Justine and I are back on the road, where she’s promoting her new book, How to Ditch Your Fairy.

Here’s where you can see her tomorrow and the next day:

Wednesday, 1 October 2008, 4:00PM
Pooh’s Corner
Breton Village
1886 1/2 Breton Rd. S.E.
Grand Rapids, MI

Thursday, 2 October 2008, 7:00PM
With Kathe Koja and Michael Spradlin
Oak Park Public Library
14200 Oak Park Boulevard
Phone: (248) 691-7483
Oak Park, MI

Coming very soon: The German publisher of Peeps has been running a fan comics contest, and the results are amazing! I was going to post them today, but we’ve been traveling. Tomorrow or the next day, depending on how the hotel internets stack up.

And for those of you who are interested in yet more political dialog, there’s another post by me over on YA for Obama, in which I discuss Morgan Freeman in greater detail.

There’s a general conversation floating around the internets about the relationship between science fiction and young adult fiction. I get this question a lot, as a writer of both adult sf and YA books. And recently I was interviewed for this article in Baltimore City Paper.

So why are sf and YA so compatible? Well, there’s an old joke that goes, “The golden age of science fiction is . . . fourteen.”

In other words, the time when you’re most likely to think about the rules being different, or everything we know collapsing, or how different the future will really be is . . . when you’re fourteen. That’s because most teenagers haven’t been brain-washed into thinking that the assumptions and customs of our little corner of space and time are hardware—fixed, immutable, natural.

To young people, the rules are more like software: hackable, tweakable, tossable. Updateable, rewritable, rethinkable.

And maybe even fixable. Because whatever the Secretary of the Treasury does to unmelt our economy over the next few weeks, you guys are going to have to do the real fixing.

You’re going to spend your entire adult lives in the future, after all. So it’s mostly your job to think about it, worry about it, and read about it. That’s what makes it so much fun to write for you guys.

Anyway, check out the article, and let me know what you think.

Special Note to Folks in Philly! Tonight Justine will be talking about How to Ditch Your Fairy at the Big Blue Marble Bookstore:

Justine Larbalestier
Wednesday, 24 September, 7:00PM
Big Blue Marble Bookstore
551 Carpenter Lane
Philadelphia, PA

Hey, everyone! Justine and I are back from the west-coast leg of the How to Ditch Your Fairy tour. (Here are the dates for the rest of the tour, by the way.)

Firstly, I’d like to give my thanks to Robin for her efforts as guest-blogger, and to all of you for being such good hosts in my absence.

Secondly, I’d like to say . . . hoverboard!

This awesome remote-controlled hovertoy was spotted by our own Kenzie-la. It’s from Think Geek—and yes, it actually hovers! You can even control the altitude. (And the attitude, presumably.)

As Kenzie-la pointed out in her email, the only problem is that the “hoverboy” doesn’t come with interchangeable Tally, Shay, David, and Zane figures. Think Geek, are you listening?

(Also, it doesn’t use magnetic levitation, so it’s actually a Special Circumstances hoverboard. But that’s a technical point.)

Stick around, because I’ll be posting frequently this week. There are many interesting revelations just ahead!

We’re still here in northern California, getting ready for Justine’s last west-coast gig tonight at Not Your Mother’s Book Club. (Thursday, 7PM, Books Inc., Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness, San Francisco, CA.) But luckily, Robin had so much fun guest-blogging yesterday that she has returned instantly and without delay. She loves you guys!

So without further ado, take it away, Robin . . .

I guess I’ve made painfully clear my current position on writing. Having written (as in being finished, done, computer off, dancing shoes on): Rocks.

Currently writing (as in sitting in front of my computer bleary eyed and wondering why the magic idea monkey who’s supposed to live under my desk has been on vacation for the last several years, leaving me to make stuff up on my own which, as it turns out, is kind of hard work): Sucks.

