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In Memory of a Teacher I Didn’t Like

February 24th, 2010

Red Pencil2Last week, I heard some sad news. My freshman high school English teacher, Roberta Quandt, passed away. I’d been thinking about her a lot recently, and the news came as a bit of a shock.

See, Mrs. Quandt, who was, at the time, Miss Flack (she was dating the vice principal, whom she later married, but the fact of their dating squicked us out to no end, never mind the conspiracy theories it engendered . . . ) anyway, Mrs. Quandt taught a sort of minimalist, broad-stroke intro to world literature for “advanced” freshmen. I’m pretty sure that I recall Aesop being involved in the syllabus.

I didn’t like Mrs. Quandt. This was not really her fault. I didn’t start to like school in general until my sophomore year of high school, when I fell in love with it – no middle ground, moderate nonsense for me, thank-you-very-much. Mrs. Quant had the dubious pleasure of “teaching” me the year before my educational epiphany. As a result, I was predisposed to hate her class. The Aesop and the random poetry and the forced suffering through Shakespeare that we utterly failed to understand didn’t help.

Grades-wise, I didn’t do well.

At all.

This was in spite of the fact that I devoured books and more than once was caught reading an unrelated novel under my desk in the back corner while Mrs. Quandt scribbled neatly-outlined notes on the overhead projector.

When it came to officially-sanctioned assignments, I just didn’t care.

Then, sometime in the spring, near-ish to the end of the school year, we came to the creative writing portion of the class. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure she put it near the end of the year because it was “easy” and by that point, she had to be unbearably tired of trying to cram a love of literature down our reluctant throats. Anyway, she set us an assignment – three short stories. At least three pages apiece.

I wrote the stories. One ended up being five pages long, which seemed like ridiculous overkill to me at the time, since my philosophy of school work was to do as little as possible to fulfill the requirements. (Ironically, the philosophical shift that made me love school was when I decided to start working my tail off, going far enough above and beyond that the work actually got *interesting.*) Anyway, I turned in the stories. I was mostly pretty pleased that I’d actually completed an assignment on time and in full.

A little time went by.

Grading time, I assume.

Then one day, Mrs. Quandt asked me to stay after class. I was so embarrassed that I must have been purple. I remember trying frantically to remember what I could have screwed up badly enough to warrant an after-class “talk.” I came close to cardiac arrest at the thought that whatever it was might result in a phone call to my parents.

After everyone left, I trudged up to her desk.

She said, “I want to show you something.”

She pulled out the packet of stories I’d handed in. In the top right-hand corner, in that dull red teacher-pencil, there was a 100, with a circle around it. She pushed the papers across the desk with one finger and kept them pinned there. She looked very serious. I remember thinking she was going to accuse me of plagiarism.

Instead, she just held my gaze and said; “You need to keep doing this. Writing. You have a talent and you need to make something of it.”

I was still embarrassed, but for a whole other reason. It wasn’t a time in my life when I got a lot of compliments or encouragement, mostly because I wasn’t doing much that was worthy of compliment or encouragement.

Mrs. Quandt was the first person who ever told me that I could write. That I *should* write. There was some stammering on my part and then I pretty much high-tailed it out of the room with the stories crammed into my backpack. I wish I could say that we became really close and she mentored me and I became the Editor-in-Chief of the school poetry journal, but it wasn’t that way. Mostly, she looked at me like I wasn’t a total screw up. In turn, I tried to see what might be interesting about Chinua Achebe (lots, as it turns out.)

Many of people have told me many very nice things over the years, both before and after Mrs. Quandt. I’ve been lucky that way. But sometimes in life, someone says one little thing – even though it’s not apparent at the time – that acts as a tipping point. Pushes the fulcrum. Changes the outcome.

One little, red-penciled number. A couple of small but sincerely-spoken words.

I’ve carried those with me for a long time.

They were a tipping point in my life, and with all the wonderfulness that’s happened in the last year with my writing, because of my writing, I’ve thought several times that I should look her up and say thanks. It turns out that I waited too long to tell her in private. So, I guess the only thing I can do is tell her in public.

Thank you, Mrs. Quandt.

I SAW JOHN GREEN!!!

