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Join me today at the Ridgewood High School LitWorks: Teen READ Workshop! I'll be talking about my process as an author, then signing copies of my books. And I'm just one of the great lineup of authors you'll meet there! Check out who else is coming:

Art Baltazar (we love his comics!!), Brent Crawford, Candace Fleming, John C. Ford, Kristin Walker, Janette Rallison, and Todd Strasser.

The event is open to the public. Teens get in free, adults pay $5. The event starts at 10 a.m. at the Eisenhower Public Library, then shifts over to Ridgewood High School at noon for the breakout sessions with the authors. The autograph party is from 3:30 - 4:00 p.m.


Click here for more information. Hope to see you there!

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Today I'm at just one school, all day long:


Ridgewood High School
Norridge, IL



Tomorrow I'll be a part of Ridgewood High School's LitWorks: Teen Read Conference. The event is open to the public, and features a slew of great YA authors! Click here for more info. Hope to see you there!

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Two school visits on tap today in Chicagoland:


Roosevelt Middle School
River Forest, IL @ 8:30 a.m.

Percy Julian Middle School
Oak Park, IL @ 2:00 p.m.


Special thanks to The Magic Tree Bookstore for helping arrange these visits!

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Two school visits on tap today in Chicagoland:


St. Francis Xavier School
Wilmette, IL @ 10:00 a.m. 

Sacred Heart School
Winnetka, IL @ 1:00 p.m.



Special thanks to The Book Stall at Chestnut Court for helping arrange these visits!

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Today I'll be dropping by three Cincinnati-area bookstores to sign stock and schmooze with the awesome booksellers there. Drop by and say hello if you're in the area!

Blue Marble Bookstore
Ft. Thomas, KY @ 2:00 p.m.

Blue Manatee Bookstore
Cincinnati, OH @ 4:00 p.m.

Joseph-Beth Booksellers
Cincinnati, OH @ 6:00 p.m.


*Note: These aren't formal readings/signings, just me signing books the stores have in stock. I'd still love to see you if you'd like to stop by!

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I recently recorded a brief introduction to and reading from The Brooklyn Nine for TeachingBooks.net. Give it a listen!

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I just found out–I will be speaking on the ALAN Panel “Books that Are Challenging, and Are Challenged” Nov 21st at 2. Such ironic timing, with Scars being challenged now–and good, too!

I’ll be on a panel with Lauren Myracle, Andrew Smith, and Paul Yee. Wow!

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I'm very happy to announce that I have been contracted to write a Star Trek novel! Those of you who know me well will probably know I've been a fan of Trek for a long, long time.

What few people realize is that one of my first attempts to become a published author, way back in the day, was by sending in a proposal for a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel. I was in grad school at Tennessee at the time, and I had an idea to do a Heart of Darkness/Star Trek mash-up with Worf playing the role of Marlow, going after a rogue Kurtz-like Vulcan on a pre-warp planet. (If that explanation makes sense to you, kudos on multiple levels.)

The funny thing about the whole process was that Pocket Books, the publishers of Star Trek novels, only allowed agented submissions--and no agent was interested in someone who was offering to just write licensed fiction. So Wendi submitted my work under her maiden name as my literary agent--with phony letterhead and all.

Alas, while Pocket Books liked my work (particularly the humor) I had mixed the Next Generation show with the Deep Space Nine show in the book (Worf made a pit stop at DS9 on the way to the assignment--this was before his character migrated to that show!) and that was apparently a no-no. I would have been happy to take that part out, but it was a no from Pocket, and I had already moved on to other writing projects and dreams anyway. My writing career went a very different direction, as you know, but I continued to read Star Trek novels as a fan, and often still daydreamed about writing a Star Trek novel.

Then, at the end of last year, Simon & Schuster began a new young adult Star Trek series called Starfleet Academy. The series is based on the academy days of Kirk, McCoy, Uhura, and Spock, as re-imagined in the fabulous Star Trek reboot that came out in theaters in 2009. Star Trek? YA? I shot off an e-mail to agent Barry right away and asked him to look into it for me. He made first contact, I submitted a proposal, CBS/Paramount gave me their seal of approval--and I was contracted to boldly go where I've never gone before! My proposal is called Starfleet Academy: The Assassination Game, and given the quick turnarounds on the deadlines, it may even come out this year! (Part of the reason I've been so quiet around here lately is that I've had my nose to the keyboard on this and the other book I'm working on.)

