In which I am interviewed on the Reading and Writing Podcast.
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The musings of Alan Gratz: children's book writer by day, masked crime-fighter by night.
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 10/10/2013
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 9/8/2013
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Meet the Youth Best In Show winner from the 2013 DragonCon Masquerade contest: The Lady Doctor and her steampunk companion K-9!
Jo loves watching Doctor Who, so she designed this Lady Doctor costume for herself. There's lots more about how she made it herself over at Wendi's Shiny Happy World blog.
Jo was especially proud of the vest, which used all different brass buttons. The coat is pretty great too. You can just see the really spacey lining here, on the lapels. Her hair is dyed TARDIS blue.
I helped her with the rocket boots. She still did all the spray painting and the drilling and gluing but I was there as the technical advisor. One of her Monster High dolls has rocket-powered boots, and so Jo wanted a pair too. The silver rockets are actually upside-down plastic things you put on chair legs to keep them from sliding. We glued them on with Gorilla glue, which held surprisingly well. The boots were thrift-store finds, spray painted with a really super copper color Jo picked out.
The whole ensemble, before she went on stage in the Friday Night Costume Contest! This was a fun costume for Jo--and one she could walk around in afterward without too much trouble! She did trade the rocket boots in for a pair of red Converse high tops for roaming the hotels though...
Congrats, Jo! So proud of you!
For more pics of the steampunk K-9, and to see how I built it, check out the next post. Add a Comment
By: Alan Gratz,
on 9/8/2013
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For this year's DragonCon, I built a steampunk K-9 to accompany Jo's Lady Doctor costume in the Masquerade. Together, we won Best in Show in the Youth category!
As a model, I used this tiny scale model K-9 from ThinkGeek, which I got Jo to go with the Barbie-sized TARDIS I built her. Despite being just a couple of inches long, it's all to scale, which allowed me to do the math and extrapolate a larger version.
I started by building a mock-up out of foam core. I got it mostly right from the start, but this allowed me to mess up and not waste wood. (And time!) The foam core is just held together with masking tape and straight pins. I designed it to fit on a remote controlled car base I bought, and ended up making it almost 1:1 scale with the original K-9...
Late in the process, we realized that a key would make a brilliant tail for a steampunk dog. Originally, I was just going to buy an antenna and spray paint it brass. I think the key turned out much cuter.
When I was finished, I cut all the taped joints apart and used my foam core pieces as pattern pieces. I traced them on a very thin plywood, and cut them out with a Skill saw and jigsaw.
The TV k-9 has colorful buttons on his back. For the steampunk K-9, I used two great brass faucet knobs we found at the Home ReStore in town. I think they were maybe $2 each. The joiner pipe is actually a piece of wood dowel I spray painted brass. The keyboard (in lieu of colorful buttons) is made up of individual wooden keys. I found a person on Etsy who laser cuts them out of wood, then applies pictures of antique keys to them. They look like authentic typewriter keys, but they're fake! They're a lot lighter--and a whole lot cheaper than real typewriter keys, which go for a pretty penny on eBay.
The tail is wood, spray painted to look brass. Again, much lighter! And there was no way I was going to be able to make something like that out of real brass.
The neck is dryer tubing spray painted brass. It took the spray paint really well! And I didn't have to attach it--all I did was bend it around the head, and the angles did all the work. The collar is a brass hand towel ring with the mounting piece cut off of it. The bone tag is wood, again painted to look brass. A rule I've heard that I'm trying to live by is "looks great from six feet away." I think all this looks great close up, but it all passes muster six feet away, which is really the level of detail we want on our costumes.
The nose was a real score at the Home ReStore, which is a Habitat for Humanity store that reclaims old fixtures from torn down houses and renovations and resells them. This faucet was an awesome find. Jo and I spent a very happy couple of hours rooting through the plumbing bins at the store, looking for treasures like this. I hadn't planned on putting a faucet on the nose, but it was too good to pass up--and ended up sort of making the whole thing.
We had a lot of options for K-9's ears. I almost went with another pair of faucets made of wood and brass, but these curtain rod ends won out in the end. They were just too cool looking. They're plastic--about the only plastic thing on the whole dog, except for the remote controlled car underneath him--but they look brass, and they have the added benefit of being lightweight, which was an issue on the head.
K-9's eye bars are wood, painted brass. The eye itself is of course the knob off a garden hose bib. I loved it--particularly as the original K-9's eye is a red circle. I left the maker's ring on there too. It was too awesome.
The big "K-9" on the side are wooden letters from A.C. Moore, again spray painted brass. I screwed them in from behind, so you can's see the screws. You'll see screws everywhere else though. My original plan was to cover those with "brass" trim, which was going to be a brass duct tape I found. In the end, I loved the look of him without all the brass trim. I think going without was a good call. He's already pretty blinged out as it is!
The other side had a door. This served two purposes. One was practical--it gave me a way to reach inside and attach the cotter pins to the posts that connected the K-9 unit to the remote controlled car. The second was part of the show: we put a tea cup and saucer in there, and at a certain part of Jo's performance, K-9 raced over to her and she took out the cup and pretended to pour tea from his nose! It was a real hit. This space also, coincidentally, made a nice storage area for his controller, spare battery, charger, etc.
By: Alan Gratz,
on 8/4/2013
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I built this for my daughter Jo, who is eleven years old and super into Doctor Who. (As she should be.) She has dressed up one of her dolls in a Who-esque costume, and calls her the Lady Doctor. I couldn't let the Lady Doctor travel without a TARDIS of her own!
The TARDIS is made out of scrap plywood of different widths I had lying around from previous projects. The windows are a thick frosted plastic, with the casement lines drawn on with a Sharpie. They let in a soft light, which I like, and Jo likes putting electric tea candles inside and letting the windows glow from within. With both doors open, you can see inside where I glued the windows in.
The "POLICE BOX" signs at the top were found online (thanks, Who-builders!) and glued on with Spray-Mount. The blue paint was chosen by Wendi and Jo on one of their trips to Asheville--I think they nailed the TARDIS blue!
