finally done with latest revisions and ready to blog about old stuff like my barnes and noble reading :)
I STILL AM GETTING TO BED CLOSER TO 3 AM THAN MIDNIGHT, 
but I am relaxing a little, now.
Despite plumbing projects. 
More on that later.
My first catch-up blog is about my Barnes & Noble reading on June 7. 
The event started with a writing club mini-reunion. 
Taylor, Jack, Brandon, & Li-Mae and I had lunch and I read bits from my work in progress, CONTACT HIGH, and they helped me choose one to read that day.
The reading was super fun. I brought my new portable turntable and started with Cassie’s fav form Zeppelin I, “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.” Then I read from OR NOT as well as a tiny bit of CONTACT HIGH.
I had great questions, including one about who had inspired Cassie and have I actually ever had someone that amazing as a student. No one in particular and lots of people. Some of my former students in the room are easily as amazing, gifted, insightful as my beloved Cass.
As I signed books, I played my Nirvana, LIVE IN NEW YORK record, and knew I was doing the right thing when management asked me to turn it down.
Overall, I love, love, love the energy I get from these things and am so thankful to have people who will come out and support me. Always a little sad when it’s over, because I’d like to spend more time with people than I get to. 
But, you know me–I love being the center of attention, and I love you people who come to see me. Lot of love in this paragraph! Sorry for gushing, but that’s how I feel, and I’m grateful and want to express it.
Here’s a few pics taken by Liberty Grad, writer, and all around awesome-woman, Marty:
Also in attendance were:
Lee, Andy, Niles, Brandy, Kyle, Anna, Caltera, Chy and her two cool friends in the picture where V. is hiding, Kelsey, Kaley, Brittany Lana, Emily, Mary, Becky, Leah, Michaela, two old CC people and their wonderful daughter, Druzzie Dru and friend and sister, Dennis, and that lady just outside the cafe who was working on legal pads and laptop who kept scowling at me for having a reading in what she seemed to think of as her own private Idaho–love you, too, lady!
A video trailer for OR NOT
My dear family friend, high school senior and all around superteen, Meredith, made this video for me ages ago, but I only just figured out how to upload it. 
Mandabach’s OR NOT: a book trailer
Great New Reviews of OR NOT!
I’m very thankful today for two new glowing reviews of Or Not!
As if I deserve more than an amazing wife, two healthy and fun kids, a cool (though run-down–hey I’m a writer, teacher, and dad) 110 year old house, and so much more!
Follow these links and comment the first one. (I think for the second one you have to be a jacketflap member.)
Teen Book Reviewer just gives me a heckuva rave, which I love.
And Lisa Chellman really “gets” the book and Cassie more than any other reviewer who’s done a review of this much detail.
Oh, and here’s a picture of my mom and me at the book signing in Alabama! I’m so thankful to have a mom who is a lover of poetry and books and who inspired me so much.
Mandabach @ Kitlitosphere Chicago O’Hare–Kudos to Robin Brande
Here’s a link to my tardy blog on Kidlit ‘07:
Not really scared of Barry–Mandabach’s too-long post on Andrew Karre’s FLUX Blog 
Peace, Love, and Vinyl!
Brian
Get the book! … or not
I’ve heard that my book is in stores and I know it is available via internet shopping. Local librarians tell me that it’s already reserved.
Cool.
I’m off to Kidlitosphere in Chicago, hosted by Robin Brande whose Evolution, Me, & Other Freaks of Nature is an excellent read. I’ve been way too busy to blog about it, though I’ve wanted to–not just because it is well-written and right-on, but because it has some odd similarities to Or Not. And some dissimilarities as well. If I had my students read both, we’d be able to make some serious venn diagrams.
I’m also going to teach 5 creative writing classes at Barrington High School, a place I haven’t set foot in since graduation in 1980.
Damn.
And spend a couple of days in the city with my beloved, with whom I haven’t had a vacation alone since 1996.
Damn.
