Pioneer Spirit

Sandy and I have been feeling a bit sorry for ourselves lately. The Christmas season is upon us, yet in recent weeks, the sound of jingle bells has been drowned out by the sound of computer keys tapping.

So on Saturday night, we took a trip back in time, with our moms and my husband, to clear our heads and remember what the season is really about – friends and family.

And food.

Our destination: Toronto ’s Black Creek Pioneer Village, which holds a “Christmas by Lamplight” event every year. The site replicates a typical village of Ontario ’s settlers with actual buildings from the late 1700’s to the mid 1800’s.

Bundled up in our woolies, we strolled along the wooden plank sidewalks with our lantern. We sang carols in the church, danced a jig at the inn and misbehaved in the schoolhouse.

(Aside: In case you can’t read it, the slate shamelessly promotes Girl v. Boy, which came out in paperback TODAY.)

While munching on mince tarts, shortbread, Turkish delight and roasted chestnuts, we also learned something: Pioneers had it hard.

Imagine long, cold winters in a one-room cabin with your parents and six siblings.

Imagine visiting the town doctor to have a tooth pulled with what appeared to be massive pliers. (The same doctor, by the way, had to run a second business on the side because he couldn’t make ends meet on treating patients.)

Imagine waiting a full week for “news,” because that’s how long it took to set the type of a newspaper.

Still, Susanna Moodie and her sister, Catherine Parr Traill—pioneers in the Ontario backwoods—managed to write books by the light of a smelly oil lamp, with their children (14 between them!) sleeping nearby.

Suddenly, tapping away at a computer in my nice, warm house doesn’t seem so bad.

Time to stop complaining about my life. Instead, I’ll put on some cashmere, fire up my coffeemaker, and get back to work! (Can you roast chestnuts on a space heater?)

Calling all Reviewers

The trade paperback of Girl v. Boy should arrive on bookshelves any day because we received a big box of copies this week.

Just to refresh, the story is about an aspiring journalist, Luisa Perez, who gets a little carried away in an anonymous column in her school newspaper and has to deal with the fall-out.

If you’d like to get your name in print by reviewing the book for your school newspaper, send us an e-mail with your name and snail mail address and tell us a bit about your newspaper (e.g., the location and circulation).

Same goes for YA book bloggers: if you’d like a free review copy, send us your snail mail address AND the URL for your website.

Send your request to: yvonne_sandy@collinsrideout.com

The Black Hole

So, where is Yvonne, you may wonder? Stringing festive lights and building gingerbread houses?

Not exactly. She’s in the black hole of revision and she isn’t speaking to me. You know how women giving birth sometimes turn on their husbands in savage rage for getting them into that situation? It can be like that with co-authors, too.

Some writers enjoy the revision stage. We’re not among them. Fortunately, we’ve gotten off lucky with most of our books, and normally have light revisions. This is probably because there are two of us: the two-headed monster goes over a manuscript so many times that we catch most big problems before an editor has to point them out.

This time we ran into a problem. The book had a mind of its own and along the way, we sprouted a third head. The new one looked like Medusa, with snakes dancing all over.

Yvonne bravely took the first shift. Down she went into the hole, armed with a machete to decapitate the third head and kill as many snakes as possible. It’s a disgusting job, but someone has to do it.

My role at this stage is to stand beside the hole shouting encouragement and helpful tips: “Don’t kill Brody! We need him.” Or, “Try a scavenger hunt! Everyone loves a scavenger hunt!”

Yvonne may not be speaking, but she can still flip me the bird. I don’t have to see it to know it’s there.

Yesterday, she emerged from the black hole with 70 pages and a sour expression. “I’m going to decorate my Christmas tree,” she said, handing me our baby. “Good luck with this.”

I waited till I had a grande mocha in hand before uncovering it. It’s a good thing I was at Starbucks or I might have screamed: the baby is unrecognizable. Limbs were severed and major organs replaced. There’s blood on every page.


