Last night, instead of sleeping, I pondered inscriptions for The Shade Of The Moon. I still have about a month before I'll be going to San Antonio for the International Reading Association convention, which will most likely be my first opportunity to inscribe copies (in this case, ARCs) of the book.

But I'd like to get some sleep during that month.

Anyway, I came up with The future is yours. There are some specific good things about it. I can write the word The with a capital "T" and it looks like The. My small "f"s are respectable, and my small "y"s are practically my favorite small letter to write ever. My absolute favorite small letters to write are "usan eth feffer" on the backs of checks I'm depositing, but that's neither here nor there. And I like the little do it yourself grammar lesson- no apostrophes in yours- just a simple "s" right where it belongs.

I got out of bed and wrote "The future is yours" a couple of times, to make sure I wouldn't forget it. This morning I looked it over checking my capital "T"s a few times. But then I thought, Maybe it should be "The future is ours." That's friendlier, and it's a little more in keeping with the book.

For those who've forgotten, I've inscribed the previous three books this way:

Life As We Knew It: Always have hope

The Dead And The Gone: Never lose faith

This World We Live In: Trust in tomorrow

So "The future is yours" or "The future is ours" should fit in reasonably well.

Let me know which you think is better. Or if you prefer, send me a check, and your bank will show you my "usan eth feffer" just as soon as I deposit it!



*The world's easiest poll question would be: Who is the bestest author ever? with only one choice.

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Under any circumstance, March is my least favorite month of the year, but this March is just ridiculous. It's like the calendar got stuck somewhere in January. There's snow, followed by the beloved January thaw, followed by more snow, with a little sleet thrown in for good measure.

The beloved January thaw is a little less lovable in March. As are the snow and the sleet.

As you undoubtedly recall, since you remember every single word I write and if not why not, I reported before the January thaw that Amazon had The Shade Of The Moon available for pre-order, with a publication date of September 3. On the off chance you've forgotten the exact wording, here's my entry with the exact wording.

Yesterday, I got an email from my publisher asking if I would like to participate in the Decatur Book Festival. You betcha, replies I, delighted at the opportunity.

But there's a little oddity in the email invitation. My publisher mentions that The Shade Of The Moon is coming out in August.

The last I'd heard, August and September were two different months. Of course I used to believe the same of January and March. So I did what all up to date writers do. I zipped on over to Amazon and Barnes and Noble to see when my book is scheduled to come out. And while there isn't much they agree about, they both felt strongly that The Shade Of The Moon has an August 13 publication date.  See? See see?

I have no idea why my publisher has moved the publication date up by three weeks. Maybe it's because they're so darn excited about the book, they can't wait to have their very own copies. Or maybe they're so darn concerned about the book, they want to get it out there in August when no one is around to notice. Or maybe they did it simply to confuse me.

Whatever their reasoning, it's a good thing I never got around to putting a countdown clock over on the right side of the blog. Although now that I've learned three weeks can vanish in the blink of an email, maybe I'll do it now.

It might help April get here a little sooner!

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I got an email from my agent, which conveniently arrived after the Pairs championship ended and before the Men's began, saying Sharp Point Press, publisher of the three moon books in Complex Chinese, have made an offer to publish The Shade Of The Moon.

Needless to say, I accepted. I accepted faster than a Patrick Chan quad toe loop.

So at some point, American The Shade Of The Moon will get to party with Complex Chinese The Shade Of The Moon.

And no doubt, Scooter will crash the party!

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Even with them, I'm not getting much done this week. It's World Figure Skating Championship time, and while I don't have access to watching them on American TV, it turns out Latvian TV is showing them in their entirety.

We're talking about 35 women's short programs. Well, I'm talking about them, but not to you.

Anyway, it's Zamboni time for the short dance programs, so I figured I'd pop in here and give you links to the work I did last week.

For starters, here's a whole bunch of writers talking about the appeal of post-apocalyptic fiction. I think it's safe to say the whole bunch of writers know considerably more than I do on the subject, but I go first, perhaps because my entry is the shortest, or more likely because I submitted mine first because it was the shortest.

Oh, maybe it's because I'm the oldest. It's certainly not because I'm the best speller (heck, I'm probably not even the best seller). I had to go back to find out how to spell post-apocalyptic. The "post" part I was pretty sure of, but "apocalyptic" renders me apoplectic.

Meanwhile, in preparation for my upcoming visit to the International Reading Association convention in San Antonio, I wrote a guest blog post about my dream panel. See all the pretty pictures? Not the one of me. The other pretty pictures. I learned how to put pictures into a Word doc just for them.

Okay. Enough of last week's accomplishments. I hear Latvian in the background. The third flight of ice dancers is about to Yankee polka their way into my heart.

I sincerely hope I'm already in yours!

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I figured while we're waiting for smoke from the Vatican, I'd catch you up on various things in my life. I'm on call, in case the cardinals decide to go out of their comfort zone and name me pope so I have plenty of time (probably a millenuium or two) to kill.

Shiny New TV Set: I treated myself to a shiny new TV set for the den. It came this morning, and in fact, I have it on right now, since I'm on smoke alert. The only way there was room enough for the shiny new cable box is to put the shiny new TV set on top of it. Let's hope Scooter never discovers this.

Insomnia: I've cut down substantially on my sleeping pill use. I've discovered if I turn off the computer, read something not particularly fascinating for about 20 minutes, go to bed, breathe deeply saying, "Sleep, Sleep" in my mind, I fall asleep pretty fast, just as long as Scooter is resting next to me. I don't know what will happen when the weather warms up, and Scooter returns to sleeping on the living room sofa, Maybe I'll buy a stuffed cat, wrap it in a heating pad, and see if that will fool me.