I'll continue to write original books of course--in fact, now that I've turned in my outline for the Starfleet Academy book, it's back to the current work-in-progress, The League of Seven, which is almost finished. But writing for Trek is a long-time dream come true, and I'm thrilled to now be an official part of the Star Trek galaxy.

Live long and prosper!

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It was with great sadness that I read the news today that Brian Jacques has passed away from a heart attack at the age of 71. Jacques is the author of twenty-one novels set in the world of Redwall, a fantasy world where woodland animals live and fight like they're in The Adventures of Robin Hood. The books are unpretentious yet poetic, and highly literary yet action-packed.

I was thrilled and honored to have Mr. Jacques be the first person to agree to let me use his characters and his world in Fantasy Baseball, the book I've got coming out in March that has characters from classic children's books all living in the same fantasy world. He didn't ask for a dime; his only request was that I send him a signed copy when the book came out. I'll still send the book along to his family, of course, but it breaks my heart that I wasn't able to send it to him personally with my thanks before he was gone.

Watching him from afar, Brian Jacques seemed to have a real passion for life. Deaths like his are the hardest to take, I think, because he seemed to be someone who was really living, someone for whom life was a gift, both to be enjoyed and to be "regifted."

Farewell, Brian Jacques. I raise a strawberry cordial in your memory!

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Here's my map! The book is called "The League of Seven," and it takes place (pretty obviously, I guess) in an alternate American history...

Click on the image to see it larger.

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We knew there was a foundry on Long Island called Gratz Industries, but we didn't know they were famous for making Pilates equipment* until our friend Sarah Mlynowski snapped this pic with her camera phone. Awesome! We applaud industrious Gratzes of all ilks.

*And is it me, or do Pilates machines look like torture devices!?

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From Wikipedia:

A pizza farm is an educational visitor attraction consisting of a small farm on a circular region of land partitioned into plots shaped like pizza wedges. The farm's segments produce ingredients that can be used in pizza, such as wheat for the crust, tomatoes or herbs, pork for pepperoni, dairy cows for cheese, and even trees for pizza oven firewood. Certain farms may even have access to coal or natural gas deposits that can be used as alternative pizza oven heating fuels. Many of the newer pizza farms are experimenting with alternative energy, such as installing wind turbines in the fields, to be more green. According to a 2005 article in USA Today, there are several such farms in the United States.

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Just a quick post to let you know I'll be appearing on A Book and a Chat tonight at 6:30 p.m. with Barry Eva as a part of his "Male YA Author Month." I think you can even dial in to ask questions! If you miss the chat and want to give a listen, the interview will also be available to listen to afterward online and as an MP3 download at Blog Talk Radio.

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I found myself in Orlando at the ALAN convention; I also found co-Egmont USA authors James Lecesne (Virgin Territory) and Tricia Rayburn (Siren).  Egmont USA's Katie Halata, who coordinated our days so spectacularly, is snapping this photo. I didn't know what to expect of ALAN; this was my first time there.  But what I found were teachers who—mostly on their own dime, taking their own vacation days—had carved out time to learn about new stories and where they come from.  There is a powerful commitment to our young out there; I felt the heat and passion of it through the day and over the course of the dinner that Katie hosted—a dinner that included such guests as Matt Skillen, Susan Groenke, Melanie Hundley, Shannon Collins, Steve Bickmore, and incoming ALAN president, Wendy Glenn.

ALAN is a class act.  I was proud and happy to be there.

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Something is wrong with me. Something new, I mean.

I don't want any more stuff.

Anyone who knows me--particularly those who have visited my cluttered house, and my even more cluttered office--knows that I have stuff. Lots of it. I have video games, and toys, and art, and baseballs and baseball bats, and books (lots and lots of books), and old typewriters, and bobbleheads, and binders, and comic books, and--you get the picture.

But I'm having a crisis. I'm thinking that maybe I don't need all this stuff.