The sign on the telephone door was printed out from a larger image I found on the web. In this picture, you can also see the teeny-tiny handles I bought from woodvictoriandollhouse.com. They came in brass, so I spray-painted them black. The handles, the paint, and the hardware for the light on top were the only things I had to buy for the project.
I should also point out that though I like to call this "The Barbie TARDIS," that doll is not a Barbie. She is, in fact, a Monster High doll, which Jo much prefers. This is the Robecca Steam doll, who is steampunk-themed. The clothes, however, are homemade--they are pieces from the Project Barbie challenge Wendi and I did together years ago, when we made Barbie clothes to match the challenges on a season of Project Runway. Jo likes the colors because she feels they are very Doctor Who.
While I was building the TARDIS (which took MONTHS, much to Jo's chagrin) I saw this little K-9 advertised on ThinkGeek, and I had to get it for her!
I'm really pleased with the look of the signage, and the slightly mottled look the plywood took on when I painted it. It looks like a weathered and used TARDIS.
I decided to add the St. John Ambulance logo, which is on the 11th Doctor's TARDIS. Here again you can see one of the super-tiny handles.
I struggled with how to do the light at the top. I trolled the dollhouse aisles at our local hobby shops and surfed around online looking for a sort of hurricane lamp I could appropriate for a light on top, but never found anything. Then I had the idea to use a test tube--and we just so happened to have a tiny one already, which was being used to hold beads! The test tube is inserted upside-down through the three layers at the top, and held in place with a swinging hatch made out of the window plastic, so I can replace the little light bulb if and when it blows out. The light bulb was bought at a hobby shop--it's meant to light streetlamps and homes on a model train layout.
The light is strung to a 9-volt battery on the inside, and then to a little switch I acquired at Radio Shack. Because who doesn't love flipping switches!? The light switch sticks out the back corner of the TARDIS, and is pretty unobtrusive. I had dreamed of attaching a sound chip to it with the sound of the TARDIS taking off and landing, but alas, that's beyond my very limited technical abilities. As it is, the TARDIS goes "WERRRN-WERRRN-WERRRN" only when you flip the switch and say "WERRRN-WERRRN-WERRRN" at the same time.
Here's a pic of one of the unpainted panels. I used a coping saw to do the windows, and ended up using a chisel to hack out the top layer of plywood to create the panels. When my chiseling got rough, I smoothed it with wood putty, as you can see in that top right panel, then sanded it flat.
By: Alan Gratz,
on 6/28/2013
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 5/1/2013
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My friend Katey Schultz has a book of flash fiction stories about the recent and on-going wars in the Middle East coming out soon, and I took time recently to ask her a few questions about it:
By: Alan Gratz,
on 2/14/2013
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 9/12/2012
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Okay! By popular demand, pics of our Totoro and Satsuki costumes! I've been holding off because we don't have too many--I was inside the thing all night, after all!--but people have been asking, so here are a few pics to whet your appetite. First up, a picture of Jo and me (inside Totoro) with Grant Imahara, star of Mythbusters, and host of this year's DragonCon Masquerade! He was really cool--and really appreciated the scale of Totoro! We were too tall for the photographer's set and lighting here, which is why there's a big lamp above Totoro's head. Jo is holding our award for Best Animated Character--our second award in that category. (Our first was for Samurai Jack and Aku.)
Here's a shot I yanked off someone's Tumblr. After the Masquerade, we set up Totoro on one of the floors in the Marriott, where a number of people got their picture made with him. He was so tall (over ten feet) that his head was hitting the ceiling (and a sprinkler!) in the first place we set him up. This place had a bit taller overhead.
Getting Totoro to the con was a bit of a challenge, as you might imagine. We had to rent a mini-van for the purpose, and stuff him in the back. We built him to be collapsible, but we were careful with his face. :-) I had hoped that people would see Totoro peering at them out the back of our van on the highway, but all the van's windows were tinted, so I don't think anyone actually saw him.
That's your teaser! More pics of the construction, and hopefully of Totoro around the con, to come!
(Click the pics to see them bigger and better.)
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 9/4/2012
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 7/14/2012
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 6/26/2012
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Let's check the old Alan Gratz bucket list. Visit Machu Picchu: Not yet. Master the Force: Still working on that. Write a Star Trek novel: Done!
It really has been a longtime dream of mine to write a Star Trek novel. Don't tell anyone, but about 17 years ago, back before we were married, Wendi pretended to be my literary agent so we could submit a Star Trek novel I had written to Pocket Books. We made up a letterhead for her "agency" and everything. Pocket Books didn't go for it and soon after I focused on writing books for young readers, but that submission officially represented my first real attempt to sell a novel.
Cut to a year and a half ago, when I learned that Simon Spotlight was publishing a series of young adult Star Trek novels set in the universe of the recent movie reboot. Trek? YA? That long-lost dream of writing a Star Trek novel wasn't looking so hopeless after all! I got on the phone with my agent, Barry, he got on the phone with the editor of the series at Simon Spotlight, and a month later I had a gig as Star Trek's newest author.
Today I have come full circle. I'm happy to announce the publication of Starfleet Academy: The Assassination Game!
The rules are simple: Draw a target. Track him down and “kill” him with a spork. Take your victim’s target for your own. Oh, and make sure the player with your name doesn’t get to you first. No safe zones. No time-outs. The game ends when only one player remains.
James T. Kirk is playing for fun. Leonard “Bones” McCoy is playing to get closer to a girl. But when a series of terrorist attacks rock the usually placid Starfleet Academy campus, it becomes clear that somebody is playing the game for real. Is it one of the visiting Varkolak, on Earth to attend an intergalactic medical conference? Or could it be a member of a super-secret society at the Academy dedicated to taking care of threats to the Federation, no matter what rules they have to break to do it?
Find out in Starfleet Academy: The Assassination Game, on sale now at your favorite bookstore!
Live long and prosper,
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 5/31/2012
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 5/20/2012
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This is the work of the awesome illustrator Evan Shaner, and though he's tired of seeing it, we never tire of it.
Pros:
Costumes are complex, but the legs are easy. (Trust us on this one.)
Could bring the house down. (Particularly if you can see what Snoopy/Rorschach's hat is hiding there on Dr. Manhattan/Charlie Brown.)
