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If Santa’s naughty-or-nice list was based on blogging, I’d be getting a big lump of coal in my stocking this season.  It’s been a busy month or so, with finishing up teaching for the semester, Christmas shopping, a few signings here and there and, of course, the careful crafting of my Christmas List, which I am calling The Christmas Folio of Gaming Gifts for ME, which is constantly being overruled by The Christmas Tome of Little People Playsets for My Boy (Do not underestimate the amount of time it takes to construct the perfect wish list.  It’ an art).

I’ve begun to dig into edits on The New Book, and once again I am thankful for such a patient and insightful editor, Joan Slattery.  I’m awfully proud of The New Book, but it’s a complex sucker.  Luckily my editor has not only an eye for detail, but also a knack for giving notes that inspire the imagination – it’s going to be a fun revision process.

I did an interview with Kidsreads.com that covers a lot of stuff – shop talk, comics and we even touch on The New Book. It was a lot of fun to do and nothing I said is too cringe-worthy.  Check it out if you get the chance.

Lastly, I want to wish a very happy holidays to all the folks who’ve contacted me through this website to tell me how much you’ve enjoyed POWERLESS!  Kids, parents, teachers and librarians – I’ve been very touched by all your kind words and they’ve made this quite a special holiday season!

This very nice review came out today from Publishers Weekly:

In a wholly satisfying debut, Cody tackles themes of heroism, sacrifice and coming-of-age, as played out in a comic book–inspired good vs. evil scenario. Soon after arriving in the small town of Noble’s Green, Pa., where his family has moved to take care of his ailing grandmother, 12-year-old Daniel Corrigan discovers the existence of real-life superheroes. In this town, certain kids develop superpowers, which they use in secret to perform good deeds (for the most part). One catch: as soon as they turn 13, their powers and all related memories vanish. As Daniel forges a friendship with these extraordinary youths, he uses good old-fashioned investigative skills rather than superhuman abilities to uncover the secret of their powers’ origins and the dark force that has been preying on the town’s children for decades. What do comic books from the 1940s, a pulp hero, a burned-down orphanage and a pair of superhuman bullies have to do with the mystery? It all comes together in a tightly woven narrative characterized by a persuasive premise, memorable characters, a bit of intrigue and a sense of wonder. Ages 10–up. (Oct.)

I have to tell you, all Mondays should start off like this.  And Tuesdays, and Wednesdays . . .

Powerless is out in stores so now’s the time to get and talk to folks!  (I’m working on my folksy twang)

Here are a few upcoming events I’ll be playing a part in:

November 4 – Teen Author Reading Night (6-7:30, Jefferson Market Branch of NYPL, 425 6th Ave, at 10th St.)

Matthew Cody, Powerless
Matt de la Pena, We Were Here
Tom Dolby, Secret Society
Barry Lyga, Goth Girl Rising
Marianne Mancusi, Boys That Bite
Courtney Sheinmel, Positively
Robin Wasserman, Crashed
Maryrose Wood, What I Wore to Save the World

Number 3: Peter Pan

Confession time.  I was scared of Peter Pan.  Sure I loved pirates.  Tinkerbell was cute.  The crocodile was cool.  But flying boys hovering outside of windows at night?  Scarrry!

I used to avoid looking out my second story bedroom window for fear that I’d see a mischievous grin smiling back at me (the werewolves were all down on the ground, so I was safe from them).

Today I’ve grown to love the original story – so full of unexplainable magic, child’s magic – and I even love Peter.  But back then the image of a kid hovering outside, in the dark, well, it was spooky even before Stephen King got a hold of it for Salem’s Lot.

I’ve written about Pan in short stories and a bit of it made its way into Powerless.  There are themes in that book that keep coming back in my work – one way or another.

If you think happy thoughts, you can fly.

You Can Fly.

Funny, the day your first book arrives on the shelves several things DO NOT happen:

• You do not get an envelope marked “Publication Vacation” and filled with plane tickets and cash.

• You do not get called “m’lord” by passerbys and lesser-thans.

• Swelling Music does not play as you enter book stores.

Several things DO happen, however:

• You get lots of very nice well-wishes from friends and professionals and friendly professionals.

• You get to see your book on bookshelves.

• You get to take care of your sick child, clean runny noses and take temperatures like usual and make them feel better and that’s actually pretty swell.

And if you’re really lucky your world’s best wife and brilliant best friend conspire to create this illustration from your book’s prologue:

Intrigued by the picture?  Well, lucky you the book’s on sale! Get thee to a bookery!

The artists (best friend’s) name is Kristopher Pollard and he’s a freelancer based out of the midwest.  If you like what you see contact him at [email protected] for a look at his online portfolio.  It’s worth it!

