The thing is, and I mentioned this in PARTY, you can’t functionally live each day like it was your last. You can’t. Or, you could, but you’d end up broke, in prison, and/or dead very quickly. I, for one, would immediately resume unhealthy habits that I fought for years to get rid of, and it’s only because I choose to assume and hope I’ll be around long enough to enjoy the long term benefits of having quit.

But what you can do is assess what you really want outta this gig. When I go to schools and tell students they can do anything, there are realities to contend with, sure. If the entire room wants to be NFL quarterbacks, well…that’s probably not gonna happen. True enough.

My argument is this: If you relentlessly pursue that goal, you will find other opportunities opening up that may make you even happier, and certainly no less happy, than if you’d gotten the big dream.

I always wanted to be a movie star (who doesn’t?). Some of my theatre friends and I always just assumed that’s where life would take us. Well, it didn’t.  (Thank goodness.) But I spent 11 years having a great time doing shows with my own theatre company. I had three great years of music and theatre and art at Chyro Arts Venue. I wouldn’t trade those for anything. I even got to make some very fun and very low budget movies with my best friends. Totally worth it. [That link is NSFW; language!]

So maybe you won’t be an NFL quarterback. But have you ever considered how many jobs are associated with just one NFL broadcast game? All the TV positions, all the on-field positions, all the behind-the-scenes positions? Going after that first goal will, I promise you, reveal and open doors you hadn’t even thought of.

You can’t live every day like it was your last. You gotta pay the bills. You have to hope and plan for tomorrow. But for crying out loud, don’t use that as an excuse to give up and just watch TV all night. Whatever it is out there that you want to do, go do it, and don’t let anyone stop you.

In other news:

ZERO comes out April 24! There will be a big release party at Changing Hands, so please come! And please get your copy that day or week from a brick and mortar store. It’ll help me and it’ll help them and, I daresay, ultimately it will help you. Bookstores and libraries are among those thing you might not realize how much are missed until it’s too late.

Speaking of Changing Hands, don’t miss this year’s Yallapalooza at the downtown Phoenix library. Classes and authors and signings and food and…just be there, it’s going to be sweet!

Take care,

~ Tom

First, I have to say, I feel bad for the youngin’s out there who will never fully appreciate this lost art. John Cusak in High Fidelity has a great speech about mix tapes that well-encapsulates their essence, magic, and, I daresay, necessity in figuring out one’s own pet angst.

Take this lovely doozy as a for-instance: The title of the mix is APOLOGLIES. (Read that carefully. Neat little word trick there, no?) Some of the song titles include Don’t Come Around Here No More; Sell Out; Bang and Blame; Beat on the Brat; Broken Circles; Indifference…

Cripes, who was I so mad at in December of 1994?

Then there’s the apparently bleak, oppressive, thoroughly hopeless Christmas of ‘92. Mix title: Can I Have Some Time Alone? (cribbed, of course, from R.E.M.’s backing vocals on It’s The End of the World As We Know It). This lil beauty includes such Christmas gems as The God That Failed; Losing My Religion; Born to Lose; Sorrow; Am I Evil; and, yes, It’s The End of the World.

You’ll be happy to learn, I hope, that I feel much better now. Merry Christmas!

As I mentioned on Facebook, I’m sort of appalled at how many of these songs I’m just flat-out missing. Some I have no idea who the band is. I don’t have the tapes anymore; these are just the paper sleeves that went into the cassette cases. Something else Today’s Youth won’t ever understand: New Tape Smell. Who’s with me?! Man, I haven’t smelled a new cassette tape in forever. Geez. Now I need to go make a mix tape.

Anyhow, it seems appropriate that I should be sorting through these paper sleeves just as R.E.M. is disbanding, because they feature so prominently on these mix tapes. I was one of the world’s biggest R.E.M. fans for a long time. That time passed awhile back, but I still appreciate them, and still enjoy the music. Just not on quite the rotation as in years past. Thanks, fellas.

