My son Haley just finished reading Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett. His review is below.
Wintersmith Review
by Haley Riordan
The book Wintersmith is really interesting. It is a good blend of comedy and magic. It is about a girl named Tiffany who is a witch and gets caught in the dance of the seasons. She is mixed up for the spirit of summer and the spirit of winter falls in love with her so she has to find out how to fight him or the whole world will freeze. One of my favorite parts in the book is when a little blue man Rob Anybody the feegle and his friends all pile up in a suit of armor and try to train Roland, one of Tiffany's friends, so he can save her. The beginning was really good. It was kind of like a flash forward, showing what was going to happen. It was really suspenseful but kind of gives away the ending.
I read the other two books in the series over the summer. They were good but I tell you, this one takes the cake. The first one was slow with some good parts, the second book was great with some slow parts, but the third book is great all around.
Friday, September 29, 2006
Sunday, September 24, 2006
Fun at the Boerne Library
Thanks to everyone who came out for my recent event at the Boerne Public Library. We had a huge crowd and a lot of excitement during the game portion, as you can see below.
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
How to Throw a Percy Party!
Many booksellers have expressed an interest in holding an in-store party to mark the publication of The Titan's Curse on May 1. Because of this, I've designed an event kit with loads of games, Greek mythology activities, flyers, and easy ideas to make a super Percy party. If you are a bookseller or a librarian and would like a free copy of the event kit, simply email me.
Demigod of the Week
Thanks to Annalisa from Malaysia, who sent in this artwork: A portrait of Percy Jackson the way she thinks he might look.
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Update on Camp Half-Blood, Austin Branch
For those of you interested in attending Camp Half-Blood in Austin next summer (and I've gotten a huge number of emails asking about this!) the dates and location have been set. You can find more information on the camp's website: http://web.mac.com/camphalfblood/iWeb/Camphalf-blood.com/Camp%20Half-Blood%202007.html.
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
New Contest for Unpublished Writers
Interesting article in the news today. When I read about the $85 entry fee, I shared the feelings of the quoted lawyer. The contest sounded "terribly suspicious." I wonder how many manuscripts the Sobol committee will receive. I suppose the award could be a good thing if you are the one author they choose out of 50,000. On the other hand, I am strangely optimistic about good manuscripts. They will out. Despite the overall odds of publishing, I do believe that a well-written story will almost always find its way to a publisher with or without an award like this. A general rule I always tell aspiring writers: Never submit your work to anyone who requires a reading fee. But who knows? Perhaps this contest will provide valuable feedback to those who enter. Perhaps it will even jumpstart a worthy career. We'll have to wait and see.
New prize for unpublished manuscripts
By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer1 hour, 49 minutes ago
A new and lucrative literary prize has just been started, with some unusual credentials for the winner: The book must be unpublished and the author must not have an agent.
The Sobol Award offers $100,000 for the best unreleased, agentless novel, with prizes of $25,000 and $10,000 for the runners-up and $1,000 each to seven others. The award was created by Sobol Literary Enterprises, a for-profit venture started by technology entrepreneur Gur Shomron, as "a venue to discover talented, unknown fiction writers and help them get the recognition they deserve."
"For many talented writers, finding a publisher is more difficult than writing their novel," Shomron said Wednesday in a statement. He added that "not a single writer will face silent rejection," receiving two or more evaluations from a panel of editors, librarians and others in the book community.
Shomron himself had to shop a novel, "NETfold," which he ended up self-publishing, making it ineligible for a Sobol prize.
The Sobol Award Web site (http://www.sobolaward.com) will accept up to 50,000 manuscripts, online only, with applicants required to pay an $85 entry fee. Winners will be announced next summer.
"As the winners' agent, we will nurture them, introduce them to publishers and negotiate the best deal for them," Shomron said.
Sobol officials include Roger Riger, a vice president at Barnes & Noble Inc.; Greg Tobin, a former editor-in-chief of Ballantine Books and author of several religious works, including "The Wisdom of St. Patrick" and "Saints and Sinners"; and Neil Baldwin, former executive director of the National Book Foundation and author of biographies of Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and others.
F. Robert Stein, who has represented Janet Evanovich, David Baldacci and many other writers, is Sobol's legal counsel. He told The Associated Press that he initially turned down the job because he was thought the contest "sounded terribly suspicious."
"I thought it would destroy my reputation," says Stein, an attorney with Pryor Cashman Sherman & Flynn LLP.
"I laid out conditions for the contest, including that winners are not bound forever to being represented by the Sobol agency. Gur Shomron had no problems. I have been over every word on the Web site and every word of the promotional material. I have been absolutely satisfied."
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Garden of the Gods
Here are a couple of pictures from our Colorado adventure. We searched the Garden of the Gods, hoping to find Pan, but no luck. The kids checked out the steam shovel at the Mining Museum in Colorado Springs. "You are not my mother! You are a snort!" Anybody remember that line?
Saturday, September 09, 2006
Why Write Novels?
I was privileged to give the keynote address at the annual Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers conference in Denver, Colorado, this weekend. My subject: Why write novels?For those who might be interested, a transcript of my speech is below.
Keynote Address: Why Write Novels?
