up to say that Justine and I will be signing this week at Sydney’s premier sf bookstore, Galaxy Books.

Date: Thursday, April 27
Time: 6:00PM
Place: 143 York Street, Sydney CBD

We’ll be celebrating the Aussie release of Peeps and the import version of Magic Lessons.

Hope you can make it. (But we’ll understand if you’re, you know, 10,000 miles away and stuff.)

If you can’t, you can always read this cool interview with Justine.

Also, watch this space for big news early next week.

UPDATE: Okay, we did the reading and it was way fun. Thanks to all the folks at Galaxy for having us, and to Jess (who posts comments here) and our pal Deb for coming along.

Italian Uglies

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Hey, sorry it’s been so long between posts. Justine and I were at Conjure up in Brisbane over the weekend. It was the Australian national sf convention, and a great time was had by all.

The most hilarious thing was the Juvenalia panel, in which Justine, Kim Wilkins, Sean Williams and I all read from our childhood and teenage writings. And oh, my, god was it funny. For the audience, at least. A friend of ours later said, “You guys’ body language got all teenagery as you read, as you madly shifted in your seats and rolled your eyes.”

And with good reason. Maybe I’ll post some of my juvenalia here some time. For any of you young’uns writing now, it will be eye-opening as to how much better you can get.

Kim’s stuff was very sweet and earnest, including a traffic safety guide penned when she was seven(ish). Sean, of course, had planets blowing up (his excellent novel Geodesica: Ascent also won the Ditmar Award at the convention—it is highly recommended). And Justine’s 15-year-old work was eerily like her current stuff.

It was a cool experiment. Yay to Kim for having the idea.

Upon our return to lovely Sydney, we discovered a cover mock-up for the Italian version of Uglies! Here it is in very rough form:

What’s interesting is that the face is pulled around from the back of the book, so there are two eyes instead of one. The face is also flipped, and, of course, the title’s on top now. Hmm. What do you guys think?

In Bologna, our Italian editor said she was having trouble with the title. She didn’t think that Brutti was as sonorous as Uglies, but couldn’t think of anything else that would make sense in Italian. But like I said, this is still a rough draft.

By the way, can anyone translate the tag line? Something about “Two rebels, two heroines . . . “?

Due ribelli, due eroine
in lotta per la liberta
in un mundo dove
essere belli e “legge”

So Yesterday, the Movie

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The contracts for the So Yesterday movie option are finally signed!

Phew. That took a while.

Now, a quick note about options: This doesn’t mean that the movie will be made! It just means that a production company has paid me for the exclusive right to make a film. So do not send your acting resumes to me yet. (Or ever. Because like, why would you send them to me?) Still, it does get us one step closer.

Now that the contracts are signed, I can finally tell you who the producers are. But first:

You may remember a long-ago contest where I promised glorious prizes to anyone who could guess the book and the producer. Well, nobody got both exactly right, but Corn on the Cob almost got one of the producers correctly, which I didn’t think would happen at all.

Corn wrote: “Okay my second guess is a documentary type thing of the Uglies/Pretties book by Michael Moore (Fahrenheit 911, Bowling for Columbine).”

How random was that guess?

Okay, so it wasn’t Uglies, and it’s not Michael Moore. But it is one of the other producers of Fahrenheit and Columbine, a guy called Jim Czarnecki. Two decades ago, he also worked as an assistant director on Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, to which I can only say: “Dude, we’re not worthy.”

On So Yesterday he’ll be working with Maria Gallagher. Maria is the author of the Stinky Boys Club books, and has produced a lot of advertising and a Madonna video. Actually, both Maria and Jim come from the world of slick, high-end advertising satirized in So Yesterday.

Back in November, I met with them to talk about how to make So Yesterday a movie, and I think they and their ideas are very cool. They want to render the book’s info-dumps in visual form, and put the critique of advertising and marketing onto the screen, somehow. It’s going to be exciting to see how it all comes out.

So Corn in the Cob, email me about receiving your fabulous prize. You didn’t get it exactly right, but I didn’t think anyone would get even remotely close. So color me w00t! (And wish Maria and Jim luck.)

This just in! Justine’s Magic or Madness has been nominated for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards Ethel Turner Prize!

Read about it here.

We Are in the Times

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News Alert: Blogsnake swallows own tail! World to end soon.

In other words, remember our discussion about Naomi Wolf’s article about Gossip Girl? Well, the NY Times just ran a round-up of blog responses to said article, and we were included. In fact, quotes from us consumed half the word count and therefore we are the champions, we are the champions, no time for losers, etc.

Oh, wait, do you guys know that song? I’m old.

Special congrats to Lenny and Momgeek for being quoted. And thanks to you all for getting me mentioned as the novelist who “maintains a running conversation with teens on his blog.” I maintain nothing! You guys do 93% of the work in making this blog interesting. And that reminds me, I was really blown away by the depth and thoughtfulness of that comment thread.

Yay, you.

And if you just came here from that link in the Times, sorry if this has been kind of circular. But what did you expect? Content?

Dude, I’ve got books to write.

Slanguage

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Those of you who follow Justine’s blog have already seen this, but I had to use it too. It captures Justine and I during our SCBWI appearance in Bologna.

Philip Stanton is an illustrator, and takes his notes in sketch format. For some reason, I love the arrow pointing to me that says, “From Texas.”

But, yo, my nose isn’t really that big. I’m just saying.

Another intriguing bit of student work from Bologna are these notes about my “slanguage” presentation. I was talking about teen vernacular and slang and language in general, and Candy manages to make me sound coherent.

Maybe from now I’ll just rant and have people write it down. It would be way cool if that worked with novels . . .