THE PEACOCK DIARIES

The great thing about going away to write in a castle with nine other writers—if you are me—is that they can be counted on to blog about it while you sit in a corner and finish your book and eat things you find on the floor, whether or not they are food.

You might, if you are me, Twitter a little when the castle internet decides to work. (I am turning into a Twitter fanatic! It quiets the hamsters in my mind.)

But anyway, just yesterday I finished SCARLETT FEVER, the sequel to Suite Scarlett. And just in time, too, because I have lots to do to get ready for the paperback release of Suite Scarlett on May 1st! But I should really talk a little bit about the castle.

BUT BEFORE I DO! I must tell you where you can SEE ME this week, at the TEEN LIT FESTIVAL in NYC!

Tomorrow! Friday, March 20: “I love you, New York” Teen Lit in the City. Speaking with Coe Booth, Paul Griffin, David Levithan, Cecily von Ziegesar, and Rita Williams-Garcia.

The New York Public Library, South Court Auditorium, 42nd St and 5th Ave, NY NY, 6-8 pm

Saturday: I will be at the New York Public Library’s Stuff for the Teen Age event. (Suite Scarlett made the list of 100 awesome things!)

Sunday: I will be at the BIGGEST YA AUTHOR SIGNING EVER! 4pm! Books of Wonder! BE THERE!

Okay.

Now, if you’ve read any of the other accounts by Holly Black, Cassie Clare, Carrie Ryan, Sarah Cross, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, Sarah Rees Brennan, Ally Carter, Diana Peterfreund, or Robin Wasserman, you might be pretty up to speed. You might also notice, if you looked at the pictures, that I am not generally in them. That was because I was sitting in the writing room more or less the entire time, finishing the aforementioned book and eating the aforementioned things off the floor.

But I was there! And this is how the trip went for me.

First, I was coming from London, which means that I had one of the shortest trips to make. It takes about 50 minutes to get from London to Dublin on a plane. Once at the Dublin airport, I was supposed to meet Robin Wasserman, who had scheduled to come in on a plane from Paris just fifteen minutes before me. From there, we had booked a fine hotel in Dublin—in fact, our hotel was so fine, it was listed as a TOURIST ATTRACTION. We were smug about our plan.

For some reason, I had decided that the only suitcase suitable for this trip was the REALLY BIG ONE. I usually do not bring the REALLY BIG ONE when I go to the UK because it does not fit into Oscar’s car. Oscar has a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny car. It is a sportscar. It has two seats and no trunk and no backseat. I bought a MUCH SMALLER SUITCASE to go in this car.

But Oscar offered to take me to Gatwick early in the morning. So the night before, we did a trial run to see if the really big suitcase could actually fit. I got in the car, and the massive suitcase was shoved on top of me. It created a wall that split the car in two, and I couldn’t see Oscar or out of the windshield, and Oscar had some trouble shifting, but we figured it would work.

So that morning, I was stuffed into the car with the really big suitcase and rode alone to Gatwick unable to hear or see a thing. I got to the airport extremely early. Exactly thirty minutes before my flight was scheduled to board, I had a well-timed breakfast, a look at my e-mail, bought my in-flight coffee, and went to look for my gate.

I was puzzled as the screens changed, because it LOOKED like what they said was: BRITISH AIRWAYS, 10:15 FLIGHT TO DUBLIN, CANCELED.

I laughed. I was seeing things.

Except that I wasn’t. There was one British Airways flight canceled that morning, and that was the 10:15 to Dublin. British Air didn’t really have any good reasons for the lack of an airplane. I showed them my actual, quite real ticket, and they approved of it highly, and got a little vague when I asked them how I was supposed to get to Ireland. I had visions of things going much like they had just two weeks before, when I bought an actual, real ticket to go to Denver, and United Airlines decided to send me to Tulsa instead.



MY ACTUAL, REAL TICKET

What British Air decided to do was make us all walk to the South Terminal, stand in a bunch of lines, and eventually put me on a flight much later in the day leaving from a different airport. So they gave me a coach ticket to that airport, and a voucher worth ten pounds to buy food.

“Can I use this at Heathrow?” I asked. “I mean, I’m going to be there for hours.”

“No,” she said. “You can only use this here, and you can only use it today.”