Bring back the mix tape! There’s far too much consolation to be had in their creation. Making a “playlist” is a poor substitute for decorating a sleeve. Where’s the art? Where’s the painstaking wait as you listen to each song as it records? None of this drag-and-drop crap; I want a dual-tape deck, man. I want to be alone in my room and tell my posters that no one understands!

Okay, I still do that, so, happily, some things don’t ever change.

If you haven’t heard, there’s a third novel of mine coming out in 2013, and I’m right in the middle of my first round of revisions. And, as I do for all my novels, I’ve created a playlist for it…but it’s not the same. Still! Always good to back and mine the insanity of high school for plot fodder. (Plot Fodder, also a good name for a band.)

In other news: Toby is cute. That is all. ZERO comes out in less than six months!

So I just typed “The End” on a new manuscript I’ve had on a low simmer for a year or so. Is it done and ready to ship off to Random House? Eh…not quite.

Everyone’s process is different, and mine changes based on other life events. Say, an impending rupture of my wife’s belly. Like every other first time parent, I have no idea what to expect when the little guy shows up, but I’m pretty sure things are going to be different. Not to put too fine a point on it.

So my goal was to get at least one more manuscript done and shipped to my agent before he arrives in August. So far, I’m on track to do that. But with this magical “The End” dangling off the final page, what’s next?

For me, it’s a break or a switch. Some writers, I believe Stephen King is among them, recommend putting the story away for no less than a month, three if you can manage. I happen to agree…but I’m not that patient. So I’ll put it away for a week instead. This is not a recommendation, it’s just me. During that time, I’ll either do nothing except maybe play video games and catch up on my reading, or (more likely) I’ll get to work on a different story, something in a totally different voice and setting.

I’m about 10 to 20 thousand words shy of a marketable YA novel with this story, so when I go back next week to check in on it, I’ll be keeping an eye on where bridges need to built, how characters can continue to grow and develop in context of the arc, and almost certainly find some new plot threads I wasn’t even aware were in there. What I won’t do is “pad.” Good writing is tight writing. I can’t add for the sake of adding. I’m not worried though, the words will show up as they need to, and when it’s done, they’ll belong there. (One hopes.)

This story has been a beast, and not in the good way. With PARTY, I dealt with subjects I wanted to know more about. With this one, I plumbed some parts of my high school career that I’m not proud of. That’s a much different challenge; to go back and examine just how badly I screwed things and people up back then. And the more I looked, the more I realized I only scratched the surface. I don’t think I was a bad guy, but man, when I made a mistake, I committed. I suppose it also depends on who you ask…

So this one is part homage, part mea culpa, part exorcism. With any luck, we’ll see it on shelves someday.

But first: revision. Then more revision. And…more revision. That’s how it works.

In parting, let me recommend a book to all you aspiring novelists (or published novelists for that matter), if you can find it: The Writer’s Digest Genre Writing Series: How To Write Mysteries by Shannon Ocork. No matter what genre you work in, just gloss over the specifics to mystery novels if you don’t write them, and pay attention to everything else she says; she touches on several subjects other books neglect, and has a style that’s easy to understand. I’m going to go back over this one with a hilighter, and I already know it will be one of the books on writing I’ll be turning to again and again. Absolutely great book.

P.S. ZERO comes out in April! Woo hoo!

Take care,

~ Tom

LOOKING BACK:

I discovered two things that I love most about this job: The book people, and the reader people. I’ve met the most amazing booksellers, educators, and authors this year, and I’m indebted to all of them for helping me out along the way. It’s amazing how many awesome authors live in Arizona. And there’s more on the way. But they’re not just good writers; they are great people. Lisa McMann, Robin Brande, Jon Lewis, James Owen, Janette Rallison, Aprilynne Pike…and those’re just the authors. I’ve met friends of friends who I now call my friends too, who love a mean game of Apples to Apples and who sincerely love books and those who write them. I’m just one lucky son-of-a to have met them all.

