The Year Without Michael

In my career, the three books that have had the greatest critical and commercial success were Kid Power, Life As We Knew It, and The Year Without Michael.

My guess is if you're here, you're familiar with Life As We Knew It. And I'll write about Kid Power some other time. But now I'm going to tell you about The Year Without Michael.

There are certain themes I return to regularly and certain structures I always enjoy. Michael is an example of both of them. Its plot, a family torn apart when their young teenage son Michael disappears, is in its own way quite similar to Life As We Knew It. Its structure, third person, episodic, with dates rather than chapters, is the same as The Dead And The Gone.

I chose to write Michael because I wanted to explore how it felt to live through a situation without resolution. At the time, someone I knew was fighting cancer, a life of illness, treatment, remission, illness, treatment, remission, then illness again. I also knew someone who had suffered severe brain damage. In both cases, these were people I cared about, but both of them were loved by people I loved. In both cases, it was wrong to give up hope, but in some ways hope was more difficult than acceptance. Since I didn't want to write anything too specifically about these people, I chose to explore the dilemma by writing about a missing person.

The Year Without Michael is told from the point of view of sixteen year old Jody, Michael's older sister. In this era before cellphones and the Internet, Jody is plunged into a world of uncertainty. Her parents are devastated, her younger sister is acting out, and yet Jody has to cope with everyday life, school, friends, family.

The book worked. It got my only starred School Library Journal review, and a great New York Times review (here's the plant my publisher sent me in celebration).


There were so many fine things said, my publisher printed a bunch of them as part of a publicity brochure.


The Year Without Michael was my second book to win the South Carolina Young Readers Award (About David was my first). It was my only book to be optioned for an After School Special. A Tony Award winning playwright was hired to do the adaptation, but it never got made (an episodic book about a family with a missing child didn't really lend itself to an hour long format for kids).

While I was going through my Michael file, I discovered a letter Robert Cormier had written to my editor.

Thanks for sending along Susan Beth Pfeffer's novel, The Year Without Michael. It's a wonderful book on an important topic. Her style--- that staccato prose and crackling dialogue--- is mesmerizing. I read it in one sitting. Pfeffer breaks your heart but she somehow manages to put it together again although the edges remain jagged. A beautiful job.

Several years after its publication, the American Library Association Young Adult Services (YALSA) named The Year Without Michael one of the 100 Best Books For Young Adults, published in a 25 year period.

I'm very pleased that The Year Without Michael is now available on e-book formats, including Amazon and Nook.

All Good Stories Deserve A Punchline

As you may recall (since I know you commit all my blog entries to memory) a month ago I donated blood, fainted in the parking lot, and ended up in the hospital emergency room. For further details (mostly about the tragedy of not eating the big donut), you may return to the original, highly dramatic entry on the subject.

Yesterday in my mail, I found the bill from the emergency room, for $250.00. You wanna know what I got for my $250.00? A chicken salad sandwich and a blood pressure reading. Oh, and the thrill of knowing that for one brief shining moment, I was a Code Blue.

Now my friends took me out to Sunday brunch, and I backed my car into a concrete planter, and it cost $325.00 in repairs, but at least that was my own doing, and next time I'll be more careful.

But all I did to deserve this wretched miserable $250.00 emergency room bill was donate blood, and not put up a fight while I was lying on the pavement being told I should go to the emergency room, even though I knew all that had happened was I gave blood and fainted.

Le sigh, le sigh, le sigh. Here I am, trying to relearn how to live on a budget (and the ever rising cost of gas isn't helping out one bit), and in the course of a month, I end up with $575.00 worth of bills for eating out and being a good citizen.

I think from now on I'll stick to staying home and eating my own chicken salad sandwiches!

A Very Quick Update (Since I'm On My Way To My Mother's)

My YA novel, The Year Without Michael is now available on Kindle and Nook.

When I have a few moments to myself, I'll write an entry about the history of The Year Without Michael. Today is just the announcement of their availability.

While I was checking to see if Nook had Michael ready, I found a link for a book about Life As We Knew It. I know nothing about the book, so it would be wrong of me to recommend it, but it's the best darn subject for a book I've ever seen.

My agent has agreed to represent my manuscript Dummy, but she's undecided about who to submit it to. I'll keep you posted as she keeps me posted.

