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I'm going to ALA!

I'm Lobbying Hard For The Knife Club Vote

When I was a kid, I was a member of two very exclusive clubs, the Explorers Club and the Knife Club. Both clubs were created by my brother Alan, and both had more than two members, but not much more.

My favorite of the two was the Knife Club, because of the knife. It was made out of plywood, and I have no idea how we came to own it. Possibly my brother made it. I don't remember there being more than one knife in the Knife Club, or what exactly we did in the Knife Club (we explored in the Explorers Club) with that knife, but I really liked that knife. I still have a great fondness for plywood.

I've been hard at work on the Possible Third Book. On Sunday I wrote preliminary notes for it, and have continued to do so over the past couple of days. When I wrote Life As We Knew It, I referred to several parts of it as set pieces (crazy shopping day, Miranda goes skating). There are similar set pieces in the dead and the gone. It's those set pieces that I've been working on for P3B. One example would be the hanging/nonhanging scene, which I've been working on in this blog.

With all the set pieces I've been creating, there's been a struggle between reason and bleakity bleak. LAWKI and d&g certainly have their moments of unpleasantness, but because both books were set in the immediate aftermath of the world's biggest catastrophe, they're about a downward spiral. P3B takes place two or three (more likely three) years after the end of those two books and nothing good has happened during the interim. It's important for me to establish just how bad things are right away, but if I do establish just how bad things are, we're knee deep in the bleakity bleak, which may be off putting to any normal healthy human being (which at least a handful of my readers might be).

In my notes on Sunday, I wrote a brief synopsis of a scene where Caitlin, the heroine understudy of P3B, goes into the woods to gather kindling (I love that kindling) for the campfire. While she's in the woods, a guy lunges at her. She is able to escape, goes back to the camp very upset and scared. She's comforted by Will (he who will end up not being hung), but is told she has to go back into the woods to get the kindling.

This morning I woke up at 4:30 and pushed the scene further. What if Caitlin sees the guy in the woods before he sees her? What if she has a hunting knife on her and plunges it into the guy, then runs back to the camp, gets comforted by Will, and is told she has to go back into the woods to get both the kindling and the knife.

Obviously this is a much more frightening and powerful scene. But it's also very heavy in the bleakity bleak. And this evening, while I was exercycling (my second favorite place to work), I asked myself if Harcourt would really like my heroine to kill someone, even if it was self defense. Then I asked myself if I would really like my heroine to kill someone, nifty and dramatic though it would be. In seventy five books, I've never had one of my heroes or heroines ever actually kill somebody (although a few have bored the readers to death). Given that I'm committed to a fair amount of bleakity bleak anyway, is it really necessary to have Caitlin plunge the knife (nifty and dramatic though it would be).

I'm like the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, holding back wave after wave of the bleakity bleak.

Meanwhile, on the left side of the blog, you may have noticed that LAWKI has not yet been splatted by a tomato in the Coventry Book Award competition. Frankly, I'm quite startled and delighted about this. I do have to confess that one young cynic on that site expressed shock that LAWKI had not yet been voted off and placed full responsibility for this injustice on power voting from my fan club.

I'm very excited to learn I have a fan club. When did this happen and why wasn't I invited to join? Trust me, I am my biggest fan. I'd be a charter member, especially if that allows me to learn the secret handshake. My favorite clubs always have secret handshakes.

Secret handshakes and plywood knives that is.

We Interrupt The End Of Civilization For A Weekend In Las Vegas

My cousins Fran and Nancy and I are planning a long weekend trip to Las Vegas, June 5-8. Nancy (who lives outside Boston) and I have never been there. Fran lives in LA and loves Las Vegas, and will show us the sights.

I'm thinking about flying in on Wednesday June 4, and spending Thursday June 5 paying calls on anyone who'd be happy to see me. Life As We Knew It is currently up for the Nevada Young Readers Award, and will have been out in paperback for a month at that point. the dead and the gone will have come out on June 1 (the same day I'm hosting my Cheap And Easy 75th Book Party). I anticipate being in a very good mood in June.