Character costumes are basic shapes, and hide a lot of building rough spots.
AWESOME.
Cons:
Well, we need six people, and we're only three people. (Volunteers, anyone?)
That's six (!) costumes to make by September.
Jo has to wear a full-body suit.
Transportation issues.
Technical issue: we're not sure yet how we would see out of them.
Candidate #2: Incredible Hulk/Maurice Sendak mashup
This is an incredible Incredible Hulk comic book cover done by Kaare Andrews. We like this one so much we have it framed and hung on our wall. It's a fantastic Where the Wild Things Are/Hulk mash-up, with all the Hulks following Max/Bruce Banner. Very apropos this year, what with Avengers in theaters and Maurice Sendak's death, yes? We agree.
Pros:
Jo doesn't have to have a full-body costume on. (She'd be Max/Banner.) That's mportant, as she wears out by 11 pm and has less patience than us overall.
Timely.
AWESOME.
Cons:
Whew. Where do we start? Do we cover them in fur, or in fleece we dye or paint?
Will people get it without the background?
Do we make the Hulks look a little more Wild Things?
Transportation issues.
That's three full-body Hulk costumes to make by September. (We would make the third either the Red Hulk, Nerd Hulk, or another Green Hulk.)
We're only three people, and we'd need a fourth. (Volunteers, anyone?)
Candidate #3: Duck Dodgers in the 24th and 1/2 Century!
Duck Dodgers is a fan favorite at DragonCon, and here in the Gratz house. We would do Duck Dodgers, Space Cadet Porky, and Marvin the Martian. Pretty much don't have to do much more than come out on stage and get the audience to yell "Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half century!" with us to be a hit.
Pros:
Just the three of us!
And only three costumes to make!
Marvin's the easiest b Add a Comment
By: Alan Gratz,
on 4/4/2012
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 3/27/2012
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To help celebrate the 30th anniversary of my favorite indie bookstore, Malaprop's Bookstore and Cafe in Asheville, NC, I was invited to be a part of a collaborative mystery novel called Naked Came the Leaf Peeper. Published by Malaprop's itself, Naked features twelve regional authors each writing a chapter of a madcap mystery, in the tradition of legendary collaborative novels like Naked Came the Stranger and Naked Came the Manatee.
Billed as "a zany Southern Appalachian take on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," Naked is already a best-seller at Malaprop's, and has gotten raves from authors who clearly ought to know better, like Ron Rash (Serena), Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat Pray Love), and Charles Frazier (Cold Mountain).
Now Malaprop's is throwing a Naked Author Jam to celebrate the book. Join me and eleven other Naked* authors at the University of North Carolina-Asheville Humanities Lecture Hall on Friday, March 30, at 7:00 p.m. as we read from, discuss, and laugh about our work. The event is free and open to the public.
Joining me on stage will be Tony Earley, Brian Lee Knopp, Linda Marie Barrett, John P. McAfee, Susan Reinhardt, Vicki Lane, Tommy Hays, Wayne Caldwell, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Gene Cheek, and Charles Price, reading for Fred Chappell. Come on out and get Naked!**
For more information, call Malaprop's bookstore at (828)254-6734.
* "Naked" in a literary sense, not a literal one, of course.
** Again, clothing is not optional.
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 3/23/2012
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 3/22/2012
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 2/13/2012
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Dad sent me this pic today, mostly because I kid him that he thinks I'm doing image number 2 or image number 6 all day. It's all pretty accurate, but to be honest it would be perfect if the last image had Gmail on it.
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 12/28/2011
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This coming March, I'm going to be part of the faculty at the 2012 Whole Novel Workshop run by the Highlights Foundation at their Honesdale, PA compound. It's a week of one-on-one critiques and small-group discussions about writing novels for kids with me, Newbery Honor-winner Kathi Appelt, Christopher Award-winner Jeanette Ingold, and the extraordinarily-awesome Greenwillow editor Martha Mihalik. We'll be reading the attendees' complete manuscripts in advance, writing extensive critique letters, and then spending the week in Honesdale helping you find a revision plan that will make your novel ready for prime time!
The deadline for applying to the workshop is fast approaching though. You only have until the end of the calendar year to apply! For more information on the workshop and how to apply, visit www.highlightsfoundation.org. You can also secure your spot by contacting Jo Lloyd at 570-253-1192, e-mailing her at [email protected], or requesting an application at the above link.
Here's more information from the Highlights press release:
Hope to see you there!![]()
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 12/13/2011
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I am very pleased to announce that I have a short story in the upcoming Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction--An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories. Sales of Tomo will benefit young people affected by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake that triggered powerful tsunami waves, devastated the area around Sendai, and killed and injured more than 20,000 people. Even today, people throughout Japan are still dealing with the effects of the earthquake.
Tomo will debut almost exactly one year to the day of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Here's a bit more about it from the Tomo website:
By: Alan Gratz,
on 12/8/2011
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Can you find the future kids book writer in this picture? (Click to see the image larger.) Here's a hint: he's rocking some awesome pants.
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 10/30/2011
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 10/17/2011
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Allan Wolf, me, and Al the Alligator, mascot of Archer Lodge Middle School in Wendell, NC. North Carolina School Library Media Association Annual Conference, 2011.
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 9/6/2011
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Here we are--your 2011 DragonCon Masquerade winners for Best Humor! That's Jo as Brak on the left, Alan as Space Ghost in the middle, and Wendi operating the life-sized Zorak puppet on the right.
That's us leaving the place where the professional photographer takes our picture. We're going to try and get a copy of that picture. If we do, we'll post it. Here though you can see a bit more of how Zorak works. Stretched out, he's six feet tall. Wendi straps his belt to her around her waist, and a lanyard anchored on his shoulders stretches around her neck to hold the top of him. Zorak's feet are on black boards, which are strapped to Wendi like sandals.
No pics of us during the show--we were out there performing, and our handler Indigo was waiting to help us off stage behind the curtain. Maybe someone will post something to YouTube? Here we are after the show, getting ready to have our pictures taken again, this time with our Best Humor award certificate. That's two category awards in two tries for us. Two more, and we are moved up from the Journeyman category to the Master category...
