In Play Me Backwards, Leon and Dustin Eddlebeck reminisce about the time before they became complete slackers, when they were engaged in such pranks as trying to talk the school into starting a crotch kicking team. Dustin leads a few other Gifted Pool veterans in a spirited rendition of the fight song. This is that fight song, "Til They Can Taste 'Em," as performed by The Enjoyment Buzzers.
Showing posts with label satanic YA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label satanic YA. Show all posts
"Satan's Parents' Basement"
Here's the music video to the theme song for PLAY ME BACKWARDS, as performed by The Enjoyment Buzzers.
Coming in August!
Coming in August!
The Great White Grape Slushee (Play Me Backwards teaser)
So, we got one of those "Soda Stream" machines at Smart Aleck's Guide HQ. Didn't much like the Splenda-based syrups you could buy, so we started making our own. We made hundreds of them, and ended up making a whole new Smart Aleck's Guide with 100+ recipes, 50+ soda fountain formulas, and a whole bunch of pictures of people wearing stupid hats. They'll be putting up new excerpts every day this week over at smartalecksguide.com Also included are recipes to make White Grape and Purple Vanilla slushees, which appear in the upcoming Play Me Backwards!
Here's an excerpt to plug both at once, with simple recipes in the sidebar:
Here's an excerpt to plug both at once, with simple recipes in the sidebar:
 The Smart Aleck’s Guide to Bootleg Soda: 100+ Homemade Soda Syrup Recipes, plus 50+ classic fountain drink formulas. Just $2.99 on Kindle "White Grape" and "Purple Vanilla" are actually two of the easiest soda/slushee syrups to make; neither uses fresh fruit, like most of the recipes. White Grape: Mix 1 part white grape juice with 2 parts sugar, boil to dissolve, and cool. Purple Vanilla: Avoid real grapes for this; take one packet of "purple stuff" drink mix, 2 cups sugar, and 1 cup water, plus 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract (or to taste). Booil to Add to carbonated water for soda, or directly over shaved ice for Slushees. | From PLAY ME BACKWARDS: in which Leon and Paige have been commanded by Stan (who claims to be Satan) to search Des Moines for the possibly mythical "white grape" flavored slushee.... Paige and I were back out hunting for Slushees the next day. Now that we'd established exactly how we'd celebrate getting the White Grape one, she was much more into the whole quest than she had been before. In the days since the 5-yen piece appeared on the wall, we'd searched for the Great White Grape Slushee everywhere: among the subdivisions of Ankeny, the split-level houses of Clive, the brick bungalows of Beaverdale, the stately mansions of Sherman Hill, and the neatly-ordered streets of downtown Des Moines.
By this time we'd found that we could usually predict what they'd have in each gas station. Casey's General Store usually had the same three flavors at every location, Kum and Go usually had the same four, and Quick Trip had the same six.
But now and then there'd be a wild card, and on that day we found two new flavors: "strawberry citrus freeze" and something called "purple vanilla,” which was tasty as hell. "Purple" is a reliably good flavor to start with, and adding vanilla made it practically a gourmet dish, as gas station grub goes. Rather than sharing one, like we usually did, we each got our own. Paige hadn't had a whole one in a long time; she usually just had a sip of mine and got a bottle of juice, if anything. But one makes exceptions for purple vanilla.
When we got to the car, I called Stan.
"We found purple vanilla," I said. "Is that it?"
"Why would purple vanilla be the same thing as white grape?" he asked.
"Well, purple usually means grape, and vanilla-flavored stuff is usually white, right?"
"You've got a fine understanding of junk food semiotics, Harris," Stan said. "But you still haven't found the Great White Grape."
Play Me Backwards by Adam Selzer is coming in August from Simon and Schuster |
My Best "Call Story."
People love to talk about when they got "the call." The phone call saying that someone wanted to publish their book. I honestly don't remember too much about my first one. I know I said "So, it's definitely going to come out now?" I think I was in my kitchen, but it's a blur.
The better story is about the time I got the call for Play Me Backwards, the new one. I was quite literally dumpster diving when I got the call about that one.
My career was at sort of a low ebb, you might say. In late 2011 I had two novels out on the same day from different publishers (and under different names). But I never saw either one of them at a store where I didn't do events. The one that came out under my own name didn't even get reviewed in the trades; when your new hardcover from a major publisher doesn't even warrant a mention in the trades that loved your last one, it's hard not to feel like you're pretty much washed up. Even one of the contracts for those two had come with a lecture about what a risk I was, and how I probably wasn't going to be worth it. Now that they weren't troubling the sales sheets, it was hard to see a way towards recovery.
