The Title
I don't consider myself a title
genius, so I don't often get attached to my (usually lame) titles, especially for
category books. However, Nerd in Shining Armor was a little different. The title
for this book came to me before I had a story to go with it. The title literally inspired
the book. That's never happened to me before and may never happen again.
In fact, my previous agent didn't care for the title and wanted it to be simply
"Shining Armor." I was willing to go along with that, having no title confidence, but
we also had some honest disagreements about the manuscript, so I decided to switch to
an agent who loved both the title and the concept. Fortunately, so did Bantam, and apparently, so did Kelly Ripa!
And now, because of the book's success, I have an entire series with
St. Martin's with "nerd" in the title, and what my previous agent believed
should be excised has become my "brand." It's a wild and crazy business.
Famous Jockey Shorts
Several people have asked me where I got the idea for Elvis'
underwear being a part of the tale, and the truth is that the idea came to me in the pool!
When I float out in my pool on my inflatable raft, if I'm not reading, I'm
thinking, and the most amazing ideas come from floating on that raft, and that was
one of them. It's magic!
L'habit ne fait pas l'homme
Jack and Genevieve have gone French! That's right! Nerd in Shining Armor
has become the first book in my nerd series to be published in a foreign language.
I'm very excited to think
about my beloved nerds making the trek "across the pond", and introducing an entire new group of readers to
the joys of falling in love with a nerd.
What I Did On My Summer Vacation
by Lincoln Terrence-Murphy
This summer a freakin' miracle happened. It still seems like a dream, but it must have happened, because I have the T-shirt to prove it. Six T-shirts, to be exact. I went to Disneyland!
See, this might not seem like a miracle to everybody, but my mom HATES to fly. She's, like, petrified of it because her Granny Neville's plane crashed a long time ago in Tennessee, and parts of Granny Neville went everywhere. So Mom and all her relatives got scared of flying, and the only time Mom ever went on a plane was when we moved to Honolulu, and I was only four so I really don't remember it.
The other thing is that Matt, my step-dad, doesn't like flying so much, either. He'd rather go places by boat, but if you're talking about crossing the Pacific, that's not, like, practical, so I'd flat given up on ever seeing Disneyland until I could go by myself. Anyway, you can imagine I almost splatted to the floor in a dead faint when they announced we were all going there -- me, Mom, Matt, my big sister Gen and her husband Jack!
The trip was a celebration of a bunch of things. Matt's company is doing great, I'm graduating next May and I finally stopped dying my hair different colors, which is no big deal to me, but they seem to think so. Also, my sister's going to have a baby around Christmastime. Mom and Matt decided if we didn't all go now, we'd have to wait until the baby got old enough, and then there might be another baby on the way, and life would get too complicated.
We got Mom through the flight by giving her wine, which I'm probably not supposed to say, but it worked. Then we spent three whole days in Disneyland. Our hotel was right across the street, so I made everybody get up early every morning so we could be in line by seven.
I figured out the Fast Pass system like right away, but keeping everyone together and moving was a trick. Older people don't have stamina. Of course I couldn't expect my pregnant sister to ride everything, but what was up with Jack not going on Space Mountain? I get that he's scared of heights, but you can't see anything but stars and planets shooting at you so you can totally forget you're on a roller coaster.
I rode Pirates ten times. Captain Jack Sparrow rocks. Just guess who I'm going to be for Halloween? Fantasmic was pretty cool, and the fireworks were great, although by that time of night I felt like I was propping everybody up. I needed, like, a portable sofa I could haul around for the old folks.
But I'm not complaining! I got three whole days and nights at Disneyland, and it was so great that I didn't even use my earphones except on the plane over and on the plane home. Now I'm saving all my money so I can go back again after I graduate. I have a couple of friends who say they want to go, too, if they can get the money. It'll be like our graduation treat to ourselves. I'll never forget this trip, though. It was the best.
