Countdown: a Conversation with Deborah Wiles

Perhaps you know Deborah Wiles from her moving picture books Freedom Summer and One Wide Sky, or her utterly charming novels Love Ruby Lavender, Each Little Bird That Sings, and The Aurora County All-Stars. (Some of my personal favorites.) Or maybe you've just noticed all the shiny awards stickers obscuring the covers of her books. Each of her books is a wonderful example of voice, character, and human nature, so I'm just one of the many people who are thrilled to their toes that she has a new book out: Countdown.

Countdown is worth picking up just for the exemplary design of the book, from jacket to cover to endpapers to the way the many, many period images are treated. Even the details on the page edges! But most exciting of all is the way Deborah's historical fiction combines a fresh, involving story with images and quotes from the 60s that make a compelling experience for those who never experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Deborah very kindly agreed to this interview.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: It's exciting to see something so ambitious (and historical) in today's sometimes overwhelmingly conservative (and paranormal) market. You call this a documentary novel. Could you explain for my readers what that is, and what inspired you to write one?

DEBORAH WILES: Thank you! So glad you think it's ambitious and different -- so do I, and I have good partners to thank for helping me make that happen. Scholastic ran the bases with me, all the way, full out, and said, "let's do it," when I presented them with this idea.

As I wrote Franny's story, I collected all kinds of photographs, newspaper stories and clippings, songs, advertisements, cartoons, recipes, quotes, and more, from the late fifties and early sixties to help me tell the story. At first, they were just for me, to help me sink into that time frame and remember, but quickly it became apparent to me that they were an integral part of the storytelling.

So I created what I started calling scrapbooks. I wanted to explore how history is really biography (as Emerson said), it's more than just dates and names and events, and I wanted to explore how each decision we make has rippling waves that affect others.

For instance, Harry Truman's decision not to answer Ho Chi Minh's 1947 letters had far-reaching consequences that may have led to our involvement in Vietnam, so I write about that in Countdown, in the larger, historical context. JFK loving the musical Camelot led to his presidency being called Camelot, thanks to a well-placed quote from Jackie Kennedy. His decision to send more advisors into Vietnam left us with an escalating war during the Johnson administration -- something I'll get into in book two.

But just as there are huge, overarching historical events in our collective history, that history is lived out on the personal stage of each individual person. So, Uncle Otts in Countdown is a living legacy of the horrors of World War I (where he fought in the same battle that Harry Truman fought in, in the Argonne). Franny being afraid that those Russian missiles might be launched from Cuba and hit the United States is a real, personal response to the horror of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Franny's decision to help (or not help) her friend changes the course of her history, and her friend's.

Early on, I began to carefully assemble each scrapbook section in a way that told the larger, overarching history of the early sixties, while Franny and the other characters in Countdown tell us the personal story of that time. I knew it had never been done before, but I very much wanted to work with this form of storytelling. I think of these scrapbooks as having been assembled by Franny -- so she is telling us her story, both the bigger picture, and the smaller, personal one within that bigger picture. I thought of the biographies as being written by the adult Franny, with a more grown-up sensibility, but still her story, her opinions, in her voice.

The term "documentary novel" actually came from my editor, David Levithan. We were tossing around what to call this brand new thing we had created... "What is it?" we asked ourselves... well, it's like a documentary, but it's not. It's a novel, first and foremost -- that was important to me, to tell a great story.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: I found your main character very compelling--and very immediate. I understand from the backmatter that the book draws somewhat from your own childhood, but there's no sense of nostalgia, no sense of an adult looking back. So I'm curious-- how much does Franny's experience of that October in 1962 draw from your own experience?

DEBORAH WILES: I draw from my life in every story I write, and this one is no different... and it may be closer to my life than the others, actually. The story -- the plot -- is completely fiction, but I did live outside Andrews Air Force Base, my dad was chief of safety for the 89th, my mother hosted bridge parties, we had a pink kitchen, my brother was perfect (still is - ha!), we had a dog (a French poodle, though, not a Lassie dog like Jack), I attended Camp Springs Elementary School, was in glee club, loved French, and had a friend who grew up way faster than I did, just like Margie does in Countdown. I used all these connections as the outside trappings of my story -- I wanted to be authentic to the time period, and using my own life to do it... well, it's what I know.