Then there’s the students I get to talk to at the various high schools and libraries. They’re the real thing, and the real reason I want to do this for the rest of my life. The stories I’ve heard from them and from their teachers and administrators has made me so angry I couldn’t see straight. I am constantly appalled at how many parents out there really don’t get it. For awhile I thought that my PARTY characters were merely vague mirrors of me (and they are) as a high school student. After meeting so many teenagers, though, I realize that people like Mr. and Mrs. Lewis, Morrigan’s parents, are more common than I’d thought.

It’s pretty much my mission in life now to reach as many teens as I can and let them know they can do anything. Sure, there’s a certain measure of “being realistic” that maybe should be observed…but honestly, all said and done, teenagers are biologically wired to be reckless, and I think they should be. Not in a life-threatening way, of course; not in a drink-and-drive kind of way, not at all. I mean in a “I can accomplish anything” way. That’s the message, and I won’t stop saying it. Deal.

Since PARTY, I’ve sold my second novel, ZERO, which should be out about a year from now. So that rocks. I’ve got seven or eight novels in the works at present, I’ve gotten to speak at conferences and write articles, I’ve gotten to teach classes. All in all — a great year. And I saw none of it coming.

LOOKING AHEAD:

So there’s ZERO, and I’m excited to see it finally on the shelves. There’s another couple of possible projects being discussed, but I don’t think I can comment any more than that on it just yet. I’m hoping to release a “new” chapter of PARTY as a free PDF soon, and with a little luck, at some point I hope to have an audiobook ready to go. Time’ll tell.

Then there’s the baby.

Why do I have seven or eight books cooking right now? Because come August, I simply have no idea how exactly my life and schedule is going to change. There’s  a baby boy on the way, and…I just don’t know. I can’t wait to meet him, I know that much. I also know that I can’t not write, but I don’t know when or how just yet. I’ll have to ask him.

I’m working on getting a regularly scheduled video blog/vlog/whatever going, but my technology is not currently cooperating. I’m planning on some live-stream events, and am getting setup to do Skype visits. Here’s hoping that all works out!

Mostly, I just want to say thank you to all the readers, all the reviewers (yes, good and bad alike…both are instructive). I’ve gotten to do what I always dreamed of doing, and it’s sometimes unreal. But it should go to show you that anything is possible.

Hear me? Anything.

See ya.

But some of those things include non-R&J related items, like homework. And revisions for ZERO (due in Spring 2012! Yay!). Also, laundry.

It’s been more than a year since I last directed a show, Talk Radio, at the now-departed Chyro Arts Venue. And like every one of the thirty-five shows I’ve directed since 1990 (starting with a terrifically maudlin and wholly angsty original play called I Want To Be Free…yeah, let that genius title sink in for a moment), it all comes down to the cast.

I don’t mean their skill or talent, which this cast has in abundance. I will always stand by my casting – any directing skill I may have is about 90% finding the actors who can make sense of my direction and do a phenomenal job despite what I tell them to do. 

I had opportunities to Make Something Of Myself in theatre, both as an actor and a director, and pretty much passed them up to go it alone. I’ve never regretted those choices, though I confess sometimes I wonder “What If.” No, I’m an author of young adult novels, the best freaking job ever invented (and it was largely invented). Writing is where I belong, and I’d be doing it whether there was money involved or not.

…just like theatre.  I think I’ve been paid three, maybe four times to direct. Grand total: Maybe a thousand bucks (spread over 22 years). I do this directing thing from time to time for two reasons.

One, it’s instant gratification storytelling. I know that in six to eight weeks, I will have a completed product, a completed story. Novel writing can take two years or more from start to finish.

Two – it’s the people. The cast and crew. The audience. This R&J cast, like so many before, are just great people, period. Some actors have enormous resumes, others are making their debut. And every one of them has worked hard, laughed hard, and made the entire experience a reminder of why I love to direct plays. You become family when you produce a show. Sometimes, great and lasting friendships develop. More than once I’ve had cast members end up marrying.

Pretty sweet.