Scooter: Last week, for reasons best known to him, Scooter thought 4 AM was the ideal play time. He attempted to convince me by knocking over a little glass bowl I'd bought in Paris in 1984. Sadly for him, the sound of breakage didn't convince me. Sadly for me, the sound of breakage was because the bowl broke. The stuffed cat with the heating pad is looking better and better.

My Career: I was kept busy last week, being Author Of The Week over at Bookiesfan. I also wrote a guest blog for one place and wrote about my high school library for another, and answered emails and the suchlike. Oh, and I did the "first pages" which used to be called galley proofs for The Shade Of The Moon, looking for typos. I caught one mistake I'd made. I had Alex say something to Jon early on in the  book, and then I had Jon remembering that Mom had said it to him. The galleys took two full days of intense concentration, and the high point was cleaning up that Alex/Jon/Mom business. A writer's life is not always glamorous.

The Shade Of The Moon Inscription: Despite all your assistance, I remain undecided. I don't know if I want to use Fight For Your Future, even though Jon actually does say something like that. Capital F is not one of my better letters (as opposed to small y, which I write fabulously, which is why I selected Always Have Hope for Life As We Knew It inscriptions), and Fight For Your Future sounds a little weird and presuptuous on my part, especially if I'm signing copies to grownups, who've probably done as much fighting for their futures as they care to. So I'm still open to suggestions.

What I'm Currently Reading: Mother Finds A Body by Gypsy Rose Lee, as part of my This Book Has Been On My Bookshelves For Decades And It's About Time I Read It program. The book I just finished reading, The World War II Combat Film by Jeanine Basinger fell into the same program, but the book I read before that, Catherine Howard by David Loades was brand new.

My Thyroid Or Lack Thereof: The good news is I don't miss it. I'm also cautiously optimistic the scar won't be particularly glaring (I'll know better when I work up the courage to change the bandages and see for myself).The bad news is some of the weight I'd lost is returning to its natural habitat. I went online this morning to read about weight gain following thyroidectomies and learned the only way to prevent it is to give up eating every single food I like. Instead, I'm looking into a thyroid transplant.

My Mother: She remains in good health, but she says being old is hard. Her willingness to listen to my babbling ("Should I get a new outfit to wear to IRA and ALA?" "And then Scooter broke my bowl...") is close to saintly.

Hey, maybe those cardinals should name her pope!

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Well, I am at Bookiesfan over on Facebook.

As far as I'm concerned, this is a great honor. Expect me to commemorate it for decades to come. I still celebrate April 30, aka Susan Beth Pfeffer Day in Winfield, WV back in 1986, and a week lasts a lot longer than a day.

Bookiesfan is really an interesting place, with or without me. With me, there's a giveaway (I'm doing the giving). You have a chance at either the audiobook of This World We Live In (read by the wonderful Emily Bauer, who also read Life As We Knew It), complete with a signed bookplate, or a copy of Blood Wounds, also with a signed bookplate. I sure hope people win these things, because they're sitting on the sofa table in my living room waiting for good homes.

Also on Friday, I'll be answering questions over there. I hope there are a lot of them, because I happen to know an extraordinary number of answers. Here's just a handful of them for future reference:

3.1416

The capital of South Dakota

Regan, Goneril and Cordelia

General Joseph Hooker

8 + Pluto and a whole bunch of others that don't have cute names like Pluto, which will always be a planet to me (I deserve extra credit for that one)

So look us over at Bookiesfan and have a good booktime while you're there!

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Last night I realized if I'm going to be signing ARCS of The Shade Of The Moon at IRA in San Antonio and ALA in Chicago, I'd better have a short catchy phrase to inscribe in each copy.

For Life As We Knew It, I sign, Always have hope. For The Dead And The Gone, I sign, Never lose faith. For This World We Live In, I sign, Trust in tomorrow. That way I never have to worry about what to sign, and I can avoid those With Best Wishes kinds of things.

My first thought, given that nice big hunk of fire on the jacket was. Don't play with matches, but I decided against that pretty quickly. Then I thought about Fight For The Future. Granted it was four words, while the others were three, but it seemed decent enough, so I wrote it out a few times on the back of an envelope, to see what it would look like.

Sadly, it didn't look like much. My capital "F"s are serviceable and my small "f"s are okay, but my "the"s have always been problematic.They look like soft sloopy capital "X's with an "e" attached. They've looked that way since junior high, when I probably thought it was a charming affectation. Now it's just how I write the word, "the," which is the kind of word one writes a lot, even first thing in the morning.

So when I woke up this morning (less than an hour ago, and definitely at the insistence of Scooter), I came up with: Fight to believe and Learn to believe. No "the"s in either one. I did, when I handwrote them out, leave the "i" out of believe, but I'm confident I can remember to put it there smack where it belongs when I'll need to. I really do know how to spell "believe."

IRA is mid-April, so I still have 6 weeks to solve this dilemma. But I'll start by throwing myself on your early morning mercies. Let me know, by way of polling, if you have a strong preference for Fight or Learn, or if you have an alternative suggestion or you have confidence someone else does, even if that someone else might be me.

Just try to leave the word "the" out of it. And thank you in advance!

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Because he gave me new bandages and told me to come back in a month.

And Dr. Thyroid must love me because he made an appointment to see me tomorrow and talk about my calcium levels.

And my friends (including you) must love me because you listen to all this incredibly boring medical stuff.

And Scooter must love me because every morning he finds just the right spot on my throat and steps on top of it.

And my Chinese publisher must love me because I got my very first royalty check from them for Life As We Knew It and The Dead And The Gone.

And my publisher must love me, because they just invited me to autograph The Shade Of The Moon ARCs at ALA this June.

It's wonderful to be loved!

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I see the surgeon on Wednesday, presumably so he can admire his handiwork, but I called his office today to get the results of the biopsy they did while removing my late lamented thyroid.