I reached over and took my two pieces of paper and examined them.


First thing first . . . I didn’t want a snack or a coffee, but this little voucher was my . . . my prize. My thing that I got instead of a seat on a plane. So I rolled my bags over to the Costa Coffee. I stood around for a minute, seeing if there was anyone I could give it to, but no one came along. So I started buying things.

I took a smoothie. I took another bottle of water. I like to have a lot of drinks around—the problem was, I was about to go to Heathrow and go back through security, which means they would take them all away, and I ALREADY had a large bottle of water in my bag that I had purchased past security. You can only drink so much before you just explode. The three bottles I had now was already pushing it. I took them to the counter. They came to four pounds fifty. I still had much more to go. I took some chocolate wafers from the container next to the till and added them.

“How much now?” I asked.

“Five pounds ten.”

More wafers. More wafers.

“Six pounds . . . seven . . .”

“I’ll just have all the wafers,” I said.

The woman behind the counter was Italian, and I could see from the way she was looking at me that she thought that “all the wafers” was just another one of those annoying expressions in English that she would have to get used to. When in fact, “all the wafers” was just me scooping all the wafers from the container and pushing them forward. I didn’t exactly know what I was going to do with all these wafers, but they were going to be mine.

I walked out with a bag of liquids and wafers.

The ride from Gatwick to Heathrow takes about an hour, more or less, but we got stuck in massive midday traffic. I had my liquids and wafers, all the precious things I had acquired.

“These,” I said, clutching the bag, “these things are mine.”

I was also worried about Robin, who was already wandering the Dublin airport waiting for me. I had the hotel information, and she had no way of knowing where I was.

So I got to immigration in Dublin. My passport is pretty full at this point, and it shows a lot of trips between the United States and England, so the passport people sometimes (understandably) give me a bit of a hard time when they see me, and they ask me piercing questions about my life. They do this to make sure I am not doing something illegal. I am pretty good with this, because I do it a lot. This time, I was asked who I was staying with in Ireland.

And my brain was thinking, “Well, I am staying with friends, but not friends who LIVE here, well, except for Sarah Rees Brennan, SHE lives here, but she is from everywhere, and I am not staying at her house, I am staying at a castle, and if I say I am staying at a castle, they will think I am a deluded American, and what she really wants to know is if I am intending to take up some kind of RESIDENCE here with some Irish people and drain the system dry, which I am not, I am coming to write and then go home, and by home I actually mean back to England which is sort of home but not really, and she probably wants to know what I have to say for myself because she is staring at me . . .”


What came out was, “I have no Irish friends.” That is actually what I said to passport control.

So eventually I got to Dublin. Robin had made her way to the hotel and talked her way in by pretending to be me, which is apparently pretty easy. (Because for the next 24 hours, the staff referred to Robin as Ms. Johnson and to me as Ms. Wasserman, and even swapped our names, so she was Ms. Robin Johnson and I was Ms. Maureen Wasserman. It was very confusing.)

Robin, for some mysterious reason, had just come from Paris, and hadn’t slept in two days. I hadn’t had much sleep either. So after wandering the streets and getting some food, we decided that the most awesome thing to do would be to go back to our awesome, swanky hotel, put on pajamas, and watch Irish television. Also, we had been told that the VIP style awards were being held in our hotel that night, as a testament to its swank factor. We asked what these were, and were told that they were for “style” and for naming the “most stylish person.”

“What?” Robin asked. “You mean like when the PRINCE sends his servants to roam the land to look for the fairest maiden?”

And they said yes, something like that, but with more text voting.

So we also spent a good while speculating on that, and wondering if we should crash said awards in our pajamas. We also ate wafers.

The major discovery of that night, however, was a button on our phone that simply read: “Delighted to Serve.” It was NOT room service. It was NOT the concierge. It was some weird, other button that just promised service.

I immediately pressed it.

And THERE, I pause, because I have to go out and see TIGER BEAT, the YA band! Libba Bray is singing! I am rocking out to THAT!

I look forward to your comments/complaints/questions as always.

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.

ACCIO, STEWARDESS!

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking, “She promises to post every single day, and she gets to day three and fumbles.”