So if you’re in the area, or want to – you know – fly in for the night, then come take a look at our production of Romeo and Juliet.  (Chicks With Swords! Can’t beat that.) Hopefully I’ll get some video or photos posted to my Facebook soon.

Curtain going up…

So the holidays are officially over, I guess.  In the last three hours, I’ve been contacted to do three school visits; received word that revisions for book #2 are en route tomorrow; and had some terrible oatmeal that is threatening to ruin my night of  – wait for it – Social Distortion, live in concert.

Okay, so, the oatmeal thing is unrelated to the holidays, it’s just pissing me off.  I hate “stomach issues.” Headache, cold, flu, stroke, coronary, a face-ectomy…fine. Just don’t let me be queasy, it’s all I ask.

In other news, giant Woo Hoo’s to A.S. King, Robin Brande, and Adam Rex for various and sundry book awards this week!  Now I want one! All the cool kids got ‘em…  Okay, no, seriously — one thing I am always happy to tell people about my line of work is the true awesomeness that is YA authors.  I’ve had a chance to meet so many this past year, and made great friends among them.  I love the writing.  I love the school visits.  I love the booksellers and Book Babes.  And I love that the other authors I get to hang out with now are just so friendly, encouraging, and funny.  It was enough to get a book on the shelves; to gain new friends is something I’d never considered.  Me = lucky sucka.  And congratulations to everyone on the various lists!  Well earned.

[Whoa - HUGE belch. That helped.] 

Speaking of which — authors, not belches — don’t miss the next YAllapalloza at Changing Hands on Saturday January 29!  The list of cool people who will be there is too long to list here, but hit the website, see for yourself: it’s gonna rock.

If you’re in the area and looking for a fun writing class experience, I’ll be at Scottsdale’s Mustang Library January 22 at 1 pm to teach a class.

Finally, get ready for a Romeo and Juliet like you’ve never seen.  People are gettin’ killed before the first line gets spoken.  It’s going to be awesome.  And I’m directing it!  February 25 – March 12 in Scottsdale.  Only $11 bucks when you pre-order online! C’mon, that’s sweet.  Links, photos, and more forthcoming.

[Ahhh, Club Crackers...soothing.]

Thus with a kiss, I die.  From bad oatmeal.

P.S. You are awesome.

Next item up for bid, I have a new/additional blog at http://tomleveen.livejournal.com/.  The blog you’re reading right now? Semi-professional.  The Livejournal? Not so much.  That’s all I’m sayin’.

Many fun appearances coming up!  Barnes & Noble Desert Ridge on Nov. 30 at 6 pm with the always-amazing Lisa McMann, for a fundraiser for a local high school.  Much Fun! 

Next, Palamino Library here in Scottsdale teaching a writing class.  That’s December 3 at 230 pm. 

After that, another writing class at Civic Center Library in Scottsdale on Dec. 6 at 4 pm.

And don’t forget YAllapalooza at Changing Hands on January 29!  Oh-Em-Gee, so much fun, you don’t even KNOW.

Okay-doke, I’m neck deep in revisions for, at last count, three books, so…see ya soon?

~ Tom

(That’s a quote from Highlander, as you know.)  In the spirit of the holiday, here’s my list of films and etc. that have absolutely scared the s**t out of me.

TOURIST TRAP
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080040/

This is either A) Stephen King’s favorite movie, or B) the movie that most terrified Stephen King. Either way, I didn’t even know King existed until about 8 years after I rented this seemingly B film after we got our first VCR, one of those monsters that is about the size of a modern day microwave. Why on earth my parents never, once, previewed a rental I made, I’ll never know.  Here is where my terror of all things animated began.  Not cartoons; oh no, we’re talking about ventriliquist dummies, manniquins, stuffed animals…anything that should not be walking and talking yet is somehow Undead.  I still have trouble watching this one.  (Of course I own it; I bought the DVD about two years before I owned a DVD player.)  These days, though, Chuck Conners (!) is more scary than the living manniquins of the movie. He pastes up a supple young lady’s face with plaster, while narrating her own death to her:  “And now the eyes…you’ll never see the sun again…it’s getting hard to breathe…you’ll die of fright long before you run out of air…”

Did I mention I was like, six?  Yeah.