The result was benign. My kind of result.

I'm definitely on the merry road to recovery. I didn't even feel the need for a nap today and it hardly hurts when I swallow. In fact, the only way you'd know I had surgery is my neck bears a strong resemblance to that of the Bride Of Frankenstein's. I'm hoping that's not a permanent condition.

I got an email this evening from my editor asking me to reread The Shade Of The Moon (the equivalent of galley proofs, I guess, only without actual galleys) by March 11. This is something of an improvement over their asking me questions about copy for the front flap on the day of my surgery.

My thyroid may be gone, but my ability to whine and kvetch remains as strong as ever!

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Yesterday was my birthday, and I had a wonderful time.

I went to brunch with some friends at Nina, and then we went to see the American String Quartet perform. Good friends, good food, good music, and except for the howling wind, good weather. The best birthday I could hope for.

Today I'm keeping busy doing some unexpected writing. I got an email from my editor on Saturday saying they'd just discovered The Shade Of The Moon was going to have five empty pages at the back, and could I do something to fill those pages up?

One would have thought (and one speaks for all humanity) a publisher could have foreseen this particular issue before those five empty pages began looming. But what does one know?

Now, as it happens, I'm feeling kind of fond of my publisher these days because they decided the next time they reissue the moon books in paperback, they're going to put my discussion topics for each one in each one. I think this is an extremely high class thing to do, so smooches for my publisher, even if they didn't realize there'd be five empty pages at the end of The Shade Of The Moon.

So this morning, before I scurried over to my mother's to pick up her not one but two loads of laundry (the first of which is making merry in my merry old washer even as we speak, well, we're not speaking, but if we were load the first is in the washing machine), I came up with five discussion topics for The Shade Of The Moon, to occupy one of those five empty pages. This was actually trickier than I'd anticipated, since I didn't want anyone scurrying to the back of The Shade Of The Moon and finding out various plot twists by reading discussion topics. But I think I came up with some good book-specific but not spoileresque things to discuss.

My editor suggested I write an author's note to take up some of those empty pages, and that seems like a fine idea to me, since I'm the author and I know how to note. So after I finish this entry, I'm going to put my recycling in my car (I couldn't recycle today because it's a national holiday in this nation at least and this is the nation where I do my recycling) and throw out my garbage, and then I'll write a fabulous four page author's note all about The Four Little Moon Books And How They Grew.

The reason I'm trying to get all this stuff done today is because tomorrow morning (after, I hope, I do my recycling and get my mother's clean clothes to her) I'm zipping over to the hospital to get my thyroid yanked.
I'm told the technical name for this surgery isn't getting your thyroid yanked, but as a Yankee fan, I find that name kind of comforting.

I'd never given my thyroid a lot of thought, but apparently, during the long years of neglect, the thing's been growing nodes. Big nodes, little nodes, all kinds of nodes. They never bothered me, let me tell you, but the entire medical community thinks I'll be better off thyroid (and therefore thyroid node) free.

The most exciting part about this is I get to stay in the hospital for 23 hours (after which, presumably the insurance company comes to throw me out). I've never stayed in a hospital overnight before. My mother was in this hospital one night, and I really really liked the painting they had on her wall, so I'm hoping every room has the exact same painting and I can steal it. It was a scene of a park on a rainy autumn day, and I've thought about it wistfully for quite a while now.

After the 23 hours are finished, I go back home (my saintly friend Marci is taking me there and picking me up) and take thyroid pills for the rest of my life. This is not what you call life changing surgery, but it is making me get my recycling done and the suchlike, because I won't be able to lift anything heavy for a while, and I read a lot of newspapers.

Since I don't know how long it's going to take me to recuperate, I don't know when I'll feel like blogging or answering emails or behaving like a normal social human being. So if I don't answer your Happy Birthday Get Well Soon comments or emails, please know I appreciate them and will be glad to let you know how things are going when I feel up to it.

And now, I must move my mother's first load of laundry out of the drier and plop the second load in and prepare the newspapers for recycling and the garbage for throwing and write a four page author's note, while I still have a thyroid to call my own!

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Last spring I put up three of my older titles (The Year Without Michael, Evvie At Sixteen and The Ring Of Truth)  onto Kindle and Nook. While it doesn't cost anything to do the listings, I paid the excellent  E-Quality Press to do the actual labor.

Then I sat around, wrote The Shade Of The Moon, played vast numbers of hands of Freecell and waited to earn out my investment.

Well, I finally did. Or more accurately, The Year Without Michael did. It's not surprising it's proven to be by far the most popular of the three titles, since it was by far the most popular of the three titles when they were first published.

So thanks to Michael, and with the help of E-Quality Press, I've put two more books up, Thea At Sixteen and Claire At Sixteen.

The publishing world sure is an interesting place. I wrote Life As We Knew It and it sold quite nicely, but even so I had to beg and plead to get my publisher to accept The Dead And The Gone. The Dead And The Gone sold quite nicely, but even so I had to beg and plead to get my publisher to accept This World We Live In. This World We Live In sold quite nicely, but even so I had to beg and plead to get my publisher to accept The Shade Of The Moon.

But back in the day, I had lunch with my then editor and I said, "I'd like to write a five book series about four sisters when each one is 16 and then a fifth book about their mother when she was 16," and my editor said, "Great. I'll have the contracts for you by dessert."

Possibly it wasn't that speedy, but there wasn't any begging and pleading either. I got to write the five books as a cohesive unit, a family saga novel divided into five parts. And I loved it. It was one of my favorite writing experiences. I loved the characters. I loved their interactions. I loved getting each of the books to start with Claire saying, "What a dump." I loved a setup in Evvie At Sixteen paying off three books later. I loved figuring out after the books were published that Character A wasn't in love with Character B all that time, but with Character C instead.

