Timewaster's Guide Archive

No, the reviews came in and they were really good, at least from the adult perspective...  The kids gave it a 'good' (not an excellent), but the adult evals were much better than I thought, so I'm excited.  We'll see what happens.

So, I submitted my second book to my publisher last week, and they have got the evals back.  I'm a bit discouraged.

I wrote my first book for adults, and it turned out the kids love it.  Elementary schools are the target audience.  So I wrote this second book keeping them in mind.  

The evals came back from the adults and they all love it.  They also sent it to a 10 year old kid who loved my first book.  He says it's not as funny.

So first I aimed for adults and the target ended up being kids.  Now I aim for kids, and the target ends up being adults.  

I can't seem to hit my audience.  I'm not sure what will happen, they will likely send it out to some other kids to get second opinions.  And I may have to 'funny it up' a bit.  Add a few fart jokes.

I'm actually heading down south to talk with my publisher this afternoon.  How far off the freeway is the West Jordan Seagull?  I really, really want some refreshment.  

Oh, and to see Rob, of course.

Well, they do sell really long staples, so you could staple the thing...  

I agree, and it's a pain (and expensive) to print out.  But if it gets some of these books into hands that may not have otherwise had the opportunity, then I think thats a good thing.

Google now lets you download and print entire books. So for example, want to read your kid Aesop's Fables? Click here. Download. Print.

You're good to go.

This book is about on par with the Magic Treehouse series, or so I'm told.  I've never read those books.  So while that isn't exactly pre-reader in the sense that they will be able to read if somebody reads it to them, they will find it interesting.  So maybe I'm not describing it right.  All I know is my four year old pestered me constantly to write more, so I could read finish the story.  And since it is a series book, he became furious with me when they didn't catch the villain in the end.  He got into the story, but it's certainly not 'See Jack.  See Jack run.  See Jack get mauled by Spot,"  kind of writing.  If you want to see the first finished story, you can go here:

http://stu-inst.usu.edu:16080/fikiwiki/index.php/TK

It's 6000 words.  Our original intent was to give this a 'church history' slant, but if you read the first chapter, you could see that with about 3 edits, you could make it American History.  If my publisher says no, we might try to make those edits and go national, but I had so much rejection when I shopped Chickens around, I hesitate to try there until maybe I've got more successes under my belt.

Who knows?

Oh, and as always, I'm writing this book in a totally collaborative manner, so if anybody wants to drop in comment or make changes, you are more than welcome.

So, Bullies in the Headlights is complete.  The ending was a bit painful to write, and it needs some tweaking, but it's all down on paper.

I also started and finished a second book.  It's a 'chapter book', for pre-readers and very early readers (obviously the pre-readers would have to have it read to them).  It's only 6000 words, but I'm excited about how it turned out.

Anyway, I will be submitting both of these books to my publisher in September, and then we'll see what happens.