As you may have heard, I recently made the change from teaching middle school and writing adult murder mysteries to writing full-time, primarily young adult fantasy. People often ask me why. I’d like to set the rumors straight. It is not because once I was out of the middle school classroom, I suddenly lost my desire to contemplate murder.
No. In fact, I enjoy teaching and writing for kids. But there’s one thing I’ve learned doing elementary school visits over the last few years: Assume nothing. On one of my first school visits to a second grade class in San Antonio, I was talking with the kids about cover art for books. I showed them a poster-sized version of the cover for The Lightning Thief and told them that this is what the book would look like. The kids gasped in amazement. One girl said, “Will it really be that big?” I tried to explain that no, books weren’t really that large. Then every child in the class pointed to a nearby easel, where they did have a book as large as my poster. Like I said: Assume nothing.
And so I’m going to use this keynote address to pose a simple question: Why write novels? Here we are at a writers’ conference, learning to create and hopefully publish books. But why? There is so much else to do, why should we aspire to write books?
Well, Sherlock Holmes once said that when you eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. So maybe we should start by dispelling some misconceptions about writing books, thereby eliminating the reasons we do not -- or should not -- aspire to writing.
So here, ladies and gentlemen, are Rick’s top five misconceptions about writing.
1. Writing is a responsible career choice. The question that surprised me most after I published my first novel was, ‘What did you do before you were published?’ The assumption: Now that I was a published writer, it must be my full-time job. I was probably lounging by the pool all day with a Martini and a laptop computer. Surely, writing had superseded my old life. In truth, as we know, writing is very rarely a full-time job. Depending on which survey you believe, the average salary of a published writer is between $2000-7000 a year. Now these numbers are a few years old, but still, even if we assume that this salary range has doubled, it’s obvious that most writers will never quit their day jobs. When I explained to people that I was still a full-time school teacher, they would give me sympathetic looks. I tried explaining that I loved teaching. I was not anxious to leave my calling. For some strange reason, no one believed me. When I finally did become a full-time writer, everyone was so impressed. Finally, I was a “real” writer. Strangers would congratulate me. Many people wrote to ask my advice on how they too could become a full-time writer. They would say, “I want to change careers and become a writer. I’ve got this great idea for a book . . .” I hated to admit that I couldn’t explain how I got to write full-time, much less explain how they could do it. If they had an idea for a book now, it would be five years minimum before they saw any money from that idea. It took me ten years before I became a full-time writer, and even then I didn’t plan it. So is writing a responsible career choice? I’d have to say no. A possible career, yes. But this is not a good reason to starting writing books.
2. I write because it’s fun! Everyone should try it! The most oft-repeated anecdote in the writer’s world: A writer is at a cocktail party, having a conversation with another man. The writer says, ‘What do you for a living?’ The other man says, ‘I’m a brain surgeon. How about you?’ The writer says, ‘I write novels.’ ‘Fascinating!’ the surgeon says. ‘You know, I’m thinking about writing a book when I retire.’ Writer: ‘What a coincidence! When I retire, I’m thinking about taking up brain surgery!’ The point is two-fold: writing is not easy, but many people believe that they have a story inside them. Wanting to be a writer is a common dream, right up there with owning a restaurant and playing pro sports. About five years ago NPR did a survey of people walking through a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Washington D.C. The question they asked: Do you think you have a novel inside you? 81% said yes. But what separates the idea from the reality? A lot of insanity and a touch of masochism. Writing isn’t digging ditches, I’ll grant you, but it is extraordinarily hard work. We don’t write simply because we think it sounds like fun. It isn’t true that anyone can do it.
3. Writing a book is the first step toward a TV/movie deal. Oh, if I had a dime for every time someone asked me, ‘When is the movie coming out?’ Or even better: ‘Can I be in the movie?’ In our culture, books are very small potatoes compared to movies. In fact, books are often seen as minor preludes, stepping stones toward the ultimate expression of the idea: the movie version. This is in spite of the fact that almost no one walks out of a theater and exclaims: ‘Wow, that was so much better than the book!’ Frank McCourt, in his most recent memoir, was talking about all the attention he got for the movie of Angela’s Ashes. He said in America, it’s all about the Movie. You could write the Manhattan phone directory and everyone would ask, ‘So when’s the movie?’ Of course, this obsession is not just limited to America. I get that question from all over the world. Even my local pizza delivery guy is infatuated with the idea. He showed up on my doorstep and asked if his wife could have a part in my movie. I had to break it to him that I had as much control over that as he did. The pizza guy came bearing food. He had a better chance of getting onto the set. The infatuation is understandable, but I hope we are not writing books simply as a prelude to the movies. If we are, we will be disappointed. The number of books optioned for movies or television is miniscule compared to the number of books published, which is turn is miniscule compared to the number of manuscripts submitted to publishers. Even if a book gets optioned for feature film, a film agent recently estimated for me that the odds of the book actually becoming a movie were about one in twenty. The average time? Anywhere from two to fifty years. Narnia and Lord of the Rings took a generation. The Golden Compass, an extremely popular children’s book, is just now going into casting. The book is fifteen years old. Even Lemony Snicket and Harry Potter took years of work. A few years ago, I was having lunch with a friend who is a screenwriter in L.A. He’s produced and written several TV shows you’ve probably heard of. His big goal, however, was to publish a novel. I asked him why. He was doing very well for himself. His work was known by millions. And yet what he really loved was the idea of writing a book, knowing full-well it would probably be a midlist title that received very little attention and made no money. He told me it was about ownership. In Hollywood, everything is done by committee. Nothing is really yours. A book is different. A book is yours. Anyone who has ever had a book turned into a movie can probably tell you about the pain of watching something you created twisted and turned into something else by Hollywood. So I hope we are not writing for Hollywood.