At the moment, this is one ugly baby. But on the bright side, most of the snakes are gone.

Now I must descend into the black hole of revision and charm the rest of them. Hopefully Yvonne can locate a pungi on eBay—the wind instrument made from a gourd that snake charmers use—and toss it down to me.

If she knocks me out, all the better. I don’t want to be awake for this.

What about Boys?

People often ask us, “Do guys read your books?”

The short answer is, we don’t know. Probably not too many, judging by the fact that we’ve never received an e-mail from a male reader.

Yvonne’s husband tried and failed, succumbing to estrogen poisoning at approximately page 200 of Speechless, our first novel. (He is hugely supportive in other ways!)

But there is definitely one guy who has read our entire body of work, and today is his birthday. My brother is two years younger than me, which makes him 27—again.

So, 27 years ago, my parents, in their wisdom, named the new arrival Randall, fully intending to call him Randy. “How cute,” they thought: “Randy and Sandy.” Maybe it was cute when we were toddlers, but by the time we were going to parties together in university, it wasn’t cute anymore. “This is Sandy,” Yvonne would say, “And her brother Randy, and his friend Andy.”

Skinny little Randy grew up to be quite a bruiser, although I didn’t fully process that until I got a call from a guy who works with me. Let’s call him “Dean.”

Dean: “Hi Sandy. I’m calling about your brother.”

Sandy: “My brother? How do you know my brother?”

Dean: “We play on a recreational hockey league together. He, uh, plays pretty rough.”

Sandy: “Randy? But he’s not a big guy.”

Dean: “Have you seen your brother lately? He’s six-two and lethal.”

ASIDE: This is how I still think of my brother.












Sandy: “Lethal?! Are you sure you’ve got the right guy?”

Dean: “Sandy and Randy... You don’t forget that.”

Sandy: “Humph. Well, my brother’s never picked a fight in his life.”

Dean: “Maybe not off the rink. On the rink he’s a brute. So I was thinking…”

Sandy: “Dean. Tell me you’re not asking me to call off my brother. It’s sports. You guys have a system for working it out, right? A secret guy code?”

Dean: “If I end up with a dislocated shoulder…”

Sandy: “I’ll help you type your press releases. Bye, now.”

It’s crucial to observe the family code of honour:

Stage one: Defend from outsiders.

Stage two: Attack from within.

I called my brother immediately.

Sandy: “Are you trying to kill my colleagues?”

Randy: “What, that Dean guy? Did he come running to you for help?”

S: “Is he right? Are you a brute on the rink?”

R: “Hockey’s a contact sport. If he doesn’t like it, he should try archery or something.”

S: “Well, I have to see him in meetings. If my boss asks how he got a black eye, you know what he’s going to say.”

R: “He’s a wimp.”

S: “Vent your testosterone on your own colleagues.”

R: “Fine. I’ll go out of my way to check everyone except Dean.”

S: “Wait a second… I know how you operate. You’ll make a BIG SHOW of avoiding Dean on the ice, thereby emasculating him completely. No. You’ve gotta check him once in awhile, just not as hard. Then he can keep his pride.”

R: Sigh…

S: “No visible bruising. Do you hear me?”

R: “Blah blah spare-the-whiner blah.”

So there you have it, folks: a snapshot of the guy who sits down and churns through each and every one of our books.

After reading Introducing Vivien Leigh Reid: Daughter of the Diva, he e-mailed: “I don't want to sound surprised or anything but it was quite enjoyable. While certainly the subject matter was different than my usual blood-and-guts, all-action reading, it was a pleasure to read.”

Yvonne, who’s known Randy since he was only five-foot-six, frequently says, “That scene with [insert name of any of our bratty male characters] sounded just like Randy.”

It’s a good thing we write teen fiction, because this particular source of inspiration permanently topped out age 27.

Happy birthday, bro!