I did duck and cover under my desk, and I did compose letters to JFK and Khrushchev at night, as I lay in bed, but the actual story I spin from all these facts is fiction. However, the inside story -- what it felt like to be betrayed by a friend, to be in love with the boy across the street, to feel invisible at home and at school, to want to understand the world -- in that way, Franny is exactly like I was at ten. I remember clearly what it was like to be ten years old in the world. I can bring that feeling back to me as if it were yesterday. I often say that I write for ten-year-old me, and maybe I do.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: The book does a great job of bringing across how big and scary and yet essentially unfathomable the idea of nuclear war is, and was for the country at the time. Can you speak to how you approach foreshadowing and tension-building in your writing?

DEBORAH WILES: Gaaaa! You know, that's a good question. Most of the time, foreshadowing and tension-building grow up in revision. Actually *so much* that I do is a task of revision. My first draft(s) are so lousy, really. I have to think and rethink. The first draft is like a bloodletting for me -- I can't see the shape, I don't know the direction, I'm grasping for plot, I'm gasping for air, and I'm sure I can't pull it off.

I have to MAKE myself get an entire first draft, just so I can believe that I can do it and am not a total failure (and so I can sleep again and take off twenty pounds) and so I can have something to revise. Revision is hard hard hard, but it is such a pleasure, too, as it holds such great rewards (as opposed to the first draft, which I suppose should feel rewarding, but instead feels like I've been fifteen rounds with the lions in Gladiator).

In revision I throw out great wads of the plot (usually the entire second half), but as I do that, the light begins to dawn, I begin to understand who my characters are and what their motivations are, which inform their actions and reactions, and as these things begin coming clear, I go back and layer in foreshadowing and tension.

I love working with foreshadowing. I like to see how oblique I can be while not cheating -- you know? How can I give you what you need to know, so that you are not hit out of left field by the reveal (and so it is a sweet release or surprise), and yet how can I not hit you over the head with it too heavily or too many times so that you're waiting for it and say "DUH!" when it comes. I change up my references and methods to what I'm foreshadowing so you don't recognize it as such, and this is fun for me, like a puzzle... but all this work must feel seamless to the reader, and that's a challenge.

Same with creating tension. I try to remember that every action has a reaction -- so show that -- and that every emotion is connected to an action: Drew tugs at his eyebrow, Franny's heart runs away with her fear, Uncle Otts digs and digs and digs that hole in front yard -- until he keels over! -- and Franny's mother lights another cigarette... there's so much that can be shown, in creating tension. I try to remember that. And again, it's a task of revision, for me.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: You mention in the book that you started this as a picture book. What did your editor say that made you realize it was really the beginning of a novel?

DEBORAH WILES: I realized it myself, early on. I say early because this book had such a long gestation. I started it as a picture book 1996, a story about a brother and sister and a "war" they have -- a balloon fight with one kid in a sycamore tree and another on his bike below. The title was Lemon Yellow Day, and started out:

"It's a lemon yellow day. A lemon pie day. I sit in the vee of the mighty sycamore, safe inside my treehouse. I pat my supply of water balloons. "All right, Mr. TakeBeforeAsking," I say "I'm ready." And here he comes, wobbling up the street on MY bicycle: my enemy, my brother, my friend."

It was full of duck and cover, atomic bomb, Cold War language, and it didn't really go anywhere, except that my (now grown) kids and I still say, "Sorry-sorry-sorry, Mr. Thornberg!" to one another, and know what that means.

This story and others had been rejected for years. Then I met an agent at an SCBWI event in Washington, D.C. and struck up a friendship with her, and asked her if I could send her my stuff. She was very encouraging; I'd send her a story and she'd send it back a few weeks later (all of this on snail mail), telling me what wasn't working, but she refused to take me on as a client. About Lemon Yellow Day she wrote, "Get rid of that day and tell me a story."

I didn't know how to do that. I was still largely writing my memories. I had been so deeply influenced by books such as When I Was Young in the Mountains and Honey I Love and When I Am Old With You, that I was still trying to tell a slice-of-life story. I couldn't figure out how to write those stories, but I was developing my voice through ten years of rejections and studying and reading picture books.