February 9th, 2010

So, last night John Green spoke at the University of Indianapolis. Wait – it just occurred to me that it’s possible that there are people reading this blog who don’t know who John Green is. If you *do* know who he is, skip to the next paragraph. If you *don’t* know who he is, here’s the short version – John Green is the award-winning Young Adult author of LOOKING FOR ALASKA, AN ABUNDANCE OF KATHERINES and PAPER TOWNS. You can find his books here. He also runs the highly popular Vlogbrothers YouTube channel with his brother, Hank. You can find their videos here.

Now that we’re all on the same page, let me start again.

So, last night John Green spoke at the University of Indianapolis. I love John Green. I’ve read all of his books, multiple times each. They stand up to multiple readings because he’s a master at capturing the pain and humor and wonder that is late adolescence. When he announced that he’d be reading/speaking at the University (not shocking, since he lives in town. How cool is that? John Green and I LIVE IN THE SAME CITY.) Anyway, I was super excited. I bundled up the baby and roped my mother into coming along and the three of us trooped off into the very cold February night.

The first fantastic thing that happened was that John read for the first time ever from his forthcoming book WILL GRAYSON, WILL GRAYSON, which he co-wrote with David Levithan. From the small piece that he read, it sounds like it will be just as fabulous as all of his other novels. He also paused over one particular line and said – half to himself – “I didn’t leave it like that, did I? God, I hope I changed it. I’d better mark that and check.” That’s not completely verbatim, obviously (I couldn’t take notes. I was holding the baby.) but it’s pretty close. I love hearing other authors spontaneously revising their work. I love knowing I’m not the only one who is never, ever completely satisfied with a manuscript. Anyway. He also read from his third novel, PAPER TOWNS, and I loved that too, though it was less of a revelation since I’ve read that one four times.

One of the things that impressed me most over the course of the night was John’s ability to talk about serious, tough-provoking ideas while continuously tossing in enough humor to keep everyone hanging on his every word – although, let’s face it, this was a room of serious John Green fanatics. They’d have been hanging on his every word, anyway. The topics ranged from the importance of books in human culture to what the TWILIGHT series was all about, and he left tons of time for audience Q&A, which was fantastic. His answers were all extremely honest, and not just in a not-lying sort of way. Honest in an actually-willing-to-reveal-something-about-who-he-really-is sort of way. I admire that. A lot.

Afterwards, he sat and very patiently signed books for anyone who wanted, which, as far as I could tell, was pretty much every person in the place. After my mom and I had our books signed (hooray! I have a signed John Green book!) he invited us (and everyone else) (and why am I using *so many* parenthetical expressions tonight?) to sign the copy of PAPER TOWNS that he had read from. This was an awesome idea. I will absolutely steal it for any signings I may do. I promise to credit John when I implement the theft, though.


All in all, it was a fantastic evening and if you weren’t there, you really missed out. You can make up for it by buying and reading John’s books, visiting his website www.sparksflyup.com or checking out the Vlogbrother’s channel on YouTube, where my mother, daughter, myself and the rest of the audience from last night will make a brief appearance in a video set to air a week from Monday.

We all say “Good morning, Hank, it’s Monday!”

We did a great job.

I expect to hear from the Oscars people shortly.

Okay, enough joking around. Go check out the million and one John Green links I gave you. Then come back and let me know what you think.

See you then!

Excuses, excuses

January 28th, 2010

I didn’t write a decent blog post this week, and here’s why:

  1. I was working on the new book.
  2. I was tired.
  3. I didn’t watch the State of the Union address, so I have no savvy political commentary.
  4. Don’t worry, I have it DVR’d.
  5. The kids were being cute.
  6. The kids were being cranky.
  7. I got distracted by something shiny.
  8. Rear Window was on BBC, and I have a policy of watching that movie whenever it’s on.
  9. Did I mention the new book?
  10. I don’t have anything cute to say about the iPad that hasn’t already been said.
  11. It’s too cold.
  12. I ate too many cookies.
  13. I didn’t have enough coffee.
  14. Space aliens took over my website as part of an effort at inter-galactic domination  and they wouldn’t let me post.
  15. Okay, that last one wasn’t true.
  16. New book! Writing! Lots! Really!
  17. I couldn’t find my car keys. (The two-year-old took them. They were in the refrigerator.)
  18. I wasted too much time following interesting-looking links on Twitter.
  19. You know you can follow me there – @cjohnsonbooks
  20. I was busy critiquing.
  21. I’m reading a really boring book and it’s taking up too much time but I’ve  been a real slacker at book club lately and I think I need to step up my game this month.
  22. That last one was true.
  23. Sequel-writing took up too much time.
  24. I’m lazy.
  25. Lists are more fun!