But keep in mind I don’t know how to do anything else. (And don’t want to.) So I guess it’s my own fault that I’m chained to this computer, and here, for those of you who are curious, is the story of how I got here. (For those of you who are 100% not curious, you can scroll down to the bottom for my take on the eternal vampire/werewolf question. I’m still working on the unicorn/zombie thing.)

This is the first book I ever wrote:

I was in fifth grade, and it was a truly horrible ET rip-off. It was also only 32 pages long with some really big spaces between the lines, so when I say you guys are ahead of me, with your piles of notebooks and epic novels hidden under the bed, I mean it.

Fast forward a few years, through high school writing classes . . . through college, when I decided I’d never be a Real Writer . . . through to my summer internship at Scholastic, the summer before senior year. And the second book I ever wrote:

Coincidentally, this book also had 32 pages. (With about ten words per page. And, um, some of the “words” were actually pictures.) Still, it’s a real book. With a cover and an entry on Amazon. Thus it was officially the most awesome thing I’d ever done in my life.

After college, I went to work at Scholastic, where I spent most of my time editing other people’s books. (If you had a DragonBall Z coloring book when you were a kid, or were forced to read the rather tedious adventures of the Boxcar Children, you have me to thank.)

Turns out working in publishing is an excellent way to learn about books. Making them, reading them, and writing them. It’s also a good way to sucker your bosses into letting you write some of your own. Even if they’re a little…embarrassing:

Yes, I wrote a ton of those collections of “embarrassing moments from kids just like you and me!” (Spoiler alert: They’re almost all “from kids just like me, by which I mean, me.” I fall down a lot.) I wrote a lot of this stuff — movie novelizations, sleepover activity guides, glossy factoid books about one hit wonders who used to be on the radio and probably now work at Radio Shack…

Fast forward another couple years. In a grand gesture, I quit my job, packed all my stuff in the car, drove cross country, moved to LA, and…went to grad school. Except ignore the grad school thing, because it’s not particularly glamorous and doesn’t actually have anything to do with this story, except for the fact that I figured I was leaving New York and publishing behind forever.

But my grad school was unpleasant. Hideously unpleasant. So to entertain myself, I started coming up with book ideas. Not embarrassing moments collections or movie novelizations or ET rip-offs, but ideas of my own. For the first time in what felt like forever, I was writing for myself again. And for the first time pretty much ever I stopped writing what I thought other people would want to read and just wrote something I wanted. That turned out to be the beginning of the first book in the Seven Deadly Sins series.

I sent what I had to an editor at Simon & Schuster. (Disclaimer: Usually, it’s a good idea to submit to an agent instead of submitting straight to a publishing company, but I lucked out — thanks to my old job, I knew someone who worked at S&S, and, being the extremely fabulous and generous person that she is, she agreed to take a look.) Then I waited. Waited more. Drove myself insane. Along with everyone I else I knew.

Yesterday someone asked me where I was when I got the Call, the life-changing-we’re-going-to-publish-your-book-and-no-this-is-not-some-cruel-joke-Call. I was sitting in an insanely boring European history class, doodling pirate faces in my notebook and wondering why the 108 year old professor was actively trying to put us to sleep. I went outside at the break (this was winter in LA, so picture sunshine and shorts), checked my messages . . . and almost had a heart attack.
Ten minutes later I went back inside, looking like a grinning zombie and thinking, “I’m a writer I’m a writer I’m a WRITER…”

Eventually, I packed all the stuff back into the car, drove back across the country, moved to New York, and started doing this writer thing full time (here’s where the head-banging and the Advil come in), and here I am. For all my complaining — and clearly, I do a lot of it — it’s exactly where I want to be.

Although NY winters totally suck.

Okay, vampire/werewolf: Sorry, wolf-lovers amongst you, but it’s vamp all the way. This isn’t an Edward/Jacob thing, it’s a Spike/Oz thing. I won’t say I’m the biggest Buffy fan in the world — because I happen to know the biggest Buffy fan in the world, and she’d beat me to a pulp with her Angel action figure if she heard I was claiming her title. But suffice it to say, my heart belongs to Spike. Yes, the whole no-sunlight (and no soul) thing would be a drag, but so would locking your boyfriend in a cage for a few nights a month. Plus, maybe he (love of my life Spike) would let me borrow his leather jacket.