4. We write to get famous. My favorite question kids often ask: Have you met any famous writers? Kids are great about keeping you in your place. But when they ask this, it does make me realize that even writers I consider ‘famous’ are not known to the general public. It takes huge publicity to get noticed by the nation as a whole, not just the book-reading population, which is a tiny fraction of the nation. What writers are recognized by the general public? Can you name more than a dozen who are household names? Because of this, people judge writers on the exceptions, rather than the rule. We are all compared to J.K Rowling, which is sort of like judging everyone in America based on George W. Bush. Writers, by and large, are not famous. Publicists will tell you how difficult it is to get media attention for a book, any book, unless there is some timely controversial tie-in, or unless it was written by a celebrity. I got a taste for how distorted the view of fame and writers was when I did an interview last year with an Irish tabloid newspaper. I did a simple interview about The Lightning Thief. When the tabloid article came out, I was amazed to learn that I was a dying, bestselling American author desperate to find Irish kin who could inherit my fortune. The tabloid even provided a hotline number for their readers. They’d had to do some serious image-enhancing to make me print-worthy, but there I was, right next to an article about David Hasselhoff and an ad for naughty Korean nurses. You see what you have to look forward to when you’re a famous writer? So please, don’t write to get famous!
5. Finally, my favorite: We write because we have the time. A question I got asked constantly when I was a teacher: ‘How do you possibly find the time to write?’ I didn’t have a good answer. I simply found the time because I had to. I would write in the early morning and again at night. I wrote about three or four hours a day, maximum. When I quit teaching, I had illusions that I’d get twice as much done. In fact, I still write about three to four hours a day. That seems to be by maximum output. I feel just as busy now as I ever have. People often tell me that they hope to write some day, when they retire, when they’re not so busy. My response? Don’t wait. That day will never come. We are always too busy to write. No book has ever been written because the author had spare time to write it.
So if all those are misconceptions, why are we sitting here? If we cannot expect fame, or money, or even a stable career, why do we write books?
We write, I hope, because we have a story to tell. How easy it is to lose sight of that, but the goal of writing is telling a good story. To be a writer, it’s not enough simply to love the idea of writing, or to dream of being published. You have to forget that. You have to find the story you must tell – the story so important to you personally that you have no choice but to write it. For me, I first got that feeling with Big Red Tequila, a story about a detective who goes home to Texas from San Francisco. It was a story born out of homesickness. I would have written it for myself whether it got published or not. But it felt different from anything else I’d ever done. I knew, deep down, that this story would get published. Then, with the Percy Jackson series, I had that sense again. I was writing a modern myth, an allegory to help my son make sense of who he was. I would have written it whether it was published or not. And it’s that very fact that made it publishable.
Find that story.
What will help you in your journey? Read a lot. Write a lot. Do your homework on the publishing industry and be professional. All of that is important. But most of all, make sure you have something to say. And if it’s any consolation, when that story is ready to come out, you’ll know it. It will find you. At least, that’s the way it was for me.
In conclusion, I’d like to turn that old anecdote about the cocktail party around. One time at a party, there were these hundred writers and a keynote speaker. The audience said, ‘We’re hoping to be writers someday.’ And the keynote speaker said, ‘What a coincidence. Some day I hope to be a reader . . . of your novels.’ Good luck, and keep writing!
Keynote Address: Why Write Novels?
As you may have heard, I recently made the change from teaching middle school and writing adult murder mysteries to writing full-time, primarily young adult fantasy. People often ask me why. I’d like to set the rumors straight. It is not because once I was out of the middle school classroom, I suddenly lost my desire to contemplate murder.
No. In fact, I enjoy teaching and writing for kids. But there’s one thing I’ve learned doing elementary school visits over the last few years: Assume nothing. On one of my first school visits to a second grade class in San Antonio, I was talking with the kids about cover art for books. I showed them a poster-sized version of the cover for The Lightning Thief and told them that this is what the book would look like. The kids gasped in amazement. One girl said, “Will it really be that big?” I tried to explain that no, books weren’t really that large. Then every child in the class pointed to a nearby easel, where they did have a book as large as my poster. Like I said: Assume nothing.
And so I’m going to use this keynote address to pose a simple question: Why write novels? Here we are at a writers’ conference, learning to create and hopefully publish books. But why? There is so much else to do, why should we aspire to write books?
Well, Sherlock Holmes once said that when you eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. So maybe we should start by dispelling some misconceptions about writing books, thereby eliminating the reasons we do not -- or should not -- aspire to writing.
So here, ladies and gentlemen, are Rick’s top five misconceptions about writing.
