Quick Hits

I downloaded the audio version of Joe Hill's "Best New Horror" to listen to in the car while I was driving home from dropping my daughter off at camp. It scared the crap out of me! Being alone in the car is kind of scary even in broad daylight. "Best New Horror" is the story of a guy who edits an anthology called Best New Horror, and how he gets sucked into some genuine horror. Normally I find this kinda postmodern metawriting annoying, but this one totally worked for me on both levels--it's a legitimately horrifying story, and it's also a pretty neat explanation of why those of us who love horror love it despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of the stuff out there is undreadable (or unwatchable or unlistenable) crap. It's in his anthology 20th Century Ghosts. Read it.

Here's what bugs me about audiobooks. The voice acting. I mean, if a man is reading the story, I'd rather just have him read a female voice straight up rather than doing that breathy, annoying pseudo-female voice that all these guys do when they are reading a female character. Still, it was a good way to pass the time.

Just finished reading "How Soccer Explains the World" by, um, aw hell, Foer is the guy's last name, but he's not that Foer. Anyway, it's really readable and fun and is packed with tons of interesting information.

As much as I complained about watching kids' soccer all the time, I think it may have turned me into a soccer fan. I find myself watching international matches just for kicks. (That Russia-Sweden game was something else!) Someone asked me the score of a game and I actually said "one-nil". Fortunately there was no time-traveling past version of myself in the room when I said that, or else I might have had my ass kicked by that version of myself. (I'd like to see him try it!)

If you're in Anaheim this weekend at the ALA conference, please talk up my book How Ya Like Me Now and tell everybody how you can't wait for my fall YA release, Forever Changes, which is, I think, the best book I've ever written. When I re-read it, I don't find anything that makes me cringe, whereas I do in pretty much everything else I've ever written. (I mean, don't get me wrong, I find stuff I love in all the books as well, and far more good stuff than bad, but there's always that sentence where I go, "ugh. I hate that.") I guess I feel like a lot of what I've wanted to say about life and death is contained in this book. Well, sort of. I mean, Donorboy and Long Way Back are both about how you live when someone crucial to your life dies, and Forever Changes is about how you live when you know that you're going to die. I know praise from myself isn't all that convincing, but I'm really really proud of this book. And, of course, I think that every high school should have at least ten copies on the shelves. And it should win lots of awards.

Speaking of awards, the awesome, discerning, not to mention incredibly attractive people at VOYA are giving How Ya Like Me Now their Top Shelf Fiction award on Sunday. I will not be there to accept on behalf of the book, but it's nice to know something I wrote is up there between the Patron and the Glenlivet.

God bless the inventor of the sundress.

My SSIGWJLAH wife bought me an awesome graphic novel for Father's Day, which I just finished: The Walking Dead part 1: Days Gone Bye. It was cool as hell. I'm definitely getting volume 2.

I'm listening to Pandora radio all the time while I correct papers and the like. It is awesome.

I've also been having fun lately at wordle.net. If you too are a kind of word geek, you'll probably dig it too.