I don't have a lot of fantasies that the e-book sales for Thea At Sixteen and Claire At Sixteen are going to pay for my rapidly approaching retirement. My hope is that they'll sell a few copies and The Year Without Michael will continue to sell a few more copies, and then if all that adds up to enough money to earn back my investment, I'll put up Sybil At Sixteen and Meg At Sixteen.

At this point, these e-books are pretty much vanity press options for me. But I really love The Sebastian Sisters and it makes me happy to add their links to my blog.

Thea At Sixteen can be purchased for your Kindle and your Nook.

Claire At Sixteen can be purchased for your Kindle and your Nook.

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According to German Amazon, it has been since October.  I had to do a little bit of prodding to get my copies, and then it took a few weeks post prodding for them to get here, and then I admit to having been distracted by various other things before staging the Welcome To Your New Home Oh Little Die Welt Wie Wir Sie Kannten Party this afternoon.

But stage it I did.

First I cleared off the table. That was enough to get Scooter interested.

He checked things out impatiently, but the party hadn't begun.*

Then I introduced little Die Welt to its Buxtehude Bulle Award winning Die Welt big brother.

A well attended German Moonbook family reunion was next.







Little Die Welt was eager to meet the rest of the international Life As We Knew It clan.







Scooter, happy the festivities had begun, checked things out.


But rather than seeing the guests off (and helping the hostess carry them back to the den), Scooter withdrew for a quiet nap.

Not a bad idea!








*Actually, the camera went off by itself and the picture is out of focus, but Scooter is so cute I decided to post it anyway.

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I got an email the other day from my editor with the copy they're going to use on the back of the advance reading copies of The Shade Of The Moon.

It’s been more than two years since Jon Evans and his family left Pennsylvania, hoping to find a safe place to live, yet Jon remains haunted by the deaths of those he loved. His prowess on a soccer field has guaranteed him a home in a well-protected enclave. But Jon is painfully aware that a missed goal, a careless word, even falling in love, can put his life and the lives of his mother, his sister Miranda, and her husband, Alex, in jeopardy. Can Jon risk doing what is right in a world gone so terribly wrong?

Don’t miss the first three books in this riveting series!

[Show small jacket shots of the first three books]

“Absorbing from first page to last.” Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“You will read it in one sitting, fighting back tears as you bite your nails.”—www.teenreads.com

“Everything Pfeffer writes about seems wrenchingly plausible.”—Booklist (starred review)

Since this is the copy that I wrote for the book (except for that "riveting" part, which I think is quite dandy), I think it is very fine copy indeed.

I'm also pleased to say I'll be signing some of those ARCs at the International Reading Association's Annual Convention  Sunday April 21, in San Antonio, TX, at the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt booth. I will be on a panel discussion of dystopian lit that day as well.

'll try very hard to be riveting at both!

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A very nice (and no doubt very talented) young reader sent me an email with an attachment of a song she wrote and recorded, inspired by Life As We Knew It.

She says the only way I can hear it is through iTunes. It's certainly true Windows Media won't let me, no matter how hard I beg it.

So I've downloaded iTunes (which no doubt I've done previously, since I've certainly bought things off of iTunes), only I don't know how to get the song from the email to iTunes to play it. And every time I try saving the iTunes file (or whatever it's called) I'm told I don't have permission and do I want to put it in the Staples file, so I say yes, but I have no idea where the Staples file is.

I know you know how to do all this, so I'm asking for your help. Explain it to me in simple easy to understand language (preferably English). Remember always that you're dealing with someone whose greatest technological accomplishment is posting videos of Scooter on this blog.

Thank you in advance. After I succeed in listening to the song, I'll come back and tell you how wonderful it is!

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Remember that blog entry I wrote complaining about the copy written for Amazon's The Shade Of The Moon page? On the incredibly off chance you don't, here's the link and here's the copy:

As soon as I pressed the Publish button, I decided while complaining to you, oh lovely you, is a lot of fun, I might get a better result by letting my publisher learn of my dissatisfaction.

So I emailed my poor beleaguered editor and gently, very very gently, let her know what I thought. Only I didn't just say what I thought. I offered an alternative version.

My editor responded by asking all the people who needed to be asked, and by golly, they changed the Amazon copy to what I suggested.

Naturally I kept the eagerly awaited part. My publisher added the rest of the first paragraph, figuring there were people who might want to know what the setup for the book actually is.

---

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I can't speak for all writers (although I do when I say we want more money and we want it now), but I know the question I'm most frequently asked is where do I get my ideas.

Ideas come from all sorts of places, but as those of you who read every precious word of this precious blog know, the idea for Life As We Knew It came from my watching the movie Meteor.

I love movies. They're my favorite form of storytelling. And I have a particular fondness for film noir.

This very Thursday night at 8:00 PM Eastern, Turner Classic Movies (or TCM as it's known to its crazed cult following) is showing  one of my all time favorite noirs, Cry Danger. I'm particularly happy about this because it's not available on DVD and I'm generally awake at 8:00 PM (TCM that night is showing another couple of my all time favorites, The Breaking Point and The Prowler, but I'll be asleep by then which is okay since they're both available on DVD and I own them both and watch them regularly).

Back to Cry Danger. In it, Dick Powell stars as Rocky Mulloy, which is in and of itself not particularly interesting (nothing against Dick Powell), except that it's kind of fun to note how many noir heroes have names with "ck" in them. Rick, Nick, Mickey, Rocky. Anyway, Dick Powell is perfectly fine, but character actor Richard Erdman steals the movie, and you should watch it for him, should you happen to be free Thursday night at 8:00 PM Eastern and have access to Turner Classic Movies.