But when you hear WHY, you will stop shaking your heads, as I know you must be. And in the process, I can answer today’s ASK MJ question.

shausto-la said...
Did you hear about J.K Rowling being list of 100 Top Living Geniuses? Really makes you think twice about all those visits she made to you in the past..

Funny you should ask this . . .

So there I am, sitting on the nice Virgin Atlantic plane yesterday, all buckled in like a good passenger. The plane was pretty crowded, but I had gotten lucky—the seat next to me was empty. So I was all ready to sit back for a nice flight. A little reading, a movie or two, and some writing--including my promised blog--until my laptop ran out of power. I had a plan.

When the cabin lights were dimmed for takeoff. I was looking out the window when another passenger approached me from behind—I have no idea where from—and plopped down in the empty seat.

“Fancy meeting you here,” J.K. said.

She was in disguise again, this time wearing a pair of baggy sweatpants, a sweatshirt from EuroDisney, and a cowboy hat. There was a suspicious-looking bulge around her stomach area.

“Why I do feel this isn’t a coincidence?” I asked her, as we sped down the runway. “And don’t you have your own plane? The one you use to chase Alan Rickman?”

“I often fly commercial. It’s better for the environment. And Alan has stopped going outside as much. He’s even gotten very good blackout curtains, the cheeky minx, so I can’t even spy on him from across the garden.”

I felt the wheels of the plane leave the ground. I illegally unhooked my seat belt and stood to scan for more empty seats, but there were none.

“Don’t bother trying to move,” she said. “I made sure these seats were full. I wanted to make sure we were together. Here. I got us some snacks.”

She unzipped her sweatshirt, revealing what had to be the plane’s entire supply of mini pretzels and nuts. Even though she had offered them, and even though I didn’t want them . . . I did note that she didn’t look like she was really going to share her stash.

“I’ve been busy since I last saw you,” she said, ripping open a bag of sour cream and chive pretzels (yes, they exist). “I bought a dolphin. I keep it in a tank on my roof. Ask me what I named it. Go on. Ask me. Ask me.”

“What did you call it?” I asked dully.

“Fatso.”

“You named your dolphin Fatso?”

“It’s a family name.”

“Is it?” I said, gripping my armrests.

“That’s not what I came to tell you about, though,” she said.

“No?”

“No. As I know you know, because you mentioned it on your blog, I revealed that Dumbledore is gay.”

“Yes,” I said. “I am always glad to hear about positive gay and lesbian characters. Well played, J.K.”

She nodded.

“Of course,” she said, “I have more to tell the world. That’s why I’ve arranged this meeting.”

“Oh no,” I said. “Oh no, no, no. You always lie to me. I’m not going to be your little instrument of falsehood anymore. Go tell it to Fatso. He can go tell the dolphins. I’m done, J.K. Do you hear me? Done!”

I put in my earphones and turned my full attention to my movie screen, which wasn’t even on yet, because we had just taken off. I stared at it anyway.

“Obviously,” she began, ignoring my attempts to ignore her, “Dumbledore is not the only gay character in the books. The magic world is comprised in much the same way as the muggle world, population-wise, so there are many gay citizens.”

I took off my headphones and looked over slowly. This made perfect sense—unlike pretty much every other exchange I’d ever had with J.K.. So you can understand my concern.

“Right,” I said, guardedly.

“So I thought I’d tell you about a few more. For example: Helga Hufflepuff, Kingsley Shacklebot, Amelia Bones, Lee Jordan, Dolores Umbridge . . .”

“Umbridge?”

“The gay guys are not always the good guys,” JK said, again, making a fair point. I was beginning to think I had misjudged her severely.

“You’re right,” I said. “Please continue.”

“Sirius Black, Crookshanks . . .”

“Crookshanks, Hermione’s cat?”

“Do you know another Crookshanks? Where was I? Oh yes. Katie Bell, Professor Flitwick, the Goblet of Fire . . .”

“Now wait a minute,” I said. “Look, I appreciate the fact that you’ve stepped up and given the world such a shining example of a gay parental figure—I do. But the Goblet of Fire is a goblet, and there is no such thing as a gay goblet. And if you make any remarks about ‘flaming goblets’ I am going to call the pilot. Not the cabin crew. The PILOT.”

“You really can’t take a joke, can you?” she said smugly. “That’s why I like you. You are very, very literal.”