If any of you work in a school or library or bookstore in or around Las Vegas and are interested in my popping in for a visit, to sign books or talk with students (assuming school is still in session; it would be in New York, but I know different states have different calendars) or giving an informal presentation at a library, please send me an e-mail via the cute little link to the left. If you yourselves don't work in a school, library or bookstore in or around Las Vegas, but know someone who might be interested, please tell them to e-mail me.

I'm off to follow the results of the men's figure skating competition without actually being able to see it until it's on TV tonight.

I think my life could use a little Vegas!

Where There's A Will There's A Way

First thing in the morning is a great time for me to work on the Possible Third Book. My cats usually give me a half hour or so before they insist I get out of bed and feed them. I take that time to ponder, before facing the harsh realities of kitty litter cleaning and the suchlike.

This morning I did some truly fabulous pondering, which is why I'm blogging instead of eating breakfast (which I have to do before the skating starts again in an hour or so).

I focused on two different parts of the book, the first, the infamous hanging/nonhanging scene, and the second, a scene I don't think I've told you about, where Caitlin somehow finds a house with a body in it, and that discovery leads them to find a car with a little bit of gas still in it. I actually did a lot of high quality pondering on that scene this morning, and as a result I discovered that Caitlin had had a sister who died before the whole moon business. Who knew? And somehow all that led me to understand better just what the understudy's position in the troupe was (I mean I've understood pretty much all along, but it gave me a chance to explain it to Caitlin). We're talking some truly fabulous pondering.

But the really big ponder moment came with the hanging/nonhanging. Don't worry- there still won't be a hanging. But it won't be Tyler who gets caught and sent off to the coal mines, along with Sara/Lyra/Lara/Lark. It'll be Will, Caitlin's one true friend in the troupe.

You should see me. I'm making my heroine suffer more and more and I'm doing the happy dance.

Once I realized it was Will who gets caught, the troupe fell into place. They have a three piece band, Jimmy on accordion, someone on banjo and harmonica and someone on drums. I'd had Will on the banjo. I saw the troupe as being created to protect Jimmy (Derrick the engineer's partner), Rashad and Eboni (Derrick's niece and nephew, who he and Jimmy have raised). Then I figured Julie could be Eboni's best friend from school, and Tyler could be Rashad's, so they become part of the troupe, since the alternative for them would be nothing good. Lark gets selected because she can actually sing, and Will for his banjo playing.

But if Will plays the banjo, then he can't go off to the coal mines. I know people are desperate for entertainment, but accordion and drums just don't make it as a band. And if Will doesn't play the banjo, why is he in the troupe?

All this while my cats were patiently waiting to be fed.

So this is what I figured out. Tyler and Rashad were in a band together. Tyler played guitar, but when the troupe idea was first formulated, he taught himself banjo. Will knew them from school, maybe even from the band (maybe Will played bass). Anyway, Will convinces them to take him along because he loved old comedy, and he knew all the old comedy routines by heart (Who's On First, old Burns and Allen stuff). And this skill becomes desirable because it gives Julie something to perform. Derrick's a magician, and Eboni's his assistant, but Julie really needed a job or else how could they justify taking her?

You see, it's not all rules and regulations and keeping down the bleakity bleak. It's show biz.

If Will gets caught, he's now expendable to the troupe. By this point, they pretty much all know the comedy routines just from hearing them over and over. The band keeps its banjo player, and while it loses its lead singer, Caitlin actually can sing and take over that role. Caitlin would be much more likely to go off looking for food with Will, who she at minimum likes (as opposed to Tyler, who's been kind of nasty in my pondering). And (best of all), losing Will has far more emotional resonance for Caitlin than losing Tyler would.

And as Caitlin suffers, so do the readers. They'll love Will too. Ha ha wicked snicker ha!

Having it be Will solves a whole bunch of problems, and doesn't seem to create many new ones. I'd been trying to make Lark likable, so that Caitlin and the readers would be saddened when she's sent off, but I kept bumping into the Megan Issue. In Life As We Knew It, Megan, the one really religious character, dies, and there are readers who object to her death. I think religion is pretty much a non-issue in P3B (although I do think when the troupe goes into a town, at least some of them, Julie in particular, go to whichever church is open), but I didn't want The Martyrdom Of Lark (I can't, for fear of spoilering, discuss the dead & the gone, except to say to those who haven't read it that it has its share of dead bodies).

