Friday, March 25, 2011

A Poem I Don't Think I've Shared Here Before:

E.T.MAIL


We assumed it was the case

that in a place as big as space

we’d find some trace of other races

with our scientific bases.


When a signal was detected

it was not what we expected.

In the subject line it pleaded,

PLEASE REPLY–ASSISTENCE NEEDED


SALUTATIONS TO YOUR HEALTH.

PLEASE HELP ME TRANSFER ALL MY WEALTH

INTO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT ON EARTH–

ELEVEN MILLION DOLLARS WORTH.

I NEED YOUR ANSWER RIGHT AWAY.

PLEASE SEND A LETTER BACK TODAY

(ALONG WITH FIFTY DOLLARS, PLEASE,

TO PAY THE MONEY TRANSFER FEES).


We gasped–a message from the stars!

And then another came from Mars:

NEED BIGGER, YELLOWER ANTENNAE?

HAVE TO FEW OR HAVE TOO MANY?

LOSS OF VIGOR? LOUSY SLEEPER?

OUR PRESCRIPTION DRUGS ARE CHEAPER!!!


We were noticing a pattern,

when a bunch arrived from Saturn–

FANCY WATCHES! CLICK AND SEE!

and GET YOUR HYPERSCHOOL DEGREE.


At SINGLES IN YOUR SECTOR!!!

we disabled our detector.

Then we emptied out the cache

and dragged the letters to the trash.


So that’s the fact we had to face:

there’s no intelligence in space.

But that’s okay–for what it’s worth,

there isn’t much of it on Earth.


Copyright 2008 Adam Rex

From Frankenstein Takes the Cake


So I wrote this a few years ago, and always thought its natural habitat was the internet. Of course I control the rights to this poem–there's a copyright notice and everything following the verse. But I am curious to see if people like it enough to share it, and if so how long it takes before it's forwarded to me or someone I know. I also understand that all creative writing on the internet eventually gets attributed to Kurt Vonnegut, so we'll see how long that takes.


Sunday, March 20, 2011

Rotten Tomatoes may be Addressed to Me Care of my Agent

I'm anxiously awaiting the blogosphere's reaction to my entry in the School Library Journal's Battle of the Books, which will be posted tomorrow morning. It's a bracketed March Madness-style competition between various YA and Middle Grade titles, and I was asked to advance either The Ring of Solomon or Sugar Changed the World. And no, I'm not going to reveal my decision–I'm not allowed yet.

Anyway, some of the judges so far are drawing criticism for being too nice, and for doing essentially the same thing I did–explaining why both books are great, and then kind of arbitrarily choosing one over the other. Rather than actually explaining why the winning book is BETTER than the other, you understand. So I admit that in this sense I wimped out (as Roger Sutton has put it), choosing instead to write a review designed to divert attention away from these two great books and back to ME.

I've been feeling a little neglected lately–my wife's in Switzerland.

Thursday, March 17, 2011

Koo Koo Ka Choo

My new novel has 41 instances of the word "egg." My new novel which is not, I should be clear, about eggs.

This seems like a lot to me. Fully .06% of my novel is the word "egg." For reference I should tell you that my novel is in many ways actually about magic, but the words "magic" and "magical" only appear a combined total of 106 times.

For continued reference, I could add that my novel contains 75 mentions of cereal, and this is not accidental. But it also contains a whopping 2,502 instances of the word "and," YET IS NOT ABOUT CONJUNCTIONS.

No doubt some of you have a favorite word and are now wondering how many times it appears in my novel, and whether I could be persuaded to slip it in there if it doesn't. I invite your comments.

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Tucson Festival of Books

The third annual Tucson Festival of Books is coming to the UofA mall this weekend (the 12th and 13th). As in past years I'll be appearing on panels and at signings and just generally walking around and knuckle bumping Dora the Explorer and so forth.

Here's my schedule:

Saturday, March 12th

12:00-12:30 Teen Author Lounge (reading of Fat Vampire)

1:00-2:00 COE 351 – Adam Rex -- Digital Painting Workshop: Illustrating Books with Photoshop. I'm going to actually give a live demo of this I guess, God help me.

2:00-2:30 Post-workshop autographing

3:00-3:30 Signing at the Mysterious Galaxy booth, #429-251

4:00-5:00 COE Kiva – E. B. Lewis, Wendy Watson and I will be on a panel called "I Didn’t Write It, But….Illustrating for Other Authors."

5:00-5:30 Post-panel autographing

Sunday, March 13th

12:00 Signing at the Heroes and Villains booth. It's #240, I think.