1. Writing is a responsible career choice. The question that surprised me most after I published my first novel was, ‘What did you do before you were published?’ The assumption: Now that I was a published writer, it must be my full-time job. I was probably lounging by the pool all day with a Martini and a laptop computer. Surely, writing had superseded my old life. In truth, as we know, writing is very rarely a full-time job. Depending on which survey you believe, the average salary of a published writer is between $2000-7000 a year. Now these numbers are a few years old, but still, even if we assume that this salary range has doubled, it’s obvious that most writers will never quit their day jobs. When I explained to people that I was still a full-time school teacher, they would give me sympathetic looks. I tried explaining that I loved teaching. I was not anxious to leave my calling. For some strange reason, no one believed me. When I finally did become a full-time writer, everyone was so impressed. Finally, I was a “real” writer. Strangers would congratulate me. Many people wrote to ask my advice on how they too could become a full-time writer. They would say, “I want to change careers and become a writer. I’ve got this great idea for a book . . .” I hated to admit that I couldn’t explain how I got to write full-time, much less explain how they could do it. If they had an idea for a book now, it would be five years minimum before they saw any money from that idea. It took me ten years before I became a full-time writer, and even then I didn’t plan it. So is writing a responsible career choice? I’d have to say no. A possible career, yes. But this is not a good reason to starting writing books.
2. I write because it’s fun! Everyone should try it! The most oft-repeated anecdote in the writer’s world: A writer is at a cocktail party, having a conversation with another man. The writer says, ‘What do you for a living?’ The other man says, ‘I’m a brain surgeon. How about you?’ The writer says, ‘I write novels.’ ‘Fascinating!’ the surgeon says. ‘You know, I’m thinking about writing a book when I retire.’ Writer: ‘What a coincidence! When I retire, I’m thinking about taking up brain surgery!’ The point is two-fold: writing is not easy, but many people believe that they have a story inside them. Wanting to be a writer is a common dream, right up there with owning a restaurant and playing pro sports. About five years ago NPR did a survey of people walking through a Barnes & Noble bookstore in Washington D.C. The question they asked: Do you think you have a novel inside you? 81% said yes. But what separates the idea from the reality? A lot of insanity and a touch of masochism. Writing isn’t digging ditches, I’ll grant you, but it is extraordinarily hard work. We don’t write simply because we think it sounds like fun. It isn’t true that anyone can do it.
3. Writing a book is the first step toward a TV/movie deal. Oh, if I had a dime for every time someone asked me, ‘When is the movie coming out?’ Or even better: ‘Can I be in the movie?’ In our culture, books are very small potatoes compared to movies. In fact, books are often seen as minor preludes, stepping stones toward the ultimate expression of the idea: the movie version. This is in spite of the fact that almost no one walks out of a theater and exclaims: ‘Wow, that was so much better than the book!’ Frank McCourt, in his most recent memoir, was talking about all the attention he got for the movie of Angela’s Ashes. He said in America, it’s all about the Movie. You could write the Manhattan phone directory and everyone would ask, ‘So when’s the movie?’ Of course, this obsession is not just limited to America. I get that question from all over the world. Even my local pizza delivery guy is infatuated with the idea. He showed up on my doorstep and asked if his wife could have a part in my movie. I had to break it to him that I had as much control over that as he did. The pizza guy came bearing food. He had a better chance of getting onto the set. The infatuation is understandable, but I hope we are not writing books simply as a prelude to the movies. If we are, we will be disappointed. The number of books optioned for movies or television is miniscule compared to the number of books published, which is turn is miniscule compared to the number of manuscripts submitted to publishers. Even if a book gets optioned for feature film, a film agent recently estimated for me that the odds of the book actually becoming a movie were about one in twenty. The average time? Anywhere from two to fifty years. Narnia and Lord of the Rings took a generation. The Golden Compass, an extremely popular children’s book, is just now going into casting. The book is fifteen years old. Even Lemony Snicket and Harry Potter took years of work. A few years ago, I was having lunch with a friend who is a screenwriter in L.A. He’s produced and written several TV shows you’ve probably heard of. His big goal, however, was to publish a novel. I asked him why. He was doing very well for himself. His work was known by millions. And yet what he really loved was the idea of writing a book, knowing full-well it would probably be a midlist title that received very little attention and made no money. He told me it was about ownership. In Hollywood, everything is done by committee. Nothing is really yours. A book is different. A book is yours. Anyone who has ever had a book turned into a movie can probably tell you about the pain of watching something you created twisted and turned into something else by Hollywood. So I hope we are not writing for Hollywood.