PS from Scott:
Spreadshirts, the home of Wearable Extras, has free shipping for the next two weeks. Just use these s3krit codes:
In the US: OKTOBERSHIPPING08
And in Canada: CADOKTOBERSHIPPING08

Right now, Justine and I are in nothern California on her How to Ditch Your Fairy tour. So while I”m on the road with sucky hotel internets, I thought I’d hand over the blog to Robin Wasserman, who I just interviewed a few days ago. She’ll be around for the rest of the week, till we get back to NYC.

Take it away, Robin!

First of all, thanks again to Scott, for letting me camp out here while you’re gone. I’ll try not to burn the place down.

Second, thanks for all the awesome comments on Monday’s interview. And thanks, in advance, for tolerating my continued presence. As opposed to, say, throwing rotten fruit. Stepping in for Scott feels a little like opening for the Beatles. (Just fyi, I’m not nearly as old as that reference makes me sound. Technically, I’m not even half that old.)

Third of all, because before we go any further I figure you should know exactly where I stand:
TEAM ZANE

(If I knew how to make that font bigger, I would. My love for Zane requires sky-high neon letters. Preferably flashing.)

Scott suggested that as long as I’m here, you guys might want to hear a bit about my writing process. Unfortunately, these days my process is as follows:
1. Wake up.
2. Stare at computer.
3. Bang head on computer.
4. Take some Advil for throbbing head.
5. Stare more. Bang more. Wonder if it’s too soon to take more Advil.
6. Type something. Delete it.
7. Freak out when computer crashes. (Possibly connected to all the banging?)
8. Cross fingers and reboot. Eat a cookie for luck. (And for sugar high.)
9. Type something else.
10. Stare at computer.
11. Go to sleep.

The sad fact is, by this point in my “writing process” (ie book due in a few weeks), my brain is basically cheese. And not the sharp kind, like cheddar. Think soft and runny and totally useless.

I’m also at the point where everything I write makes me think, “Why would anyone ever want to read this, or anything else I write? If I ever had any talent, which is debatable, it must have leaked out while I was watching Gossip Girl, because clearly the universe is punishing me for watching too much TV, and now I’m going to have to quit being a writer and go learn to juggle or something so that I can join the circus, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing because even hosing down elephants while scary clowns are stuffing themselves into tiny cars and pretending to pull fake flowers out of each other’s fake noses would be preferable to SITTING IN FRONT OF THIS COMPUTER FOR ONE MORE MINUTE.”

This point in the writing process is, as you may have noticed, a bit of a downer. So for your reading pleasure — and my own sanity, I figured I would treat you to a glimpse of my favorite part of the whole thing: The end.

A lot of writers I know figure out their stories as they’re going along. But I’m a big fan of outlines, which means I almost always know how my things are going to turn out. Sometimes I even know what the last line will be. You know how sometimes when you’re reading a really good book, you start going slower and slower as you approach the last page, because you don’t want it to end? That’s almost how it feels to be finishing up a book — once the end is in sight, once you can feel it coming, you’re almost sorry.

I said almost.

Because eventually the end comes, and writing that last line is like eating a brownie sundae. (And not the kind where the brownie is stale and the ice cream has freezer burn. I’m talking homemade brownie, hand-churned ice cream, hot fudge sauce. No cherry. I hate cherries.) The only thing better is pressing “send” on my email and shipping the book off to my editor—-then, for a few brief, blissful seconds soaking in the fact that the book is DONE.

At least until it’s time for revisions.

Bring on the Advil.

Questions, comments, requests for my next post? I’ll answer anything you’ve got since, as you may have guessed, I’d rather be reading your comments than writing my book!