I didn’t speak to her again until the stewardess brought me my vegetarian meal. Since it was food, J.K. was extremely interested. Her hand was midway to my salad dressing when I gave her a very dangerous look.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said.

She retracted her hand and did the “I was doing nothing, what are you even talking about?” look. She tried to distract me by playing with the contrast control on my video screen and making my seat go back, but I never diverted my eyes from my food. This, I could tell, was getting to her. She almost broke the stewardess’s wrist when they finally rolled up with her tray.

“Let’s stop wasting time,” she said, eating a pat of butter right out of the foil. “Let’s get right to the Curse of Ravenclaw.”

THE CURSE OF RAVENCLAW

“Everyone in Ravenclaw has a very serious nut allergy,” she said.

“What?”

“All incoming students with pre-existing nut allergies are sorted into Ravenclaw, but the majority of students are actually given a nut allergy right after the arrival night banquet. This is why you will never see a Ravenclaw eating a peanut butter sandwich.”

“Do you ever see anyone at Hogwarts eating a peanut butter sandwich?” I asked.

“Not a Ravenclaw.”

“Or anyone.”

“Anyone who is a Ravenclaw.”

“What I’m saying,” I said, “is that I have never seen a peanut butter sandwich at Hogwarts, ever.”

“Especially not when Ravenclaws are involved,” she said, knowingly.

“I’m saying that there are no peanut butter sandwiches,” I said, growing annoyed. “Not just in Ravenclaw House . . .”

“Exactly!”

“No . . . let me finish. Not just in Ravenclaw, but . . .”

“Exactly!” she shouted.

She made a second attempt for the salad dressing. I smacked her hand.

“Why?” I asked. “What is the point of giving everyone in Ravenclaw a nut allergy? Is this relevant?”

“I wanted to illustrate the fragility of the human experience. The humble nut taking down a powerful wizard. You see?”

“But you never used any humble nuts in the books.”

“That’s what makes this such an exciting revelation,” she said. “Only I knew about the curse!”

“It’s not a curse if they give students a nut allergy on purpose. What you’re describing is a tradition. A highly insane tradition.”

“If you think that’s bad,” she said, “you should see what they do to the students in Quabblecrack.”

“What in the #&*(@ is Quabblecrack?”

“The fifth house,” she said, with a smile.

With that, we hit a patch of turbulence and the plane began to shake.

THE FIFTH HOUSE

“It didn’t seem worth mentioning at the time,” J.K. said, as we gripped our armrests and the flight crew went running down the aisle to secure the duty free cart.

“You didn’t think it was worth mentioning that there are FIVE houses, not four?” I said.

“I wrote up a description, if you want to see it.”

She produced a folded piece of paper from the pocket of her sweatpants. It read as follows:

The house of Quabblecrack was founded by Quentin Quabblecrack. He was a great believer in bureaucracy, and he invented many behind-the-scenes elements of Hogwarts, such as the complex magical spreadsheets that explain the pay scale for the staff, the impenetrable filing system, and the truly astonishing vendor approval process for all Hogwarts maintenance work.

The house symbol is the platypus. With its furry body, webbed feet, duck-like bill, pouch for young, and one poisonous spur, the platypus truly encapsulates Quabblecrack’s motto: “I am moved not by beauty, nor elegant design, nor simplicity . . . bring to me your forms, your procedures, and your systems of law, and I will make them complete in all ways. But print these things in block letters in number #2 quill, and make no mistakes. Also, please provide copies (in person, not by owl) and expect two weeks for processing.” The house colors are steel and smoke, which is pretty much just grey and a slightly lighter shade of grey.

Entry to the Quabblecrack common room is gained by a picture called “In the mail room at Gringotts.” Students must answer a long series of seemingly unrelated questions, and it is known to take up to three days to get inside. (The longest recorded wait was four and a half weeks, but that was due to a technical error inside of the painting.) As such, Quabblecrack students are frequently late to class due to exhaustion and confusion. Also, every student in Quabblecrack has a serious nut allergy . . .



The duck-billed platypus, symbol of the House of Quabblecrack

I put the paper down.

“You see,” J.K. said, “I created a lot of characters in my head. Certainly more than you ever have. I’ve read your books, you know, and with the exception of 101 Dalmatians, they’re pretty sparsely populated. And I don’t even think dogs count.”