4. We write to get famous. My favorite question kids often ask: Have you met any famous writers? Kids are great about keeping you in your place. But when they ask this, it does make me realize that even writers I consider ‘famous’ are not known to the general public. It takes huge publicity to get noticed by the nation as a whole, not just the book-reading population, which is a tiny fraction of the nation. What writers are recognized by the general public? Can you name more than a dozen who are household names? Because of this, people judge writers on the exceptions, rather than the rule. We are all compared to J.K Rowling, which is sort of like judging everyone in America based on George W. Bush. Writers, by and large, are not famous. Publicists will tell you how difficult it is to get media attention for a book, any book, unless there is some timely controversial tie-in, or unless it was written by a celebrity. I got a taste for how distorted the view of fame and writers was when I did an interview last year with an Irish tabloid newspaper. I did a simple interview about The Lightning Thief. When the tabloid article came out, I was amazed to learn that I was a dying, bestselling American author desperate to find Irish kin who could inherit my fortune. The tabloid even provided a hotline number for their readers. They’d had to do some serious image-enhancing to make me print-worthy, but there I was, right next to an article about David Hasselhoff and an ad for naughty Korean nurses. You see what you have to look forward to when you’re a famous writer? So please, don’t write to get famous!
5. Finally, my favorite: We write because we have the time. A question I got asked constantly when I was a teacher: ‘How do you possibly find the time to write?’ I didn’t have a good answer. I simply found the time because I had to. I would write in the early morning and again at night. I wrote about three or four hours a day, maximum. When I quit teaching, I had illusions that I’d get twice as much done. In fact, I still write about three to four hours a day. That seems to be by maximum output. I feel just as busy now as I ever have. People often tell me that they hope to write some day, when they retire, when they’re not so busy. My response? Don’t wait. That day will never come. We are always too busy to write. No book has ever been written because the author had spare time to write it.
So if all those are misconceptions, why are we sitting here? If we cannot expect fame, or money, or even a stable career, why do we write books?
We write, I hope, because we have a story to tell. How easy it is to lose sight of that, but the goal of writing is telling a good story. To be a writer, it’s not enough simply to love the idea of writing, or to dream of being published. You have to forget that. You have to find the story you must tell – the story so important to you personally that you have no choice but to write it. For me, I first got that feeling with Big Red Tequila, a story about a detective who goes home to Texas from San Francisco. It was a story born out of homesickness. I would have written it for myself whether it got published or not. But it felt different from anything else I’d ever done. I knew, deep down, that this story would get published. Then, with the Percy Jackson series, I had that sense again. I was writing a modern myth, an allegory to help my son make sense of who he was. I would have written it whether it was published or not. And it’s that very fact that made it publishable.
Find that story.
What will help you in your journey? Read a lot. Write a lot. Do your homework on the publishing industry and be professional. All of that is important. But most of all, make sure you have something to say. And if it’s any consolation, when that story is ready to come out, you’ll know it. It will find you. At least, that’s the way it was for me.
In conclusion, I’d like to turn that old anecdote about the cocktail party around. One time at a party, there were these hundred writers and a keynote speaker. The audience said, ‘We’re hoping to be writers someday.’ And the keynote speaker said, ‘What a coincidence. Some day I hope to be a reader . . . of your novels.’ Good luck, and keep writing!
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
An Anonymous Author Speaks
As I was preparing to fly to Denver to speak at a writers' conference, I came across an article Becky had printed for me last year about the trials and tribulations of one anonymous midlist author. I'd forgotten how painful this was to read, but I think everyone who has aspirations of being an author should read it. It's still available on-line here:
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/
2004/03/22/midlist/index1.html?pn=1
http://dir.salon.com/story/books/feature/
2004/03/22/midlist/index1.html?pn=1
Monday, September 04, 2006
The Doctor, TV, and Me
I did something very uncharacteristic this week. I watched television.
I am woefully uniformed about pop culture as far as TV and movies go. If it’s been on television in the last ten years (unless it’s a kids’ show my sons watch) I guarantee you I haven’t seen it. It’s not that I object to TV on principle, and I understand there are many great programs on these days. I just don’t watch them.
I could plead the fact that I’m too busy to watch TV. That’s certainly true. But I find other ways to waste time. It’s just that when I sit down in front of a television, I start feeling antsy. I think about all the other things I could be doing, and within five minutes I usually switch off the set and leave the room.
Movies? Similar story. Every so often, I will see an ad for a movie that sounds interesting. I tell myself I’ll go see it. I hardly ever do. I don’t even rent the video. Most of the time, when I rent a video, I end up returning it late, unwatched. I just never make the time to sit down and watch the thing. People often ask me to cast my own books. Who would play Tres Navarre? Who would play Percy Jackson? I stare at them blankly. I don’t know the names of that many actors.
And so it was quite uncharacteristic for me to order a boxed set of DVDs on line – Doctor Who: The Complete First Season -- and actually watch them! Becky and I watched a lot of the old Doctor Who episodes as PBS re-runs when we lived in the Bay Area. I had heard the new series, which the BBC aired in 2005, was very good, and so I decided to give it a try partly out of nostalgia, partly because I am a sci-fi/fantasy geek from way back. Wow . . . if modern television is this good, maybe I should be watching. The new Doctor Who series blew me away. The acting was great. The writing was great. As wonderful campy and fun as the old series was, the new series was much, much better in every way. If you like sci-fi, check it out. Even if you don’t like sci-fi, these stories are fabulous. They rely more on strong characterization and thrilling plot twists than on special effects. Haley loved them too, although some of the episodes are a bit frightening. Be warned!