A quick reminder. Justine is on tour in northern California this week. She’ll be appearing at lots of lucky schools and, for the rest of you, at two bookstores:

Tuesday, 9/16
7PM
Copperfield’s
140 Kentucky Street
Petaluma, CA

Thursday, 9/18
7PM
Not Your Mother’s Book Club
Books Inc.
Opera Plaza
601 Van Ness
San Francisco, CA

Hope to see you there!

And here’s a preview of Justine’s new book, How to Ditch Your Fairy, with first lines from each chapter (edited for spoilers). Also, she’s been interviewing other YA authors about what fairies they have, and wish they had. Interesting revelations.

While we’re on tour for the rest of the week, Robin Wasserman (who I just interviewed) will be blogging here. Enjoy!

Another book in the blurbed-by-me stack comes out this week: Skinned, by Robin Wasserman. Here’s what I said about it:

A spellbinding story about loss, rebirth, and finding out who we really are inside.

But there’s much more to be said about Skinned than that! So I decided to do an IM interview with Robin, like this one with Lauren McLaughlin a couple of weeks ago. It turned out to be another rollicking trip through the wilds of science fiction, teen angst, and writing advice.

Enjoy!

So while I’m on tour with Justine next week, Robin will be guest blogging a couple of times here at Westerblog. (Because I know you all hate the dead air.) I’ll be back next weekend, though, with tales (and pix) from the road.

Click here for details on all of Justine’s tour dates.

By the way, here’s what Skinned looks like:

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

If you have any questions for Robin, I’m sure she’ll be monitoring the comments and will answer them.

Ciao for now!

Two things:

Those of you who’ve bought merchandise at Wearable Extras, the online store of all things Westerfeldian, should pat yourselves on the back today. As I mentioned back when Wearable Extras opened, I don’t get any money, but one dollar of each purchase goes to Katrina relief.

Now a horrible admission: I suck at administrative details, and hadn’t totaled up the sales or found a charity to send the money to. But that turns out to have been a good thing, in a way. With Hurricane Gustov roaring through the Gulf, I’ve buckled down and finally figured out how to collect from Spreadshirts. So $531, representing 531 of your T-shirts, went to the Red Cross yesterday to aid victims of Gustov.

All best of luck to anyone who got evacuated or otherwise soaked. Our thoughts are with you.

Secondly, Librarian DOA just sent me this cartoon review of the Uglies series.

The cool thing is that it was made with Toonlet, a cartoon-producing tool for those of us who are drawing impaired. (Which very much includes me.)

Click here to see it full size.

Early last year, I got to read the unfinished manuscript of a book called Cycler, by Lauren McLaughlin. It was about a girl named Jill who has a problem: she changes into a boy four days a month.

Obviously, this isn’t the best way to go through puberty, what with all the identity issues and stuff. So with the help of her parents, she’s managed to keep her transformations hidden. In fact, she’s repressed her memories of being a boy to the point where her male self, Jack, has developed his own personality–and he’s very much a boy.

A boy who’s getting really tired of being hidden . . .

Needless to say, the book was really awesome, and I wound up blurbing it:

Artfully fractured and wickedly smart. A brilliant screwball comedy about love, self knowledge, and the secret identities inside all of us.

The book has taken a while to come out, as first novels do, and in the meantime I’ve become pals with Lauren and her husband Andrew. So now that Cycler is on shelves, I thought I would convene with her and do a quick IM interview.

Here’s our conversation, unedited and in its original IM-y format! (Argh, so many typos.) I’m on the right side and Lauren, for reasons that will soon be revealed, is the cat.

By the way, Lauren’s husband (Andrew, mentioned above) is a fashion photographer, and he did the photo for the cover:

You can buy Cycler at Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon. Or at many fine real-life bookstores across the land!

If you have any questions of your own for Lauren, feel free to ask them in the comments, and I’ll see if she’ll answer them.

All best to everyone going back to school!