After a dozen or so books, I'd never had one that sold even moderately well, and one can't live on good reviews forever. My editor at the old publisher had left, and the two new projects I came up with failed to land me a new one; one editor responded to my middle grade project by saying "Did he ever think of writing YA?" I felt like that was a good punch line for the end of my career (since I'd published several YA books) at least until WorldCon 2012, where I somehow ended up booked to do an autographing session sitting next to George RR Martin. That was the better punch line. I didn't sign a single thing, and none of my books were for sale at any of the dealers' booths.
But then the book I did under SJ Adams won me a Stonewall Honor, so I felt as though I was going out on a high note if this was the end. And Random House told me I could spin off the "Smart Aleck's Guide" series for whatever ebooks I felt like, so I'd always have something to do. I could write Shakespeare guides for years and not worry too much that the global market for The Smart Aleck's Guide to Timon of Athens was pretty tiny.
And now I had a new agent who was sending out the project I called Satan's Parents' Basement, the "Satanic YA" novel that I'd really written just to stay sharp. I'd been tinkering with it for a while; I'd work on it for a few weeks, then decide it was time to get back to "work" and switch over to something more commercial. This was the era when a book being a "boy book" made it seem about as marketable as a technical manual written in Welsh, after all. It felt like the only options for a book with a male narrator were either to get it made into a movie, be John Green, or get James Patterson's name on it somehow. For the record, I'm not sure we're entirely past that yet, but the market has changed enough that contemporary books by lower mid-listers at least have a shot again. Still, I always assumed that the Satanic one would be one that I just had to toss up on Amazon or something.
By the way, I got "the call" from this agent saying she wanted to represent me while stuck in traffic on the way back from a haunted cemetery where I'd had some photos taken for my new Ghosts of Chicago book, none of which showed a ghost, but some of which showed more butt crack than I'd intended.
So, anyway, one cold day around January, 2013, I was dumpster diving. Not that I was that broke (I was paying the bills as a tour guide), I had just made a mistake. But I was digging around in a whole series of dumpsters. In the snow.
I should probably explain how garbage works in Chicago. We don't have "garbage night" or anything. In the middle of every block is an alley full of dumpsters that we put our trash in, and periodically a truck comes and takes it. Black dumpsters for most trash, blue for recyclables. Often, one can find some nice furniture out there, too. It's strange - you decide you need a table top, or a certain kind of shelf, and presto! You find one in the Enchanted Alley.
Theoretically you have a dumpster assigned to your apartment, but in practice everyone just uses whichever dumpster seems to have the most room, and no one really cares (except this one woman who used to live next door, and who also thought that the Navy Pier fireworks were gunshots, and who often told me the End of Days was at hand). It's seldom that all the dumpsters are too full to fit another regular garbage bag or two, but the recycling bins fill up fast. On this particular day, I had to spread my recyclables between four or five different dumpsters, since none had nearly enough room for the whole load. Then, when I got back to my apartment, I realized I no longer had my keys. They were either in the snow, or in one of the dumpsters.
It was while I was rooting through them that the phone in my pocket buzzed, and it was Adrienne, my new agent, saying that someone at Simon and Schuster wanted to talk to me about the Satanic book.
"Really?" I asked. "The Satanic one?"
"Well, don't be so surprised, Adam!" she said.
"Huh," I said. "Well, whattaya know!"
Then I found my keys.
This wasn't THE call. There wasn't a firm deal for a few weeks after this. I got THAT call at Disney World, which was a nice change of pace. I knew we were going to find out one way or the other that day, and bought a little devil-face looking thing at Epcot and took pictures of things being sacrificed to it throughout the day. There's a great shot of me holding it up, along with a knife, and standing next to Chip and Dale.
Play Me Backwards will be out in August from S&S.
The better story is about the time I got the call for Play Me Backwards, the new one. I was quite literally dumpster diving when I got the call about that one.