I’m a sucker for British television, I will admit. Maybe it’s just the “difference” factor, or the fact that my mom was raised in England as a child after World War II, and so was attuned to all things British and passed this inclination along to me. I’m not sure. At any rate, Doctor Who was amazing. My next walk down memory lane: I just got word that the Red Dwarf boxed set is on its way! I can’t wait to get reacquainted with Lister and Rimmer and the Cat!
I am woefully uniformed about pop culture as far as TV and movies go. If it’s been on television in the last ten years (unless it’s a kids’ show my sons watch) I guarantee you I haven’t seen it. It’s not that I object to TV on principle, and I understand there are many great programs on these days. I just don’t watch them.
I could plead the fact that I’m too busy to watch TV. That’s certainly true. But I find other ways to waste time. It’s just that when I sit down in front of a television, I start feeling antsy. I think about all the other things I could be doing, and within five minutes I usually switch off the set and leave the room.
Movies? Similar story. Every so often, I will see an ad for a movie that sounds interesting. I tell myself I’ll go see it. I hardly ever do. I don’t even rent the video. Most of the time, when I rent a video, I end up returning it late, unwatched. I just never make the time to sit down and watch the thing. People often ask me to cast my own books. Who would play Tres Navarre? Who would play Percy Jackson? I stare at them blankly. I don’t know the names of that many actors.
And so it was quite uncharacteristic for me to order a boxed set of DVDs on line – Doctor Who: The Complete First Season -- and actually watch them! Becky and I watched a lot of the old Doctor Who episodes as PBS re-runs when we lived in the Bay Area. I had heard the new series, which the BBC aired in 2005, was very good, and so I decided to give it a try partly out of nostalgia, partly because I am a sci-fi/fantasy geek from way back. Wow . . . if modern television is this good, maybe I should be watching. The new Doctor Who series blew me away. The acting was great. The writing was great. As wonderful campy and fun as the old series was, the new series was much, much better in every way. If you like sci-fi, check it out. Even if you don’t like sci-fi, these stories are fabulous. They rely more on strong characterization and thrilling plot twists than on special effects. Haley loved them too, although some of the episodes are a bit frightening. Be warned!
I’m a sucker for British television, I will admit. Maybe it’s just the “difference” factor, or the fact that my mom was raised in England as a child after World War II, and so was attuned to all things British and passed this inclination along to me. I’m not sure. At any rate, Doctor Who was amazing. My next walk down memory lane: I just got word that the Red Dwarf boxed set is on its way! I can’t wait to get reacquainted with Lister and Rimmer and the Cat!
Sunday, September 03, 2006
The Lightning Thief in the Sunday Comics
Thanks to the Unshelved Book Club at Overdue Media for the hilarious book talk comic featuring The Lightning Thief. To check it out, go to: http://www.overduemedia.com/ and look at the comic for Sunday, September 3. Thanks also to Robin Wood at the San Marcos Public Library for bringing it to my attention. I don't know what I would do without librarians!
Friday, September 01, 2006
The Great Home School Experiment
Two weeks ago, we officially took the plunge. After a year of thought and planning (and a fair amount of worrying) we began home-schooling our older son, Haley.
For those who don’t know the background, Haley is now eleven. When he was in second grade, he was diagnosed with borderline dyslexia and ADHD. It was a rough year, and my attempts to keep him interested in the curriculum by telling him bedtime stories from the Greek myths are what inspired The Lightning Thief.
The past few years, Haley has been attending private school and he’s made some strides. He had a great reading specialist who used the Scottish Rite program, and his reading skills are now more or less on grade-level. Writing is still a big struggle. Spelling? Very hard. Handwriting? Yikes. Last year in fifth grade we tried ADHD medication for the first time, and while it definitely helped his focus in class, we weren’t comfortable with the way it changed his behavior at home, after the medication wore off. Instead of being somewhat okay most of the time, he went from being very okay in school to off-the-wall at home. I’ve seen how ADHD medication can affect different kids in different ways in the classroom. Some kids really do need it to be successful. In Haley’s case, I just wasn’t sure that the trade-off was worth it.
As we started looking ahead to middle school, we knew Haley would be in for a rough ride. Middle school is a difficult transition under most circumstances, even for excellent students. Suddenly, a student has five to seven core teachers rather than one. There are lockers to deal with, massive amounts of homework to keep organized, extracurricular activities . . . Well, I’m sure you know the drill. At Haley’s private school, we were pretty sure the middle school program would not be a good match. He would fall through the cracks.
We began looking at other schools. Unfortunately, the options are somewhat limited in San Antonio. We didn’t find a program that Haley was comfortable with and that we liked. Then, after a lot of research, we tried a sample day of home-schooling. I designed the curriculum, which wasn’t hard, considering I’d been a sixth grade teacher forever. Becky and I took turns with the lessons. I tried to make it as hard as I could so Haley would understand that home-school would not be a free ride. It would be more work than regular school. I impressed on him that spending the entire day with Mom and Dad might not exactly be fun for him. It didn’t matter. Haley loved it. At the end of the day, he said, “That’s what I want.” We did more school visits, looked into other options, but Haley was convinced. Home school was it.
I was by no means convinced. Like many people, I didn’t understand or trust the home-school initiative. The words “home school” carried all sorts of negative connotations. Who did these people think they were, taking their children out of school? Wasn’t home-schooling only done by religious fundamentalists?
