Because, Y'know, Everybody Writes Four Books At The Same Time.....

It's official: I've begun yet another new book.
Yes, this is in addition to Becoming Brigid (which is in the editing stages and should be published within a few months), The (Dis)Appearance of Nerissa MacKay (which is in the 3rd or 4th draft stage right now, almost ready for gamma readers), and The Chocolate Smuggler's Notebook (uh, okay, I've written one chapter -- and about 6 different outlines for the rest of it).
So, naturally, it makes sense to start a fourth project.  Not.
But this idea is just too good, so I'm going to go with it anyway -- even though it might not be ready for public consumption for a few years.
Tomorrow I'm going to throw out stock characters to my 9GT English class and let them pick names and personality traits.  (This thought makes me smile.)  (And, yes, I'm choosing to work with stock characters intentionally; it suits the project.)
That's all for now, folks.  (*cue Looney Tunes music*)

Writing (or Parenting) The 13-Year-Old: You've Got An 8th-Grader!

All the time on the web I see articles about how to tell when a child enters such-and-such a stage -- and what to do about it.  But these moms and articles always deal with children; no one wants to talk about puberty.
You see, any junior high teacher can tell you that age 13 is to adolescence pretty much what age 2 is to childhood: the worst.
Want proof?  Ask yourself honestly which year of your youth are you most embarrassed about now?  In which year did you have the most stress about yourself and yet do the most stupid things?  Was it, by any chance, 8th grade/age 13?   Over and over again, parents tell me that, yes, they would happily delete that year of their lives -- and, moreover, they'd like now to skip that year of their kids' lives.
And lots of writers avoid puberty, too.  Sure, we can all name off Judy Blume and JK Rowling as brave souls who tackle pubescent teens, but most writers don't.
I suspect this is probably because we all like to block the memories most painful and embarrassing to us, and 8th grade is way up there on the list.  If a writer doesn't want to remember age 13, the writer cannot write about being age 13.  Thus, we have writers who try to stretch the Middle Grade level clear into junior high and writers who won't touch anything below age 16, claiming that Young Adult starts there.  (It doesn't.)
Now, I've been in junior high and dealing with the trauma of puberty for more than half my life.  I can tell you a few things to remember about the workings of the 8th grade mind:

1) At 13, your body is changing in weird ways.  Adults tell you it's hormones and growth spurts and act like it's all normal.  But  your feet get too big and you get hair in weird places.  Sometimes you gain weight -- and fat prejudice is still okay, so no one is going to tell you it's okay to be fat like it's okay to have a hearing aid. You get hyper and don't know why.  You get super-tired and don't know why.  You get sexually aroused and don't dare even think about it -- and sometimes you don't even realize that's what the new feeling is.  All you want to do is scream because no one can tell you what's going on and you're too scared to ask anyway.  And then your parents yell at you for being grumpy.  Life is SO UNFAIR!

2) At 13, you are the center of the universe.  All this new weird stuff is happening to you, so the world should focus on your new experiences.  Period.  Nothing else really matters.  People are watching you, even when you don't see them.  Yes, it might be God or angels who know when you have sexual dreams and feel guilty or when you really lied to Mom about the homework.  And it might be parents and teachers who are still these mysterious beings who can TELL when you're hiding something or having a mood swing!  How scary is THAT???  And how the freak do they DO it??  (Note: kids this age have no clue about body language or facial expressions that tip off adults to such things.  It is therefore still somewhat magical to them how we know what we know.)  But it's also about your friends who might turn out to be frenemies and post pictures of you on facebook when you're looking stupid at a slumber party.  Or they might send pics of you to that one cute person you really like -- and then you'd just DIE!  Life would be OVER!
And because you are the center of the universe, you believe everyone notices if you get a huge old zit on your nose or if your hair didn't work out right or if you get your period and your pad is slipping around and oh my gosh it might show lines through your skinny jeans!  And if other people don't notice how awesome you look in your best moments or when you made that basket or got to sit with the cool people at lunch, what is wrong with them?!  Why are they not making a fuss when they're supposed to be?
And then your parents yell at you for being moody!  Life is SO UNFAIR!

3) When you are 13, the world is indeed your stage.  You think the world is watching you; your hormones are running high, and this affects your emotions.  Ergo, drama is the word.  You drop your books in front of someone cute: humiliation.  The teacher has you work with that person who is so not as cool as you are: rage. Dad makes you stand outside with a hose to water the dry spots on the lawn when you were skyping with your friends: no one understands you.  But the cute neighbor comes out to ride a bike and says hi: super-elation because s/he SPOKE TO YOU!!!
All this happens in a 3-hour block of time.  Then your parents yell at you for being over-dramatic.  Life is SO UNFAIR!!!


For some of you readers, this may have been a painful experience as you remembered your past.  :D  However, I hope that it will help a few more writers who try to deal with this age in a believable way.  (It may even explain a few things to a few parents as well.)
And other junior high teachers will just be nodding their heads and smiling.  We've seen it all, people.  We've seen it all.

