Stuart Gibbs

Belly Up may not have sold a million copies (yet).  But it has inspired schoolchildren in Vermont to make FunJungle brochures, write a song — and run around in the snow reenacting the ‘escaped tiger’ sequence from the book. Click here to check it all out.

The escaped tiger sequence is at the beginning of the newscast, which is quite well done.  I enjoyed it far more than any of last night’s best picture Oscar nominations.  The state of Vermont has been very good to Belly Up.  Ever since nominating it for the 2011 Dorothy Canfield Fisher Book Award, Vermont has been a hotbed of Belly Up activity, from having me Skype with classes to doing extremely clever projects like the one I’ve just mentioned.  It has all been extremely flattering and I’m very thankful.

As a writer, one of the greatest joys in life is seeing your book finally get published.

Only slightly less exciting is seeing it published in other languages.

Especially Swedish.

I mean no offense to my numerous Swedish fans, but I don’t think I’m alone in finding Swedish funny.  After all, the Swedish chef on ‘The Muppet Show’ wouldn’t have been nearly as funny if he’d been speaking German.  (In fact, he would have been scary.)

Must be all the umlauts.  Lots of umlauts in Swedish.

It’s less than a month until Spy School comes out.  I have received the first official review of it.  (I actually got this two weeks ago, but I’ve been busy on Spy School 2 and haven’t had time to post.)

This is from the School Library Journal.  I have actually edited it a tiny bit, because I felt there were a few spoilers in it.

“Ben Ripley, a 12-year-old math genius, receives a mysterious summons to join the Academy of Espionage, a secret recruitment arm of the CIA. Since his life’s ambition is to become a spy, he is thrilled by the offer, but his first day is hardly what he expected. It involves ninjas, flying bullets, and Erica, the most beautiful girl he has ever seen. Twists and turns in the plot keep readers guessing until the very end. The story, over-the-top funny, combines Alex Rider’s espionage skills with a huge dose of the sarcasm of Artemis Fowl. Subtle digs at the stuffiness of a federal agency and the romance of spying abound.”

The woman who wrote this was also kind enough to post it on Goodreads.  What’s odd is that there are two other text reviews on Goodreads, written by people who must have somehow managed to get an advanced copy of the book.  Luckily, they are both good reviews as well.

For the record, Spy School seems to be generating some excitement.  It’s already pre-selling decently well on Amazon.

And now that I’m done with Spy School 2 (at least the first draft) I can say that I’m quite pleased with this book as well.  You folks will just have to wait a year or so to read it for yourselves.

Quick quiz:  What is the largest animal you can encounter on land in the United States?

No, it’s not a grizzly bear.

No, not a moose, either.

It’s the northern elephant seal.

If you’ve never seen an elephant seal before, I highly recommend it.  It’s one of the most bizarre, improbable creatures on earth.  Just check this guy out:

Honestly, these guys look like they ought to be in the bar scene in Star Wars.

There’s only one catch: They’re only on land about three months a year.  The rest of the time, they’re swimming in the ocean.

Yes, that’s right, they swim for nine months straight.

When they are on land, however, they’re not hard to find.  They tend to go to the same beaches every year.  The females give birth and nurse their young.  The males fight for dominance and then breed.  It all happens from December to March, with the most action coming between Martin Luther King Day and Valentine’s Day.

The largest breeding colony in the US is just north of San Simeon, California.  They are right off the Pacific Coast Highway.  It’s about a 30 second walk from your car.  As you can see, you have a relatively good chance of seeing a few thousand:

I hung out there for two hours last weekend.  I saw plenty of newborn pups, like this one, who was less than a day old:

And I got to see some good dominance battles as well:

There aren’t many other places in America where you can see so many large mammals in one place at one time.  So, if you ever have the chance, go see this amazing spectacle.

Even if you’re not into pelagic megafauna, the scenery’s pretty awesome.

Sad news from the LA Zoo today.  Jabba the Hippo was euthanized yesterday at the age of 28.

Although I go on about how dangerous hippos can be in ‘Belly Up,’ they’re not all as awful as Henry.  Jabba was, from what I can tell, rather mild-mannered as hippos go.  I never heard of him attacking anyone, and while he certainly sullied his pool with poo a lot, he never blasted anyone with it, Henry-style.  (In the picture above, he’s begging for food from one of his keepers, like a 4,000 pound labrador retriever.)

Since Jabba was the closest hippo to my house, I spent a good amount of time watching him while writing ‘Belly Up.’  I didn’t base Henry on him, but it was always interesting to observe people’s reactions — especially children — when they watched him.  Have you ever seen a child see a hippo for the first time?  It’s quite incredible.

This photo of Jabba adorned my blog page for a long time:

Now, for the first time in at least 28 years, there is no hippo at the LA Zoo.  (Although there are still quite a few animatronic ones at Disneyland.)  Such a shame.