Well . . . We are now in our third week of home-schooling. The year is still young, but I can share with you my early impressions.
First, home-schooling isn’t for everyone, because it’s a ton of work. I was not surprised by this, really. I knew how much work it would be teaching Haley half of every school day. For Becky, I think, it was more of a shock, but she seems to be getting into the swing of things and even says she’s enjoying it. Who would ever have thought that Becky, my BFA left-brained significant other, would be covering math and science? It’s a huge time commitment, but there are a lot of great resources on the web. We are more or less mirroring the curriculum at Haley’s old school (the same middle school where I used to teach), which in turn loosely follows the Texas state framework.
On the bright side, it is amazing how much you can get done in a school day when you aren’t worried about taking attendance, filling out administrative paperwork, doing cafeteria duty, etc. Haley is usually done with his school day by 2:30, and he’s done everything his peers have done and more.
Also, there is no falling between the cracks. Haley is the only student, so he has to master the concepts or we don’t move on. He has to answer the questions, engage in discussion with me, use his best-handwriting, edit his paper . . . He can’t turn invisible, which is what he prefers to do in a regular classroom. Strangely enough, he likes the new system. I was sure he’d be ready to run for the hills by now, but nope. He tells me every day that he loves home-schooling.
Some of the things he’s done so far: He has learned the basics of geography and designed his own continent, complete with maps, a narrative reflecting the five themes of geography, and a bar graph showing immigration patterns. He has begun writing a short fantasy novel (His idea, amazingly, not mine – I would never wish my choice of professions on anyone unless they were truly determined and a little crazy!). He spent a morning studying minerals with his grandfather, a retired physician who has been itching to share his love of science. He takes walks every morning with his mother. He reads about twice as much as he used to, and sometimes even reads more than he’s required to. Gasp! I am teaching him guitar and he’s learned seven chords. He’s taken a pottery class at a local art studio. In English, we’re doing a unit on Norse mythology. He’s watching his own stock portfolio and learning to invest. And of course, he still has his friends over to play in the afternoons.
One of the big questions about home-school – the one that always gets asked first: “But what about socialization?” Boy, I fretted about this a lot. Is it enough that he just hangs out with his friends and takes a few classes with kids here and there? Won’t he miss being around his peers all day? And then I stepped back, and started thinking about what people mean when they say ‘socialization.’ Do we mean the typical school environment? Let me propose something radical: Is there anything inherently ‘normal’ about cramming 300-1000 adolescents together – so many that they can’t possibly be supervised – and letting them teach each other how to behave? If that’s what we mean by socialization, I’m not sure it’s a good thing. It’s also a fairly recent paradigm. Education did not always mean huge institutions busting at the seams with children. Well . . . that’s a much bigger debate, but I thought I’d toss out the question.
As I said, the year is early. I may change my tune by winter. But right now, I’d say the benefits of home-schooling far outweigh the disadvantages for our family. Is it for everyone? Good lord, no. But for us, right now, it seems to be working. I’ve gained a lot of respect for other families who have made this choice.
We still have a lot of work to do, and part of that is educating others about why we are doing this. Becky and Haley were walking down the street yesterday and saw our neighbor Pete, who’s a retired Navy man and a great guy. He was sitting on his porch reading the paper, and he asked why Haley wasn’t in school.
“He is,” Becky said. And she explained.
Pete cursed. “Y’all spent too much time in California!”
Becky just smiled and she and Haley kept walking. She didn’t have the heart to tell Pete there are just as many home-schoolers in Texas as in California, maybe more. To Pete, it’s a crazy hippie idea that must be from somewhere else.
But (shhhhh) the biggest advantage of this experiment so far? I feel connected with my son. I was starting to feel that adolescent “pulling-away,” which is normal and good, I know, but at least now I talk with Haley every day about current events. I read with him, write with him, find out what he’s interested in. Next year, Haley may decide he’s had enough of his parents and say goodbye to home-schooling. If he does, that’s fine. But for the time being, I’m enjoying getting to know him as a student and watching him learn.
I’ll keep you posted!
For those who don’t know the background, Haley is now eleven. When he was in second grade, he was diagnosed with borderline dyslexia and ADHD. It was a rough year, and my attempts to keep him interested in the curriculum by telling him bedtime stories from the Greek myths are what inspired The Lightning Thief.
The past few years, Haley has been attending private school and he’s made some strides. He had a great reading specialist who used the Scottish Rite program, and his reading skills are now more or less on grade-level. Writing is still a big struggle. Spelling? Very hard. Handwriting? Yikes. Last year in fifth grade we tried ADHD medication for the first time, and while it definitely helped his focus in class, we weren’t comfortable with the way it changed his behavior at home, after the medication wore off. Instead of being somewhat okay most of the time, he went from being very okay in school to off-the-wall at home. I’ve seen how ADHD medication can affect different kids in different ways in the classroom. Some kids really do need it to be successful. In Haley’s case, I just wasn’t sure that the trade-off was worth it.
