SEE AMERICA, BY ACCIDENT

As many of you may know (and many more may not), my beloved agent, Daphne Unfeasible, lives in Denver. This is a fairly recent development. She was your standard, high-powered fancy New York agent—and then she met the dashing Rexroth Implausible and decided to merge their empires. She now runs Unfeasible Enterprises from her mountain stronghold in Denver.

As it ALSO happens, Daphne, ever the professional agent, was born 36 hours before me (to get the lay of the land and set up some deals). In fact, many of us have birthdays at the same time—including Rexroth, and our friend J. Krimble. It has often been our tradition to spend our birthdays together. This year, Daphne suggested that we do so in Denver.

So yesterday morning, J. Krimble, his female companion Pixie Potpie, and I all headed off to the airport to catch what was supposed to be an easy set of flights to Denver—one from New York to Chicago, and then another from Chicago to Denver a few minutes later. We had attempted to get a non-stop flight, but it turns out MANY PEOPLE wanted to come to Denver when we did, and we thought, what’s a quick transfer between planes?

And so, our story begins.

WELCOME TO CHICAGO

“I’ve never been to Chicago,” I said, as we came in over Lake Michigan. “They say your first trip to Chicago is always the best. Doesn’t Lake Michigan look like the BELLY OF AN ENORMOUS DRAGON from the plane?”

“I’ve been to Chicago once before,” Pixie said.

“Oh,” I replied. “Well, they say that your second trip to Chicago is always the worst.”

J. Krimble was looking at his watch in concern.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “Technically, we have forty minutes to make the connection, but we’re almost fifteen minutes late.”

“What are you worried about?” I asked. “It’s not like they would sell us a ticket if it was impossible to make the connection. This was the suggested route. The airline PLANNED this trip!”

“Right!” Pixie said. “And we have, what, twenty minutes to get over there? And they know we’re supposed to be on the plane.”

When we landed, the automatic status alert text I had signed up for blipped on to my phone.

“Here we go,” I said, feeling very efficient. “Gate B29.”

“B29?” J. Krimble said. “We just passed that gate. It’s, like . . . WAY over there. It’s going to take us forever to get there. We’re going to have to run.”

I didn’t really believe this, and neither did Pixie. We truly believed that United Airlines had our backs. (I did mention that this was UNITED AIRLINES, right? I really want to get that fact across.)

But we agreed, mostly to appease the worried J. Krimble, that we would all run over to our new gate. And run we did! All the way across Chicago airport, through an amazing connecting hall with pastel glowing walls and a rainbow of rippling, disco-like lights overhead. I wanted to stay and do some dancing, but was dragged on. We ran and ran and ran. We ran along moving sidewalks, and up escalators, and were rewarded by getting to our gate a full ten minutes early. All three of us ran up to the desk and said, “HiweareherefortheflighttoDenver.”

And the woman behind the counter tipped her head to the side and regarded us in the same way dogs do when you make an interesting noise.

“Oh, that plane is gone,” she said, matter-of-factly.

Five little words, delievered without the slightest amount of care, applied with the light touch like the hand of the fairies as they paint on the morning dew. Oh, that plane? Is gone! Tra la la!

For a moment, we could not process this information. “But . . .” we said, holding out our tickets. “But . . . we have these tickets.”

Because we didn’t just . . . evaporate, the woman was forced to take a better look at us and accept our presence.

“It left ten minutes early,” she said, not without a touch of pride. Look at the good job we at UNITED AIRLINES have done today!

“It WHAT?”

“And it was oversold,” she added, as if implying that we would NEVER have been on that plane, even though we were fully ticketed passengers. As if we should have known better.

“But . . . “ we said. “But . . . we have these tickets.”

She glanced at the tickets out of politeness and gave us slips of paper that more or less said the following: IT APPEARS THAT YOU HAVE PURCHASED ONE OF OUR “TICKETS”! SOMETIMES, WHEN WE AT UNITED AIRLINES SELL YOU A TICKET, IT DOES NOT MEAN THAT WE WILL ACTUALLY PUT YOU ON AN AIRPLANE. IF YOU LIKE, YOU CAN TAKE THIS TO CUSTOMER SERVICE, WHERE ONE OF OUR REPRESENTATIVES WILL ASSIST YOU IN THE PROCESS OF SUCKING IT.

“There’s an 11:09 to Denver,” the woman added. “But you probably won’t make that either. We board in a few minutes, and it’s way oversold. It’s always oversold.” Tra la la!