I've always loved how spartan some homes are. And visiting Japan, I saw some truly spartan spaces. There's a simple elegance to emptiness--so much so that when those spaces do have something special on display, it's even more highlighted by the fact that it's not hidden among the bric-a-brac. Wendi and I have talked about this before: you can have so much cool stuff that the coolest stuff gets lost in the chaos.

But though I've always loved the spartan homes I've visited, I've always had to be honest with myself and admit that's just not me. I'm a collector. A buyer. I like stuff.

But then something weird happened. Lately, we've been creating online wishlists for ourselves and our families to know what we'd like for Christmas/solstice presents so we can know we're giving--and getting--things that are really wanted. (In the world of stuff, nothing is worse than keeping around something just because somebody else gave it to you.)

But this year, I've had trouble putting together a list. In fact, there's only one thing I can even think to ask for--an iTrip transmitter to plug into my Sansa Fuze mp3 player so I can listen to it through our car radio.

It costs $17.00.

My list is usually filled with stuff I love: DVDs, books, toys, board games, video games, electronic gizmos. But this year, I'm just not interested. DVDs? Why bother? We have Netflix. We can have anything here at the house in three days. Do I really need to own the first and only season of Ellery Queen, when I'll probably only watch it one time, and when I can easily get it from Netflix?

Toys? Where am I going to put them? I love these new Mini Mug Star Wars characters from Mighty Mugs, but I'm running out of wall space. And next season, there's just going to be some other cool toy to rival it. Where will that go?

New video games? I spent an hour the other night trolling Amazon's top 100 bestselling video games, and I found only two--count 'em, TWO--things I was remotely interested in, and neither of those compelled me to put them on my list. Most video games now are shoot 'em ups, and I'm not good at those and don't particularly enjoy them. (Perhaps because I'm not good at them.) As for an immersive game like Civ V--when do I have the time for something like that? I'm not in college anymore.

Electronic gizmos? I already have the mp3 player I want, and a good set of headphones. Yes, I'd love an iPad, but that's a big ticket item that's too much to ask for from any one person for the holidays. That's something I'll have to purchase on my own, in time. Beyond that, and something to help me play my mp3 player on my car radio, I want for nothing electronic.

Board games? Okay, there are board games I want, board games I'll buy in the coming year, I'm sure. But we have so many great games already we have trouble deciding which one to play each week on game day! It seems wrong to buy MORE games when we hardly have time to play the great ones we have already.

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I've been saving this box from a little toy I bought at a Tokyo Swallows baseball game during my visit to Japan in the spring for a little while now, because I've been meaning to blog it. The toy was just a little plastic brick guy in a baseball uniform, but the box turned out to be something special. All along the top there (half-hidden by a sticker) and along the sides are...advice? Life lessons? Philosophical musings? Social commentary? I'm not quite sure. Whatever it is, the author certainly has a lot to say on the matter.

I present the text here in the hopes that you, dear readers, can discern some truth or meaning from them. From the front of the box:

Everyone is playing himself or herself, in spite of he or she is conscious it or not. People cannot stop the play because their ideas are strongly affected by international information that is brought by TV and Newspapers, and they are conscious themselves by social bonds, although they may believe that they are making decisions by themselves first, then they take actions, but these are strongly affected.

The daily life that does not have any changes is passing with unexpected fine balances.

Everything that people is feeling by their five senses is in their inside. They cannot show them to other people as they are.

And from the side:

The imperfection is becoming a motivation to cope with social environment. However suppose people could love others only to the level that they can compromise. You should take more interested in yourself. What really am I?

What really am I indeed? A toy box that has given us a lot to think about for sure.

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In honor of Jo's favorite new expression (and when I find the person who taught it to her, I'm not going to let him be her dad anymore!) here's a funny as hell collection of prints where the only thing the people can really say is...WTF?

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No, not Geronimo the Apache, not Geronimo Stilton, the mouse reporter, not Cesar Geronimo, outfielder for the Big Red Machine in the 70's, and not Sarah Geronimo, the cute young Filipina actress. Geronimo as in, "Geronimo!" Ever wonder why people say that when jumping off things?