101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith was published in 1956.

“Unlike you,” she said pointedly, “and many lazy writers like you, I have a cast of hundreds! But I made up far more characters than I needed, and frankly, a lot of them were boring and unusable. They had to go somewhere. So I put them in Quabblecrack. Lavingia Root, for example, is your classic Quabblecrack student. I never wrote Lavingia because she was so awfully, awfully dull and served no purpose. So I put her in Quabblecrack, where she is a prefect.”

“You mean that you made an imaginary house for imaginary students?” I asked.

J.K. made a sudden and successful lunge for my cheese as we hit an air pocket.

“Hogwarts is entirely imaginary,” she said with a chuckle. “Magic isn’t real, you know. There’s no such thing as Diagon Alley, or Hogsmeade, or the Hogwarts Express, or King’s Cross railway station.


King’s Cross Railway Station is a major junction of both the London Tube and the rail service. It does not have a nut allergy.

“That’s not the point,” I said. “You can’t just keep adding stuff you didn’t write. You can’t make an unwritten home for unwritten characters who were too boring to live.”

“Who says?” she asked, eating my piece of cheddar in triumph.

“Everyone knows that!”

“Someone,” she said, pointing at me with a food-stained finger, “makes a lot of dangerous assumptions. Now if you’ll excuse me, the pilot is going to give me some flying lessons. I think I can talk him into letting me land the plane if I let him have an hour in the tank with Fatso. People love dolphins.”

As a parting shot, she took my pillow. I think she ate it.

I hope this answers your question, Shausto-la. And I hope you have all assumed that when I said “every day for a week,” I didn’t mean weekends. I have a lot of mental damage to recover from, and I have to sign books tomorrow and talk to English teachers.

Please continue to send your questions, and I will continue to do my little all in providing answers.

THE TRAVELS OF ME AND FREE MONKEY

At the moment, both Free Monkey and I are on the road. He is in LA, and I am in Georgia, spreading the word of Girl At Sea.

First, the Monkey report.

FREE MONKEY is now in Los Angeles for the first stop of his World Tour. (The visit to Hank was a pre-tour stop to prepare.) You can see his activities by going to Little Willow’s site.

I flew to Atlanta on Monday night, and I am there now, sitting in the Georgia sunshine. Last night, I did a fantastic event at Little Shop of Stories in Decatur, where I spoke to a an amazing reading group.

That much is good. But the getting here, friends . . . that was not so good.

I have to preface everything below by saying that I am used to traveling internationally, so flying inside the US can be confusing. I don’t mean this in a “I only fly to fancy, faraway places!” I mean this in an “I expect the worst in terms of long lines and strict security” kind of a way. I expect my body to be x-rayed, my passport to be checked every six minutes, my shoes to be blown up, and my comings and goings to be ruthlessly questioned. On international flights, they make you show up days in advance so they can do all of this. They even board you a full hour before you take off just to make super-super sure that you are belted in snug and secure so they can seal the plane and check it fifty more times.

All of which I LIKE, because I am nothing if not pro-safety.

Comparatively, when I arrived at La Guardia (New York’s domestic airport), things seemed pretty relaxed. I checked in without showing ID. The security check seemed normal enough, but then I walked through the terminal, looking for my gate, and found that it was not so much a gate but more of a dark hallway in the back with about three hundred people crammed in it with nowhere to sit. The board behind the counter was not a digital display—it was one of those old fashioned boards where they stuck up plastic numbers.

Frankly, it looked shady, like some guys had quietly backed up to an unused corner of the airport, maybe one that had previously been a bathroom or something and was under renovation, parked their plane, and tried to stir up a little business.

The problem was, there didn’t seem to be a plane. They weren’t even acting as if there was supposed to be one. The flight was supposed to take off at 7:00. It had read 7:00 on the board, but since they didn’t know when we would be leaving, they simply removed the last two numbers and left it as 7:

After about 45 minutes of standing there, slack-jawed, staring at the 7: . . . I decided this was getting a little old, so I walked around and around until I found one seat, recently vacated, in the middle of a crowded row. I was just happy to be sitting down, and I barely registered the strange objects that were across from me, which were: a pair of black high-heeled fur boots, a sealed bag, and a plastic tub marked “chemical de-icer.”