Walking through the bowels of the Hyatt for Add a Comment
By: Alan Gratz,
on 8/11/2011
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The musings of Alan Gratz: children's book writer by day, masked crime-fighter by night.
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 10/10/2013
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 9/8/2013
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Meet the Youth Best In Show winner from the 2013 DragonCon Masquerade contest: The Lady Doctor and her steampunk companion K-9!
Jo loves watching Doctor Who, so she designed this Lady Doctor costume for herself. There's lots more about how she made it herself over at Wendi's Shiny Happy World blog.
Jo was especially proud of the vest, which used all different brass buttons. The coat is pretty great too. You can just see the really spacey lining here, on the lapels. Her hair is dyed TARDIS blue.
I helped her with the rocket boots. She still did all the spray painting and the drilling and gluing but I was there as the technical advisor. One of her Monster High dolls has rocket-powered boots, and so Jo wanted a pair too. The silver rockets are actually upside-down plastic things you put on chair legs to keep them from sliding. We glued them on with Gorilla glue, which held surprisingly well. The boots were thrift-store finds, spray painted with a really super copper color Jo picked out.
The whole ensemble, before she went on stage in the Friday Night Costume Contest! This was a fun costume for Jo--and one she could walk around in afterward without too much trouble! She did trade the rocket boots in for a pair of red Converse high tops for roaming the hotels though...
Congrats, Jo! So proud of you!
For more pics of the steampunk K-9, and to see how I built it, check out the next post. Add a Comment
By: Alan Gratz,
on 9/8/2013
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For this year's DragonCon, I built a steampunk K-9 to accompany Jo's Lady Doctor costume in the Masquerade. Together, we won Best in Show in the Youth category!
I started by building a mock-up out of foam core. I got it mostly right from the start, but this allowed me to mess up and not waste wood. (And time!) The foam core is just held together with masking tape and straight pins. I designed it to fit on a remote controlled car base I bought, and ended up making it almost 1:1 scale with the original K-9...
Late in the process, we realized that a key would make a brilliant tail for a steampunk dog. Originally, I was just going to buy an antenna and spray paint it brass. I think the key turned out much cuter.
When I was finished, I cut all the taped joints apart and used my foam core pieces as pattern pieces. I traced them on a very thin plywood, and cut them out with a Skill saw and jigsaw.
I don't have very many pics of me actually building K-9, strangely. I love process pics, but so often I did the building later in the evening while watching TV, and the light was always terrible for taking pics. I always said, "Oh, I'll take a picture tomorrow in the good light." And then I never did. But here's me using a vise to hold together the tricky angles of the face while I screwed it together. In the back of the head, you can see the small square dowel I used in the corners to give my something to screw into besides the thin plywood.
And here's the finished product!
The TV k-9 has colorful buttons on his back. For the steampunk K-9, I used two great brass faucet knobs we found at the Home ReStore in town. I think they were maybe $2 each. The joiner pipe is actually a piece of wood dowel I spray painted brass. The keyboard (in lieu of colorful buttons) is made up of individual wooden keys. I found a person on Etsy who laser cuts them out of wood, then applies pictures of antique keys to them. They look like authentic typewriter keys, but they're fake! They're a lot lighter--and a whole lot cheaper than real typewriter keys, which go for a pretty penny on eBay.
The tail is wood, spray painted to look brass. Again, much lighter! And there was no way I was going to be able to make something like that out of real brass.
The neck is dryer tubing spray painted brass. It took the spray paint really well! And I didn't have to attach it--all I did was bend it around the head, and the angles did all the work. The collar is a brass hand towel ring with the mounting piece cut off of it. The bone tag is wood, again painted to look brass. A rule I've heard that I'm trying to live by is "looks great from six feet away." I think all this looks great close up, but it all passes muster six feet away, which is really the level of detail we want on our costumes.
The nose was a real score at the Home ReStore, which is a Habitat for Humanity store that reclaims old fixtures from torn down houses and renovations and resells them. This faucet was an awesome find. Jo and I spent a very happy couple of hours rooting through the plumbing bins at the store, looking for treasures like this. I hadn't planned on putting a faucet on the nose, but it was too good to pass up--and ended up sort of making the whole thing.
We had a lot of options for K-9's ears. I almost went with another pair of faucets made of wood and brass, but these curtain rod ends won out in the end. They were just too cool looking. They're plastic--about the only plastic thing on the whole dog, except for the remote controlled car underneath him--but they look brass, and they have the added benefit of being lightweight, which was an issue on the head.
K-9's eye bars are wood, painted brass. The eye itself is of course the knob off a garden hose bib. I loved it--particularly as the original K-9's eye is a red circle. I left the maker's ring on there too. It was too awesome.
The big "K-9" on the side are wooden letters from A.C. Moore, again spray painted brass. I screwed them in from behind, so you can's see the screws. You'll see screws everywhere else though. My original plan was to cover those with "brass" trim, which was going to be a brass duct tape I found. In the end, I loved the look of him without all the brass trim. I think going without was a good call. He's already pretty blinged out as it is!
The other side had a door. This served two purposes. One was practical--it gave me a way to reach inside and attach the cotter pins to the posts that connected the K-9 unit to the remote controlled car. The second was part of the show: we put a tea cup and saucer in there, and at a certain part of Jo's performance, K-9 raced over to her and she took out the cup and pretended to pour tea from his nose! It was a real hit. This space also, coincidentally, made a nice storage area for his controller, spare battery, charger, etc.
For the curious, here's the R/C car I used as the base. It's not your cheapo mall-bought R/C car. I got this at HobbyTown USA, where they know their machines. At first, I was worried it wouldn't be strong enough to move the wood and brass K-9 I built--but I ended up having to take it in to the shop to have them help me slow it down! It's a beast of an R/C car, and it worked great.
The steampunk K-9!
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 8/4/2013
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Meet the Barbie TARDIS!
I built this for my daughter Jo, who is eleven years old and super into Doctor Who. (As she should be.) She has dressed up one of her dolls in a Who-esque costume, and calls her the Lady Doctor. I couldn't let the Lady Doctor travel without a TARDIS of her own!