DARK NIGHT OF THE SCARECROW
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082235/

This is still an awesome movie, so says me and my dad.  This one was made for TV; no gore, not that much violence really, but the ending…I remember watching this with a then-girlfriend one night, and she didn’t make a sound until the second-to-last cutaway, when she leaped into the air screaming, “NO F****** WAY!!!”  I spent about $80 on a hard-to-find copy of this gem for my dad.  Haven’t seen it in awhile; it’d probably still scare me too much at the end.  Gave me nightmares for, oh, a year?  Two?  But again, anything even remotely bespeaking of an animated scarecrow does me in.  (See also “Friday the 13th: The Series” pilot with the china doll and R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps book and TV show, “The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight.”)

TRIOLOGY OF TERROR
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073820/

The Zuni fetish doll has become a cult favorite, and for good reason.  The first two stories are yawners, largely, but the — wait for it — tiny animated doll that comes to life and terrorizes a lady with a knife…yep, there they are, goosebumps even as I write this.  Part of it was the shrieking sound effects the little doll made when he chased her around the apartment.  Beautiful.

No, seriously: I have goosebumps, right this second.

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (Honorable mention)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/

If you know me even a little, you know I have a preoccupation with zombies. In fact, I don’t even watch that many zombie movies because they freak me out.  NotLD deserves a special mention not because the movie itself freaked me out — it didn’t, but it’s a great f’ing movie — but because I used to sleep with the TV on in my room, and one night, I woke up just at the time the newscasters in the movie are talking about the living dead, and steps people should take to remain safe.  I was turned away from the TV and only heard the voice.  And, honest to heck, I didn’t even move.  I just lay there staring at the wall, literally thinking — I am not making this up — I knew it!  Dammit!  I told you people, I KNEW this was gonna happen!  Okay…gotta board up the windows.  Or get to the Suburban and get out of town… 

Took about five minutes to realize it was NotLD.  Thanks, George.  That was kinda cool.  (And they are coming, some day, just you wait.)

THE EXORCIST (Honorable Mention)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070047/

Now, this movie was on TV (!) once when I was little, and I watched it, and it gave me exactly one nightmare, but I was like, 5.  Didn’t think much about it until I was in my 20’s, when I realized I didn’t know what all the hubbub was about, so I rented it.  Watched it in my room.  Watched the special features first (which I do as a way to nullify any potentially scary effects in the movie; now I’ve seen how it was done, so it chills me out).

Then I started the movie.  About ten minutes in, if that, I felt really weird.  Sorta nauseous.  So I shut off the movie and stood up to choose a different movie, assuming I was getting worked up from the anxiety/panic disorder I had at the time.  My head swam, and I heard a thunk, and I woke up on my floor.

Passed.  The hell.  Out.

It’s the only time in my life that’s ever happened, and it is not fun.  I have no idea if it was the movie or something else, but I will never try to watch that film again.  So I couldn’t tell you if it scared me or not.

WATCHERS by Dean R. Koontz

I read a lot of Koontz’s early work, and liked it well enough, but Watchers is something special.  The characterization was great, and his tension building up to the first time we see the creature is first rate.  I need to read this one again soon. 

(And what’s up with the dropped “R”, Dean? You will always have an R to me, my friend.)

ZOMBIE: A NOVEL by Joyce Carol Oates

Not a novel about an actual undead zombie, but rather about a serial killer…from his point of view. Not scary, per se, but POV is everything when you read a seemingly insignificant line like, “I bought an icepick today.”  (Think about it.)  Oates is far too prolific for me to have read all her works, but I’ve never been disappointed when I do read her.

THE HAUNTED HOUSE AT TOWER PLAZA, 1988
Freshman year.  All I really remember is that the Thomas Mall haunted house attraction was lame, and everyone knew it, but the Tower Plaza one was supposed to be WAY scary.  I remember screaming a lot and trying to joke my through the whole event, to mixed results.  But I got a girlfriend out of it, so.  And the one at Thomas Mall really was lame.

