My Spastic and Poorly Organized Looking Back at 2014 Post

You want to know what's crazy? Me and my year. Or is that "My year and I"? Whatever.

I've had a certifiably insane year. So much so that it's time for a list:

Crazy Things That Have Happened to Me:

1) I sold a book.

2) I got a really cool editor (because I have a really cool agent who knew how to sell it).

3) I took awesome trips to New York, Michigan, and Iowa.

4) I finished LIFE IN BOOLEAN VARIABLES and started two other books of drastically different themes and tones. Maybe they'll have a race to see which finishes first?

5) I taught fourth grade for my second year after previously teaching fifth. I'm starting to feel the ground beneath my feet. I'm sure it will disappear again soon.

6) I ate a whole lot of Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I'm serious. We're talking epic amounts. My wife is thoroughly grossed out.

7) I got ARCs of I AM DRUMS in the mail. Read about how that went here.

8) People are actually reading the ARCs and that is flat out insane to think about.

9) I worked really hard at being a good father. I failed most of the time, but remain proud of the times I succeeded.

10) I had the privilege of... wait, I kind of forgot what this one was going to be.

Anyway, that's my looking back post for 2014. It's not very organized. There are others out there that are much better, but it's honest and it's wonderful to me.

2015 is going to be insane. I'm thoroughly excited and worried, but I'll save that for another post when I have my wits about me.

Funny Reactions to Book Deal News

One of the fun things you get to do when you sell your debut novel is deliver the news to friends and family. It's big news to share, so reactions are understandably extreme. Most often this is a positive thing, but you do end up getting a few reactions that swing the other direction, and they can be pretty entertaining.

Below are some of those reactions, posted for entertainment purposes only. They haven't all happened to me, but I know they do all happen, and are best met with good humor.

1) The Supportive Opportunist:

"I'm so happy you're publishing a book! I can't wait for you to give me seven-hundred free copies!"

2) Disappointed:

"What do you mean it's not out for another year and a half?! Why can't you release it sooner?"

3) Condescending:

"Oh, you wrote that kind of book? I was hoping you'd written something legitimate."

4) Relieved:

"Whew! It's so great to hear you succeeded at something. I was always worried you'd end up in jail."

5) Skeptical:

"Are you sure Houghton Mifflin Harcourt is a real publisher? Lots of people are out to rip you off, you know."

6) The Marketing Guru:

"If I were you, I'd get on the Today Show and Oprah's reading list. Why haven't you done that yet?"

7) Unimpressed:

"So what if you got a book deal? Anyone can publish a book nowadays."

8) Me, Too:

"I've always felt I have one good book in me. Maybe I should finally write it. I mean, if you can do it..."

9) Impractical:

"I guess you'll be quitting your day job now, what with that huge advance!"

10) Full of Bad Suggestions:

"Your next book should be about a talking animal that's dead the entire time and wakes up at the end to find out it was all just a dream!"

Finally.... the I AM DRUMS cover reveal!

It's official. It's set in stone. And I can totally share it with you!

It's the cover for I AM DRUMS, and the wonderful people at Kid Literati are hosting by cover reveal this morning, along with a chance to win a signed ARC!

Check out the cover and enter the giveaway:

http://www.kidliterati.com/2014/12/cover-reveal-i-am-drums-by-mike-grosso.html

A huge thanks to Kid Literati!

How my ARCs showed up at my apartment

The only person more tired than Dad this week is Son. So it is no surprise on Monday, December 1st, when Dad arrives at Son's daycare to find him still asleep in his cot. Son sees Dad and smiles, because he is happy to see him, but pulls covers over his head, determined not to leave until his beauty rest is complete.

Dad gets Son out of his cot and holds him in the air while he puts on his coat, hat, and gloves. Son digs his head into Dad's shoulder and falls back to sleep.

They both head home, listening to music, because Son is a musical child in every way possible.

They arrive at their building, but Son refuses to walk. He is tired, and Dad is tired, but like paper beats rock Son's tiredness beats Dad's. Dad carries Son up to the building, his face smushed into his coat.

Dad sees something inside the common area. Right under the mail slots.

It is a box.

It's a cube, actually, and very heavy. It has dad's name on it, but dad doesn't recognize the return address. Mom has probably purchased something, and since it's addressed to Dad it might be a present he's not supposed to open, lest he sleep on the couch for the rest of the holiday season.

So with one hand holding his heavy three-year-old who should be able to walk himself up the stairs, and the other hand holding a package that is rapidly ripping his bicep in half, Dad trudges up the stairs, angry that Mom has bought him something so heavy.

I mean, it's not like he needs anything that big. Mom should get herself something nice instead -- preferably something light.

Son wakes up just as they enter the apartment. Dad sighs and sets Son and box (oops, I mean cube) on the living room floor. Son runs in circles until Mom gets home. Dad ignores box, because he is angry at it for being heavy and he has to stop Son from destroying their apartment.

Mom gets home and says, "What's that?"

Dad says, "It's something you ordered for me, isn't it?"

"I didn't order anything. Especially not something for you!" (She didn't really say this last part because she is nice, but isn't it a funny line?)

"Whatever it is, I'll look at it later. We have dinner to prepare and a little guy to entertain."

Dad, Mom, and Son eat dinner. They tell each other about their day and laugh a lot. Boy gets into lots of trouble, because he's three and that's what three-year-old people do.

After dinner, while cleaning up, Mom notices two things: "We are out of pull-ups, and that box is from New York. I think you need to open it."

As Dad is opening the box, it dons on him what is inside before he even sees the cover of his book plastered over ARC copies. This is the first time he has seen it in physical form, typeset and beautiful.

"Whoa," Dad says, because he is channeling Bill and Ted. "This is really cool, but we still need pull-ups."