According to Wikipedia, "Geronimo!" is believed to date from 1940, when an Army private was testing out a new invention called the parachute. Private Aubrey Eberhardt was scheduled to take a "mass jump" with the rest of his platoon, and, as you might expect, they were a little nervous about it.

To calm their nerves, the Army boys took in a movie--a western, in fact, which people now figure had to have been the 1939 film Geronimo with Andy Devine and Lone Ranger star Chief Thundercloud in the title role.

On the way back to barracks, Eberhardt said he expected the jump would be no different from usual. The others taunted him, saying that he would be too scared to remember his name. Eberhardt retorted, "All right, dammit! I tell you jokers what I'm gonna do! To prove to you that I'm not scared out of my wits when I jump, I'm gonna yell Geronimo loud as hell when I go out that door tomorrow!" Eberhardt kept his promise and the cry was gradually adopted by the other members of his platoon.

The expression stuck, and by 1941 the 501st Parachute Infantry Battalion had added the word "Geronimo" to its insignia.

By then the coverage of the paratroopers exploits during the war had made the cry "Geronimo" known to the wider public, and its use spread outside the military and air force.

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Dad sends along this camera phone shot of Something Rotten, still stocked and sold at Books-a-Million! He kept his card-carrying-member status in the Face Front Club by turning it face out on the shelf, too...

Have you faced out a book by an author friend today? :-)

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Our plans to install our wood stove this past weekend were derailed when we discovered (surprise surprise) that we didn't have all the parts we needed. Some are still on order at Lowe's, and others we'll have to buy in store, but that won't be until this coming Friday. In the meantime, we decided to get a woodshed built!


We bought a few pieces of pressure-treated wood for this project, but we tried to use up a lot of scrap from other projects on this one, particularly as it's hidden behind the house and doesn't need to look pretty.


A cord of wood, according to The Internet, is four feet by four feet by eight feet of wood, so those are the dimensions we used, kicking the front up an extra foot for accessibility--and to allow snow to slide off the roof in the winter.




Our outer frame is finished! Now to add side panels, a roof, and a floor.


But first, we added side supports for the three stacks of wood that will fit inside. We used more scrap wood here, so the pieces are uneven and mismatched.


While Wendi and I covered the walls with old flooring pieces left over from the construction of our house, Jo was charged with shoveling sand from our leftover sand pile for the base. She ended up playing more than shoveling, but she helped out.
<

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We had a lovely Halloween here at Gratz Industries. Jo was torn between her Pokemon trainer costume and her Hogwarts Student costume. The weather decided for her and I think she looked terrific.

We decided to follow Neil Gaiman's lead and celebrate All Hallows Read by giving a scary book as a Halloween gift.
We did it up right with gift wrap and everything.
We got Jo a copy of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Brett Helquist. She DEVOURED it. That girl loves ghost stories - as long as they're not too scary - and this collection was just right. Now she's asking for the next two volumes in the series.

Hope ya'll had a great Halloween! And - just for fun - how awesome was the Halloween design on the Krispy Kreme box? We enjoyed far too many of these boxes this month. :-) Scary!

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Okay. I do a lot of poking around on Wikipedia, and like many people, I easily (and often) fall down the rabbit hole of hyperlinks, clicking from one fascinating subject to another. A few weeks back I thought it would be fun to start an entire blog of wildly-interesting facts found on Wikipedia, and today's find finally spurred me to action. But rather than start a new blog, I realized, why not post my discoveries on the perfectly good blog I already have?

So today begins "Found on Wikipedia," a feature that will probably be more regular than I would like, as the time I spend surfing Wikipedia always--always--takes away from time I should be writing. Still, stuff this good has to be shared.

The South-Pointing Chariot

The South Pointing Chariot is widely regarded as one of the most complex geared mechanisms of the ancient Chinese civilization, and was continually used throughout the medieval period as well. According to legends it was supposedly invented sometime around 2600 BC in China by the mythical Yellow Emperor, yet the first valid historical version was created by Ma Jun (c. 200–265 AD) of Cao Wei during the Three Kingdoms. The chariot is a two-wheeled vehicle upon which is a pointing figure connected to the wheels by means of differential gearing. Through careful selection of wheel size, track and gear ratios, the figure atop the chariot will always point in the same direction, hence acting as a non-magnetic compass vehicle. Throughout history, many Chinese historical texts have mentioned the South Pointing Chariot, while some described in full detail the inner components and workings of the device.