All right, you say (I can hear you saying it). Susan's a big movie fan and in particular a big film noir fan and most unexpectedly a big Richard Erdman fan. But what does that have to do with me?

Well, probably nothing, unless you too are a big Richard Erdman fan. But as it happens, I was "inspired" by Cry Danger quite a number of years ago, and kinda sorta lifted its premise and turned it into a middle group novel called The Pizza Puzzle.

Now Cry Danger is about robberies and ex-cons and beautiful women and alcoholics and night clubs and gangsters and trailer camps and the post-war period., all in 79 minutes because film noirs don't waste time. The Pizza Puzzle is about middle school friendships and family problems and teachers and pizza, so unless you know that the latter is directly "inspired" by the former, you'd never guess it, and the only way you'd know is if I told you, which I just did, but I trust you'll keep it to yourself, and don't tell the folks who made Meteor about Life As We Knew It either, because I'd prefer if they never found out.

Sadly (well, I'm sad about it) The Pizza Puzzle never earned out its advance (although it sold 100,000 in paperback, which should have helped). But I did get a $15,000.00 advance for it 18 years ago, and I'm sure the money came in handy at the time (to be honest, it feels like a lot more than 18 years ago, but the date on the contract is Feb. 1995 and my calculator assures me that's 18 years ago give or take a couple of weeks which my calculator didn't care about).

So if you happen to be free Thursday night at 8:00 PM Eastern, my recommendation is you sit back, relax, watch Cry Danger for 79 noir heaven minutes, and have a couple of slices of pizza while you're at it!

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In a rare fit of megalomania, I went googling about the other day and came across Life As We Knew It vocabulary lessons.

I want you to know I knew the meaning of every single word, although I'd say 98% of them are not in everyday use around here.

Sadly though, I stank at the Life As We Knew It vocabulary games. My timing at Scatter was a world's worst, and I couldn't even master the rules of Space Race. But then again, I was never good at fill in the blanks. Give me an essay question and I could breeze through to an A (my handwriting was a lot better in those days, which also helped). I always had a 50/50 chance at True/False, and I could generally outguess the test maker in multiple choices. But when I was actually supposed to know something...well, the odds were I didn't.

But who needs vocabulary when one is a brilliant financier (one of seven words that violates the I before E rule, and I can name all of them, should you ever ask), such as I (before or after E).

Yes, at long last, I have found my true calling. I am a financial whiz kid (okay, a very elderly kid, but a whiz none the less and whiz senior doesn't have quite the same ring to it).

You want proof? Well, don't expect visuals, because I forgot to take pictures. But here's what happened.

Towards the very very very end of 2012, I got my last and thankfully smallest royalty check. It was for $7.11.

Now what does one do with a check for $7.11? One cashes  it and, and buys 7 scratch off lottery tickets (pocketing the 11 cents as a commission).

I wanted to buy the 7 lottery tickets at a 7/Eleven, only it turned out the one we had around here had gone out of business when I wasn't looking. So I bought them as a gas station/convenience store instead. Seven bucks, seven tickets.

I scratched off one a night for a week. And three of the seven were winning tickets.

Yes, out of the initial $7.00 investment, I made $9.00. I know this for an absolute fact, since I went back to that very gas station yesterday and cashed those suckers in.

According to my calculator, this gave me a 29% rate of return on my investment, assuming dividing 2 by 7 is the way to figure these things out.

Given that I'm getting 0% interest on money in the bank, and my bond funds aren't doing much better, and the stock market goes up and down with dizzying regularity, I think it's safe to say my lottery ticket purchases were the best investment I made all year (and maybe in my entire life, except for that once when I bought a dollar ticket for one of those multi-million lotteries and I got four of the numbers right and won $23.00, but that was a once in a lifetime sort of thing, unlike this shrewd scratch off investment). So I am now planning to take all the money I have in the bank and all my bond funds and all my stocks and buy scratch off lottery tickets from that very same gas station and live off the proceeds for my much anticipated extremely long life.

And because I hate to be selfish, I'm offering you the exact same chance at a 29% rate of return. Yes, send me all your money, and I'll buy scratch off lottery tickets for you as well.

Send your checks or money orders or even better, cash to:

Susan Pfeffer
@ Bernard Madoff
Butner Federal Correctional Institution
Federal Bureau of Prisons
North Carolina, USA

Don't hesitate a single moment. Who knows how long that gas station is going to have winning tickets!

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Among the many resolutions I fail at is my resolution to stop complaining. Most of my other resolutions I break in the privacy of my apartment, where only Scooter notices, and as long as I keep my resolution to feed him whenever he wants, he overlooks the breakage.

I complain about my publisher a lot. It doesn't matter which publisher (and in the many decades I've been working, there have been many publishers). They do something I don't like, I complain about it. Since I have friends who are writers, I complain to them and they complain to me about their publishers and it all works out. If my complaints veer on hysteria, I complain to my agent, and if need be, she complains to my publisher, thus earning her 15%. And now, thanks to our friend the internet, I complain to all of you, without having to listen to your complaints or pay you 15%.

Since starting this blog, I know I've complained about waiting to hear from my publisher and waiting to get paid by my publisher. Those are traditional complaints, not worth anyone's 15%. I also probably complained about the jacket copy for This World We Live In, since it gives away a major portion of the last part of the book, for no reason except to make it easier for students to fake their book reports based on book jackets, if they still do that sort of thing, which they probably don't, thanks to our friend the internet.

But I don't remember ever complaining about the copy that my publisher sent to Amazon before. I do believe this is going to be a brand new complaint. A heartfelt brand new complaint.

It's the copy for The Shade Of The Moon, and to put it in simple, easy to understand, language, it stinks.

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Well, I admit I do like that eagerly awaited part; that was pretty good. And the copy is kind of okay through the dreaded "grubtown," although I don't see any great need for the quotation marks (which get dumped a sentence later anyway).

