Things that make me happy.....

Cookies AND some of my favorite book characters.....

The lovely Susan Prunty made these cookie versions of Zachary Ruthless and his henchmen Newt.  How cool are they??  Read more about her fiction-to-cookie-making adventures on her blog here. 

We Have a Winner!

We have a winner for our Zachary Ruthless Body Guard contest!

Sheila JG and her sidekick will no doubt provide ample protection for future hostile takeovers!  And in order to best prepare these new body guards, I am sending them a copy of Zachary Ruthless--read it, take notes.

And just for some weekend fun...here's some advice for writing children's books from Strong Bad:

My Rotten Book Signing (Guest Post: Allan Woodrow)

What if you throw a party and no one comes? I think everyone has that fear, whether you’re throwing a keg party in the backyard or doing a book signing. I kept imagining reading from my book, The Rotten Adventures of Zachary Ruthless, with two or three employees of Barnes and Noble watching to be polite. One of them claps to make me feel better. The sound echoes through the empty store. In the back, the person behind the coffee counter burps. I buy a couple of books just to sell something, because I feel guilty. The store manager shakes her head out of pity.

So when B&N said they bought a couple of hundred books for my signing, I felt even more pressure. What were they thinking? Were they going to make me buy 195 of them myself?

So, it was a bit of relief to see about 40 kids sitting around my chair waiting for me to read my first chapter during my launch last week. The manager handed me a microphone, and I was off. It’s a big store, but I guess you could hear my voice throughout (the microphone was pretty loud). I’m glad I didn’t know that until later.

Kids, of course are a great audience. They gave me their best evil laughs, and a boy named Jacob did a great hiccupping hyena-laugh for us (you’ll have to read the book to know how that fits into the story). And I don’t think I mispronounced any words. I tend to be a serial mispronouncer, so this was a big accomplishment even though I practiced reading the chapter 46 times at home.

Then I sat behind a desk with a  big bowl of gummy tarantulas, gummy internal organs, gummy blood, and gumball eyeballs … all perfectly evil in keeping with the evilness of my book. Barnes & Noble assigned numbers to people wanting me to sign, so they announced over the loudspeakers, “People with numbers 15-30, please get in line for Allan Woodrow’s autograph,” etc. Pretty surreal, actually. It took about 80 minutes to get through everyone’s books.

Then I was home, no longer a big time author person but someone who had to clean the fish tank. The goldfish don’t care I have a book, apparently. But neither will anyone else unless I write another one just as good.

Signing is over. Time to go back to work. 

Super Villain Zachary Ruthless - Evil Takeover.....

I don't have much time as I'm typing this message from under my desk.  Our blog is in serious danger of being taken over.  There is a villain--no, a SUPER villain named Zachary Ruthless...if you haven't heard of him yet, be sure to remember that name because your blog could be next!

Have you seen this face?

Have you noticed any zombie lasers lying around in your neighborhood?

One or both of these things are surefire signs that Zachary is coming for your blog next.  


There is only ONE way to stop him: you need to build up an entourage of bodyguards for protection. Please join my entourage by leaving a comment here on your master bodyguard skills!  If I escape, I'll pick three bodyguards to receive free copies of Zachary's book, The Rotten Adventures of Zachary Ruthless, so that you're prepared for when he comes for YOU.  

Please help!  I--wait....

What was that?

I thought I heard--

BWA HA HA HA!

The Hiatus

Hello All!

So we've been kinda busy.  Like busy busy.  And busy is always good.

Most of our time has been filled with things like revisions (ongoing), projects on submission, books being sold, contracts being negotiated, film deals being closed, foreign deals being translated (ha--not exactly), queries/manuscripts being read, meetings being met (teehee, okay now I'm just getting silly) and all that good stuff.

And there is more good stuff to come.  But in the mean time, we need to take a short blogging hiatus.  While we're gone, there are a number of fun blogs to read in the mean time.

Such as....

Confessions of Suite 500, agent Suzie Townsend's blog and where I occasionally guest blog.

La Vie en Prose, a blog run by Janet Reid's assistant Meredith Barnes.

Query Shark, need I say more?

Neverending Page Turner, run by Kathleen Ortiz and her digital media genius!

And of course, if you don't already read Janet Reid's blog, Kristin Nelson's blog, or Rachelle Gardner's blog you should.

As for us, we'll be back and running again by May 1, starting with a blog post about a truly evil and villainous boy named Zachary Ruthless. If you'd like to get a head start, you can pre-order Zachary's first book, The Rotten Adventures of Zachary Ruthless through Amazon, IndieBound, or Barnes & Noble.

And if you're interested in the status of our submissions, check the Query Log at the top of the blog, which we will be updating regularly.

See you guys, soon!

PS - if you get bored, you can practice your evil laugh.  Check it out.