My career was at sort of a low ebb, you might say. In late 2011 I had two novels out on the same day from different publishers (and under different names). But I never saw either one of them at a store where I didn't do events. The one that came out under my own name didn't even get reviewed in the trades; when your new hardcover from a major publisher doesn't even warrant a mention in the trades that loved your last one, it's hard not to feel like you're pretty much washed up. Even one of the contracts for those two had come with a lecture about what a risk I was, and how I probably wasn't going to be worth it. Now that they weren't troubling the sales sheets, it was hard to see a way towards recovery.
After a dozen or so books, I'd never had one that sold even moderately well, and one can't live on good reviews forever. My editor at the old publisher had left, and the two new projects I came up with failed to land me a new one; one editor responded to my middle grade project by saying "Did he ever think of writing YA?" I felt like that was a good punch line for the end of my career (since I'd published several YA books) at least until WorldCon 2012, where I somehow ended up booked to do an autographing session sitting next to George RR Martin. That was the better punch line. I didn't sign a single thing, and none of my books were for sale at any of the dealers' booths.
But then the book I did under SJ Adams won me a Stonewall Honor, so I felt as though I was going out on a high note if this was the end. And Random House told me I could spin off the "Smart Aleck's Guide" series for whatever ebooks I felt like, so I'd always have something to do. I could write Shakespeare guides for years and not worry too much that the global market for The Smart Aleck's Guide to Timon of Athens was pretty tiny.
And now I had a new agent who was sending out the project I called Satan's Parents' Basement, the "Satanic YA" novel that I'd really written just to stay sharp. I'd been tinkering with it for a while; I'd work on it for a few weeks, then decide it was time to get back to "work" and switch over to something more commercial. This was the era when a book being a "boy book" made it seem about as marketable as a technical manual written in Welsh, after all. It felt like the only options for a book with a male narrator were either to get it made into a movie, be John Green, or get James Patterson's name on it somehow. For the record, I'm not sure we're entirely past that yet, but the market has changed enough that contemporary books by lower mid-listers at least have a shot again. Still, I always assumed that the Satanic one would be one that I just had to toss up on Amazon or something.
By the way, I got "the call" from this agent saying she wanted to represent me while stuck in traffic on the way back from a haunted cemetery where I'd had some photos taken for my new Ghosts of Chicago book, none of which showed a ghost, but some of which showed more butt crack than I'd intended.
So, anyway, one cold day around January, 2013, I was dumpster diving. Not that I was that broke (I was paying the bills as a tour guide), I had just made a mistake. But I was digging around in a whole series of dumpsters. In the snow.
I should probably explain how garbage works in Chicago. We don't have "garbage night" or anything. In the middle of every block is an alley full of dumpsters that we put our trash in, and periodically a truck comes and takes it. Black dumpsters for most trash, blue for recyclables. Often, one can find some nice furniture out there, too. It's strange - you decide you need a table top, or a certain kind of shelf, and presto! You find one in the Enchanted Alley.
Theoretically you have a dumpster assigned to your apartment, but in practice everyone just uses whichever dumpster seems to have the most room, and no one really cares (except this one woman who used to live next door, and who also thought that the Navy Pier fireworks were gunshots, and who often told me the End of Days was at hand). It's seldom that all the dumpsters are too full to fit another regular garbage bag or two, but the recycling bins fill up fast. On this particular day, I had to spread my recyclables between four or five different dumpsters, since none had nearly enough room for the whole load. Then, when I got back to my apartment, I realized I no longer had my keys. They were either in the snow, or in one of the dumpsters.
"Really?" I asked. "The Satanic one?"
"Well, don't be so surprised, Adam!" she said.
"Huh," I said. "Well, whattaya know!"
Then I found my keys.
This wasn't THE call. There wasn't a firm deal for a few weeks after this. I got THAT call at Disney World, which was a nice change of pace. I knew we were going to find out one way or the other that day, and bought a little devil-face looking thing at Epcot and took pictures of things being sacrificed to it throughout the day. There's a great shot of me holding it up, along with a knife, and standing next to Chip and Dale.
Play Me Backwards will be out in August from S&S.
Play Me Backwards advance copies
Advance copies of Play Me Backwards arrived at my PO Box the other day. They look GREAT.
On second thought, let's not go to Tumblr. It is a silly place.
Play Me Backwards COVER REVEAL!
Sometimes, you just have to trust that the dark lord knows what he's doing....
But when Anna B.—yeah, that Anna B.—says she might be moving back from England, Leon is desperate to get his act together. Desperate enough to ask his best friend, Stan (who may or may not be Satan), for help.