My mother awaits. I must be off!

Happy Leap Year's Day!

You didn't expect an important holiday like that to go unnoticed by me, now did you?

When I was a little girl, I had a fierce crush on a (very good looking)little boy, who was about one year older than me. Actually, now that I think about it, there was no about about it. He was a tiny bit less than one year older than me, because his birthday was in February also.

I remember him telling me when his birthday was, Feb. 27, I think, and I mentioned (in my adorable, approximately 5 year old way) how fortunate it was his birthday didn't fall on Feb. 29, because then he'd only have a birthday once every four years (even at age approximately 5, I understood the necessity of having as many birthdays as possible).

He gave me a very eyes rolling look, and pointed out his birthday was a good 2 days before Leap Year's Day, and besides, he wasn't born in a Leap Year anyway.

I continued to love him. Did I mention how very good looking he was?

Here's something I don't understand (and have never Googled to see if anyone understands it). When they were making up the calendar (I have no idea who they were, but I know I wasn't consulted), why didn't they design it this way?

January 30 days
February 30 days
March 31 days
April 30 days
May 31 days
June 30 days
July 31 days
August 30 days
September 30 days
October 31 days
November 30 days
December 31 days

Leap Year's Day- June 31 (no one would object to an extra day in June, at least not north of the Equator).

Also, they should have spelt February differently. I can never remember if it has that extra R in it, and it's embarrassing not to know how to spell the month of one's birth (and the birth of the very good looking boy I was so desperately in love with).

February gets a very bad rap from just about everybody who doesn't have a birthday in it (and that's just about everybody; it has the fewest births per month, although that does seem to be because it has the fewest days-according to my calculator's long division, April has the fewest births per day). But with the splendidly mild winter we've had, even the projected Leap Year's Day snowstorm is now downgraded to a snow/rain mix, a nuisance perhaps, but hardly a blizzard.

Hmmm. Now that I think about it, Leap Year's Day is when women are societally allowed to propose. Sadly though, the very good looking boy of my dreams is now married, a lawyer, and eligible for Medicare.

He'd be a lot younger if he'd been born on Feb. 29!

Waiting For The Waiting To End

Right now I'm waiting for the clothes drier to stop, but that's just a drop in the waiting bucket.

In a bit, I'll be waiting for Marci to pick me up, so we can have lunch with Carol (a variation of the birthday lunch I didn't get to have on my birthday).

I'll be waiting for Marci because I'm waiting for my car to finish up at the body shop, where, they assure me, I'll be able to get it at 4 PM. So that's five and a half more hours of waiting.

For some unknown reason, it snowed last night, so I'm waiting for the snow to melt, and for spring to show up. In spite of this being the sweetest little winter I can remember, I'm still eager for spring.

Since I'm midway through Young Queen Victoria, I'm waiting for Young Queen Victoria (who is currently Young Princess Victoria) to become Queen Victoria. Young Queen Victoria's kind of nasty mother is waiting even more impatiently than I, but that Nice King William The Something Or Other, doesn't seem to be in any hurry to die and turn the crown over.

Then I'm waiting to hear from the company that will miraculously turn my previously published books into e-books. I'm very eager for the process to be completed, so I can tell you which books they are and what made me write them. My guess is I'll hear sometime next week, and trust me, when I hear, you'll hear.

And finally, I'm waiting to hear from my agent about my ghost story manuscript, Dummy. My agent is an extremely busy woman, and she never gets back to me fast about manuscripts, but that doesn't stop me from waiting. In fact, it positively encourages it.

It occurs to me that Nice Prince William is going to face the same logjam as Young Princess/Queen Victoria, only with an extra generation to get through. And his dad, Poor Prince Charles could collect Social Security before he ever gets a job. Now that's something I'm glad I don't have to wait for!

My Birthday Weekend Report

Granted, that's not the catchiest blog title ever, but at least it's accurate.

My birthday was a wee bit more complicated than I thought it would be. My friend Carol had a stomach virus, so she opted out of the birthday lunch, and then my mother decided she wasn't feeling up to it either. So Marci and I had lunch, and Marci had bought a carrot cake for me, and she and my mother and I had some.