We Interrupt The Regularly Scheduled Posting For A Bit Of Awesomeness About The Real Man Behind One Of My Characters

In Confessions of an Average Half-Vampire AND in All in the Half-Vampire Family, Eric's best friend is a wheelchair user named Joseph Mitchell.  In a previous post, I explained about three people who were the inspiration for Joseph, but, since one of those 3 real people has gone very public with his name, releasing a CD and now performing on So You Think You Can Dance, I'm going to tell you that his name is Joel Brown.  And he's paralyzed from the armpits down.
Yeah, you read that right: he's paralyzed AND he's on So You Think You Can Dance tonight.  Because he can.  Dance, that is.  I've seen him.

UPDATE FROM 9/7/12: Lila has provided a link for us to see this on youtube.  Click here to see this AMAZING performance.

Joel's great-aunt had a HUGE influence on modern dance and children's dance theatre in Utah.  I know that well, as she was my very first dance teacher.  Her name?  Virginia Tanner.  Her niece -- Joel's mother -- was my second dance teacher ever.
Joel danced before the accident that paralyzed him, and when he was about 14, his older brother Graham choreographed a number that put both brothers in and out of wheelchairs.  And Joel returned to dancing.
I recall when he got a role as one of Danny Zuko's friends in the high school production of Grease.  Joel danced so well that anyone not familiar with the role would've thought it was supposed to be for a wheelchair user.
The next year, Joel became the school's student-body president.  He also took up tennis, singing, swimming, and rock climbing.  "Handicapped" is not really a good adjective to describe the fellow, even if he is paralyzed.
I don't have a TV that actually picks up programs (it plays DVDs, though), so I can't watch tonight's show.  But, if any of you watch it tonight, just know that Joel Brown is amazing.  (I haven't seen him in a couple of years, but I've heard about his doings now and then.)
And, if you do watch AND you've read my book, you'll understand how the fictional Joseph Mitchell moves, since part of the character comes from Joel.

(PS.  People have been getting to this post by searching for how Joel ended up in a wheel chair, so I will add that info.  When Joel was 9, he went on a fishing excursion with his older siblings.  They were in a car accident, and Joel's spinal cord sustained significant damage.  He has never walked since, but he does just about everything else.)

(All photos from The Salt Lake Tribune.)

This Just Brightened My Day

I've been battling a migraine since 1:00 AM today, and I was just heading off to bed (8:00 PM) when I checked my e-mail and found a twitter message had been directed toward me.
It was from Eric.  The REAL Eric on whom I based Eric Wright in Confessions of an Average Half-Vampire nearly 9 years ago.
You see, I joined twitter over the weekend, and, since they freakin' MAKE you follow 15 people just to register, I found my blog buddy Max, and through him my former student Chris (who also makes cameos in Half-Vamp, as he was the inspiration for the character Tim), and through Chris, I found Eric -- and signed up to follow him.
I hadn't sent him any tweets, but I soon noticed he'd signed up to follow me, so that was nice.
Then, tonight there was this:
@lisamshafer Not only did I just buy your book on Amazon earlier this week, I was literally collecting vials of sheep's blood at work today.
Hilarious!
He works in a lab doing AIDS research, so he's not kidding about the sheep's blood.  But somehow this just amuses me to no end this evening.
Sheep's blood. *giggle*
Irony abounds. :)