Stan’s orders? Listen to the whole audiobook of Moby-Dick. Find the elusive white grape Slushee. Join the yearbook committee. And go out with a popular girl.
As each strange task takes him farther from slackerville, Leon has to wonder if maybe Stan really does have unholy powers after all….
Excerpts, downloadable soundtrack, and maybe an a NSFW trailer coming soon...
Rights inquiries, etc, contact Adrienne Rosado, Nancy Yost Literary
 |
| back cover |
Some Clues about Play Me Backwards
Here are a couple of "clues" about my upcoming novel, Play Me Backwards, which was known for some time as the "Satanic YA." First, we have this photo of a page from the "Style Sheet" that came with copyedits, in which they establish what should be capitalized, hyphenated, etc. I imagine that the list of terms they had to decide on might provide some interesting glimpses into the book (with a couple of clear clues showing which characters/places from previous books might be making cameos):
Enjoy! The book is coming in August from Simon & Schuster. A photoshoot for the cover was held in New York a few weeks ago - I got to help pick the cast based on shots from an earlier casting call, which was pretty cool (on my last book from a major publisher, the first I heard about the cover was when I saw it on Amazon). I also got to weigh in on photos from a "mood board" of photos that captured the sort of feel they were going for - many of them reminded me of the kind of pictures you see in gallery exhibitions of photos from the punk rock scene.
Then, we've got a demo for the first song of a planned EP of songs "from and inspired by" the book. This is one of the songs in the "from" column, as it appears in the book. It's called "Til They Can Taste 'Em (School Crotch Kicking Team Fight Song)."
Enjoy! The book is coming in August from Simon & Schuster. A photoshoot for the cover was held in New York a few weeks ago - I got to help pick the cast based on shots from an earlier casting call, which was pretty cool (on my last book from a major publisher, the first I heard about the cover was when I saw it on Amazon). I also got to weigh in on photos from a "mood board" of photos that captured the sort of feel they were going for - many of them reminded me of the kind of pictures you see in gallery exhibitions of photos from the punk rock scene.
New YA book coming: "Play Me Backwards."
The revisions for my "Satanic YA" novel are just about done! I can now announce that the title is going to be Play My Backwards. I'm very excited about this one! It's slated to come out in Summer, 2014 from Simon and Schuster.
If you're going to be at ALA this weekend, I'll be lurking around for much of it. I'll be doing two half-hour signings at the Flux/Llewellyn booth at 10am and 1pm on Sunday. The schedule has me signing Sparks at 10 and Ghosts of Chicago at 1.
If you're going to be at ALA this weekend, I'll be lurking around for much of it. I'll be doing two half-hour signings at the Flux/Llewellyn booth at 10am and 1pm on Sunday. The schedule has me signing Sparks at 10 and Ghosts of Chicago at 1.
The infamous "Satanic YA"
| As many of you know, some while ago I fell into a chat about "Christian YA" novels and joked that I should write a Satanic one. Then I started to do it for real - a book in which Leon, the narrator from my first two books, has grown into an 18 year old slacker with no direction in life. He spends most of his time working at a b-list ice cream place, eating mix-ins and joking around with a co-worker who claims to be Satan (and functions as Jeeves to his Wooster). But when Leon finds out that his old girlfriend might be moving back from England, he panics; it never occurred to him that she might see him like this. The dark lord tells him that everything will work out fine, but that "there will come a great plague and halls will flow with the blood of the unbelievers." Soon, Leon finds himself attending a debutante ball, slipping Satanic messages into the yearbook, and going on a quest to find the mythical "white grape" slushee. It's a funny book with a lot of heart and a realistic portrayal of an imperfect relationship. It opens like this: "There are times when Satan really get on my nerves. Like, he's been saying for years that he wants to buy my soul, but whenever he gets enough cash saved, he decides to get his windows tinted or something instead. He can be a real dick like that." I wrote it assuming that it'd only ever come out if I put it up on Amazon or something, but we'll see! |
update November 2012: My new agent has been sending the book around to publishers. It initially went to 13 of them, and was originally scheduled to go out on Oct 29. Did the man upstairs send a hurricane to stop it?
update March 2013: I never thought I'd get away with this one, but I can now announce that Simon and Schuster will be publishing it in Summer, 2014. Watch www.satanicya.com for more info, extras, and more!
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Adam's New Book: Sept 2013
