After turning in my manuscript on Monday, I decided it was time to slowly return from my zombie-writer state and begin the metamorphosis into Human before class starts on Friday. Part of this includes eating regular meals that do not entirely consist of delivery pizza, delivery Mexican food or tuna helper.

Unfortunately, I go to my fridge, and see this:

Including food and snacks hidden in my closet, I currently own a grand total of:

2 cans of tuna

1 box of ham

1 bag swiss cheese

1 half-empty box of cereal (no milk)

2 Eclipse mints

The problem with all of these is that none of them are quite big enough to make a meal that will put a dent in my hunger.  That, combined with being exhausted after editing 120,000+ words multiples of times, has left me slightly loony.

Of course, as fate always goes, the night before I was turning the book in, I found a minor mishap in a sub-storyline, which is code for ‘a small plot hole’ when I don’t want to admit to it. It is not the best of feelings to arrive home at 6 PM to read the final 60 pages of your manuscript only to find that yes, there is something that needs to be fixed; yes, it is something important; and yes, you only have 6 hours in which to do it.

The good thing about finding minor mishaps in a sub-storyline is that sometimes, they lead you in a better direction than you were before. I discovered that by fixing this problem, I also was able to have a villain double-crossed, which is one of the most fun things to write, (second only to a secret door). Example:

“Here you are, massster,” hissed Earnoggin, dropping a box onto Dr. Steinsnot’s lab desk. “The brains of every citizen in all of town. Now, give me my freedom.”

Dr. Steinsnot looked over the brains, and then shrugged.

“First go put them down the brain-chute, from which nothing escapes.” he ordered.

Earnoggin quickly grabbed the box and went to the chute to dump them. But, the moment his back was turned, Dr. Steinsnot suddenly gave him a sharp kick, and sent him sprawling down the chute as well.

“Silly Earnoggin,” Dr. Steinsnot said with a cackle.

Dr. Steinsnot apparently just double-crossed the unknowing Earnoggin, by tossing him down the brain-chute and not giving him his freedom.

For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, I just installed a new chat on my other site and sometimes I drop in to talk with people. Wish me luck because school starts Friday!

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I just put up a new Youtube video that basically says why I haven’t put up a new Youtube video in so long. In my last post I said my next video would be about writing. Wrong! That one is taking a little more work. Meanwhile:

ADDED: Forgot to mention: you can see my interviews on this page.

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Listening to Into The Ocean by Blue October

Alas, I thought I had finally rid myself of the Music Trolls nearby, but that was obviously only for a week. In this place, I will never be wanting for a night full of loud, pounding, incessant, bassy, terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad music banging my desk, rattling my keyboard and knocking pictures off my walls.

I discovered the most horrifying thing of all yesterday. While the music was forcefully threatening the structural integrity of my eardrums, I decided to go check the mail. The second I stepped outside, however, the music STOPPED. I am not kidding. It just went absolutely silent. Then, to test it, I stepped back in. IT STARTED AGAIN. I did this back-and-forth motion for some time, and came to this conclusion:

In spite of that, I am just about finished with the first round of revisions. So far I have cut thousands of words of Pure Fluff that has no place in a finished novel. There were two scenes that were particularly hard to chop out. However, I managed to salvage them, tie them into a bag of bones, and I will be putting them on the website after the book is in stores, as some special outtakes.

I wasn’t able to make it to New York but I did watch the entire event for Stephenie Meyer there. It was wild even on screen. You would not believe the fans there. I watched both online shows and in the second one I sat in my site’s chatroom with about 25 other people watching too. By the time this song came on, most of us were hugging computer monitors or waving cell phones in the air. As for me, let’s just say the concert series turned me into a Blue October fan.

On a similar note, I also heard that I was indirectly responsible for messing with someone’s autograph. He he he.

Meanwhile, on those random days that I do flee my apartment in search of outside human interaction, I have still been scouring this city for a copy of the Entertainment Weekly with my interview in it. Although I was promised a free copy, it has yet to arrive, and I am impatient. My list so far:

• Walmart
• Target
• Krogers
• Tom Thumb
• 7-11
• Shell
• Chevron
• The University bookstore
• The haircut place
• Jack In The Box (I was getting desperate and hungry)

and the only thing I got in return was a sunburn. I found one copy of it, 45 minutes across the city at a store that claimed to be a Borders (the phone book said it was a Booksamillion), but I simply refuse to travel that far for one stack of papers.

While I was at Walmart, I literally got lost in the store. I was somewhere between where they sell the washrags and Hannah Montana country. I turn a corner, and suddenly I’m at a dead end. There should be no dead ends in a Walmart. It is something that will send a sane person silly. I just stood there: how is there a dead end in a Walmart! Is this real? Am I imagining it? Is this what hell is like?

Worse: an enormous, poster-sized face of Hannah Montana was sitting at the end of this place, staring back at me. I had somehow gotten lost in Miley Cyrus town. That is enough to send me running. And I did, spinning about, only to find to my horror that when I moved, the face on the poster CHANGED. Right before my eyes, Hannah Montana transformed into SOMEBODY ELSE. I am not kidding. The picture just fizzled and changed like magic. When I stepped backwards, it changed BACK AGAIN.