The TARDIS is made out of scrap plywood of different widths I had lying around from previous projects. The windows are a thick frosted plastic, with the casement lines drawn on with a Sharpie. They let in a soft light, which I like, and Jo likes putting electric tea candles inside and letting the windows glow from within. With both doors open, you can see inside where I glued the windows in.
The "POLICE BOX" signs at the top were found online (thanks, Who-builders!) and glued on with Spray-Mount. The blue paint was chosen by Wendi and Jo on one of their trips to Asheville--I think they nailed the TARDIS blue!
The sign on the telephone door was printed out from a larger image I found on the web. In this picture, you can also see the teeny-tiny handles I bought from woodvictoriandollhouse.com. They came in brass, so I spray-painted them black. The handles, the paint, and the hardware for the light on top were the only things I had to buy for the project.
I should also point out that though I like to call this "The Barbie TARDIS," that doll is not a Barbie. She is, in fact, a Monster High doll, which Jo much prefers. This is the Robecca Steam doll, who is steampunk-themed. The clothes, however, are homemade--they are pieces from the Project Barbie challenge Wendi and I did together years ago, when we made Barbie clothes to match the challenges on a season of Project Runway. Jo likes the colors because she feels they are very Doctor Who.
While I was building the TARDIS (which took MONTHS, much to Jo's chagrin) I saw this little K-9 advertised on ThinkGeek, and I had to get it for her!
And look--the scale is perfect! I surprised her with it (and the finished TARDIS) when she got back from sleepaway camp last month. The TARDIS itself is pretty large--about 16.5 inches tall and 8.5 inches wide. Jo likes it because her Lady Doctor can fit a lot of companions in there with her, including K-9.
I'm really pleased with the look of the signage, and the slightly mottled look the plywood took on when I painted it. It looks like a weathered and used TARDIS.
I decided to add the St. John Ambulance logo, which is on the 11th Doctor's TARDIS. Here again you can see one of the super-tiny handles.
I struggled with how to do the light at the top. I trolled the dollhouse aisles at our local hobby shops and surfed around online looking for a sort of hurricane lamp I could appropriate for a light on top, but never found anything. Then I had the idea to use a test tube--and we just so happened to have a tiny one already, which was being used to hold beads! The test tube is inserted upside-down through the three layers at the top, and held in place with a swinging hatch made out of the window plastic, so I can replace the little light bulb if and when it blows out. The light bulb was bought at a hobby shop--it's meant to light streetlamps and homes on a model train layout.
The light is strung to a 9-volt battery on the inside, and then to a little switch I acquired at Radio Shack. Because who doesn't love flipping switches!? The light switch sticks out the back corner of the TARDIS, and is pretty unobtrusive. I had dreamed of attaching a sound chip to it with the sound of the TARDIS taking off and landing, but alas, that's beyond my very limited technical abilities. As it is, the TARDIS goes "WERRRN-WERRRN-WERRRN" only when you flip the switch and say "WERRRN-WERRRN-WERRRN" at the same time.
Here's a pic of one of the unpainted panels. I used a coping saw to do the windows, and ended up using a chisel to hack out the top layer of plywood to create the panels. When my chiseling got rough, I smoothed it with wood putty, as you can see in that top right panel, then sanded it flat.
The Barbie TARDIS, exploded view, during the painting phase.
I'm thrilled with the result, and so is Jo! Allons-y, Lady Doctor!
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 6/28/2013
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Last night, I got an e-mail through Facebook from a guy who says he met me at a SCBWI Carolinas conference three years ago. He's putting together a writers retreat near Charlotte next March, and he's having trouble getting guys to come, so he's inviting me. Okay, so that's not why I want to be invited to something, but I sympathize, because I also can't get guys to come to my kidlit writing retreats.
He doesn't tell me the date, or how long it is. Also, he says it will be a "combination writing retreat/Spartan Race." He says this like I am supposed to know what "Spartan Race" means. I have no idea what a Spartan Race is, so I write back: what is the date, how long is it, and what is a Spartan Race?
He writes back that the retreat will be over a particular weekend, that there will be a craft talk on Friday night, and then "the Spartan Race Saturday morning." And in case I don't know what that is, he says, here's a link.
I follow the link. A Spartan Race is a sort of traveling Iron Man Obstacle Race, a four mile run through the mud where you do things like crawl on your stomach under barbed wire, jump over burning fires, climb greased pyramids, and get beat on by very large men with padded sticks.
Then in the evening we will probably do a first pages critique.
I wrote back to the man and told him that I was sorry, but I couldn't attend because YOU COULD NOT PAY ME TO RUN A SPARTAN RACE.
But thank you very much for the invitation.
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 5/1/2013
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1) Why flash fiction? How does the form fit the material?
Flash fiction stories are typically 1-3 pages long. They are very short snapshots or moments captured on the page, often showing characters in response to a situation that out-sizes them. (Here’s a recording of one example, titled “Poo Mission.”) At first, I began writing about war using the flash fiction form because I knew very little about how we were actually, physically fighting the wars and how civilians in the Middle East were interpreting our actions. So the size of the story represented my limited knowledge, because I couldn’t imagine much more than a scene or two at a time with much accuracy.
The more I learned, the more I was able to refine my word choice in these stories, and really build momentum and energy on the page. At that point, I still stuck with the flash fiction form because intense, dramatic, or traumatic situations are often remembered only in snapshots—so that seemed right and realistic to me. It was only a year and a half or so into my work writing about war that I had amassed enough information and confidence to begin writing full-length short stories on this topic.
2) How did you research the experience of the soldiers before, during, and after the war in the Middle East to be able to write so well about it?
It all started by making lists of words. I was very interested in the language of warfare and the Global War on Terror in particular. Giving a writer a new word is like giving a painter a new shade of green. I really wanted to play around with things and see what I could do. It felt empowering…but I also knew I needed to be careful with these words, because they came with certain contexts that I had to become familiar with. The stakes felt very high, and that made me even more diligent in my research and also my precise imagining. If I wrote something and it didn’t “feel” true…if I couldn’t put my heart behind it…I deleted it. There was a lot of back and forth of my cursor across the screen, at least initially. Eventually, I found my way in.