I also got phone calls and cards and wonderful messages on my blog (thank your for them), and two great presents (a copy of Skating Shoes by Noel Streatfield from my cousin Ellen, and a biography of young Queen Victoria, from my goddaughter, as though her cheeses weren't enough). But the lunch thing was a little disappointing.

Joyce and Lew came up Saturday afternoon, and Lew decided as soon as he crossed the threshold that he wanted to take a nap (one reason why Joyce and Lew are such great houseguests is they like to nap). So Joyce and I decided to watch a girlie movie in his absence. We watched Born To Be Bad, which we both thoroughly enjoyed.

Then Lew woke up, and we had supper (chicken with multitudinous garlic bulbs- it could have used some more salt), and watched Conflict, while eating carrot cake and fudge and my goddaughter's cheeses.

Sunday, Joyce and Lew treated me to the fancy brunch. I had an apple stuffed brioche french toast which was extremely fabulous. The champagne flowed (out of my glass, since I don't drink) and we had a fine time. Except when I backed the car out of the parking lot, I hit a concrete planter, which was clearly made of sterner stuff than my Civic. The body work will get done on Thursday/Friday and will cost more than the brunch did. There's irony for you.

We went back home and indulged in Linsanity (the Knicks won! Yay!- and since I don't much care for basketball, that will probably be the only time you'll hear me cheer for them). Well, Lew and I did, because Joyce napped.

When she woke up, we watched Wild Things, which we all agreed was very silly but we enjoyed anyway. Then we ate leftovers and cheese and fudge and cake and the Zebra Popcorn my editor had sent me for Christmas, and watched Wings and the really great Making Of documentary on the DVD.

Hmm. Either Spellcheck isn't working or Linsanity has made it into the dictionary. I think I'll try it with a small "l." Hold on.

I think it's stopped working. I hope I spelled multitudinous correctly.

Back to the weekend. We ate breakfast out on Monday (conservative, low calorie, good for us, breakfast), and then Joyce and Lew took the bus to NYC, and I went back to the apartment and did three loads of laundry and one load of dishwasher and let the air out of the air mattresses, and, oh yeah, I took a nap.

What can I tell you. Joyce and Lew are my role models.

Meanwhile, Scooter also enjoyed his birthday. He very much liked the flowers that my brother and sister-in-law sent me.



But he especially liked his own birthday present.



And clearly, Joyce and Lew are role models for Green Catnip Mouse as well!

How Scooter And I Will Be Spending Our Birthdays

I thought I'd be spending my birthday tomorrow enjoying the tulips I bought today, but Scooter, who shares a birthday with me, regards tulips as a noshy (who knew). If they're poisonous, he may not make it to tomorrow. But then again, if tulips were poisonous, there wouldn't be a deer left in suburbia. And, for that matter, my characters in Life As We Knew It would be dead, since I had them eat tulip bulbs for dinner one night. So most likely Scooter will live, even if my tulips won't.



Fortunately for both of us, there's more to this birthday business than tulips. Scooter is getting a bright green catnip mouse that he'll probably mistake for a tulip. And my goddaughter sent me a birthday present of two of the cheeses she makes, OPUS 42 and PRIX DE DIANE. I treated myself to a taste of each one last night, and they are seriously yummy.

Tomorrow, I'll be having a birthday lunch with my mother, Marci and Carol. Then Saturday, my friends Joyce and Lew are coming for the weekend. I'm going to make supper Saturday night (chicken with multitudinous garlic cloves), and Sunday morning we're going to the elegant Glenmere Mansion for a very very elegant champagne brunch.

When we're not eating our happy little heads off, we'll be watching movies, which is what Joyce and Lew and I do when they come to visit. I know we'll watch Conflict, which is a genuinely silly movie, but Joyce and Lew love Humphrey Bogart, and I don't think they've seen this one. Since it's short, we may have a double feature of either The Reckless Moment or Wild Things, which was also pretty silly, but had so many plot twists I got dizzy from watching. Then,on Sunday night, I think we'll watch Wings, the first movie to win the Academy Award. The only tricky part is Wings makes me cry every time I watch it, and the image of Joyce and Lew and me all sobbing at the end is a little worrisome.

Alas, Monday they go home, and I have to return to normal life. What's worse, I'll have to lose the 10 pounds I'm bound to put on from this orgy of birthday celebration.

Maybe I should follow Scooter's example, and limit my diet to tulips!