As we started looking ahead to middle school, we knew Haley would be in for a rough ride. Middle school is a difficult transition under most circumstances, even for excellent students. Suddenly, a student has five to seven core teachers rather than one. There are lockers to deal with, massive amounts of homework to keep organized, extracurricular activities . . . Well, I’m sure you know the drill. At Haley’s private school, we were pretty sure the middle school program would not be a good match. He would fall through the cracks.
We began looking at other schools. Unfortunately, the options are somewhat limited in San Antonio. We didn’t find a program that Haley was comfortable with and that we liked. Then, after a lot of research, we tried a sample day of home-schooling. I designed the curriculum, which wasn’t hard, considering I’d been a sixth grade teacher forever. Becky and I took turns with the lessons. I tried to make it as hard as I could so Haley would understand that home-school would not be a free ride. It would be more work than regular school. I impressed on him that spending the entire day with Mom and Dad might not exactly be fun for him. It didn’t matter. Haley loved it. At the end of the day, he said, “That’s what I want.” We did more school visits, looked into other options, but Haley was convinced. Home school was it.
I was by no means convinced. Like many people, I didn’t understand or trust the home-school initiative. The words “home school” carried all sorts of negative connotations. Who did these people think they were, taking their children out of school? Wasn’t home-schooling only done by religious fundamentalists?
Well . . . We are now in our third week of home-schooling. The year is still young, but I can share with you my early impressions.
First, home-schooling isn’t for everyone, because it’s a ton of work. I was not surprised by this, really. I knew how much work it would be teaching Haley half of every school day. For Becky, I think, it was more of a shock, but she seems to be getting into the swing of things and even says she’s enjoying it. Who would ever have thought that Becky, my BFA left-brained significant other, would be covering math and science? It’s a huge time commitment, but there are a lot of great resources on the web. We are more or less mirroring the curriculum at Haley’s old school (the same middle school where I used to teach), which in turn loosely follows the Texas state framework.
On the bright side, it is amazing how much you can get done in a school day when you aren’t worried about taking attendance, filling out administrative paperwork, doing cafeteria duty, etc. Haley is usually done with his school day by 2:30, and he’s done everything his peers have done and more.
Also, there is no falling between the cracks. Haley is the only student, so he has to master the concepts or we don’t move on. He has to answer the questions, engage in discussion with me, use his best-handwriting, edit his paper . . . He can’t turn invisible, which is what he prefers to do in a regular classroom. Strangely enough, he likes the new system. I was sure he’d be ready to run for the hills by now, but nope. He tells me every day that he loves home-schooling.
Some of the things he’s done so far: He has learned the basics of geography and designed his own continent, complete with maps, a narrative reflecting the five themes of geography, and a bar graph showing immigration patterns. He has begun writing a short fantasy novel (His idea, amazingly, not mine – I would never wish my choice of professions on anyone unless they were truly determined and a little crazy!). He spent a morning studying minerals with his grandfather, a retired physician who has been itching to share his love of science. He takes walks every morning with his mother. He reads about twice as much as he used to, and sometimes even reads more than he’s required to. Gasp! I am teaching him guitar and he’s learned seven chords. He’s taken a pottery class at a local art studio. In English, we’re doing a unit on Norse mythology. He’s watching his own stock portfolio and learning to invest. And of course, he still has his friends over to play in the afternoons.
One of the big questions about home-school – the one that always gets asked first: “But what about socialization?” Boy, I fretted about this a lot. Is it enough that he just hangs out with his friends and takes a few classes with kids here and there? Won’t he miss being around his peers all day? And then I stepped back, and started thinking about what people mean when they say ‘socialization.’ Do we mean the typical school environment? Let me propose something radical: Is there anything inherently ‘normal’ about cramming 300-1000 adolescents together – so many that they can’t possibly be supervised – and letting them teach each other how to behave? If that’s what we mean by socialization, I’m not sure it’s a good thing. It’s also a fairly recent paradigm. Education did not always mean huge institutions busting at the seams with children. Well . . . that’s a much bigger debate, but I thought I’d toss out the question.
As I said, the year is early. I may change my tune by winter. But right now, I’d say the benefits of home-schooling far outweigh the disadvantages for our family. Is it for everyone? Good lord, no. But for us, right now, it seems to be working. I’ve gained a lot of respect for other families who have made this choice.
We still have a lot of work to do, and part of that is educating others about why we are doing this. Becky and Haley were walking down the street yesterday and saw our neighbor Pete, who’s a retired Navy man and a great guy. He was sitting on his porch reading the paper, and he asked why Haley wasn’t in school.
“He is,” Becky said. And she explained.
Pete cursed. “Y’all spent too much time in California!”
Becky just smiled and she and Haley kept walking. She didn’t have the heart to tell Pete there are just as many home-schoolers in Texas as in California, maybe more. To Pete, it’s a crazy hippie idea that must be from somewhere else.
But (shhhhh) the biggest advantage of this experiment so far? I feel connected with my son. I was starting to feel that adolescent “pulling-away,” which is normal and good, I know, but at least now I talk with Haley every day about current events. I read with him, write with him, find out what he’s interested in. Next year, Haley may decide he’s had enough of his parents and say goodbye to home-schooling. If he does, that’s fine. But for the time being, I’m enjoying getting to know him as a student and watching him learn.
I’ll keep you posted!
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