But if it's Will the readers mourn over, then Lark can be whoever Lark turns out to be. Will is the only member of the troupe Caitlin's gotten truly close to (although I think Julie's pretty nice to her). And Caitlin can not only assume she'll be the girl sent as part of the Keep Will Alive trade, but even volunteer, a moment of personal sacrifice that will show how much she's grown from the somewhat spoiled girl who begged to join the troupe because she didn't want to get married.

I like those sacrifice moments. I liked them in LAWKI and I like them in P3B.

I sent an e-mail to my editor on Friday, with a link to a blog review of LAWKI, and she very nicely e-mailed me back and asked when I might have something from P3B to show her. I think this is a very good sign. As it happens, I've been looking at my calendar to see when I might write P3B. I'm currently favoring starting mid-Feb. (assuming the prewriting keeps going as strongly as it currently is), and then working on through March, a month when my mother only has one doctor appointment. In April, she has a bunch of them, but by then I should be so close to finished that I can work around them.

US Nationals (which I've been enjoying each and every lutz of) ends tomorrow. Monday I'm going to clean the apartment (which I didn't do yesterday like I was supposed to because of all those lutzes), but maybe in the afternoon I'll start putting all the P3B stuff on paper, looking to see what sections need more developing (I can tell you right now, I need more fun stuff, or else P3B is going to make the dead & the gone look like the happy & the healthy). Mid-Feb. will be here before I know it, which is a good thing as far as I'm concerned, what with a birthday to celebrate and spring to look forward to.

Naturally, my cat Emily has chosen this very moment to get on my lap. I must dump her and eat breakfast, since the skating will now start in less than half an hour. Pairs, dance, and women will all be decided today, and I have many people to root for.

I'm sure you do too. But if you have a moment, root for me as well!

Why Is It So Complicated To Keep Things Simple?

I've gone through some serious blog withdrawals over the past few days. Tuesday was particularly difficult, but thanks to the Australian Open and the US National Figure Skating Championships and a time consuming lunch with friends, I've managed not to write anything and give you, oh beloved and running out of patience slowly gained readership, a much deserved break.

While my fingers weren't working, my brain was. I've solved any number of Possible Third Book problems, and created a few more in the process.

I'll start with a quick update on the great hanging/coal mine issue, which I'd mostly worked out on Sunday. It's still no no to the hanging and yes yes to the coal mine. Tyler and Caitlin go food foraging, Tyler sees food on a porch, goes to steal it, but it's a trap, and he gets caught. Porch Owner (it turns out) leaves food out there to trap human varmints, because the town offers a bounty. So Porch Owner takes Tyler in to town, Caitlin tells the troupe, and Jimmy (former lawyer, current accordion player) goes in to see what he can do. When he returns to the troupe, he explains (this is the short version) that he's made a deal- coal mines for Tyler and one of the girls in the troupe, instead of the hanging. Caitlin (who has every reason to believe this) assumes she'll be sent, but instead Jimmy tells Lyra (previously known as Sara- I was watching skating and thinking about Tanith Belbin and I thought, Who the heck is named Tanith, and dumped the 1000 most popular girls name list and created the name Lyra) that she's going. Everyone is shocked, since Lyra is the lead singer in the troupe, but it turns out Lyra's been coughing blood (in my first fab version Lyra was pregnant, but that turned out to be way too complicated), which she didn't realize anybody knew, but as Jimmy puts it, "We know everything." So Lyra was going to have to get dumped anyway, and this way at least she keeps Tyler from getting hung. And Caitlin, the understudy, gets the lead singer job.

All this happens very close to the end of the book. I don't seem to be working P3B chronologically. My guess is I never do, but this is the first time I've kept this kind of diary during the prewriting, so I can't be sure.