Dad gets back in the car with Son, which is much easier this time because Son is willing to walk. Together, they go to the store and get pull-ups, but the entire time Dad is thinking about the box of books. He has waited a long time to see them. It is a very wonderful moment, and totally worth lugging them up the stairs with a heavy dude in his arms.

Dad gets home and sleeps with one of the books under his pillow, because he really is that weird sometimes.

In Which I Lose Faith in My WIP While Home Sick

I was home sick with my son today, sniffling and grumbling and playing silly games, when something amazing happened. He took a nap.

"I wrote I AM DRUMS during naptime!" I thought. "Time to crank out some words for NANOWRIMO!"

Then a problem came up -- I started writing in first person without even realizing it. This is not unusual for me, as I've written lots of middle grade fiction in first person. Only this time, I started writing first person without realizing it, for multiple paragraphs, in the middle of a third person narrative. That was part of my NANOWRIMO self-challenge -- the whole trying something different for fun approach.

You see, LUNCH BOX is a bizarre little thing. It's sort of genre-ish (I think), inspired by my students who leave their lunch boxes behind when they leave for the day (and what I joke might one day happen to their rotting food). It's also told in third person, past tense. I chose these things because they turn the story into a noble experiment that takes me out of my recent comfort zone. I churned out tons of stuff like this in the past, but recently I've been so glued to contemporary realistic middle grade first person present tense that I was beginning to wonder if I had what it takes to break out of it.

So that's why I started writing LUNCH BOX this way. And the sudden compulsive switch to first person went on for several paragraphs before I even realized I was making a mistake. And now I don't even know if it was a mistake. Maybe my brain is trying to tell me something? This whole forcing the story to be a certain way never works.

Then again, this is an experiment, and experiments need parameters if they are to be valid.

LUNCH BOX, my Nanowrimo experiment

Here's a short list of things currently causing me to panic:

1) Report cards.
2) PT Conferences.
3) PT Conference with my child's teacher(s).
4) Something I can't talk about yet.
5) LIFE IN BOOLEAN VARIABLES, an intensely personal book that almost killed me (not literally), is in the hands of beta-readers, and I already see millions of things I wish I'd fixed before sending it out.
6) Something will pop into my head five minutes from now, and I will worry about it even though there is nothing to worry about.
7) I want to hold an ARC of I AM DRUMS in my hands (this will happen in the next few months, so I should chill out about this, too. Fat chance!).
8) I am taking over the spelling bee at school, because I'm just not busy enough (and I'm secretly a spelling nerd who never had a spelling bee at his elementary school).
9) I just thought of something that fits #6 perfectly. AAAAAAAH!

Now, on top of all of that, I've jumped into NANOWRIMO for the first time. Why am I doing this? I have no time. I'll be lucky if I hit 20k by November 30th, much less the goal of 50k. I'm setting myself up to fail, which is exactly what modern educational pedagogy tells me not to do.

But I'm doing it anyway. Because I said so, and I'm an adult. I can eat ice cream three meals a day if I want, and there's nothing you can do about it. I've earned the right to try NANOWRIMO for my first time and fail at it if I feel so inclined.

And I will fail. I'm okay with laying it out there ahead of time, because it's true and there's no sense pretending otherwise. This is not pessimism because it is certain -- I have a 0% chance of winning NANOWRIMO. It's the exact opposite of pessimism, in fact, because I'm giving myself permission to fail, and appreciating the material I will create on my road to failure. Oddly enough, this is a theme that surfaced late in my first draft of LIBV while listening to the well of ideas inside my head.

It's a little book (or maybe a big book. How should I know?) called LUNCH BOX. It's very different from my last two finished novels, even though it's middle grade and very much me at the writing wheel. It's a bit sillier than I AM DRUMS and LIBV, but it also might end up -- dare I say it -- scarier. It has a Calvin and Hobbes meets Wayside School thing going on, and I'm not sure if that's a recipe for success or a recipe for going back to the drawing board on December first. But it has promise, I think.

I'll settle for it being fun. I'm at 5,400 words as of the moment I'm writing this, and at this rate, I will finish 50k sometime between the hare's second and third nap. But at least I'll finish.

I joined NANOWRIMO this year because I win either way. Take that, procrastination! You always were kind of a punk.

Why I Signed on with a SF/F Agency

I've gotten this question more times than you might expect. I'm not entirely surprised -- I'm publishing a contemporary middle grade novel, and my next few projects fall under the same category. How exactly did I end up working with one of the leading science fiction and fantasy agencies in the business?

It was actually pretty simple. I queried them, and I caught their interest. I'd queried them four times before, and two of the times gotten them to nibble a little bit. The two projects that had briefly caught their interest in the past were fantasy novels (one high, one urban). I'd written fantasy and science fiction (mostly awful material in the latter category) in the past, and I might again down the road. But that's still not the reason I signed on.

Because think about it. Contemporary middle grade? With an agency known for repping genre heavyweights like Brandon Sanderson and Charlaine Harris? What in the name of fruit salad was I thinking?

My first phone conversation with them was brutally honest.

"You do this and that really well, but when it comes to (mentions seven-thousand things), you're pretty terrible."

I'm paraphrasing and exaggerating, but that was the general gist. They were interested, but only sort of. They thought I had potential. But I had work to do before they jumped on board.

They were right about what was terrible, of course. They rep a lot of genre fiction, but they understood what made MG tick in the invisibly intricate way that adult authors just don't get. Every suggestion was sensible, and was likely to improve my manuscript. Why say no to an agency that knew exactly what I needed to do to make my book the best it could be?

I made my book a lot better, and I signed on with a heavy duty SF/F agency to sell my contemporary middle grade novel. I'd do it again if given the choice, even if an agent with a huge middle grade list offered to take me on.