PC vs. Mac

January 22nd, 2010

So, until recently, I’ve been doing all of my writing, Internet-ting, photo-saving, etc., on a rather elderly Toshiba laptop.

4296351926_44038c624cHere is a picture of said elderly laptop.

I’ve had a string of PC-related problems in recent years, most commonly involving melted motherboards which required entire computers to be replaced. We’d bought the extended it-broke-but-it-wasn’t-my-fault-I-swear warranties, which was great because I didn’t have to buy a new computer. It was terrible because I just kept replacing broken PCs with new PCs which eventually . . . broke.

Finally I got the Toshiba, which happily puttered along past the end date of the latest warranty. Hooray! Of course, as it entered the twilight of it’s working years, things began to go wrong. The power cord got upset about being crunched up against the wall all the time and it had to be replaced.

The battery, on a full charge, lasted a maximum of 20 minutes.

It began to load, run, wake up, and/or reboot sloooooowly. There was a lot of knuckle-cracking and throat-clearing it had to get through before it was ready to do any actual work. It started to freeze up so badly that I’d just have to turn it off midtask and hope to God I’d saved my work recently.

The Blue Screen of Death (you know. . . “Beginning physical memory dump. Physical memory dump complete?” That one.) became a common sight.

In order to protect its increasingly frail workings, I bought and installed McAfee’s virus/firewall/suit-of-PC-armor software.

Oh my God.

It took over the entire life of the computer, bursting in on me at inopportune moments like some sort of deranged technological side-kick with a lazy eye and high-water pants, waving its arms and shouting about the viral armageddon which would surely befall me at any moment if I didn’t update my spam filter now, NOW! (Wow. That was a really long sentence.) Agreeing to the updates just sent Mad McAfee off into a corner to sulk over a cup of tea while it calculated the remaining upload times on some sort of antiquated abacus.

Why yes, I *did* hate that software program. What makes you ask?

ANYway. It was clearly time for a new computer. And I made the decision to go Mac.

I was a little hesitant about it. After all, I was used to Microsoft. I’ve always had PCs. They’re cheaper. I knew how to use them (at least, sufficiently for my non-tech-geek purposes.) And truth be told, I was a little concerned that I’m not actually cool enough to be a Mac person. But most of the writers I know have and love Macs, and I figured if some sort of secret send-her-over-to-HP alarm went off when I entered the Apple store, I would pull out my novelist trump card and see if they would ignore the diaper-bag and practical shoes long enough to sell me a laptop.

It worked! I fooled them into letting me have one to take home! Yay!

4296349166_897b533aceHere’s the new Mac.

I’m still getting used to it. The iWork stuff is different than Office (duh,) and I’m finding myself clicking on the little “Help” section a lot with pretty inane questions. But I love the multi-touch-mouse-pad-thingie. And I can use Scrivener now, which I’m also getting used to, but if you write books, it’s an *awesome* software program and you can try it for 30 days, free. Whether it’s really as trouble free as all the Mac-lovers out there have promised me, only time will tell. For now, though, I’m just happy to have a computer that I don’t have to conduct elaborate prayer rituals over every time I want to hit the power button.

So. I guess I’m a Mac. Just don’t tell my sensible grey wool coat, okay?

Literary Legacy

January 15th, 2010

booksRecently, I reorganized the books in my son’s room and playroom. I do this occasionally, so that we “refind” the books that have made their way to the bottom of the basket or back of the shelves. After I got everything straightened this time, he latched on to one particular book, and hasn’t let go. For nearly two weeks, we’ve read the exact same book every day before nap time and again before bed.

I have the thing memorized. But not because of the last two weeks.