Read more about The South-Pointing Chariot here...and good luck getting anything done today.

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Gather around for a Google Alerts Round-up, troops!

Team Banzai member Janet send in this link to the Learning Through History newsletter, which recommends The Brooklyn Nine as a resource for historical studies centered around baseball, which is kind of a big deal this time of year. Thanks, Janet, and thanks Learning Through History!

Challenging the Bookworm likes The Brooklyn Nine because you don't have to be a sports fan to enjoy it...

Tyler B. at Otto-Eldred Junior-Senior High School writes on BookHooks that he "didn't dislike anything" about The Brooklyn Nine, and is sure "history nerds will like this book." :-)

Donna Woody at Print Matters picked up The Brooklyn Nine expecting a sports story, but feels like she got so much more...

"Like one of those cereals advertised as too tasty to be nutritious," says Doug Smith of the Lockport, New York Union-Sun & Journal, "'Brooklyn Nine' informs in an entertaining style."

And I'm a little late with the news (I was in Japan!), but Something Rotten got a great mention by Regina Brooks at the Huffington Post in an article about adapting classics for modern generations.

 Thanks, everyone!

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I ran into a story on the internet yesterday that reminded me so much of my brief time writing for City Confidential that I had to share it here. It's got all the makings of a great City Confidential episode: a semi-famous perpetrator, a silly motive, a botched crime, and a colorful supporting cast. Truly, this story is worth bringing the show back for an encore episode.

So, first the teaser: Chef Juan-Carlos Cruz made a name for himself serving up low-calorie pastry treats on TV--but when this "Calorie Commando" tried to trim the fat by hiring two homeless men to kill his wife, his cookie crumbled.

Here's what happened, according to a CNN story:

Former TV chef Juan-Carlos Cruz faces nine years in prison after pleading "no contest" Tuesday to a charge of soliciting two homeless men to kill his wife, the prosecutor said.

The former host of the Food Network's "Calorie Commando" will be sentenced on December 13, but the plea agreement calls for a nine-year sentence, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office said.

One count of attempted murder was dropped as part of the plea settlement, the prosecutor said.

The motive?

Fertility issues were at the center of Cruz's motivation in the murder-for-hire plot to kill his wife, according to sources close to the couple.

Two sources close the couple, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter, said their 20-year struggle to have a child overwhelmed them.

After spending a lot of money on unsuccessful fertility treatments, Cruz's wife, Jennifer Campbell, was "very depressed and talked about suicide," one source said.

The sources suggested she may have wanted to end her life but that as a devout Roman Catholic, she believed suicide was a sin.

So, I guess he was just trying to help her out then? But it's all cool:

The source closest to Campbell said she still loves her husband despite his arrest.

...

The source closest to Cruz, 48, said he was "nothing but a loving and devoted husband."

I just hope, someday, that I can do something as loving and devoted for Wendi.

The story begins to reach Elmore Leonard proportions with the supporting cast, which includes two indistinguishably Rosencrantz-and-Guildenstern-like homeless men named "Big Dave" and "Little Dave."

The criminal complaint accused Cruz of trying to hire David Carrington and David Walters -- homeless men who go by the street names Little Dave and Big Dave -- to murder Campbell. It was not immediately clear who was Little Dave and who was Big Dave.

The homeless men solicited to carry out the hit spoke with celebrity news and gossip website TMZ soon after the arrest. One of them called Cruz "very meticulous" but "very cheap" in his planning.

Well, you get what you pay for, I suppose.

The plan fell apart when one of the men whom Cruz allegedly recruited told Santa Monica police, Sgt. Jay Trisler said. Trisler confirmed that the men interviewed by TMZ were the chief witnesses against Cruz.

Little Dave told TMZ that he was approached first by Cruz, who asked him to kill his wife for cash, and he told his friend Big Dave.

Big Dave said he told a Santa Monica police offic

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