Something Good about Winter

Welcome, December! As I’ve said before, Yvonne and I loathe winter, but December gets a free pass, what with all the parties and presents.

This year, there’s another cause to celebrate: Girl v. Boy is coming out in paperback in a few weeks. If you’re in the U.S., it should be on the shelves by the 22nd. We Canadians will probably have to wait a few more days for the dogsleds to deliver.

Here are a few reviews of Girl v. Boy. The bolding is all mine!

Booklist

Chicago sophomore Luisa Perez generally avoids school activities. Then she is asked to anonymously cover the school’s efforts in the citywide literacy fund-raising challenge for the school paper. Though initially reluctant, Luisa becomes columnist “Newshound,” and soon two competitions are on: one between the boys and girls to raise money; the other between Luisa and her anonymous male counterpart, “Scoop,” to get the story. As the columns become more provocative, tackling gender and relationship issues, Luisa determines to uncover Scoop’s identity. Her discovery may not surprise all readers, but even those who saw what was ahead will appreciate Luisa’s hard-won insights, particularly those about looking beyond appearances. Luisa’s descriptive first-person narrative provides compelling reading as she and the supporting characters experience struggles and achievements, at school, at work, at home, and in romance. The interspersed, dueling columns are snappy and edgy, and they empower Luisa and her friends to examine priorities in relationships, learning, and life. This enjoyable, thought-provoking battle of the sexes highlights literacy’s importance and the power of the written word to hurt, heal, and inspire.

Children's Literature

Chicago's Dunfield High School has a reputation for its abysmal school spirit, and the kids don't care. In fact, sophomore Luisa Perez makes it a point to avoid extra-curricular activities. Instead, she waits tables to help support her family—and waits for her FB (future boyfriend) to appear. Then, surprisingly, the superintendent of schools levels a challenge: Which high school can raise the most money to support literacy? The reward is huge: two extra weeks of vacation during winter break. At Dunfield, the girls take on the boys for an exciting contest. Two anonymous school journalists (Luisa and one boy) cover the competition. Rapidly, they turn from fund-raising reporters to gender combatants. "Girls versus boys" becomes "girl v boy," and the spicy tit-for-tat column becomes so popular that Dunfield becomes a fundraising powerhouse. The ending satisfies, as loose ends are woven in, Dunfield wins extra vacation, and Luisa gets her CB (current boyfriend). The authors of this book take high school readers, primarily girls, on a fun and saucy romp. The pace is lively, and the vocabulary is intelligent. Imaginative new events pop up in each chapter, making this book hard to predict and hard to put down. In addition, sexy flirtations run through the story like a Valentine-red ribbon. Give it a PG-13 rating for language. However, this otherwise likeable work disappoints in that only the central character (Luisa) is well developed. An array of other characters begs to be known better. There would be plenty of opportunity to do that in a sequel.

Kirkus Reviews

When offered a chance to write an anonymous column for the school paper chronicling Dunfield High's efforts in Chicago's citywide literacy challenge, 16-year-old Luisa Perez jumps at the chance. She hopes to distance herself from her family's legacy of academic underachievement as well as to differentiate herself from the ten other Luisa Perezes in the school. The competition between the girls and boys heats up, as each group tries to outdo the other in fundraising. Luisa offers the girls' perspective for the paper, while another writer provides the male point of view. As if juggling her writing, a part-time job, school and a sudden rush of possible F.B.s (future boyfriends) were not hard enough, Luisa has to contend with her sister, Grace, who moves back home with her young daughter. Readers will dope out the identity of the boy writer long before he is revealed in the narrative, but a strong voice and quirky characters keep the plot moving despite the absence of dramatic tension. Smart dialogue and realistic scenes add to the story's appeal.

Snappy, saucy, spicy, sexy and smart? Not bad!

So if you’re looking for a snappy, saucy, spicy, sexy and smart gift for a friend, you’ll know exactly what to choose. And don’t let those gift cards sit around gathering dust!