But the rest. Oy, oy, and double oy.

Nasty government, not even purifying the ash-polluted air. Of course, the nasty government doesn't purify anyone's air. It's just in the enclave, buildings have air purifiers.

Nor does Jon buy into the idea of the innate superiority of clavers. He's not a Nazi. He accepts the concept that people who do more essential work are entitled to greater rewards. Nothing innate about it.

Then we bump into the green-eyed girl. While it's true, Sarah's the only character in The Shade Of The Moon whose eye color gets mentioned (most likely, she's the only character in any of my books whose eye color gets mentioned- you know me and descriptions), I don't think the color of her eyes is all that essential to the story. I gave her sandy hair too, but you don't see them mentioning that.

All right. The green-eyed girl believes in equality etc. It's not quite that simple, but I'm not going to argue. But couldn't the anonymous person who wrote this tripe come up with anything more dramatic than asking if Jon can afford to be as idealistic?

It would give away nothing of the plot to start (well, after that eagerly awaited part) by saying it's been four years, yet Jon Evans is haunted by the memory of people he has lost. Haunted is a nice strong word. Then you throw in the lucky one stuff, leaving out the purified air nonsense. Instead of casually saying his family lives in a grubtown, stress the difficulty of his living away from his family (and you know, it might not hurt to mention that family includes his sister Miranda, to remind people who exactly Jon is). Leave out the innate superiority, and put in something about Jon's insecurity, his knowing that he doesn't really belong in the enclave. Keep the green-eyed girl if you must, but instead of asking if Jon can afford all that idealism, mention that his family's lives would be at risk if he allows himself to believe as she does.

The cover shows burning buildings, for goodness sake. The copy should reflect some of that drama.

Hmm. Maybe instead of complaining to you, I should ask my publisher to let me rewrite the copy.

As the saying goes, it's better to burn a building than curse the darkness!

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I went to the library on Wednesday and took out a biography of Clarence Darrow. He's one of those people who's always interested me, and I haven't read anything about him in a long time.

Thursday, I read the preface to the book, which mentioned Leopold and Loeb. Natural enough, since that was one of Darrow's most famous cases.

Friday, I ran errands. When I came home, I learned about the shootings at Sandy Hill Elementary School.

The most obvious descendants of Leopold and Loeb are the Columbine killers, because there were two of them. But all these young men who kill for no reason are from the Leopold and Loeb family tree.

Leopold and Loeb murdered Bobby Franks in 1924. Things were a little different then than now. For one thing, the weaponry is different. Machine guns were coming into fashion, but you couldn't simply stroll into a Walmart and buy one.

And while there was no shortage of violence in 1924, it didn't permeate the entertainment world the way it does today.

Think about it. Violence for fun is everywhere. Movies, TV shows (especially cable), video games. The most popular American sport, football, is all about physical attack.

The first thing a writer of fiction learns is that a story has to have conflict. Decades ago, when I was reading what were then called teenage novels, the books were essentially romances, and the conflict was between a girl and a boy, a girl and her best friend (about the boy) or a girl and her parents (always about the boy). At book's end, the girl would have the boy, and her best friend, and her parents. Kiss kiss. The end.

I can't talk intelligently about today's YA novels because I don't read them. But my perception is they've moved a long way from a girl and a boy, kiss kiss, the end.

What I can talk about are my last five books. I don't recall Miranda witnessing much violence in Life As We Knew It, but the entire book is about death. I joke about how much I enjoyed killing off all humanity, but the truth of the matter is, the book is about the death of all humanity.

I progressed in The Dead And The Gone. I show suicides, lots of corpses, and I had two young, important to the story, characters die in particularly unpleasant ways.

By This World We Live In, Miranda doesn't merely observe death. She causes it.

Blood Wounds has two separate reenactments of violent death. The victims include young children.

Finally, in The Shade Of The Moon, Jon witnesses slaughter, including one particularly horrific death outside of a school.

A very quick count of the number of named characters I've killed in those 5 books is 16. I couldn't begin to estimate how many unnamed ones, extras, if you will, die. Kill kill. The end.

Again, I can't speak for anyone else. But my truth is I like writing violent scenes. I find them much easier to write than romantic ones. They solve all the need for conflict in a story, because violence is by definition, conflict. And they make it easy for me to portray my main character's emotions. Terror, heartbreak, guilt, shock, rage, they're all right there.

I'm not saying books intended for young teenagers shouldn't have violence in them. Kids nowadays have grown up in world of violent entertainment. They would never sit still for the books I read at their age. And the important thing is for kids to read.

As Mayor Jimmy Walker said, back in 1932, no girl was ever seduced by a book. Clarence Darrow's defense of Leopold and Loeb notwithstanding, no boy ever killed because of one either.

But I think it's naive to believe that the pervasive use of violence in entertainment has no effect on young people. And I'm not happy thinking about how my books are part of that culture of violence.

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Usually I hate dealing with copy edited manuscripts. A great deal of whining and cursing goes on when I work on them.

But this version doesn't seem bad at all. The comments are typed in and there aren't a lot of them, and a very quick skimming of the manuscript didn't reveal any that provoked me.

I don't even have to mail the manuscript back. Just email my editor to let her know what I think about the various suggestions.

Both my editor's email to me about the manuscript and the handwritten note I got with the manuscript mentioned that Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (aka my publisher) wants to have ARCs of The Shade Of The Moon available for the spring conferences, ALA and the suchlike.Which is fine by me. So we're moving along swiftly (at least by publishing standards).

For those of you who have dreamed of seeing a copy edited page of The Shade Of The Moon (and who amongst you hasn't), I've scanned one into my handy dandy computer just to bring you joy and happiness and anything else you might feel upon seeing a copy edited page of The Shade Of The Moon. If you hate spoilers and yet are tempted, don't worry. It's not a plot revealing kind of a page, but if you don't care to read it, feel free to look for joy and happiness somewhere else.