Let me just put that into perspective . . . you can’t even bring water past security. You can’t bring bottles of shampoo. I once had my lip gloss taken from me and put into a small sealed bag. (I’m not sure what that was supposed to accomplish, aside from not getting the lip gloss on my stuff.) One time, when my flight to England was delayed, I had to leave the terminal and use the ladies room. They held my passport while I did this, and when I came back, they gave me one of those full body patdowns, they examined my shoes, and took the battery out of my computer to examine it.

So, that someone had come in with a tub of suspicious-looking chemical stuff was weird. What was even MORE weird was that that stuff had been sitting there unattended for TWO HOURS. I knew this from my seatmates, who had seen the pregnant woman who had come and left it there so long before. By the time I came on the scene and collapsed into the seat, there was quite a buzz about it.

Because the only thing more disturbing than a random tub of chemicals in an airport is an UNATTENDED tub of random chemicals in an airport left next to furry boots and a scary bag.

There’s always one woman who takes control of the situation, and we had one. She went to security. In fact, she went to FIVE PEOPLE, begging them to come and take away the Incredibly Suspicious Packages.

Again, this comes in sharp contrast to international travel—or anything in England. If you leave a bag for more than five minutes in England, they swoop in with an entire team, take it away in a big machine, and blow it up. The English have a lot of experience dealing with bombers, and they don’t mess around.

But at La Guardia, they really could not have cared less. They shrugged her away.

“No one will listen to me,” she said. By now, we were all involved in the story of the boots, bag, and de-icer and everyone was waiting for news.

This is when the staff of "I Can't Believe It's An Airline" sprang to life. The guy at the desk came on and said, “Who wants to go to Atlanta!”

You know, like it was a surprise trip, and not an airplane that we all had tickets for. But everyone was so excited that there was A PLANE that cheers and clapping broke out.

It was only as we were quickly scrambled back into line (it was a big rush now, of course, further confirming in my mind that this plane was not actually supposed to be here and we were getting into the equivalent of an unlicensed taxi) that the police showed up with the bomb sniffing puppy. It was definitely a puppy—he was sort of a shaggy German Shepherd, with huge paws, clearly delighted to be at work. I don’t know exactly what he found, but he went a little crazy with delight for the de-icer. The sealed bag turned out to contain large cheese puff balls.

So if you heard any stories about weird stuff being found at LaGuardia airport the other night, I was there. And if it was some scary germ or something, drop me a line and let me know, because I was sitting next to it for a while. Unlike that guy who flew all over the world with an infectious disease, I will turn myself in immediately. I think I might like quarantine.

So we got on the plane, and I eyed the contents of my seat pocket. (I’m always hoping that some day I will find something wonderful in there, like a first edition Harry Potter or a baby bunny.) Instead, I saw that my safety card had been ripped into pieces. The only other thing in there was a barf bag.

“Who ever uses those?” I thought to myself. I am lucky enough to have a very strong stomach, and the idea of throwing up on an airplane is pretty much the worst thing I could imagine.

And then we took off, and the girl across from me barfed into her barf bag.

Things started to look up once we took off and were flying along peacefully. We landed very suddenly (everyone down! down! down! we're landing!), and then I thought things were really on the move. But they had had a storm in Atlanta hours before, and for some reason this messed everything up, and we sat on our spot on the runway for well over an hour.

When I finally got to my rental car, I breathed a sigh of relief, and then I looked down at the ground next to it and saw this, which I had to pick up and take with me:



Would you take this as a sign?

I really could not have asked for a better way into my LIST OF THINGS TO BE AFRAID OF IN THE SUMMERTIME. And this story also proves why DRAGON TRAIN is so appealing. (Dragon Train is appealing for many reasons, but now more than ever.)

That’s coming next, just as soon as I complete something I have to turn in, pretty much now. (Not a book, but another writing project.) Deadlines call! FREE MONKEY travels!

BRIEF ENCOUTERS WITH FAMOUS PEOPLE

Friends, when I last left you, I was writing from the London Office, where I was recovering from flu and talking about television and my FREE MONKEY.

Getting home was an experience I must share. After all, because of 13 Little Blue Envelopes (and, you will find, Girl At Sea), a lot of people think of me as “that person who writes about traveling.”