Jabba, we’ll miss you.

I have just been informed that Belly Up is a final nominee for the Mark Twain Readers Award.

My competition to actually win this is pretty stiff, but that’s praise in itself.  It’s nice to be included with such a great bunch of books.

Frankly, it’s nice to have my book associated with anything with the words “Mark Twain” in it.

In addition to that honor, though, it’s always nice to have praise like this:

Review from A Random Hodgepodge of Bookishness

Or this:

Review from DogEared Book Blog

Or this:

Review from Teen Ink

For the legions of you who follow this blog (6.5 million at last count), you know that I’m a little obsessed with tracking my sales.  Well, this year, for the first time, I was able to pay particularly close attention to the trending of my books over the holidays, and I noticed something that was pretty interesting.  (Although, in retrospect, it should have been obvious.)

Up until Christmas Day, my books were selling a bit better than usual.  This makes sense, because a lot of people are out there looking for books, and what better gift is there for a middle grade kid than a book, right?  So then, of course, sales dipped a bit right after the holiday, because no one needed to buy presents any more.

But that was only for actual, physical books.  E-books had the exact opposite trend.  They didn’t sell all that well before the holidays.  (Because, let’s face it, an e-book makes a rather lousy gift.  Yes, it’s a book, but it’s very hard to wrap.)  But then, on Christmas Day, sales went through the roof.  For Belly Up, Christmas was actually my best e-book selling day ever.  And sales of e-books have stayed pretty high ever since.

So what happened?  Obviously, a bunch of kids got e-readers for Christmas.

This is actually a pretty clever deal for all the e-reader makers.  And a rather good indicator that their master plan — sell e-readers at a loss and then make the money back in selling product — is working.  People give the e-reader as a gift — and then the first thing the recipient has to do is spend more money to buy the actual books.  (Because, let’s face it, an e-reader without any books on it is just a really expensive paperweight.)

I have no idea how many e-readers were sold this holiday season, but given the trend, I’m guessing it was a lot.

Just thought you’d like to know.

First off, there’s a new trailer for Belly Up on YouTube.  I believe that makes 1,473 overall, though I may have overestimated this a bit.  Keep them coming!

I’ve been meeting the kids at a lot of elementary schools lately, but my most recent had a little twist.  I’d been asked to come meet the kids at Grand View Elementary in Manhattan Beach, CA… only, when I got there, it turned out they hadn’t told the kids I was coming.  It was going to be a surprise.  So I stood behind a curtain off-stage while the parents announced that I was there.  This was cute, although I have to admit there were a few moments when it was a little nerve-wracking.  There was always the chance that they’d say: ‘The author is here!’ and all the kids would groan in disappointment.  Luckily, that didn’t happen and, as usual, the kids were really engaged and asked some great questions.

It’s good to know that, after being out for almost two years now, Belly Up is being discovered by more and more people.  Here’s a nice new review from a really great site called Reading Junky’s Reading Roost.

And, of course, it’s always nice to get a good review for the Last Musketeer as well.  (In fact, I’ll happily accept nice reviews for anything I do.)  Here’s a nice review for Last Musketeer on epinions.

If you’ve read Belly Up (or even seen the cover) you know I have a soft spot for hippos.  Yes, they’re dangerous and can be quite unsanitary, but they’re absolutely fascinating.  Until recently, however, I’d never had the chance to see a baby hippo up close.  I’d only seen them in the wild through binoculars, and then, it was just the tops of their heads.  (They tend to spend most of their time under water.)

These shots are taken at the San Diego Zoo, which has one of the finest hippo exhibits in the world.  (I modeled Hippo River at FunJungle after it — although, to be fair, Disney’s Wild Animal Kingdom also has a fine exhibit.  And I understand that the Toledo Zoo had the first underwater hippo viewing in the country, but I’ve never been to Toledo.)

Anyhow, here’s the little hippo.  Well, not so little anymore.  He’s almost a year old.  But still, adorable, right?  (By the way, the cute kid in the red hat is my son.)

OK, really I said it couldn’t be done.  I fully believed that there was no way I could actually write an entire book before Thanksgiving.  (See my ‘Insane Deadline’ post from a month ago.)  And yet, I did it.

Well, I wrote a first draft.  But still, that’s 200 pages long.

I realize that, by sharing this, I might not exactly be making a strong case that the book in question (book three of the Last Musketeer series) is quality work.  However…

1) Work will continue on it over the next few months.

2) Part of the reason I wrote it so quickly was that I was swept up in the excitement of telling the story.

Book Three, I assure you, will be quite the action/adventure spectacular, with prison breaks, hidden tombs, army battles and plenty of swashbuckling.  (You all know how much I love swashbuckling.)  It should be out in a mere 14 months or so.

In the meantime, to tide you over, there’s book one.  Check out this great review of The Last Musketeer from epinions.