Wish me happy trails.
Peace
Alexgirl’s book!! BACK TALK
I have so much to say, after being off line and on vacation for a good long while.
But tales of the heavenly beach, all the books I read, and the stingray from hell will have to wait, because THE MOST IMPORTANT THING NOW IS
BACK TALK
by the hilarious and way too cool
ALEX RICHARDS!!
If it’s not on the shelf, ask your bookstore to order it, ask your librarians to get it, grab Mommy’s Visa and order it from Amazon, but get this book!
Goodbye small town hell . . . hello Big Apple!
Sixteen-year-old Gemma Winters couldn’t be more ecstatic—and terrified—about scoring a summer internship at one of the hippest daytime TV talk shows, Back Talk with Kate Morgan. To top it off, she’s staying in a palatial brownstone in Manhattan with celebutante Dana Cox (a virtual E! True Hollywood Story in the making) and world-weary millionheiress America Vanderbilt. Gemma’s corn-fed naiveté melts away as she gets a taste of designer clothes, underage clubbing . . . and a cute Johnny Depp look-a-like.
The glamour fades by nine a.m. when Gemma becomes slave labor for harried producers. Not even her borrowed Manolo Blahniks can shield her from an office romance turned ugly and backstabbing fellow interns. When someone is unfairly fired and a show is at risk, Gemma goes out of her way to prove this small-town girl is more than just a “photocopy bitch.”
Here’s a link to Amazon:
BACK TALK
And here’s an interview with Alex on Slayground, by that miraculous girl, Little Willow
King Soopers Book Tour
So, while some of the cool people are at BEA, I decided to go on tour!
Check it out, from the bakery, to non-dairy, to produce–its the all vegan tour on West Uintah Street, View of Pikes Peak, USA–the anti-NYC!!!!!
It’s a book!
Actually, it’s an advance reading copy, an uncorrected proof.
But it looks like a book, it feels like a book, it smells like a book, it reads like a book. So it must be a book! It’s hard to believe that an idea of mine, after a little bit of a struggle and a lot of help, is now a book. Kinda cool.
I don’t have time to read . . .
and I could blame my new macbook, but I know it’s my own damn fault.
I am writing blogs, I am going over my next book, and I am being a dad (blogging in between tearing out coloring pages for my son to paint, and I did take the boy outside to play hide and seek, and get up with him in the night, twice, to smooth the hair from his fevered brow, and in the morning before six to lie down with him so he could rest some more and his mom could get forty more winks), and I am sort of teaching, and I have to be giving the devil of obligation his half-assed due in several areas.
What I most want to be doing is immersing myself in this novel that I am revising. I get a second wind after the kids are in bed and it keeps me up past the time I can really concentrate or trust the work.
But by then it is too late to read. I need immersion in reading as well as writing but I can’t fit both into the time. I miss Cordelia (This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kennby Adan Chambers). As soon as I hit post, I am going back to her for an hour–forget my own stupid book.
COME SUMMER! COME SOON! I’m going to get the DARK TOWER (the last one–I have been reading them after my birtday and Christmas for the past few years) for my birthday (even if I have to buy it myself) and I am going to read a ton of other books: King Dork, I’m with the Band, novels by Carrie Jones, Alex Richards, more Simone Elkeles, short stories by Denis Johnson and Stuart Dybek . . . the list goes on and on.
Come summer, before I become the kind of teacher who actually stoops so low as to count the days! I know everyone who isn’t a teacher hates me because of my summers, but I hate you becuase you don’t have to try to inspire and discipline in the perfect measure so that kids learn stuff they don’t give a good goddamn about. I love teaching and I love my students, but I LOOOOVE SUMMER!!!!!!
Hey, I just realized that I have NOTHING to complain about.
I get summer vacation, and you-hoo doh-hon’t!!
Cover
Here’s the cover for OR NOT coming October 2007~~~~~
Brian Mandabach is a writer and teacher who lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado. OR NOT is his first novel.