Meanwhile I keep creating all these governmental rules and regulations, tinkering with them and playing with them and polishing them so they're nice and shiny, and then I have to remind myself that nobody who reads the book is going to care, so they're all (or at least almost all) a waste of time. And then yesterday, to make things even more difficult, I remembered that the President was referred to a few times in Life As We Knew It, and apparently he was at best ineffectual (he's mentioned only in passing in the dead & the gone). All these wonderful rules and regs are most likely not federal anyway and why was I wasting my time inventing them?

Well, for fun, if you really want to know.

So my new mantra is, Simplify, Simplify. I'll try to give you a quick and easy example, using the beginning of the book (which has been one ding dang problem after another for me).

Okay. We need to establish who Caitlin is, how her world is, and get her to join the troupe, all in as few pages as possible (start as close to the center of the action as you can). I've consistently liked the idea of her joining the troupe to avoid a marriage. I've also consistently liked the idea that the thrust of the book is Caitlin's learning what the real world is like (she's been sheltered by her position as a dentist's daughter) and her gaining compassion for those less well off than she. Only if she has to gain compassion, we need to see her lacking it, and if she lacks compassion on page 1 or thereabouts, the readers aren't going to like her from the get go. That one was quite the headache, and I wasn't making things any easier on myself with endless (albeit delightful) rules and regs.

Then, for Caitlin to know about the troupe, she has to see the troupe, and why would she see the troupe if her father just died? Which I assumed he was going to have to do, because if he was sick and Caitlin left him to join the troupe, then she was a pretty unlovable kind of daughter, and the readers wouldn't like her from the get go for a whole other reason.

So I kept creating more rules and regs as a means of maneuvering my way through this situation. Pretty soon the good old US of A was resembling a cross between Nazi Germany and the Cultural Revolution. Don't get me wrong. I think this is quite nifty. But if P3B takes place a mere two or three years after the end of LAWKI/d&g, then that's a real change in how Americans act, and I just don't think they'd get that rotten that soon. Especially not with an ineffectual federal government.

So I've decided to go traditional. Caitlin's mother died pre-book, and her father has since remarried. Caitlin has, thank goodness, a wicked stepmother! Caitlin herself is sheltered, and perhaps unquestioning, but if there's any nasty to be done, wicked stepmama can do it, so the readers won't dislike Caitlin from the you know when.

Meanwhile, I simplified all those complicated marital rules and regs to one basic one- girls can't be married until they're sixteen. Caitlin's sixteenth birthday is just a few days away. Caitlin's father, her stepmama (who is probably all of eighteen herself), some guy old enough to be Caitlin's father, and Caitlin go to the performance of the troupe. Caitlin loves what she sees. At the evening's end, Guy Old Enough goes back with Caitlin's family and announces that he's satisfied, and will marry Caitlin on her birthday. Caitlin protests privately to her father, but she's told it's a done deal, and it's the only means he has of seeing to it that Caitlin will continue to live in a house with heating and get three meals a day. Besides, his wife says Caitlin has to go.

So now Caitlin is vulnerable and sympathetic. She slips away from the house the next morning, finds the troupe leaders (Derrick and Jimmy), who agree to dump the girl they'd selected to be the new understudy and take Caitlin instead, because she's healthier (although Caitlin may think it's because she can sing). Caitlin goes off with them, still sheltered and with a sense of privilege, but never having been shown as cruel or unfeeling. Thank goodness for a long and honorable tradition of eighteen year old wicked stepmothers.

Now all this may seem easy as apple pie to you, and you may well be thinking, "Why did Susan have to sacrifice that many brain cells for such an obvious solution?" All I can say in my own defense is, "I've been working on other parts of the book as well." That's true, and it leaves out the more obvious answers of, "I'm not as bright as you are," and/or, "Hey watching all that figure skating takes up a lot of time."