Number 7: The Hobbit

This one shouldn’t take much explanation.  The Hobbit is a classic, but it holds a special place in my heart because of its hero, Bilbo Baggins.  The awkward, not-particularly-brave-and-certainly-not-fearsome burglar.  Around the time that I discovered The Hobbit (thanks to a swell middle-school librarian) I was dealing with my own issues of feeling a bit less-than.  Middle School can be a rough place for the best looking and most socially graceful of us, and I was certainly not either of those things.  So it was a wonderful surprise when I found this book where the unlikeliest of heroes escaped the goblins, rescued his friends from the spiders and outwitted a dragon.

There was nothing particularly special about Bilbo.  He had a bit of luck on his side, and a few powerful friends to be sure, but what made this little hobbit really remarkable was a rather unremarkable trait – persistence.  The little guy just never gave up, despite his grumbling and in the face of terrifying odds he just kept slogging through it all.  He put his head down,  one foot in front of the other and tried his best to be clever.

And in the end (small spoiler warning, here, folks) he won.

Number 8: Escape to Witch Mountain and Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Okay, so I cheated.  Today’s post is two-in-one, but I can explain.  You see, it’s about mountains.  Dark, mysterious mountains that loom over everything else.  There’s no backdrop so dramatic, so imposing, as that.

When I was very little, Disney released Escape from Witch Mountain and though I was little more than a toddler when I saw it, the movie stuck with me (I know there’s a remake but I’m stubborn about these things).  I honestly haven’t seen it since, not in thirty-some years, but I still remember the “boat wreck”, the mysterious box with two suns and, of course, the gifted brother and sister.  And then there was that name . . . . Witch Mountain . . . . it just lingered in my brain.

I was a bit older when I saw Close Encounters, and as an adult it’s still one of my favorites.  While it’s pure coincidence that both of these movies are about UFO’s (I’m not really a sci-fi writer) it’s no coincidence that the mountains in each are directly connected to a mystery from the heavens.  The final images of Close Encounters that take place on and around that mountain, beneath a black and cloudy sky, were forefront in my head throughout much of the writing of Powerless.

You know what?  After writing this entry, I’ve gone and updated my Netflix que.  Hope the family is up for a movie marathon this weekend.

Everyone loves lists, right?  Well, the publication of Powerless is just days away, and to celebrate I present The Powerless Top Ten . . . er, Nine list of the nine biggest influences on the book.  In a lot of ways, writing Powerless was like a walk through my own childhood – many of the things that the 10-year old me loved found their way into the book.

Next week, there will be some great additions and exciting changes made to this website (just wait – it’s very cool!), but in the meantime I will add a new post each day about a different childhood influence on the book. Some are subtle, some are obvious.  My hope is that you’ll read the book, and then come back here and have a nice “aha!” moment or two.

So without any further blather, I present . . . .

NUMBER 10: The Invaders

Full Disclaimer: I’ve never read this comic book.  As a matter of fact, if I had a nice copy of 1946’s All Winners issue 21 I probably wouldn’t be pecking away at the keyboard for a living, or at the very least I’d be pecking away on a nicer computer.  This original comic came and went long before my time.

But the heroes of this World War II era book lived on.  In subsequent years they were dubbed The Invaders by comics scribe Roy Thomas, and he and many others have continued their adventures right up until the present day.  The original Human Torch and his sidekick Toro, the Sub-Mariner, Captain America and Bucky – these were characters that survived wars and witch hunts only to make into the impressionable psyche of a certain ten year-old boy.

It was the pictures of these heroes in their war days that really got me.  I couldn’t read the stories, but I could see the covers in the pages of the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide and that was enough to leave a mark.  Here was a group of heroes out of the distant (to a ten year-old) past, complete with their teenage sidekicks, parachuting into the European theater of war, or spoiling the plans of some mad scientist bent on world domination.

I poured over those covers in the Overstreet guide.  I memorized the details and made up stories to fit the pictures.  It was like discovering a history, a secret history, that adults were clueless about.

The All Winners.  The Invaders.  The original heroes.

As the publication date approaches, this wonderful Powerless review popped up on the Borders site written by none-other-than their head kids’ book buyer:

How would you feel if you could fly, but knew you’d soon lose that ability? How would you deal with a town bully so strong he can pick up cars? How can kids keep a secret from a whole town for generations?

These are some of the questions posed by Matthew Cody’s fantastic new middle grade novel Powerless which goes on sale on 10/27/09. Fan of comic books, super-heroes, and plain old good mysteries will love this book of friends banding together before they are overcome by a terrible fate.