My reaction:

After I escaped that store relatively unscathed though mentally scarred, I got my provisions home and got right back to editing.

For those who haven’t been keeping up with the TwilightGuy.com blog, I’ve had a lot of good press recently. Although my interview got cut from the Businessweek article I got the issue in today, and happily enough there was a mention of me in there. I had my first telephone interview last week which was fun and a bit nervous at the same time. Thankfully, I wasn’t misquoted, although for the life of me I don’t remember a word I said, so they could have made up pretty much anything they wanted to.

Other than those I was told I was in the Globe and Mail on Thursday, in Canada. I think I have another interview coming out in Canada this week sometime…not sure. I also had a mention in the Gilette New-Record and a mention on Salon.com — just in time to pass the 1-million hit mark for my site! Excitement ensued.

I was hit with an idea for a new Youtube video yesterday and I should be making it soon (hint: this one will appeal to writers). Editing for days on end has left me pale and zombie-ish, so I’d want to return to my human state before filming. Along that same line of thought, my channel was recently approved into the Partners program and passed 2000 subscribers (yay!), which means I got to put the really cool banners at the top of my page. More excitement ensued.

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Last year, I happened to be wandering around the Texas Book Festival dodging dragons, when I saw a panel that included a few authors who were speaking about Writing Books For Boys. I went inside because I was exhausted and they had chairs, but I stayed because the speakers were enthralling.

I had never read any of their books before but they clearly knew their stuff. Later, I was surprised to discover that one of the people on the panel had been none other than Jeff Kinney, whose popularity from his Diary Of A Wimpy Kid series has increased enormously since then (it was written for younger children, but I am 19, and my laughter when reading the first could be heard down the hall). At the moment, he perches at the top of the New York Times, hogging both #1 and #2, but he has taken time from his busy work on the upcoming third book in the series to answer some questions for me!

—-

Hey Jeff! First, there’s a tradition here for authors to describe themselves in ten words or less. The closer you land to exactly ten words of an improv bio, the more points you get:

I’m a newspaper cartoonist wannabe who found success in books.

Did you ever expect that you would become an author with the Diary of a Wimpy Kid stories you published online, or did it happen unexpectedly?

I actually felt very ambivalent about publishing my work online. I thought it would cheapen the work and make it harder to get published. But I couldn’t resist Funbrain’s audience… the online version has been ready by more than 50 million kids to date. I never did expect to get published in print, so I’m thrilled that it worked out.

Your books have been noted as being very popular with boys. What is the most important writing advice you can give to authors who want to write for boys?

I think boys are very hard to write for, because there are a lot of things competing for their attention. I cheated by including lots of pictures. I think that in the years to come, there will be a lot more books like mine, that feature copious, light illustrations.

How do you feel that your experience in designing online games for kids might have helped you in creating engaging stories?

I bring a visual literacy to my writing, and I think that comes from creating video games.

What is the best part about being an author for you?

The best part is having the satisfaction of being in print.

What has been the hardest part about being a popular author?

Time management… I have a full-time job and I’m also helping to make a movie version of the book.

There is talk about a movie: what’s the latest news on that side?

Yes… Fox 2000 is making the movie. It should be half live-action, half animated.

The third book in the series is coming in January of 2009- what can you tell us about it and how it fits with the first two?

The third book will center around a conflict between Greg and his dad. Greg’s dad is threatening military academy if Greg doesn’t change his wimpy ways.

After the Wimpy Kid series, do you plan to continue writing books in the same format, or try writing other types of books?

I’m hoping to write these until I run out of creative juice. I think of these more as a cartoon series than a series of novels. I’d like to write a mixed-media book as a guide-to-life for graduates in the next few years. That would be a lot of fun.

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Quick update! I have a talk scheduled with two other bloggers on the Washington Post website, on August 1 at 1:00 PM, US Eastern Time. I will be doing it live and also answering questions that are submitted early. The focus of the interview will be Twilight, the upcoming Twilight film, and my other blog, TwilightGuy.com.

You can find more info about it here or submit questions to me early at this link.

On other news, I will have my Famous Author Interview up here soon, possibly Friday (if I remember ).

Comments are disabled on this post: send questions on the Washington Post site. Hope to see you there!

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I know that most of you have not read The Farfield Curse in its entirety yet (as it’s not out until 2009), and even those who have read parts probably do not know well enough about the characters to actually care who Emry Hambric is. I won’t attempt to explain it because I’d really have to write the whole book out for it to be understood, but hopefully my new song will help you imagine the feeling at the end of the first book:

The ending is a mixture of hope and a little sadness, a happy ending but tinged a little, and in a way I feel this song echoes how the first book concludes.

If you like my music or my other songs, I have two that you can download for free on a hidden page at BranHambric.com. I’ll have more news on the book soundtrack closer to the release in late 2009.

There is some about Emry in the prologue of the book (and a song for the Prologue as well, on the Music page) so I can also email preview chapters of The Farfield Curse if you want to get a better feel of who she is. Email me and I’ll try to get previews out as quick as I can.

This song is a first draft so opinions are welcome!

[note: email subscribers must visit the site to hear audio]

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