To extend my research beyond using the right words, I read twenty or so nonfiction books about 21stCentury warfare and our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was in early 2010, so there weren’t nearly as many contemporary fiction authors publishing about Iraq and Afghanistan as there are today; and that was fine. I wanted to start with the facts. I watched countless DVDs (mostly documentaries) and clips of head-cam footage on YouTube from soldiers in ambushes or civilians in daily life. I really only interviewed 2 soldiers in my research—one, to discuss the day-to-day operations of life on a Forward Operating Base, and another, to talk about the process for enlisting in the Army. Information from the former helped me write “The Ghost of Sanchez,” and information from the latter helped me write “Deuce Out.”
Finally, I looked at many, many photographs using Google Images searches. I printed these and hung them on my walls, or downloaded the images and used them as a screen saver. In other words, I surrounded myself with the words, images, and sounds of war as much as I possibly could without going there…then I began to write.
3) You not only tell stories about Americans, but about people of Afghanistan/Iraq. How did you learn about their experiences enough to be able to write about them?
It took a healthy balance of research and imagination. I didn’t speak to any Afghan or Iraqi civilians while researching the book, though I would have liked to. I did, however, spend three weeks on a self-made writing retreat with former foreign war correspondent Karen Button. Her advice and knowledge were crucial as I began my first forays into writing from a completely different cultural perspective. I think that watching the DVDs and documentaries was also helpful to me here—they enabled me to study gesture, tone of voice, clothing, physical setting, and gendered interactions that I could then bring to life in my stories. Typically, I saturated my mind with information until the only thing left to do was start putting things together and inventing characters that could move around and react within the imagined spaces I was creating in my head.
There are still so many perspectives and viewpoints that I was not able to write. For instance, one of the stories that I chose not to publish in the collection was written from the perspective of a suicide bomber. Try as I might, I just never felt I could bring that piece up to par. It was too far for my mind to go and I didn’t believe my own words as I wrote them. So I cut the story out.
4) You often write about children. Is there a children's book writer inside you trying to get out? ;-)
This has honestly never occurred to me. Wow. I do this? I suppose it takes a strong YA author such as yourself to notice! Thank you! In another life, I was a teacher for five years, so I’m sure that has trickled into my writing some (as well as my work as a waitress). I will say that I find the appearance of children in short stories to be a great source of relief, and when you’re writing about war, it’s only natural to want relief from that. For example, when I wrote “Into Pure Bronze” about two, young Afghan boys playing soccer in downtown Kabul, I was trying to write my way out of the wars. I had been researching and writing about war for two years at that point, maybe longer. I needed to believe my stories would have an end…and that the wars would, also. So I specifically wrote about “the next generation” of Afghan children and tried to imagine what their impressions of their own country and of America would be, given all that has taken place in their lifetimes thus far.
5) You say in your epilogue that you chose to write about war--and this war specifically--because you wanted to understand it better. To get to know what it was like from the inside out. What did writing Flashes of War teach you? What answers did you find?
For me, every story begins with an unanswered question. Why else would I want to write it? Because of this, I did learn a lot while writing Flashes of War. Personally, I changed my views on the military’s recruitment practices, on why an individual may or may not choose to enlist, on our nation’s obligation to our troops while they serve and once they come home, as well as on the use of force in general. There was a time when I didn’t understand why anyone would sign up to serve in the U.S. Military. There was also a time when I believed that problems could be solved without military action. But the more I looked at these wars, the more I understood and became open to the diversity of reasons for serving. I also became supportive of the U.S.’s initial—very early—acts of war in Afghanistan. (Doug Stanton’s incredible book, Horse Soldiers, played no small part in informing and persuading me of this.)
In the end, however, writing Flashes of Warwas never about who was for or against anything. I felt genuinely interested in examining what those of us alive today could do to help relieve the suffering and bring awareness to the myriad impacts of war. Winning or losing, Republican or Democrat, Sunni or Shiite, Taliban or U.S. soldier—our tax dollars are still funding everything from Taco Bell deliveries on base, to drone strikes, to the rebuilding of schools for Afghan girls, to destroying weapons caches, to providing prosthetic limbs to any one of more than 50,000 U.S. soldiers who are now amputees. As Americans and as citizens of the world, I think that’s worth looking at and responding to. Flashes of War is my response.
Thanks, Katey!
Flashes of War officially pubs on May 27th, but pre-orders begin today. Click here to learn more about pre-ordering the book.
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 2/14/2013
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I made this. From an idea by my friend Wes Stitt. Kind of a hack job on GIMP, the Linux freeware Photoshop, but I'm pretty proud of it. The number in the corner is the year the original Doctor Who serial The Tomb of the Cybermen debuted.
That's a mash-up I'd love to read!
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 9/12/2012
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Okay! By popular demand, pics of our Totoro and Satsuki costumes! I've been holding off because we don't have too many--I was inside the thing all night, after all!--but people have been asking, so here are a few pics to whet your appetite. First up, a picture of Jo and me (inside Totoro) with Grant Imahara, star of Mythbusters, and host of this year's DragonCon Masquerade! He was really cool--and really appreciated the scale of Totoro! We were too tall for the photographer's set and lighting here, which is why there's a big lamp above Totoro's head. Jo is holding our award for Best Animated Character--our second award in that category. (Our first was for Samurai Jack and Aku.)
Here's a shot I yanked off someone's Tumblr. After the Masquerade, we set up Totoro on one of the floors in the Marriott, where a number of people got their picture made with him. He was so tall (over ten feet) that his head was hitting the ceiling (and a sprinkler!) in the first place we set him up. This place had a bit taller overhead.
Getting Totoro to the con was a bit of a challenge, as you might imagine. We had to rent a mini-van for the purpose, and stuff him in the back. We built him to be collapsible, but we were careful with his face. :-) I had hoped that people would see Totoro peering at them out the back of our van on the highway, but all the van's windows were tinted, so I don't think anyone actually saw him.
That's your teaser! More pics of the construction, and hopefully of Totoro around the con, to come!