So I put the story aside and went on to others, and eventually found my way to Love, Ruby Lavender and Freedom Summer, both of which were picture books when I started them. I didn't know I could or wanted to write a novel. But Liz Van Doren at Harcourt was interested in Ruby (which started out as a slice-of-life story). She said it had voice. She assured me I could learn the rest. And she took on the gargantuan task of teaching me.

So we started working together. The story got longer and longer. As it turned into a novel, and as I turned into a novelist (a long, slow process), I began to understand that this Cuban Missile Crisis story was bigger than the argument between a brother and sister, and I began to explore it.

I'd drag it out and look at it, play with it, put it back, until one day as I stuck with it, other characters appeared. There was always a mother and an older sister, but now they had backstories -- wow. Who knew? Then there was a father. I didn't know him at all. The brother and sister got names: Franny and Drew. They took on lives that went way beyond their picture book argument. Suddenly they weren't enemies anymore, and up popped a friend for Franny, someone who could take the enemy's place eventually.

And then -- lo and behold -- Uncle Otts appeared. When he came on the scene, in all his bulldoze-the-front-yard-glory (for he had a bulldozer in his first incarnation)... well! Now I had a full-fledged family with a rich history, and I needed to know their stories. And I knew then, I had a novel on my hands. This was probably 1998.

It would take me another ten years to figure out how to write it.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: Thank you--so much!-- for bringing across how hard great writers work to be great. Finally, do you have any advice for those attempting historical fiction? Any lessons you've learned in the process?

DEBORAH WILES: Thank you for giving me the opportunity to think and talk about these things!

I'm not good with advice, as I'm still learning how I work with historical fiction, even though my first book, Freedom Summer (which is historical fiction, albeit a picture book), is almost ten years old.

There is an over-arching line of history that humans live through, a sort of collective history, if you will. Then there is each person's individual story within that history. When I wrote Freedom Summer, I knew that the book was about the passage of the Civil Rights Act and yet, at its heart, Freedom Summer is a book about friendship and fairness -- and choice -- between two boys, one black, one white, who decide they want to go swimming together at the town pool, the day it opens to "everyone under the sun no matter what color." It was always about that.

With Countdown, I tried to remember that Franny's heart and her story were paramount. Her life -- her choices -- would pull the reader through, and I wanted to place the reader firmly in Franny's world. So the personal story comes first, and somehow, as personal as it is, it also needs to be universal.

That's a key for me, I think. Where are the inner places we are connected as fellow travelers on this earth? What are our universal hopes and fears as human beings young, old, rich, poor, black, white, city, country, and every shade and persuasion?

At one particular low point in the long writing of Countdown, I despaired of young readers ever being able to connect to the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. And then, two planes flew into two twin towers and one flew into the Pentagon. And as the world reacted, as I reacted, it dawned on me that we are living this history together; this grief, this joy, this fear, this confusion, this beauty, this life. We beat with one heart. And that's when I knew I could hold that heart in my hand, and tell this story.

Fat Vampire: a Conversation with Adam Rex

You may know Adam Rex from his alien-invasion novel The True Meaning of Smekday (which wins for most hilarious alien). Or from his bestselling poetry collections Frankenstein Makes a Sandwich and Frankenstein Takes the Cake (which win for best running jokes). Or from his very entertaining blog. Now Fat Vampire is about to come out, which wins for Best (Comic) Relief from the Vampire Craze.

To find out more about his newest book, I put on my trenchcoat and met him in a darkened parking garage.

ADAM REX: You're Editorial Anonymous?

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: Yeah. Why?

ADAM REX: I dunno, I expected someone older, I guess. Isn't this a school night?

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: I'm often mistaken for younger than I am. If you guess my age, you'll be wrong.

ADAM REX: 42.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: Shit.

(awkward silence)

...So thanks for agreeing to this interview. I'm guessing that you saw and/or read a bit of the Twilight oeuvre, and reflected (of Edward Cullen), "What a douchebag!" And perhaps at about the same time you attended a ComicCon and witnessed one or more of the attendees being called douchebags... And you were inspired to write about the true nature of douchebaginess. Am I close?

