Once Spoken, Forever Forgotten - Me on Cynthia Leitch Smith's Blog

Goodness gracious, I have inadvertently appeared in YA author Cynthia Leitich Smith's blog!

I was interviewed by the excellent Anita Loughrey in anticipation of my talk before the SCBWI pre-Bologna conference.

Reading the interview, I was struck by how little I remembered of what I'd said.

And we mustn't forget that this is the world that our readers take for granted--TV, computers, games, the Web--this is the world our readers know. As writers for children, it is our responsibility to inhabit it with them.

It's a good thing someone was writing it all down.

For lack of anything interesting to illustrate this article with, here is a cartoon from my unpublished collection of pregnancy cartoons Who Are You And Why Are You Standing On My Bladder

The Agent Dunnit!

Okay, so I'm addicted to films about writers trying to get published. Last night I watched this Christmas TV movie starring Rob Lowe - The Perfect Day.

Guy gets fired, writes novel, gets rejected ... the usual.

Then a literary agent (Six Feet Under's Frances Conroy) sees the marvel of his manuscript and signs him ... the book climbs to number one on the New York Times bestseller list ... and the Rob Lowe character promptly turns into a jerk.

The jerk needs to learn a lesson which is provided by mysterious meetings with the mad professor from Back to the Future telling him all sorts of unknowable things including the fact that he was going to die on Christmas day.

So are there supernatural things at work? Is he going to die? After all those rejections, isn't a writer allowed some Pride before the Fall?

Turns out it was all a trick. He was getting too big for his boots. He had to be taught a lesson. And who was behind the lesson?

His AGENT.

I could have cried after this plot twist was revealed.

Except I was too busy laughing.

Zombie Idol Winner Vows to Devote Life to Zombie Work

If you've been following the Zombie Idol over at YA author Maureen Johnson's blog, you will be pleased to learn that the winner of the competition to insert a zombie into literature is Adrienne K with her version of How to Be An Artist by Sark -

HOW TO BE A ZOMBIE by Adrienne K.

Never stay dead. Learn to watch from shadows. Spread incurable viruses. Invite slow runners to tea. Collect occipital lobes and put them all over your house. Make friends with fear and trepidation. Look forward to nightmares. Make men cry in movies. Eat brains naked. In moonlight. Cultivate apocalypse. Refuse to “be entombed.” Do it for evil. Take lots of innocents. Give undeath away. Do it now. The living will follow. Believe in the cursed. Groan a lot. Celebrate every gorgeous medulla oblongata. Take bloodbaths. Steal others’ wild imaginings through transformative cerebrum-sucks. Revel in perfect chaos. Draw on the walls. With gnawed-off knuckles. Imagine yourself victorious. Giggle at shot guns. Listen to old people wail. Open them up. Dive in. Be free. Damn yourself. Drive in the fear. Play with entrails. You are unholy. Build a fort with corpses. Get revenge. Hug graves. Roam aimlessly. Massacre.

IN response to ecstatic praise from all corners of the internet, the winner said:

This marks a new course for me, as I think I will pursue zombie research and writing full-time. Read more