(Click the pics to see them bigger and better.)
By: Alan Gratz,
on 9/4/2012
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 7/14/2012
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While Jo is off at summer camp for three weeks (!) Wendi and I write her a letter a day, alternating days between us. Wendi's tend to be crafty, while mine tend to be silly. Here's one I sent to Jo with a couple of Mad Libs books during her first week at camp. I was pretty pleased with it. :-)
By: Alan Gratz,
on 6/26/2012
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It really has been a longtime dream of mine to write a Star Trek novel. Don't tell anyone, but about 17 years ago, back before we were married, Wendi pretended to be my literary agent so we could submit a Star Trek novel I had written to Pocket Books. We made up a letterhead for her "agency" and everything. Pocket Books didn't go for it and soon after I focused on writing books for young readers, but that submission officially represented my first real attempt to sell a novel.
Cut to a year and a half ago, when I learned that Simon Spotlight was publishing a series of young adult Star Trek novels set in the universe of the recent movie reboot. Trek? YA? That long-lost dream of writing a Star Trek novel wasn't looking so hopeless after all! I got on the phone with my agent, Barry, he got on the phone with the editor of the series at Simon Spotlight, and a month later I had a gig as Star Trek's newest author.
Today I have come full circle. I'm happy to announce the publication of Starfleet Academy: The Assassination Game!
The rules are simple: Draw a target. Track him down and “kill” him with a spork. Take your victim’s target for your own. Oh, and make sure the player with your name doesn’t get to you first. No safe zones. No time-outs. The game ends when only one player remains.
James T. Kirk is playing for fun. Leonard “Bones” McCoy is playing to get closer to a girl. But when a series of terrorist attacks rock the usually placid Starfleet Academy campus, it becomes clear that somebody is playing the game for real. Is it one of the visiting Varkolak, on Earth to attend an intergalactic medical conference? Or could it be a member of a super-secret society at the Academy dedicated to taking care of threats to the Federation, no matter what rules they have to break to do it?
Find out in Starfleet Academy: The Assassination Game, on sale now at your favorite bookstore!
Live long and prosper,
Alan
By: Alan Gratz,
on 5/31/2012
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 5/20/2012
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We're stuck.
We don't know which costumes to attempt for this year's DragonCon Masquerade, and time to build is running out.
The top three candidates are below. Each has its particular challenges and drawbacks, but each is equally worthy and awesome. Tell us what you think in the comments!
Candidate #1: Peanuts/Watchmen mash-up
This is the work of the awesome illustrator Evan Shaner, and though he's tired of seeing it, we never tire of it.
Pros:
Costumes are complex, but the legs are easy. (Trust us on this one.)
Could bring the house down. (Particularly if you can see what Snoopy/Rorschach's hat is hiding there on Dr. Manhattan/Charlie Brown.)
Character costumes are basic shapes, and hide a lot of building rough spots.
AWESOME.
Cons:
Well, we need six people, and we're only three people. (Volunteers, anyone?)
That's six (!) costumes to make by September.
Jo has to wear a full-body suit.
Transportation issues.
Technical issue: we're not sure yet how we would see out of them.
Candidate #2: Incredible Hulk/Maurice Sendak mashup
This is an incredible Incredible Hulk comic book cover done by Kaare Andrews. We like this one so much we have it framed and hung on our wall. It's a fantastic Where the Wild Things Are/Hulk mash-up, with all the Hulks following Max/Bruce Banner. Very apropos this year, what with Avengers in theaters and Maurice Sendak's death, yes? We agree.
Pros:
Jo doesn't have to have a full-body costume on. (She'd be Max/Banner.) That's mportant, as she wears out by 11 pm and has less patience than us overall.
Timely.
AWESOME.
Cons:
Whew. Where do we start? Do we cover them in fur, or in fleece we dye or paint?
Will people get it without the background?
Do we make the Hulks look a little more Wild Things?
Transportation issues.
That's three full-body Hulk costumes to make by September. (We would make the third either the Red Hulk, Nerd Hulk, or another Green Hulk.)
We're only three people, and we'd need a fourth. (Volunteers, anyone?)
Candidate #3: Duck Dodgers in the 24th and 1/2 Century!
Duck Dodgers is a fan favorite at DragonCon, and here in the Gratz house. We would do Duck Dodgers, Space Cadet Porky, and Marvin the Martian. Pretty much don't have to do much more than come out on stage and get the audience to yell "Duck Dodgers in the 24th and a half century!" with us to be a hit.
Pros:
Just the three of us!
And only three costumes to make!
Marvin's the easiest b Add a Comment
By: Alan Gratz,
on 4/4/2012
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Fantasy Baseball is now out in paperback with a new cover, just in time for opening day of the new Major League Baseball season! The new cover is spooky and fun at the same time, just like the story inside. I recommend buying them in batches of nine--one each for every player on your baseball team. That's a totally unbiased recommendation, of course...
Fantasy Baseball is available online or at your favorite local bookstore, and signed copies are in stock at my favorite local bookstore, Malaprop's Bookstore and Cafe! Follow the link to find out how you can get a signed (and personalized!) Fantasy Baseball sent your way.
By: Alan Gratz,
on 3/27/2012
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Billed as "a zany Southern Appalachian take on The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," Naked is already a best-seller at Malaprop's, and has gotten raves from authors who clearly ought to know better, like Ron Rash (Serena), Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat Pray Love), and Charles Frazier (Cold Mountain).
Now Malaprop's is throwing a Naked Author Jam to celebrate the book. Join me and eleven other Naked* authors at the University of North Carolina-Asheville Humanities Lecture Hall on Friday, March 30, at 7:00 p.m. as we read from, discuss, and laugh about our work. The event is free and open to the public.
Joining me on stage will be Tony Earley, Brian Lee Knopp, Linda Marie Barrett, John P. McAfee, Susan Reinhardt, Vicki Lane, Tommy Hays, Wayne Caldwell, Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, Gene Cheek, and Charles Price, reading for Fred Chappell. Come on out and get Naked!**
For more information, call Malaprop's bookstore at (828)254-6734.
* "Naked" in a literary sense, not a literal one, of course.