ADAM REX: No, not even. I haven't seen either of the movies, and I haven't finished any of the books. When a bookstore-worker friend heard I was writing a YA vampire story back in 2007 she insisted I take home a copy of Twilight, and I got about 100 pages in before I decided it wasn't for me and bailed out.

No, I'm just the sorry SOB who decided to start a vampire manuscript a few years ago with no idea what vampires were about to mean to the literary world. I mean, I was aware of Twilight and at least a half-dozen other vampire books/series at the time, but there you are–there are ALWAYS vampire stories, why not another? Now I'm watching the clock and hoping vampires don't entirely wear out their welcome before July, or that they wear out their welcome just enough for people to be ready for my kind of book.

But since you mention it, I did sort of write a treatise on douchebaggery.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: I enjoyed the treatise. And I think the time is in fact ripe for a vampire spoof. Fat Vampire made me wonder how many people, if stuck with vampiredom, would really find it made them all brooding and romantically tortured? And how many would just find it to be an enormous pain in the ass?

ADAM REX: That's the gist of what got me started. A big part of the fantasy of vampirism, of course, is the wish-fulfillment of being frozen at the peak of your existence. At the moment we seem to have agreed as a culture that everyone should want to be a teenager again. But, while being a teen had its charms, I actually think I'm a lot happier now. I'm certainly a better person now than I was in high school.

I have to say the impetus for this book actually came when I misread a banner ad. I was in the middle of my morning web-crawl when I saw an ad for some manga or webcomic or something called My Dork Embrace. And I thought, That's great. I bet it's a story about the kind of awkward guy who's never supposed to become a vampire. And a minute later my brain wouldn't let go of it because the art and tenor of the ad didn't really jive with the assumption I'd made, so I scrolled back to have another look at it. And I discovered it's really just My Dark Embrace. I'd misread it. But then I got excited because that meant I could write My Dork Embrace myself, and it would be a good framework to work out some thoughts I'd been having about high school.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: My god, I remember that banner ad-- I misread it the same way! And I was so disappointed when it wasn't My Dork Embrace. The lowercase 'a' in that typeface wasn't very clearly formed.

ADAM REX: Oh, that's funny. It's nice to have corroboration, because I've since searched for that title and I can't seem to determine just what it was the ad was advertising.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: So what about writing this book was a pain in the ass? And what was fun?

ADAM REX: I always enjoy writing dialogue, and I'd do it all day and all night if I'm not careful. Sometimes I have to accept that NOTHING'S HAPPENING and the story will never go anywhere if I can't get my characters to stop exchanging breezy banter.

I also think one of the larger challenges of this book was writing my main female character, Sejal. She becomes something of an Indian Exchange Student Goth Kid–a combination I thought was funny, what with the Goth predilection for pale skin and pseudo-medieval-romantic European sensibilities, but which probably only underscores how little I really know about the subculture. There are probably Goths of all stripes.

Anyway, writing a teenager from India was sort of terrifying–I wanted her to seem genuinely foreign but also instantly relatable to my readers, and I didn't want to appear that I was trying too hard either way, if that makes sense.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: I thought she was very well developed—a stand-out character. And the comparison between Sejal and your main character, Doug, helps to underscore your point about it being our mistakes that force us to grow—she’s made hers, and is trying to overcome the aftermath; she's more grown up. Doug is still in the middle of making his (and is going at it with gusto, too, which is a happy thing for the book).
How do you approach character-building?

ADAM REX: I don't have much of a system. I'm afraid I just sort of plow into the story and then revise. Sejal's backstory changed a number of times, and each time it changed I went and rewrote some of her parts to better reflect the person I'd felt she'd become. I often use someone I know or once knew as a kind of personality anchor for a character, but I give myself leeway to go off the map here and there.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: So you do it by feel? That's about what I guessed, though it's not a lot of help to my readers, lol.

ADAM REX: No, it isn't, and yet I do think there's something encouraging in knowing that published authors are just feeling around in the dark as well. When I was a teenager and took my first real stabs at creative writing, I frequently felt like a big faker because I would just write without being entirely sure what I was writing or where it was going. My public school education had not taught me to have much faith in this approach, but the thought of mapping everything out ahead of time was too daunting. Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird saved my life because she explains that she doesn't compose outlines or flow charts or any such thing, either. She dives in and figures it out as she goes along. And she assures her readers that this is the method preferred by every author she's ever known. This was a big deal to me–knowing that, despite appearances, my own amateurish blindfolded plate-spinning might actually be a legitimate means to an end.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: Do you have any method to your revision?