On the way to a weekend camp to volunteer as a dishwasher, circa 1991
Everything was fine that night till we hit the deserted dirt road winding through the evergreen trees up north, the darkness pierced only by our headlights.  That’s when my “Good Buddy Joel” started whispering behind me: Che-che-che…ah-ah-ah, that notorious old Friday the 13th chanted bastardization of “Jason-kill” that we all know and love.  I coulda effing killed him myself for that one.  Jerk.

Conclusion: Confessions of a reformed horror buff.

I really did grow up on this stuff.  All the worst B-movies (Demons; Sorority Babes at the Slimeball Bowl-a-rama; the entire Friday the 13th ouvre until about chapter 7; etc.)  And I still enjoy my R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike books.  Raised myself on Stephen King through grade, junior, and high school.  So horror and I are well acquainted.

Well, we were.

These days, I just can’t stomach it anymore.  You couldn’t pay me to watch Hostel or Saw…12? 13? Whatever.  I couldn’t handle Devil’s Rejects even a little, though I tried.  Maybe it’s a natural function of growing the hell up.  Next week I’m watching B movies with some of my best friends and giving them our usual MST3K-ing.  That’s still fun. 

But I don’t have a taste for the horrific that I used to.

Maybe it’s just that real life got in the way, and I prefer my escapes to be a little more tame now. Maybe after watching real-life footage of an explosion in Iraq that damn near killed one of my best friends, blowing stuff up and fighting monsters doesn’t have the same appeal.

But these old films, the old books and TV shows (World Beyond; Twilight Zone; Alfred Hitchcock Presents; old time radio dramas like Escape, X Minus One, Suspense, all those) I still love.  I can handle them.  The trend toward torture porn just makes me queasy.  If that’s your cup o’ blood, more power to ya, but I have to say, once you see those images, you can’t get rid of them.  They are in there for life.  How they could possibly be beneficial to you later on in life is beyond me.  That’s all I’m sayin’.

But when the zombies come, bet your chainsaw I’ll be ready.  That’s probably why I’m currently revising a novel about them.  (Sidebar: I did like Zombieland a lot, though.  Probably because it was about the people, not the zombies.)

Braaaaaaaains!!!

Have a safe and happy Halloween, and if you’re in town, come see Halloween LIT at Changing Hands!

Also appearing on October 21 at Hamilton High School with author A.S. King…but I think that’s a closed sort of event. So come to Changing Hands instead!

Next week: My scariest movie and TV experiences EVER, with links.

Got up and did my running and exercise stuff.  (Blegh.)  Breakfast.  Then an in-person interview with ASU’s literary magazine about PARTY – how and why I wrote it, how to break into publishing, etc.  Picked up my very first check for an appearance I did not too long ago.  Got to say hi to my inimitable adolescent lit professor.  Then over to a certain bookstore where I signed a copy of PARTY and wrote a short note for one of my all-time YA author heroes who will be coming through town soon, letting her know how awesome she is and how much I appreciate her work on and off the written page.  Discussions about an upcoming performance.  Purchasing such necessities as “The Elements of Style,” my copy of which had somehow been lost over the years, and a copy of a book by an author I’ll be meeting in a couple months so I can add to my growing collection of signed books.

Then back home to search for short pieces to perform at an open mic: scheduling a rehearsal for the LIT performance; responding to an email request for a student interview, and sending other emails to confirm some details for upcoming appearances.

That was before noon.

Now – lunch time, after which I should get back to work on what hopefully will one day be my second multi-POV YA novel.  Here’s hoping.  Then on to the open mic.

And no less than eleven book/author-related appearances from now till December, with more en route.

So, yeah.  I love my job.  It’s not glamorous, it’s not easy, and it has its dark days…but mornings like this are a huge ol’ reminder of why I got into this line of work in the first place.

Oh yeah.