The book we’ve been reading againandagainandagain is OH, WHAT A BUSY DAY! By Gyo Fujikawa. I know this book by heart because my own mother read it to me, at my insistence, day in and day out when I was little. In fact, she can still recite the book without looking at the text. There’s a companion book, COME FOLLOW ME, which I’ve set aside for my daughter, that my mother read just as often. She saved them both, for decades, unable to part with the books that were so important to me when I was small.

When I found out I was expecting my son, she patched up the covers and gave them to me, so that I could read them to my own kids. I was thrilled and touched and pleased to note that I still thought they were great books, almost thirty years after loving them for the first time.

What I didn’t expect was how happy I would be to see that my son loves “his” book just as much as I did. It thrills me to have him demand the same stories – even the same physical books! – that I did at his age. I know literature is timeless. Generations of girls have loved JANE EYRE. Dads have given their old HARDY BOYS mysteries to their sons. But handing down this one, not-so-well-known book and knowing that it may shape my own son’s first early-reading memories the way it shaped mine . . . this is a big part of what I love about books. How they link us together, not just through the universalities we find in plot and character, but through the shared experience of an actual book. Turning the same pages. Touching the same illustrations.

Who knows? Maybe someday my son will read the same book to his own child. It can be our own little literary legacy. Even if it is as simple as OH, WHAT A BUSY DAY!

Trash Eater

January 7th, 2010

I’m not normally one for procrastination. I’d rather do today what could wait until tomorrow, so that it’s not hanging over my head while I sleep like a Damoclesian to-do list. This has become especially true since I had kids. The time I have to work is extremely limited and passing up an opportunity to write is just plain stupid. So I shun distractions. I ignore the things that suck up my precious time.

But there is one thing that’s been taking up an unfair amount of my attention lately.

Trash Eater.

Trash Eater

This is Trash Eater.

Last month, Trash Eater was the fattest squirrel known to man, but he’s thinned out as the weather’s gotten worse. He’s still plenty plump though, thanks in large part to my trash.

As his name might indicate, he eats it. First, I should confess that our trash cans are out by our detached garage. On account of the small children, I often toss a full trash bag onto the back porch and wait until the next time someone’s going out to the garage to take it to the bins. Apparently, the temptation of the un-attended, un-canned bag was too much for Trash Eater.

The first time I found a garbage bag ripped open, with coffee grounds and leftover mac-and-cheese strewn across the ground, I assumed it was a raccoon. We live near a large park, and they wander through occasionally. Grumblingly, I cleaned up the mess, assuming it was a one-time annoyance. My ire grew as the ransacking of our family’s refuse happened several more times – and each time there was increasingly grumble-y cleaning up.

Then I caught him. I was making the toddler his lunch one day when I looked out the sliding glass doors onto the back porch and saw this enormous squirrel digging a heel of bread out of my trash. Massively irritated, I stormed across the kitchen, sure that my approach would scare him off.

No so. Trash Eater is a very intrepid squirrel. He turned one beady eye toward me and went back to nibbling on his (my) bread. So, I took the absolutely rational and sane step of whipping open the glass door and yelling at him. “Trash eater! Get out of my trash!” I may have shaken my fist. I’m not sure. I was pretty angry.

My toddler found this absolutely hysterical.

The squirrel finally took off at that point, ducking under the gate and disappearing down the driveway. Feeling pretty pleased with myself, I went back to making lunch. A few minutes later, a tiny voice called from the direction of the back door: “Mommy! TRASH EATER!!”

I looked out, and sure enough, the same squirrel was back, digging through the garbage while giving me a what-are-you-gonna-do-about-it-lady look. Thus, Trash Eater was named, and a feud was born. I upped the stakes by keeping a steady vigil for Trash Eater, assisted by my highly enthusiastic toddler. I made a better effort to get the trash bags into the cans, pronto. Trash Eater responded by learning how to tip over the trash cans and ripping into the newly-freed bags.

I began brandishing a broom.

Trash Eater started checking through a window on the side of our house to see if I was near the back door before attacking (not kidding.)