So we ran all the way to customer service, where we got in a big, long line. While waiting in the big, long line, we had time to process that information. The customer service woman was in a good humor, and seemed to regard our problem as a pleasant dilemma, not unlike a brain teaser.

“Oh, you’ll never make THAT flight,” she said with a smile. “ALL the flights to Denver are sold out. Oversold.”

“But . . .” we said, holding out our tickets and pieces of paper. “But . . . we have these tickets and pieces of paper.”

She took the tickets and pieces of paper.

“Oh, see,” she said. “You didn’t have seat assignments for Denver.”

“They wouldn’t give us seat assignments for Denver,” J. Krimble said.

“Your seats were on standby,” the woman said, still smiling.

“We weren’t standby,” I said. “We bought these tickets months ago. These are full tickets. We were promised seats. On the airplane. To Denver. It’s not our fault that your computer wouldn’t assign us a seat, or that the plane took off ten minutes early, or that the other plane was ten minutes late.”

But I said it nicely, because there is no reason to be rude! But this was all true. We were not standby passengers. We were three people who were supposed to be on their way to Denver.

“I KNOW you aren’t standby,” she said. “But you HAD NO SEATS.”

I ask you, readers. What do you do with that?

“Now what I CAN do,” she said happily, “is put you all on a plane to Tulsa.”

“A plane to TULSA?” I repeated.

Tulsa, for those of your unfamiliar with American geography, is in Oklahoma. Which is not anywhere near Denver, Colorado. It’s not even in the area of Denver, Colorado. So I wasn’t entirely sure why she would think we would be happy about going there. But it seemed like there was a possible plane we could get on in Tulsa that would take us to Denver.

There was no apology offered in any of this—it was all offered as if this was a kind of bonus. “Six more hours of travel!” she was suggesting. “A trip an airport in Oklahoma!”

We asked her what the alternative was, and she made it more or less clear that either we were going to go to Tulsa, or we were going to live in the Chicago airport.

We said we would go to Tulsa. New tickets and pieces of paper were produced.

“Can we sit together?” J. Krimble asked.

“No,” the woman replied. “But this plane to Tulsa is so small, you’ll PRACTIALLY BE ON TOP OF EACH OTHER.”

Our Tulsa tickets required us to go over to F terminal, reachable by a tiny shuttle that looked like it had been produced in Stalinist Russia—grim and gray, with foam popping out of the seats. F terminal didn’t seem as loved as B or C terminal. Our best option to grab some food was a very angry sandwich shop where they threw together some sandwiches that exploded in the bags.

“I feel like they just don’t care,” I said, looking at the total collapse of my sandwich. It had exploded to pieces in the bag. “It’s just a bag of sandwich now.”

“Would you like one of your birthday presents now?” J. Krimble asked.

I said I would. A small wrapped object was placed on the table.

“I would give you yours,” I said, “but it is on its way to Denver.” This was true. I had checked my bag, but inside, there were birthday presents for everyone. I wondered if I would ever see it again. Then I unwrapped my present, only to find this!



Yes! The Unauthorized Biography of Robert Pattison, star of Twilight!

I stared at the book for a moment and flipped through the very unauthorized photographs.

“This is wonderful!” I said. “Now I am going to read this to you. Let’s begin . . .”

SCENE: CHICAGO AIRPORT, A CROWDED GATE

It was Pixie’s turn to read. J. Krimble was looking moderately suicidal. We were on page 15.

“Please stop,” he said.

“No, no,” I said. “This is my birthday present. We are going to read it. Please continue, Pixie.”

“This book is like, fifty pages long,” J. Krimble protested. “And forty of them are about the filming of Twilight. And thirty of them are about his HAIR.”

“Yes,” I said happily. “That is why I like it.”

“Listen to this,” Pixie said, reading, “Rob’s nicknames are: ‘Rob, Patty (what his friends call him), RPattz (what fans call him—though he thinks it sounds ‘like an antacid pill’), Spunk Ransom (long story!)”

“Spunk Ransom?” I said. “I want to hear a story that ends up with you getting the name ‘Spunk Ransom.’ I want to hear it right now.”

“Next fact,” she said, reading on. “‘If he weren’t an actor, Rob would be: a pianist (or Jack Nicholson).’”

“There’s already a Jack Nicholson,” I replied. “Maybe Jack Nicholson is just a job you can have. Maybe Rob Pattison will be the next Jack Nicholson!”

“It also says he doesn’t like children, and it says there’s a picture where it looks like he wants to eat a baby. There are a lot of exclamation points in this book . . .”

J. Krimble put his head on his knees.

The woman at the desk wasn’t lying about the size of the plane. We had to duck to get inside, and the jetway was two feet long. In the front, a very precious little girl was talking to her father.