But here’s my favorite part – a bit of a teaser:

I don’t want to spoil anything, but the villain in the story is one of the most interesting characters. While he is creepy, he may actually be doing good…

Are you hooked, yet?  Then go pre-order it today!  Otherwise some playground jerk will just spoil it before you have a chance to get a copy!

Follow the link here for the rest of the review, (just click on “Customer Reviews”).

One of the very nice bits of good news for Powerless has been Random House’s decision to include it in their “It’s a First” promotion.  This is where they pick a few first-timer titles every season and give them a little extra love.

There are some great looking books on this year’s Fall list and here’s the link to the site if you feel like checking them out.  PLUS you can download a pdf brochure with little excerpt from each book!

Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the marketing team at Random House for a little Powerless pre-publication pow-wow (alliteration, anyone?).  They were gracious, enthusiastic and made me feel like a real honest-to-goodness author.

And they fed me cupcakes.

I suspect that this is a privilege reserved for only the select few.  I suspect there are a whole host of authors out there who, upon reading this, might place a frantic early-Monday morning call to their agents and editors demanding to re-negotiate their contracts to insure a cupcake clause.  But I am sorry to share the following, daunting publishing facts with you:

• Of the percentage of writers who garner the majority of their income from writing, less than 5% are given cupcakes.

• Of that 5% (let’s call them the cupcake class), less than 3% are offered a choice of vanilla OR chocolate, and their quantities are severely limited.

• This leaves a minuscule 1.5% of published authors who are provided a choice of cupcake flavors and encouraged to eat their fill.

Them’s the tough facts, folks.  So what I’m saying is – don’t quite carrying around your own snack cakes.

So cool, yes? I’m thrilled at the new look of the place – designed and built by the extraordinary Denise Biondo.  Powerless is just around the corner (well, November is still a few months away so let’s just say that it’s lurking near the corner and down the street a bit.  Maybe even stopping for cup of coffee and a doughnut first, but it’ll get there!)

What I love about the site is its pulp/comic book feel, presented in a clean, modern design.  Mystery and adventure and a big old “Kaboom!” – what more could you want?

But there have been a lot of exciting developments over the last few weeks and I’ll be posting them here soon.  But to start I’d like to give a HUGE shout out of thanks to Jeff Smith and Jonathan Stroud for their kind words about Powerless.  Their exact quotes are up on the site, but I’ll leave it to you to find them.  (See, it’s like a treasure hunt!  We even have games at matthewcody.com!)

So take a look around and let me know what you think!

Happy to announce that I signed the contracts today for Powerless‘ Italian debut!  Molto importante publisher Mondadori has aquired Italian rights to the novel thanks to super-agent Kate Schafer Testerman’s super-agentin’.

If there are any Italian booksellers who want to schedule a signing, I will tell you now that I am willing to make that trip - I will suffer for my art.

This is my first foreign rights deal and, of course. the question of the day from friends and family has been, ” Wow, I didn’t know you spoke Italian!”  My answer is that I don’t, but I am rooting for Fabio on Top Chef so I think that counts for a lot.

I’ve been gone a long time, but due to the demand of thousands of worried readers (well, one) I’m back for some more intermittent nonsense.  By the way, check out Kater’s story in this creepy-cool anthology, hot off the presses!

I’ve been teaching nights in an English immersion program at LaGuardia Community College - a really wonderful city initiative that is rewarding and a whole lot of work.  The plus side is that I’ve now got my days free to spend with my baby boy, and I will proudly brag that his first words were ” Da-Da”.  Snap.

Some updates on Powerless:

Final edits on Powerless have been approved, I’ve seen some terrific cover art and now I’m just waiting on notes from the copy editor.  We’re still looking at a Fall ‘09 release, but I hope to get advance copies before the NY Comic-Con.  I don’t know if we’ll be able to swing that but it would be nice to hand out a few copies to the kiddies and chubby stormtroopers at the con.  I can’t wait to see it in actual book form.

I’ve also begun two new novels, which is incredibly frustrating because I only have one brain and seeing as how its a rather small and feeble brain anyway I’m having a hard time focusing on one.  I’ve been showing bits and pieces of both to my agent, my editor and, of course, my wife.  Hopefully they will provide some objective perspective and I’ll get cracking on just the one book.

So I’ll either be spending my autumn with American revolutionary magicians or steampunk explorers.  Both sound like good company right about now.

On that note, here are some more Steampunk Star Wars figures.  Check out the Ewok!

oh, and I started playing City of Heroes this weekend.  So, you know, goodbye writing career.  Goodbye family . . .