I'll go looking right along with you!

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I thought I would zip through the copy edited version of The Shade Of The Moon, get it all read and polished by the end of the week. Not a job I was looking forward to, but not one I was dreading either.

Well, that fantasy is out the window.

It turns out the copy editor (whose name I don't know but whose praises I will sing forevermore) realized I had totally totally totally screwed up. I mean totally.

You'd think I, of all people, would know that an asteroid knocked the moon out of orbit on May 18. It says so in Miranda's diary in Life As We Knew It. The Dead And The Gone starts on May 18. In This World We Live In, Miranda and Mom and Syl have a ceremony a year later, on May 18.

Let's look for a common theme here. MAY 18!

But in The Shade Of The Moon, I make the anniversary day May 20.

Why? you ask.

Because I'm stupid and careless and stupid, that's why.

The anniversary day is very important to the plot of The Shade Of The Moon, and so is the action right before the anniversary day.

Here's how things are now.

Sunday May 17: Jon visits his family
Monday May 18: A little scene with Jon and Sarah
Tuesday May 19: A lot of important stuff because the next day is the anniversary day.
Wednesday May 20: Anniversary day

Only anniversary day is really Monday, May 18, and all that important stuff that has to happen the day before can't happen the day before because Sunday May 17 Jon is visiting with his family and not doing the important stuff, which he has to do the day before the anniversary day because roughly 1/4 of what follows in the story is because of that important stuff.

I've pretty much figured out what I have to do. I'm going to change all the dates up to May 18 to make them a week before (so Jon will visit his family on May 10 instead). Of course that leaves the book with nothing happening between May 10 and May 16, when Jon and Sarah have their little scene. But I think I can take a little bit of action that currently happens before Jon visits his family and make it after he visits his family. I'll also write a little scene (don't ask me about what), and a moderately significant scene, because some of Jon's motivation for the important stuff comes from his visit with his family, and it won't feel right if that motivation is a week old. So I have to give him more reason for the motivation, which will make that new scene moderately significant.

And then I'll go back to all those copy edited pages (about 20 of them) that there's no point looking at now because I have to add so much before them, and see what the copy editor has suggested. I just finished going through a batch of post-anniversary day pages, since they aren't affected by the date changes and the unwritten new scenes. I'll get back to them tomorrow.

The deadline is January 2 and I know I'll be finished by then. But while Santa's saying Ho! Ho! Ho!, I'll be saying Howl! Howl! Howl!

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LOOKIT!

Let me try that again.

LOOKIT!

Did I get your attention?

I sure hope so. I want you to notice that over on the beloved right side of the blog, there's a link for pre-ordering The Shade Of The Moon at Amazon.

They say publication date is Sept. 3. Of course they also say the book is 352 pages long, which is about 52 pages longer than I remember writing.

As of the moment, it doesn't have a ranking number, which either means no one has ordered a copy (waah), or Amazon refuses to let me know someone has ordered a copy (waah). I suppose I could order a copy just to find out, but I've had other things on my mind, like FreeCell.

Today, after playing approximately 1,000,000,2435 hands of FreeCell, the computer finally dealt me the perfect hand. Since there was an off chance I might forget, I recorded it for posterity.

Of course, my life isn't all FreeCell. I made my way through the copy edited version of The Shade Of The Moon, and added the five pages I needed because of my massive goof up (see below). I mailed (real mail, the kind that costs money) the manuscript to my editor yesterday, but I thought I'd share with you and Scooter the brand new two and a quarter page scene between Jon and Mom.

Scooter saw them first, and you'll see them second, and my editor will see them third, since she won't get the manuscript before Friday.

I hope you like them as much as Scooter seems to have!

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It's the first I've seen it.

I'm not quite sure what that big building is supposed to be, but it's got fire and I like it!

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My goal for 2012 was to read an average of one book per week, and I surpassed that.

My other goal was to read or reread books that have been sitting on my bookcases for decades. I did a good job with that, although many still remain. And since I have money these days, I indulged myself by buying books that sounded good in their New York Times reviews.

I think my favorite non-fiction books this year  were Catherine The Great: Portrait Of A Woman by Robert Massie and The Catcher Was A Spy by Nicholas Davidoff and my favorite novels were The Secret Keeper by Kate Morton and Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. My favorite story of how I came to read a book goes like this:

I was at the library and saw Clarence Darrow by John A. Farrell. I took it out and read it.

Darrow was of course a brilliant lawyer. It turns out he quoted poetry during his jury summations.

One of the poems he quoted was by A. E. Housman, and it ended with the line: "There's nothing but the night."

Wow, says I. Nothing But The Night. What a title for a noir.

So I zipped on over to Amazon and looked up Nothing But The Night. I found a Bill Pronzini novel by that title. I then went online to my library's catalog and found they had it. So the day after I returned the Clarence Darrow biography, I went back to the library, found the Pronzini novel, took it home, read it that afternoon (and enjoyed it), and returned it to the library the next day.

If I hadn't read the Darrow biography, I wold never have known about the Pronzini novel. When the weather warms up, I'll go back to the library and take out some more by him. He's got a new fan thanks to Clarence Darrow.

I'm going to divvy this year's list by fiction and non-fiction, alphabetical by title. Expect to see a lot of The(s).