“I’ve named the plane!” she said, in her adorable little girl voice. “I’m named it AMELIA!”

I turned to look at J. Krimble, who crammed in a few seats behind me. He mouthed the words: NO THAT IS A BAD NAME FOR A PLANE.

I opened my Rob Pattison book for a moment, then put my head back and . . . .

zzzZZZZZzZzZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

SCENE: TULSA AIRPORT

I was very groggy when we landed.

“Why are we in Oklahoma?” I asked.

“Because United Airlines hates us,” J. Krimble said.

We had LOTS OF TIME to kill in Tulsa airport, so we wanted to see all we could. The first thing we saw was a police guard at the women’s room right at our gate. We watched as a small team of policemen took a sniffer dog inside.

“Tulsa is exciting,” I said.

We decided almost immediately that we liked Tulsa, largely because they had a large display of these shirts:



But looking at t-shirts could only entertain us for so long, so I pulled out my new book.



CAN ANYONE RESIST?

When they finally called our flight, J. Krimble went up to make sure we were actually on it.

“Is this plane really full?” he asked. “Can we sit together?”

“Oh,” the woman at the counter laughed. “It’s SO full. It’s . . . 101% full.”

“That is one percent more full than it should be,” J. Krimble said, politely.

We all got middle seats. I took a picture mid-flight to commemorate the moment:



ME

And so . . . many hours and states later, we arrived in Denver. And there was Daphne, waiting for me.

We were immediately struck by the fact that they had a carosel for normal bags, and then another one with long, tall compartments, perfect for a person to ride in standing up! I ran for this, but Daphne caught my arm.

“No,” she said. “For skis.”

“But . . .”

“For skis.”

I walked past, sadly . . . every moment twitching to hop on board and ride around. We went off searching for my bag at the baggage service desk.

“Oh yes,” they said, “it’s right there, in the middle of the floor.”

United Airlines, faithful to the last, had left my unattended bag in the middle of the floor for what I assume was about six hours.

So, if you are considering a trip across the country, why not try UNITED AIRLINES?

Now that we have recovered, I resume work on the BLOG OF LOVE, which I hope to post TOMORROW. Thank you all who sent in your romance questions. I study them now, and hope to provide you with the very best of advice for your Valentine’s Day. If you have any questions to get in at the last minute, please ask, and I will certainly try to address them.

THE UNVEILING OF UNFEASIBLE

While I’m doing my blogging residence at insideadog until February 15th, I’ve decided to leave tiny recaps of what I’m writing over there on this blog . . . . just so it doesn’t fall to pieces in my absence. I will probably repeat the fact that I have temporarily moved every single day*, just for any new people who come along. Seasoned readers, just ignore that, okay?

Today, there is an entry of epic importance. Today, I have unveiled DAPHNE UNFEASIBLE, and in doing so, provided an amazing resource for any budding writers out there. Also, the competition to win another advance copy of Suite Scarlett continues!



*Meaning that every day on this blog, I will say, "I am temporarily blogging at insideadog until February 15th." Not that I am going to make a temporary move every single day. Because that would REALLY be annoying!

THE GREAT HARRODS CAPER

Well, friends, it is done. We completed the Great Harrods Caper. The event was recorded on video, and edited together with questionable results.
Daphne and I followed the list, after a fashion. I think we found the most expensive item in the store. We also found the oldest (the fish you will see on the wall are 50 million year old fossils).

What you'll notice most, I think, is the preponderance of live animals.

Also, I learn an important lesson about gambling.

I should also point out that I am still in England, sitting here comfortably, and not (as I would have been) packing my bag and getting out my passport. This is because I seem to have the ability to attract storms whenever I fly home anymore. As much as I enjoyed sleeping on the conveyor belt all night at JFK the last time I flew home, I decided to skip it.

So, I'll be reporting from here for the next few days. Until then . . . here you go. 13 Little Blue Envelopes fans, here is your virtual visit to England’s most famous store, home of Richard Murphy.

(I have just put up a slightly higher quality version, so it may take a moment for youtube to catch up. Please come back in a few minutes if it doesn't play.)

24 HOURS TO GO

I asked, and you answered.

Right now, Daphne is zipping up her suitcase in New York. Then, after spending a few hours attending to important agently business at Unfeasible Enterprises, she will board a fast jet and hurl herself across the Atlantic in my direction.

And then, the Great Harrods Caper begins.