ADAM REX: One rule I try to stick to is that if I find myself, just twice, wondering if some passage (or dialogue, or plot contrivance, or bit of drawing) is good enough and then mollifying myself that it is, I'm wrong. I'm wrong and I have to fix it.

Frankly, revision is often what I'm doing when I want to feel like I'm working but I'm feeling shy about charting new territory. There's nothing like rereading twenty pages and changing three adjectives to give you that sickly florescent glow of accomplishment, in lieu of any actual ray of light from the heavens.

What a nice metaphor. I bet it's going to be hard for people to believe that this is the transcript of a face-to-face meeting between the two of us in a darkened parking garage and not actually some protracted email exchange.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: Shh, let’s preserve the illusion. What was the editing process like for this book (if you don't mind talking about it)? Was it different at all from the process for Smekday?

ADAM REX: I had the same great editor (Donna Bray) on each, but there were differences. In Smekday Donna pointed out, quite rightly, that an entire middle section sucked and, later, that the entire second half could be tightened up quite a bit. In fact, given the clarity of hindsight, I wish I'd really done as she asked and tightened it up a bit more. According to Donna Fat Vampire was, comparatively, a cleaner manuscript. She asked me to clarify and strengthen the motivations of a couple characters but there were no big plot rewrites. I think in general she always has to nudge me in the direction of being more forthcoming, as I tend to err on the side of being a little obtuse and vague. I've already read a review of Fat Vampire online that confesses not to understand what actually happened at the end of the book. Whoops.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: I followed the ending, but readers will have to pick up the book to decide what they think.
Finally, do you have any advice for budding writers? Or budding vampires? Or budding douchebags?

ADAM REX: There's a joke in there somewhere: What's the difference between a writer and a vampire? One of them leads a pallid, lonely existence, sucking dry both loved ones and strangers alike in his ghoulish quest for immortality, and the other one is a vampire. Ha ha.

I don't know if I have anything new to say to writers. As someone who not long ago was an illustrator who wanted to write and is now the author of his first major work without any illustrations whatsoever I am still in equal parts exhilarated, bewildered, and frightened by writing. I've been doing this just long enough to suspect that those feelings are not supposed to go away. But to answer your question: read as much as you can, and read critically. Live frugally. Marry someone with insurance. Find your own voice, or failing that mimic your favorite authors so blatantly and with such conviction that the costume of their style gets humid and itchy and you can't wait to be rid of it. All that, and write more.

To the aspiring douchebag I can only say, you're too late–the market has reached saturation. Buy low and sell high, man.

Calamity Jack: a Conversation with Shannon Hale

You may know Shannon Hale from her awesome Newbery-Honor-winning novel Princess Academy. Or maybe from her many other novels, which manage to be both thoughtful and a hell of a lot of fun. Or maybe you know her from that time you thought you were just going to hear another author talk, and ended up laughing so hard you had cross your legs to keep from peeing your pants.

Or perhaps you know her from the fantastically entertaining graphic novel Rapunzel's Revenge, which she wrote with her husband, Dean, with the fab illustrations of Nathan Hale (no relation). If so, you're in luck, because--tada!-- there's a sequel out this spring: Calamity Jack, and there's just as much fairy-tales-meet-the-wild-west hijinks as lit up the first book.

In honor of its release, Shannon and I traded secret passwords and "met" in adjoining airport bathroom stalls.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: I enjoyed Rapunzel's Revenge a great deal, so I was thrilled to see a sequel. I particularly admire the pacing, which is often a troublesome thing for writers trying the graphic novel format for the first time. Can you speak to what it was like to transition from novels to graphic novels?

SHANNON HALE: Thank you! I think the key for us was having the right story. We didn't want to take any book idea and try to cram it into that format. We wanted just the right story that would really shine in this medium. The fairy tale was the skeleton, but the Hollywood western really directed the plot and let us have fun with the story.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: I think many writers coming from a novel-writing background are accustomed to the support that narration offers. But in graphic novels, the dialogue has to do the lion's share of character building AND plot acceleration. I suppose that could be either difficult or exciting (or perhaps both). What elements do you like best about the two storytelling media?