Fiction first:

Before The Poison- Peter Robinson
Bread Upon The Waters- Irwin Shaw
Defending Jacob- William Landay
Gone Girl- Gillian Flynn
House Rules- Jodi Picault
Nothing But The Night- Bill Pronzini
Passing Strange- Richard Sale
Rebecca- Daphne du Maurier
Skating Shoes- Noel Streatfield
The Big Clock- Kenneth Fearing
The Blue Zone- Andrew Gross
The Child Who-Simon Lelic
The Chill- Ross MacDonald
The Cocktail Waitress- James M. Cain
The Connoisseur- Evan S. Connell, Jr.
The Forgotten Garden- Kate Morton
The Good Father- Noah Hawley
The G-String Murders- Gypsy Rose Lee
The Green-Eyed Monster- Patrick Quentin
The Intruder- Helen Fowler
The Magician's Wife- Brian Moore
The Pact- Jodi Picault
The Poisoned Chocolates Case-Anthony Berkeley
The Prophet- Michael Koryta
The Unsuspected- Charlotte Armstrong
The Wheel Of Fortune- Susan Howatch
The Winter Sky- Susanna Kearsley
What The Dead Know- Laura Lippman

Now here's the non-fiction:

Alexandra- Caroly Erickson
A Magnificent Obsession- Helen Rappoport
A Smattering Of Ignrance- Oscar Levant
Belles On Their Toes- Frank B. Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
Catherine The Great- Robert Massie
Clarence Darrow- John A. Farrell
Complicated Women- Mick LaSalle
Dark City- Eddie Muller
Every Picture Tells A Story- John Hedfield
Five Sisters- James Fox
Galileo's Daughter- Dava Sobel
Jack London And His Daughters- Joan London
Lonelyhearts- Marion Meade
Lost Prince- Jeffey Moussaieff Masson
Mary Boleyn- Alison Weir
Murder Plus- Marc Gerald ed.
Nutcracker- Shana Alexander
On The Verge Of Revolt- Brandon French
Party Line/ Out On A Limb- Louise Baker
Queen Of The Conquerer- Tracy Borman
Sins Of The Son- Carlton Stowers
The Astaires- Kathleen Riley
The Beauty And The Sorrow- Peter Englund
The Bronte Myth- Lucasta Miller
The Catcher Was A Spy- Nicholas Davidoff
The Gershwins And Me- Michael Feinstein
The Life Of David- Robert Pinsky
The Lost Empire Of Atlantis- Gavin Menzies
The Loyalists- Christopher Moore
The Medical Detectives- Berton Roueche
The Moose That Roared- Keith Scott
The Making Of The Wizard Of Oz- Aljean Harmetz
The Mormon Murders- Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith
The Quiz Kids- Eliza Merrill Hickok
The Secret Life Of Houdini- William Kalush and Larry Sloman
The Wages Of Sin- Lea Jacobs
The Witch Must Die- Sheldon Cashdan
The Women Of The Cousins' War- Phillipa Gregory, David Baldwin, and Michael Jones
The Youthful Queen Victoria- Dormer Creston
Things I Did And Things I Think I Did- Jean Negulesco
To Hell And Back- Meat Loaf and David Dalton
Under The Banner Of Heaven- Jon Krakauer
Vertigo The Making Of A Hitchcock Classic- Dan Auiler
What Happened To Their Kids- Malcolm Forbes and Jeff Bloch
Without Lying Down- Cari Beauchamp

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Wishing a happy and reasonably calm new year to: aap (April & Kate), Abigail, alter emi, Amanda,  Anna Heart, Anonymous, Anonymous C:, Anonymous Fish, Anonymous Santa Fe, Anonymous WS, Another Susan, arcos, A said,  Ashna, Aurora, Becky, becky, Bonnie Jacobs, Bookaholic 007, Brianne Turner, Brynne, C, Cailean, Caroline, Catalina L. L., Claire, Corrine. said, Christy Rush-Levine, Crystal M Billings, Danielle, Deirdre B., Eating as a Path to Yoga, Eclipsed, emi:), Emily, eraleta colson, Esther Pfeffer, Everette, exBFF, Fabiola C., Fear Death By Water, Friendly Neighbourhood Bookseller, Gamesatservice, Gil, Gillian, Glen, Gretchen, Heather, Heather_Wick, Hotdog 12, Hunter MD, iko, Ing (Ingrid Kalchthaler), Jacquekh, Jacqui P99, Jamie Cline, Janet, Jason, Jeff Vincent, jjchase 11, Jennifer in Wisconsin, jennie moo, Jenny Rae Rappaport, Jen Robinson,, jess, jessica, jessiemc82, JMCooper,jnifr. Johanna, Jonathan, Jon C. Hackathorn, Jordan G., Julie B, Julie Robinson, Jude Rosenberg, Kaitlin, karen, Karis Jacobstein, Kate, Kats, Kelley, Kelly, Kelly Tompkins, Kelsey, Kevin Harris, Kiera Ball, Kiralys, Kyra, Lee, Liana, Linda, Linda Jacobs, Linda Joy Singleton, Lindsay, Lisa Mandina, Lisa-Marie Jordan, lizzie TC, Lizzy, Lulume, Maddie, Marci, Margaret, McQ, Melissa, Miss Gardiner, Miss Mint, Morgaine, Mr. Cavin, mykake, myst7,  Nina, Nina Ruit, Nora Durbin, Olivia, Paige Y., Pascaline, Pat P., Rachel Keller, Rae, Rebecca, Rebecca Herman, Renee Carter Hall, Robyn, rose, rowster,  Sandra Sasal, Sandy C, Sarah, Sarah Mayer, Shadow, Shauntrice Art,  Shelby, Sriharsha Jayanthi, Susan, Susan from Michigan, Tara, Tayler Clements, Tez Miller, thelostgirl, tigerlily*, Timo, Timoliere, Tori, Tracy, Twilight's Dawn, Unknown, Verity, veyroniqa, VKR, Wanda Vaughn, Wendy, Your Youngest Biggest Fan!!!!! and all others who might visit.

With love and gratitude from Scooter and me.

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