Caper Central

I have probably mentioned that Daphne and I lived in London together after we graduated from college. We spent a long, hot summer here, during which we were Extremely Broke. I mean, living on change, eating cereal as a form of nightly entertainment, breaking in to our own apartment by climbing over trash cans, saving up to go to Pizza Hut kind of broke. When things got better and we were only Somewhat Broke, we spent a lot of time hanging out at each other’s places of work. I worked at a pub, so Daphne logged a remarkable number of hours there, and she worked at a major West End theater in the management office, so on occasion we got to crash big theater parties, where we would quickly eat all of the snacks and drink all of the drinks before the actual famous people showed up. Boy, did we impress them when they got there.

Things are different now, friends. We can buy snacks.

I am now armed with a video camera (Oscar’s, of course). I have a cup of tea next to me, nice and hot. And I am making the final list for the Great Harrods Caper, which starts in 24 hours. You wrote in with so many good suggestions that I am starting to think you all work at NASA, such is the quality of your thoughts.

One of the reasons I am doing this challenge is that Harrods plays a huge role in 13 Little Blue Envelopes, and this would both fascinate and horrify Keith. Harrods is BIG. It has 7 floors, 28 restaurants, and its own casino, bank, and airline. There are a handful of stores in the world that are bigger (including Macy’s in NYC), but none, I would argue, are as confusing and bizarre as Harrods, which has departments hidden inside of departments, and freely mixes up pianos with swimsuits and pet supplies.

So, tomorrow, I will meet Daphne at her London hotel, and then we will proceed to Harrods at around 2 in the afternoon. We will begin with a drink in one of the 28 restaurants, during which we will come up with our battle plan to tackle the following:

Ride every single escalator/elevator and going on every staircase

Find the cheapest and most expensive items you can

Find the weirdest thing with a Harrods label

Collect as much loose change as you can find and tally it up

Get a photo of you hiding inside a display tent

Find a friend for FREE MONKEY

Find the absolute ugliest dress in the store.

Find a stun gun (they don’t sell them in England, as far as I know, but I can try to find something close)

Find a Vespa

Find all 28 restaurants

Find the creepiest looking doll in the toy department

Find a trampoline

Find a Canopic jar

Daphne quickly latched on to the “go to the wedding dress department.” This is now as dangerous as taking Daphne to the shoe department. I’m kind of afraid that the Caper will come to a grinding halt the minute Daphne sees those poofy white dresses. She will go very still, her eyes will dilate, her lips will quiver. I will see a little flash and feel myself falling backwards as she propels forward, and that will be that. So I think we might have separate challenges here. She’ll try to find the dresses, and I will try to hide the entire department.

I don’t exactly know how this will all go down—all I know is that it will be recorded and put here for your examination and comment.

Along with your suggestions, some of you also let me know about some other important issues.

sarah said...
I have a doll that looks like she could kill me. That's why I worship her and stuff...you know, keep her satisfied. Maybe then she will wake up in the middle of the night and strangle my enemies. Or at least sit on their faces or something so they wake up screaming.

And here it is:



Believe it or not, this is the same doll that Daphne uses on me when I am late on my deadlines. I wake up to find this sitting on the foot of my bed. So here’s a top writing tip from mj: NEVER GIVE YOUR AGENT KEYS TO YOUR HOUSE.

kiersten said...
why does justine hate unicorns so much? i dont like them either but she absolutly HATES them. (or so it seems on her blog.)

No one knows. But you know what? Justine and Scott are off at the Texas Library Association conference right now, and she’s not updating her blog. This is a GREAT opportunity to sneak in there and FILL her comments section with unicorn-related remarks. Just an idea.

nuwon wearspants said...
I love reading your blog. If there was a Blog Award of The Year, you'd win. <3 - I write without pants.

Excellent!

kiersten said...
i also saw free monkey on john green's blog. free monkey stole the show.

Didn’t he? He’s like that everywhere he goes. And he will be coming tomorrow.

Please leave any last minute requests, wishes, complaints, and other remarks in the comments.

LIBBA BRAY HAS A GLASS EYE

It’s been a rough few weeks here in YA land. It seems like everyone has been on crazy deadlines, or getting sick, or otherwise falling to pieces. I think I should bring you all up to speed.

The other day, I had lunch with Justine Larbalestier and Libba Bray. Libba has been working 25 hours a day on the final book in the A Great and Rebel Terrible Angel trilogy and was looking a little green around the gills. The final days of revision are trying at best. Libba is one of those people who gives off an air of total composure—but it did seem like, with only a slight provocation, she might have flipped the table over and challenge the first comer to a knife fight. Or something like that.