SHANNON HALE: I do depend a lot on my narrator. I love the third person narrator. It's such a useful tool, and allows for so much language, which is thrilling for me. But the truth is, I get bored easily. I have to switch stuff around to keep myself from getting disaffected with writing. I used a different narrator for my adult books than my YA books, I had a first person diary in Book of a Thousand Days. It is very limiting to lose that narrator entirely in a graphic novel, but it's a good, clean challenge too. Whittling down a story to dialog and captions, then turning over the action of the story to an illustrator is scary and exciting! Luckily we had a brilliant illustrator. Also, we re-wrote a lot, which is my secret weapon in any genre.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: Did you and Dean write the manuscript before beginning work with Nathan (the illustrator)? If so, how close to what you'd imagined were the illustrations/scenes? How much did the manuscript change as it came together with the art?

SHANNON HALE: I love the way it worked out. We had the plot outlined and first 1/4 written when we met Nate. We pitched it to our editor and Nate was on board before we finished the script, so we were able to work with him on character designs, as well as write to his strengths. (He loves beasties and creatures!) I think it became a stronger partnership that way than if we'd written in a bubble then turned it over to an unknown illustrator.

Graphic novels are so different than picture books, I think if the author/illustrators don't know each other, it makes it harder to have solid collaboration. We do write all the panel descriptions for Nate, since so much of the action is visual, so the script we send him is twice as long as what ends up actually printed in the book. After we see his art we go through and make lots of changes--striking unnecessary dialog, changing dialog to better fit the mood of the scene, etc.

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: What do you think it is about you that attracts you to total doofuses like the main character? Are you proud of the example you're setting for the young people?

SHANNON HALE: I know you don't mean Rapunzel, because she is Kick-Butt Awesome. And no way you mean Jack is a doofus, since he's all kinds of good times, built in the grand tradition of trickster/rogue/Coyote. But in answer to your question, yes, I am very proud. As you no doubt know, we children's authors took a sacred pact years ago to secretly subvert the young minds we so carelessly influence and lead them straight to a Bad Place. My part of this nefarious scheme is to trick my impressionable readers into growing their hair long and using it as a weapon. When the war comes, my army will be well-trained, and ALWAYS ARMED. (or haired)

EDITORIAL ANONYMOUS: LOL! I'll start growing out my bangs. Do you have any advice for people who want to try writing a graphic novel, or who want to fight crime with hair?

SHANNON HALE: I think there was this idea for awhile that graphic novels were HOT, HOT, HOT and easy to sell. That has not always proven true.

I've never had such gleeful responses to any of my books as I have to Rapunzel's Revenge and Calamity Jack. Parents, who were initially hesitant (there's that idea that comic books are Evil and kids should be weaned off illustrations by age 8), were so excited when their 10, 12, 14 year old non-reader read these books and decided he/she liked to read after all. That kind of feedback is worth a career!

Graphic novels have found a place in the libraries, but many book stores still struggle with where to shelve them (a kids' GN section? on the shelves with regular books? the general GN section?), let alone to sell them. I've been pleased with the success of our books, but they're very expensive to produce, both for the illustrator Nathan Hale (17 hour days, 7 day/week for 9-12 months per book) and the publisher. Less than hoped-for sales have discouraged many publishers, and I've heard of some publishers who are no longer looking at GNs. (I'd be curious to hear your experience with this, E Anon.)

But what that all sums up to is, the graphic novel market is no easier to break into than any other, and perhaps even harder. I think writer-illustrators have the upper hand here. I don't know of any debut author who pitched the script alone and got published. The idea, the hook, the script itself has got to be pretty extraordinary to catch an editor's eye. Still, if you can make it, wow. It's awesome. Based on reader response, I'd be thrilled to do more books like Jack and Rapunzel for the rest of my life.

As for the hair question, I find my own locks woefully flimsy and harmless. But as a child, I was Pippi Longstocking for Halloween and my mom threaded my braids with a piece of hanger to make them curl up. So I suggest pimping out your hair with lethal lengths of wire. Unless someone gets hurt in the process; then I never suggested such a thing.