I know, I know. There are ways I could do away with Trash Eater. A little arsenic in the remnants of the apple pie comes to mind. But I don’t have the heart. Two things stop me from going there, no matter how irritated I get. The first one is my toddler. He takes great joy in spotting Trash Eater and sending up the two-year-old alarm signal (which consists of yelling MAMA! MAMA! TRASH EATER TRASHEATERTRASHEATERTRASHEATER until I come running to chase him off. If I am too slow, the toddler will open the back door, stick his head out, and yell at the squirrel himself.) This is extremely adorable, and is also an easy way to entertain him when I need to – say – grab a load of laundry or answer an email. I just tell him to go check for Trash Eater. Yes, it’s sort of horrible. But he likes it. Really!

Anyway, the second thing that stops me is Trash Eater himself. There are a lot of really scrawny, pathetic squirrels out there this time of year, scraping at the cold, hard dirt, looking for some acorn they buried in September. Trash Eater isn’t one of them. He’s figured out a pretty sweet deal. There’s *always* trash. He didn’t have to run around like a ninny shoving nuts into a dying day-lily plant. He’s smart, for a squirrel. I mean, seriously. He does *reconnaissance*. Over the course of our feud, I’ve developed a grudging respect for him. He irritates the crap out of me, but God help me . . . I respect him too much to off him.

I still wish he’d stay the heck out of my trash, though.

And if you’ll excuse me, I need to stop writing and go check on my garbage cans.

Free downloads!

December 30th, 2009

Thanks to the Simon Pulse marketing department, I’m able to offer these really awesome downloads to everyone. There’s a super cool moving avatar and wallpaper in two different sizes. Download ‘em, share ‘em, send ‘em to your friends. Hooray for marketing folks! Hooray for Claire de Lune! Hooray!

Happy news!

December 22nd, 2009

newspaper

I’m thrilled to announce that the still-untitled sequel to CLAIRE DE LUNE is going to be published by Simon PULSE. It’ll be coming to bookstores in the summer of 2011! Hooray! I’ll be staying with my wonderful editor, Anica Rissi, and I can’t wait to work on another book with her. And thanks, of course, to my fab agent, Caryn Wiseman, for facilitating the whole thing.

Here’s the Publisher’s Marketplace blurb: Christine Johnson’s sequel to the forthcoming CLAIRE DE LUNE, about a 16-year old girl who discovers that she is a werewolf, one of a long line of female werewolves, to Anica Rissi at Simon Pulse, for publication in Summer 2011, by Caryn Wiseman at Andrea Brown Literary Agency (world).

Note that the sequel is untitled. If you have any title ideas, I’d love to hear them. Seriously. It’s my least favorite part of writing.

Guest Blogging

December 16th, 2009

detour

Hey, everyone! I’m guest blogging this week over at peaceloveandpat.blogspot.com – go check it out!

http://peaceloveandpat.blogspot.com/2009/12/author-guest-post-christine-johnson.html

Book review: GOING BOVINE by Libba Bray

December 6th, 2009

Going bovineSo, I’ve just finished GOING BOVINE, Libba Bray’s newest work. And wow, was I seriously impressed. Not only was it fabulously written, with an intriguing story line and absolutely unique and impeccable narrative voice, it was different. Massively different. Especially when held up against her previously-published Gemma Doyle trilogy.

Though I would have enjoyed the book immensely no matter which author engendered it, to see this thoroughly modern teen boy – complete with cursing and pot-smoking and raging hormones – spring from the pen of a woman known for corsets and secret Victorian societies made me want to stand up and applaud. How incredible to be so flexible! It’s the writing equivalent of being able to do the splits.

It’s true that both of the books contain fantasy elements, but it wouldn’t be possible for them to be more different. Especially in her latest effort, Bray does an excellent job of blurring the lines between the fantastic and the real, creating a world in which the two live so closely side-by-side that a miniscule Norse god seems like the most logical next narrative step in the world. It’s got everything. Adventure. Excitement. Fantasy. A driven plot happening on an urgent timeline. The writing is contemporary without having the timbre of prose that will be outdated in five years.

If you haven’t already (and there are plenty who have jumped me on this review, since I’ve been in a slow reading phase,) run out and buy a copy of GOING BOVINE. Seriously. It’s good, people.