We were talking about the fact that our compatriot, J. Green, was in the hospital with a horribly infected eye. (He’s out now.)

I was saying that I felt bad, because J. Green had been complaining about that eye for a while, and I kept saying, “Blah, blah, blah. Your eye is fine, Green.” Of course, it wasn’t.

And then Libba hit me with a surprise.

“I have a glass eye,” she said.

I was impressed, and I said so. I envy anyone who has a removable body part.

“You know what I was going to do?” she asked. “I was going to go to the hospital to see him, and I was going to say, ‘Hey! Bet you can’t do this!’ And I was going to smack the back of my head and . . .”

She mimicked popping out her eye into her palm and shoving it in Justine’s face.

“If you did that,” I said solemnly, “I would give you ONE MILLION DOLLARS.”



Libba was going to pay John a visit.

“You know,” Justine said. “When I first met Libba, I knew she was missing something, but I couldn’t remember what. I thought it was hearing in one of her ears. So I kept screaming at her.”

“I thought she was insane,” Libba said, nodding.

John is recovering, and by recovering, I mean that he is at home playing with his Wii. At least, that is what I assume he is doing. You don’t need two good eyes to play Wii, you only need the will. And he has the will.

Meanwhile, Scott Westerfeld (who sits next to me as I type this), has something like fifteen minutes to finish EXTRAS, the next book in the Uglies/Prettie/Specials series. He keeps staring off into space, as if he sees a hoverboard floating somewhere in the middle distance.

It is best not to provoke Scott, but it still seems like a good moment to interview him. Let’s do that now. This as in-process as you can possibly get.

ME: How’s that revising going?

SCOTT: What revision?

ME: The one you are doing right now, as we sit here.

SCOTT: (twitching a little) I’m not revising, I’m first drafting.

SCOTT starts typing again. I watch.

ME: Are there hoverboards in Extras?

SCOTT: There are hoverboards and there’s a whole new species of hover equipment.

ME: Are you having fun right now?

SCOTT: I’m having less fun that usual.

ME: Is this a bad time to be asking you questions?

SCOTT: (gritting teeth) No. It’s the perfect time.

ME: Oh, good!

I watch Scott’s fingers closely as he types. He looks at me.

ME: What are you typing right now?

SCOTT: (reading) “Flakes were falling from the sky, like a light snow.”

ME: That’s an official sneak preview of Extras?

SCOTT nods and scoots his computer over a little.

ME: Did you know that Libba Bray has a glass eye?

SCOTT: Yes.

ME: If you could have any body part made of glass, what would you get?

SCOTT: A tooth.

ME: I would get a foot.

There you go. That’s an mj exclusive.

I’m glad to see that some of you have been writing in with questions for me and for “Ask An Agent” with Daphne. I have to keep Daphne’s brain on track, because she is getting married and is using her considerable organizational skills making notebooks of dresses, cakes, and flowers, instead of figuring out how to get me a stun gun.

Did I not tell you this?

Yes, Daphne Unfeasible just got engaged. I knew it was coming. Her beau, Rexroth Implausible, told me—and I had to be quiet about it. Which I was. Quiet as the grave. It helped that this was when I had the flu and was asleep for about two days.

Rexroth and I get along very well. Like the other day, when Daphne was showing me their wedding registry, talking me through the coordinated china patterns and throw pillows or whatever.

“Know what you need?” I said. “A trampoline.”

Daphne paid no attention to this, but Rexroth perked up at once. I could tell from the look in his eye that he wanted to know more.

“boingboingboingboingboingboing,” I explained.

He nodded, and I could see that he knew exactly where I was coming from.

“boingboingboingboing,” he replied.

Daphne turned and narrowed her eyes.

“boingboingboing,” we both said.

And you know what? There’s a trampoline on the registry now. See, it’s good to have me around.



Let me help you with your registry. Get better stuff.


So, please keep sending me the requests and questions. I have examined them all. In fact, I pose a task for YOU.

THE UK CHALLENGE:

I will be leaving for the London office over the weekend. (Hopefully not in a snowstorm this time.) I am now accepting UK CHALLENGES. What should I do in the UK? I need to make up for the fact that I was flat on my back the last time I was there, and you guys seem to be full of good ideas. I have all of London at my disposal. And for a few days, I’ll even have Daphne! (Her participation in any hijinx cannot be guaranteed, unless I kidnap her, which I am not above doing.)

UK readers—I look forward to your weighing in!

I will examine all of the suggestions, both those in the comments and on e-mail, on Sunday night—and I will complete one of them.

Let’s see what you got.

(This will scare Daphne all week.)