A Character Inspiration That May Just Quicken A Few Pulses

Character inspirations are weird things, and we writers find them in the oddest places.  One of the important characters in All in the Half-Vampire Family, for example, came from a 70s song called "Arizona," which is about a hippy girl with long braids and moccasins. I used her as Eric's cousin.  Another one of my characters, Dougal in Becoming Brigid, walked around in my head for a couple of years before I finally found a face to put with his personality, while Pepper/Brigid herself is totally fictional and is really just someone I pieced together in my mind.
But most of the time I have to "cast" people to "play" the roles of my characters.  I might give the person a totally different personality but steal their looks and a mannerism or two.  Those who know about this usually think it's funny.  I tell them their alter ego is playing a role in my novel.
Ten years ago this summer, I took some courses at a summer literature program at the University of Edinburgh.  My tutor (as the Scots call such folks; Americans would call them "professors" or merely "teachers") was a fabulous Cypriot named Charis, and I loved working with her.  But there were several other tutors as well, and one of them found his way into my photo album (for such it truly was; I did not have a digital camera a decade ago).  He was a young, jovial Irishman finishing his PhD at the uni, and I took two photos of him at the final party where he had put on a top hat and was carrying a cane while he sang and danced solo to a medley of songs from Oliver! where he had re-written the words to reflect his student poverty and his groveling for a summer job.  It was hilarious, and I remember thinking he had an acting talent buried under that researcher's facade.
In 2003, I needed a face to go with the character of the mentor vampire for Eric in Confessions of an Average Half-Vampire.  As Eric himself is such a very normal kid, I did not want the older, wiser vampire to be dark or brooding: no Dracula, nothing out of Anne Rice (thank heaven there was no Twilight in those days, but I certainly would NOT have wanted sparklies on him either).  I wanted a cheery, anti-vampire to be the vampire.  Searching through albums to find a face, I was delighted to remember Jim, the rosy-cheeked fellow singing and dancing his way through a funny memory of mine.  Hence, Jim was "borrowed."
Not much of the man, really, for I barely knew him.  But I borrowed his looks, his surname, his country of origin, and his joviality for the character of the kind-hearted Irish vampire, Patrick Kelly.  Everything else I made up.  I had to; I knew absolutely nothing else about the real man.
The first two drafts of Half-Vampire written, it was put aside as I moved to Scotland to do my master's degree in 2004.  Imagine my surprise when I walked into Blackwell's Books on Nicholson Street one afternoon not long after I'd moved in and found Jim working there.  After several trips and several more times of having him take my money and give me books in return, I finally got the guts to tell him I'd created a vampire based on him.  He laughed loud enough it was nearly a distraction in the store.
I saw him every now and then as he lectured at the uni and I studied, but I rarely had conversations with him.
Over the years, I've thought of the fellow once in a while, usually after reworking a scene that contained his alter ego playing a role in one of my books.  And over this past weekend, after I'd finished editing what would become the first proof copy of All in the Half-Vampire Family, wherein the character of Patrick is so crucial to Eric's development, on a whim, I did a yahoo search for Dr. Jim Kelly, the cheerful Irishman who gave me the inspiration for one of my favorite characters ever.
And I found him.

Um, yeah.
I must say, he has aged very well.  Very well indeed.  *blinks*  Wow.
I am quite certain that this fellow never lacks for female attendees at his lectures.  In fact, I'm willing to bet that his courses are strangely popular with undergrad ladies.
Ahem.
Well, then.

I'm also pleased to see that his career is going well, as I found him here.  (Since this is a public webpage and this photo was meant to appear online, I feel no qualms about posting his photo on my blog, especially since I've said nothing but positive or neutral things about the man anyway.)
So now my readers know what "Patrick" looks like.
And, if I ever sell enough books to be even remotely impressive, I'm going to contact Dr. Kelly and send him  copies of the Half-Vampire books.  Chances are, he'll laugh.  :)

Why I Chose To Make A Wheelchair User The Protagonist's Best Friend

Joseph Mitchell, Eric's best friend in Half-Vampire, is an unusual character in a YA novel.  To be honest, I can't ever recall reading a YA novel that had a wheelchair user as a major character.  Why'd I choose such a character?  Well, I needed someone to teach Eric not to focus on his disabilities.
The character of Joseph was inspired by 3 real people.  One was "Suzy," a severely hearing-impaired girl who was in my dance group when I was growing up.  A deaf dancer?  How?  Well, she felt the music rather than heard it, and she watched everyone else very closely.  No one in the audience ever knew she heard next to nothing.  And Suzy was an excellent lip-reader, so all the rest of us had to do was remember to turn toward her as we spoke.  Another inspiration was S., a 20-something-year-old actor I worked with in community theatres about a decade ago.  Due to a birth defect, S. had legs that didn't grow after infancy, so they were amputated, leaving him to use either his hands or a wheelchair to get around.  (The character Joseph walks on his hands the way S. did.  That's where I observed the motions and the possibilities.)  S. was completely undeterred by his lack of legs; he sang, danced (in and out of the wheelchair), acted, skateboarded (a legless skater is something to see!), and never made his difference an issue.  After a while, most of us didn't notice.  The third influence was J., a young man paralyzed at age nine from the armpits down.  Yes, he's a wheelchair user, but he's also a singer, dancer, actor, and was even the student-body president of his high school.  As with the others, J's a person, rather than a disabled person.
If you could meet these three people, you'd understand why one girl once complained to S., "[name deleted], you're the least *&^% handicapped person I know, but you get all the good parking places!"
Joseph doesn't ever focus on his "handicaps."  In fact, in the scene where he's telling Eric to stop whining about his own (Eric, after all, has a genetic disorder that gives him a bad reaction to sunlight and makes him crave blood, which definitely make him different from his classmates.), Joseph admits to his own disability: the fact that he cannot sing.  (I stole that from Suzy; she really couldn't sing very well.)  It never even occurs to Joseph at the moment that his lack of legs might be a handicap.
I'm sure there might be some readers who think Joseph is an unbelievable character, but I promise you that he's not.  His amazing attitude was shared by 3 people I know who had great excuses to be negative about their lots in life.  And Joseph's physical strength and ability to walk on his hands are completely modeled after S., who could do the same things.
Plus, I thought it would be a nice change to have a wheelchair user in a YA story.
So now you know.  :)

PS.  If anyone can think of any good YA books that feature wheelchair users, please drop a note in the comments.