** Again, clothing is not optional.
By: Alan Gratz,
on 3/23/2012
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 3/22/2012
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 2/13/2012
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Dad sent me this pic today, mostly because I kid him that he thinks I'm doing image number 2 or image number 6 all day. It's all pretty accurate, but to be honest it would be perfect if the last image had Gmail on it.
By: Alan Gratz,
on 12/28/2011
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This coming March, I'm going to be part of the faculty at the 2012 Whole Novel Workshop run by the Highlights Foundation at their Honesdale, PA compound. It's a week of one-on-one critiques and small-group discussions about writing novels for kids with me, Newbery Honor-winner Kathi Appelt, Christopher Award-winner Jeanette Ingold, and the extraordinarily-awesome Greenwillow editor Martha Mihalik. We'll be reading the attendees' complete manuscripts in advance, writing extensive critique letters, and then spending the week in Honesdale helping you find a revision plan that will make your novel ready for prime time!
The deadline for applying to the workshop is fast approaching though. You only have until the end of the calendar year to apply! For more information on the workshop and how to apply, visit www.highlightsfoundation.org. You can also secure your spot by contacting Jo Lloyd at 570-253-1192, e-mailing her at [email protected], or requesting an application at the above link.
Here's more information from the Highlights press release:
Many times when a manuscript is rejected, it isn’t because the writingis weak. It’s because the manuscript isn’t ready. We all want to pushour work to the next phase, but sometimes we submit work to agentsor publishers before it's ready. Maybe we’ve shown the manuscript to ourwriting group. Maybe we’ve revised a few times. Maybe we think we’vedone all we can do. But what we really need is a writing coach, a revisionplan, and a clear strategy to make the best book we can. In today’s demandingworld of publishing, you get only one chance to grab the attention of an agentor editor, so make that chance count. Make sure you are ready.
The Highlights Foundation’s Whole Novel Workshop has been helping writerspolish their manuscripts since 2006. Participants receive a readingof and editorial response to their complete manuscript prior to a weekdedicated to revision and readying your manuscript for submission. We offeran award-winning faculty of writers, editors, and agents to help make yourbook the best it can be. Through one-on-one critiques and small-group discussions,we focus on revision plans, query letters, and pitch strategies to getyou ready to submit. We also nourish your creativity with a privatecabin in which to think and write, farm-style meals, and an environmentthat will refresh your publishing dreams.
Our first wholenovel workshop in 2012takes place March 11–17. Submission deadline is December 30. The facultyincludes award-winning authors and talented teachers Kathi Appelt, AlanGratz, and Jeannette Ingold, as well as smart and sassy editor Martha Mahalickfrom Greenwillow Books. Authors Janet Fox and Karen Henley round out thesupport team as teaching assistants.
Come spend a week in the woods and finally get your manuscript readyfor publication!
Hope to see you there!
By: Alan Gratz,
on 12/13/2011
Blog: Gratz Industries (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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I am very pleased to announce that I have a short story in the upcoming Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction--An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories. Sales of Tomo will benefit young people affected by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake that triggered powerful tsunami waves, devastated the area around Sendai, and killed and injured more than 20,000 people. Even today, people throughout Japan are still dealing with the effects of the earthquake.
Tomo will debut almost exactly one year to the day of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake. Here's a bit more about it from the Tomo website:
Tomo (meaning “friend” in Japanese) is an anthology of young adult short fiction in prose, verse and graphic art set in or related to Japan. This collection for readers age 12 and up features thirty-six stories—including ten in translation and two graphic narratives—contributed by authors and artists from around the world, all of whom share a connection to Japan. English-language readers will be able to connect with Japan through a wide variety of unique stories, including tales of friendship, mystery, fantasy, science fiction and history.By sharing “friendship through fiction,” Tomo aims to bring Japan stories to readers worldwide, and in doing so, to help support young people affected or displaced by the March 11, 2011 Japan earthquake and tsunami disasters. Proceeds from the sales of this book will go directly toward long-term relief efforts for teens in Tohoku, the area most affected by the disasters, in the northeast region of Japan’s main island, Honshu.Edited and with a Foreword by Holly Thompson, Tomo contributing authors and artists include Andrew Fukuda (Crossing), Liza Dalby (The Tale of Murasaki), Tak Toyoshima (Secret Asian Man syndicated comic), Alan Gratz (The Brooklyn Nine), Wendy Nelson Tokunaga (Love in Translation), Deni Y. Béchard (Vandal Love), Debbie Ridpath Ohi (illustrator of I’m Bored), Graham Salisbury (Under the Blood-Red Sun), Naoko Awa (The Fox’s Window and Other Add a Comment
By: Alan Gratz,
on 12/8/2011
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Can you find the future kids book writer in this picture? (Click to see the image larger.) Here's a hint: he's rocking some awesome pants.
By: Alan Gratz,
on 10/30/2011
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We found her posing with the mannequins in the front window of--you guessed it--The Gap.
By: Alan Gratz,
on 10/17/2011
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By: Alan Gratz,
on 9/6/2011
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Here we are--your 2011 DragonCon Masquerade winners for Best Humor! That's Jo as Brak on the left, Alan as Space Ghost in the middle, and Wendi operating the life-sized Zorak puppet on the right.
That's us leaving the place where the professional photographer takes our picture. We're going to try and get a copy of that picture. If we do, we'll post it. Here though you can see a bit more of how Zorak works. Stretched out, he's six feet tall. Wendi straps his belt to her around her waist, and a lanyard anchored on his shoulders stretches around her neck to hold the top of him. Zorak's feet are on black boards, which are strapped to Wendi like sandals.
Another shot of us backstage before the show.
And another.
We're ready for our close-up.
No pics of us during the show--we were out there performing, and our handler Indigo was waiting to help us off stage behind the curtain. Maybe someone will post something to YouTube? Here we are after the show, getting ready to have our pictures taken again, this time with our Best Humor award certificate. That's two category awards in two tries for us. Two more, and we are moved up from the Journeyman category to the Master category...
Walking through the bowels of the Hyatt for Add a Comment
By: Alan Gratz,
on 8/11/2011
Blog: Gratz Industries (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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