But I have been working on other parts of the book, in between split triple twists and twizzles. Not only do I have to figure out characters (pish tush- such a minor consideration) and governmental rules and regs, I've had to work out an evening of vaudeville, and which character does what. Not to mention actual action to take place in between Caitlin Joins The Troupe and The End Of The Book. I love the latter, by the way, more and more, although when I worked on it this morning, a whole new problem rose to complicate my fabulous solution. And between simplifying rules and regs, trying to decide just how much government there is in this post LAWKI world, and keeping the bleakity bleak to an acceptable level, working out the opening of the book has taken longer than it might ordinarily do.

But the important thing, for me at least, is that I love the stuff I'm coming up with. I still have a lot to decide (obviously). I'm hearing the book third person, in part because I can't come up with a justification why Caitlin would be writing everything down. And at first, I saw things in good old fashioned chapters (LAWKI is a diary, and d&g uses a diary format, only third person), but I'm favoring the d&g solution now. My first thought had been dates would no longer have meaning, but I think the troupe is on a specific schedule, and it's immensely important for them reach their destinations and give their performances within a three day framework; if they're late, they'll no longer be paid in food, which is how they keep going. So dates will matter big time after all.

Speaking of dates, I have one with the live streaming of the Junior Free Dance in a little less than an hour. Or is it the Senior Original Dance? Either way, it's time for twizzles.

Feel free to write the rest of P3B without me!

Reprieved!

My brain, which I imagine as a entity with a life all its own, a little gray creature riding around frantically on a tricycle, has been having a great time working on Possible Third Book. "Slow down!" I cry. "Let me sleep!" But my brain has a mind of its own.

P3B, just like Life As We Knew It and the dead and the gone is a ridiculous amount of fun to work on. Characters, plot, situation, logistics, each feeds into the other. It's like making a lanyard, all those different threads coming together to create a colorful, albeit totally useless, cord. Lanyard making was my second best subject at summer camp (being homesick was definitely my number one, but that's a topic for a day when I'm feeling nostalgic, not creative).

Last night I decided to name my characters. I even thought I'd write a blog entry about character naming, which is an art and a science and well worth blogging about. But it turned out naming the characters was just one thread in the lanyard, and once the characters were named, I started to see relationships I hadn't anticipated and the next thing I knew I was back to logistics and that led to hangings and the suchlike.

You know, maybe I'll never write P3B. Maybe I'll just publish a collection of these blogs, and then everybody can read them and write the book for themselves. What a time saver that would be.

Back to names. I had four before last night- Caitlin (the heroine), Will (the potential love interest, if the plot moves in that direction) , Julie, a member of the troupe, and Jimmy, one of the two men in charge of the troupe. By the time I went to bed (with one quick change I made just now), all the other troupe members had been named. I knew I wanted at least one African American kid in the troupe, and I pictured the other half of the gay couple as African American as well. For reasons I no longer remember (hey, this was last night), I decided two of the kids should be African American. I went browsing through Popular Baby Names, and picked Rashad for the boy, and Eboni for the girl. I wanted names that would allow the readers to picture them as African American. I have no idea how much their race will factor in the story, but LAWKI is just so white, and even d&g is lacking in African American characters. Then I decided Rashad and Eboni should be brother and sister. Once I realized that, I figured they should be related to the other gay man, so after a quick trip through the rosters of NFL teams, he got named Derrick and became their uncle.

That left one more girl and one more guy, and oddly enough, they were the hardest to name. But the other girl is, at least for the moment, Sara, and the other boy is Tyler. Tyler, poor kid, is the one I had scheduled to be hung.

The big decision was realizing that Rashad, Eboni, and Derrick form a family, because that got my brain working on logistics, which I devoted an hour to this morning, while my cats were sleeping. I invented The Sweep. It seems that somewhere towards the end of the second year (assuming I keep my beloved opening line- In the third year, things got worse) the government issued far more stringent rules about food entitlements. Before the sweep, Jimmy, Derrick, Rashad and Eboni constituted a family, and just as long as one of them, say Derrick, had a position of importance (say an engineer), they could get the maximum amount of food, shelter, and schooling. But post sweep, since Rashad and Eboni had never been legally adopted, they no longer were regarded as Derrick's children, and out they would go (sharing food is as much a crime as stealing it- you're just not allowed to eat any food that hasn't been allocated to you).

