Archive for September 27, 2024

Edits: The Last Few Lines of BEFORE YOU GO

I came across this document from my only true YA novel, Before You Go (Macmillan, 2012), which even got a kind review in The New York Times of all places, and landed with a thud in the marketplace. My idea for this book came when I was confronted by the Pink Wall of a YA display in a bookstore. It just seemed so extremely female-dominated. So I decided to try to enter that world from a male perspective. I always strongly disliked the cover. But the book’s shortcomings in the market surely has more to do with my own failings, or predilections, as a writer. What I liked, what I tried to do, did not fulfill the desires of the reading audience.

I guess, I don’t know. Too slow, possibly. Too male? That’s what I was trying to do. 

We go through these questions, as writers, after books die on the vine. We wonder why and search for answers. And if you are me, the easiest and most obvious target — once we move past the disappointing cover and the harsh publishing world where almost nothing gets promoted vigorously — is me. The fault is mine. It might be as simple as what I like, in this case, is not what the majority of readers wanted.

Anyway, I still like the book a lot, always have.

This snippet (below) is from the final revision I did in the copyediting process. The book was typeset and just about ready to go to press. I was still fiddling with words, working that last scene, Jude at Jones Beach, alone, waiting for the sun to rise, possibly in love, throwing a stone into the ocean.

Okay, thanks for listening. I’m not sure about the availability of this book. It’s a strange publishing world out there now. Books can be “available” but “not in stock,” which is confusing and not gratifying. It might be completely out of print. At the same, you can usually find books in libraries or secondary markets if you are willing to click around for two minutes. I think it’s a good read. 

Thanks!

 

Chuckles, the Candy: A Tribute

It’s remarkable that we live in a world where we can still purchase Chuckles candy. After everything’s gone so wrong, how is it that we’ve got this one thing right? Chuckles is like a food item left to us from an alien world. A distant galaxy. And certainly a different time. 

Think of the things that didn’t exist when Chuckles first hit the scene in 1921. This colorful, sugar-sprinkled “jellied candy” arrived before smartphones and the internet, before alarm clocks and avocado toast, before scotch tape and sliced bread, before the chocolate chip cookie and TV dinners, before the cheeseburger and chicken nuggets, before the walkie talkie and the electric guitar, before the frisbee and jukebox, before everything bagels and string cheese, before M & Ms and Gobstoppers, before Sour Patch Kids and the Charleston Chew, the Milky Way and Hershey’s Kisses, Milk Duds and Heath Bars and Tootsie Roll Pops and Red Hots, before the microwave and the atomic bomb.

Today we can walk into a convenience store and find that tidy rectangular rainbow of jellied confectionary in red, yellow, black, orange, and green. The mighty Chuckles, perfectly packaged in thin cardboard and a cellophane wrapper. Even the typeface is exactly right with those two cockeyed eyeballs over the u. 

Chuckles began more than one hundred years ago when a man named Fred Amend introduced his latest edible invention to the unsuspecting world. Amend’s genius? He figured out how to make jellied candies that didn’t stick together. Amend threw together a few wholesome ingredients: corn syrup, sugar, cornstarch, modified food starch, natural and artificial flavors, red 40, caramel color, yellow 6, blue 1, and yellow 5 and . . . presto!

These days, now a grown man, I’m like that bee buzzing by the flowers, seeking nectar, thinking: sugar, sugar, sugar. I blame my father for my sweet tooth, for he did the food shopping in our family. On Saturdays, Dad ventured out alone and performed the massive, weekly food shop at Bohacks or the A & P for a family of nine ravenous mouths. When Dad pulled up to the house in a station wagon crowded with groceries, it was expected that all available children would file out to help, passing along the behemoth brown bags like a fire brigade.

It was a ton of food. And if we are in fact what we ate, here’s a snapshop of me: cans of vegetables, peas and corn and carrots. TV dinners. Campbell’s soup. Juice and six-packs of soda (we kept it warm under the sink) and Maraschino cherries for cocktails. Pop-tarts and big boxes of sugary cereals (Quisp was my childhood favorite) and “family-sized” packages of Reese’s Peanut Cups and a bag or two of those pink wintergreen mints he loved so much. Dad was a devout Entenmann’s man, of course, so there would be coffee cake and raspberry danish and whatever else struck his fancy. Open to inspiration while wandering the aisles, Dad was prone to coming home with surprises. 

What chance did I, just a child, have in the face of all that goodness? I caught the buzz even then: sugar, sugar, sugar. 

One day we’ll look up and Chuckles will be gone the way of the dodo, destined to extinction, surpassed by Gummy Worms and Life Savers Gummies or Skittles or what have you. But for now, count your blessings. And be like me: once a year, or once every few years, pick up a sleeve of Chuckles at the neighborhood convenience store. It’s like tasting the Olden Days. A magical portkey that transports us through time to a simpler era.

Sugar, sugar, sugar.

 

 

 

 

Come to the Chappaqua Children’s Book Festival: 9/28/24

It’s that time of year again . . . 

 

If you love children’s books, this is the event for you. This Saturday in Chappaqua, NY — more than 150 children’s book authors and illustrators gathered together under several tents, happy to chat, sign books, make connections, and most of all, celebrate literacy.

I’m thrilled to be invited once again. Lucky me. Please say hello if you can make it.

Thanks!

PUB DAY in the ADKs: “Shaken” Now Available!

PUB DAY in the ADKs!
Yes, I’m on vacation with a place on Rainbow Lake for two full weeks. Amazing. 
Today this book sees the world, and here I am reminded that the rocks, the air, the water, and the trees don’t care.
It is only right that this is so.
I know I’ve been a lot lately with the publishing news. I promise, this is my last new book of 2024. Thank you to anyone who picks up Kristy’s story, who places it (cover out!) on a bookshelf, hands it to a young person (grades 4-8), reads it — while the world shrugs with benign indifference.
I think I’ll get out on the water today and count my blessings.

Welcome Back to School!

Here in the northeast, I think everyone is back to school. To celebrate that, here’s a page that captures some of that first-day feeling, a little senryu (haiku format w/ a focus on human activities rather than nature). This comes from our book, All Welcome Here, gloriously illustrated by my wonderful pal, Mary Grandpre. (Mary illustrated the first editions of the Harry Potter books, so you are likely familiar with her work.) All Welcome Here was a back-to-school book and one of the many casualties of the pandemic. It landed with a thud and is already out of print. So much for immortality!