So now Derrick and Jimmy have to figure out a way to keep Rashad and Eboni safe, and that's when they come up with the idea of the traveling band of players. Derrick, it turns out, worked his way through college as a magician. But to make their case more convincing, they decide to take some other kids with them, and make a full evening of vaudeville out of it, so they can be licensed and entitled to food.

A certain amount of this, I figure the readers are going to learn as Caitlin learns it. Of course she'll know about the sweep and the rules, but I needed to figure out how this troupe came into being, and now I do. And it all came from naming the characters.

Meanwhile, back to poor Tyler and his hanging. I started thinking about the towns, and how Jon (a licensed courier) is going from place to place letting the people know that there's a recruitment underway to send young people to the coal mines. And I thought how if I were in one of those towns, I'd want to protect my own, and maybe instead of hanging Tyler, they'd substitute him, by giving him the papers of some teenage boy who had just died a day or two before, and send him off to the coal mines.

Or maybe if I want to make the book really sad, it could be Will, possible love interest to Caitlin.

Ooh ooh, double ooh. I'd been thinking how truly nifty it would be if the town negotiated with the troupe somehow, with maybe Jimmy (a lawyer in his previous life) the one to suggest substituting Tyler/Will in lieu of hanging, and the town agrees (I mean the coal mines are awful, but they're better than being hung), but only if the troupe gives up another of its members. Girls can go to the mines also, and the recruitment says how many boys and how many girls must be sent. So if the town's been told to send four boys, two girls, now one of the boys is Tyler/Will, but the town insists one of the troupe girls goes also.

I pictured what this does to the four girls, especially when Derrick declares that Eboni will not be sacrificed, which leaves Caitlin, Julie, and Sara as possibilities. Now if it's Will, maybe Caitlin wouldn't mind too much going along with him...

And this is how my mind works. As soon as I typed it, I changed my mind. It won't be Will. I'm sticking with Tyler, because I don't want Caitlin to offer to go, noble and self-sacrificing and romantic though it would be. I'm not sending her off to the coal mines, because if I do, I lose any chance of an even mildly happy ending (already written in my mind), and if Caitlin is willing to go to the coal mines, then Julie and Sara would say," So long Caitlin, it's been swell," but they sure wouldn't volunteer to take her place. And if Caitlin doesn't agree, and it's Will, her potential romantic interest, well then Caitlin doesn't come off very well. So sorry Tyler, it's back to you. The readers won't know who's going to end up going (I assume it'll be a lottery of some sort amongst the girls), and given that Eboni is excused, Caitlin's my heroine, Julie has suffered enough (coming as she does from d&g), poor Sara gets to join Tyler on the coal mine express.

Of course since I was planning on having Sara twist her ankle and be left on the side of the road anyway, she never was going to make it to the end of P3B.

The other great thing about not hanging Tyler is I still have one big deal death available to me. Yum yum.

So that's where things are right now, Tyler is reprieved, and Sara is off to the coal mines (which promotes Caitlin from understudy to full member of the troupe- there are a lot of logistics there I'm still working on).

Now here's the best part. I'm having lunch with friends tomorrow and Tuesday, and the US National Figure Skating Championship has already begun and I'm going to be watching as much as I can on the internet. So I promise that unless something really really really important (like the total failure of my e-mail address) happens, I won't blog maybe even until Thursday (I almost never blog on Wednesdays). I may not even think between now and Thursday, with all that skating and socializing going on. So my apologies for blogging three days in a row, but my assurances that I won't blog for the next three days.

Consider yourselves reprieved!

E-Mail Issue

I was informed this afternoon that the "Email Me" box to the left wasn't working earlier this week. When I tried it this evening, it didn't work.

I've signed up with a different e-mail account and have linked it to the blog (all by myself!).

If anyone sent me an e-mail via the link during the week and hasn't heard from me (and I'm really pretty good about answering my e-mails within 24 hours), please try again. I love getting e-mails from all of you, and I hate the thought that your messages have been lost.

For any of you with whom I've been corresponding, please switch to the new address: susanpfeffer@mail.com

Thanks for your patience.