Before I left England, I carefully packed my free monkey into my suitcase. Oscar (having just read my blog about getting the Free Monkey) said, “Do you know what? There was a rush on the Free Monkeys. People started buying three or four at a time, and they ran out. People are trying to get them.”

I smiled at my monkey.

To be honest, I didn’t think I was going anywhere. I’d heard about the massive snowstorms that were descending on the East Coast, partially from the news, and partially from my mother, who called me about six times to tell me. But Virgin Atlantic seemed unaware of the storm. I checked. There was no delay. I went to Heathrow Airport expecting to be laughed at and sent home.

“Isn’t there a delay?” I asked, as I checked in my bag. “Because of the snowstorm?”

“What snowstorm?” they asked.

That would be the snowstorm that canceled all the American Airlines flights and caused all their passengers to be put on Virgin Atlantic, including flight 25, which was my flight.

By the time we got on the plane, they were admitting that there was a storm.

"There's a bit of bad weather in New York," the pilot said in his lovely Irish accent. "We're going to feel it about two-thirds of the way across the Atlantic. And we may have to circle a bit when we get there, but don't worry. We've put on extra fuel. Happy Saint Patrick's Day to all of our Irish passengers."

That sounded fun. Turbulence AND holding patterns! I was glad they hadn't delayed us.

About 30 minutes into the flight, the pilot came on and said, “Are there any medically qualified persons on board? Specifically, we would like a midwife.”

So, presumably, there was going to be a BABY born on our flight. And if there was going to be a BABY born on our flight, you would think we would have to land. Short of going back, the only place I could think of that we could land was Iceland, where (I had just recently been told) you often can’t land anyway because of the wintry fog.

I started to mentally plan my crazy night out in Reykjavik. First, I would find Bjork . . .

That was as far as I got. We didn’t hear anything more about the midwife, so I don’t know if there was a Virgin Atlantic flight 25 baby or not. If there was, they were awfully quiet about it. I’ve been on flights before where they have been medical problems (like the time the woman actually collapsed on me when I was trying to work on Girl At Sea), and it’s been chaos. People running up the aisles. People with no medical knowledge at all standing around, giving advice.

About halfway through the flight, I looked up to see our captain wandering the aisles. I fought the urge to get up and scream, “THE STEWARDESS IS FLYING THE PLANE!” Or even something weirder, like, “BJORK IS FLYING THE PLANE!”

I laughed to myself, albeit a little nervously.



I didn’t know who was in charge.

When they announced that it was about time for us to land, and if we wanted to get up we had to do it now, I left my seat to change out of the yoga pants I had put on earlier in the flight and back into my jeans. A friendly, if somewhat drunk, Irishman was waiting with me.

“What do you think?” he asked me.

It was a little too general of a question, but I got the idea that he was asking me something about our general chances.

“There’s a storm,” I said. “We might be diverted.”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “The pilot is Irish! He’ll land this #&$^#*&^$#*& plane no matter what.”

I laughed, a kind of loud “Ha ha!” that I often employ around drunk people when I myself am sober. The bathroom was free, and I stepped up for my turn.

“Can I give you a hand in there?” my new friend asked me.

“I’m fine,” I said. “I’ve been going to the bathroom by myself for over five years now.”

I locked the door carefully as he puzzled this over.

He was right, though. Our pilot landed that plane, very suddenly in fact. I could see from the flight tracker that we were dropping altitude fast and bumping like crazy as we went through the clouds. He came on the loudspeaker and said, “Flight crew, take your seats IMMEDIATELY.”

And then we were down on a solid white sheet of snow, the only plane in sight, surrounded by plows.

“Well, we’ve landed,” he said. “Unfortunately, we have nowhere to go. There is no gate for us. And I can’t really tell you when we will have a gate.”

That didn’t sound good. I made a few calls, then put my head back for a little nap. No sooner had I closed my eyes, though, then we were parked in a gate. We marched off the plane, just an hour and a half after our scheduled landing, which seemed fair to me.

“Wow,” I said to myself. “That worked out well!”

It continued to work out well as I breezed through passport control, where my inspector was so bored that he didn’t speak and literally threw my passport back at me.

“I love New York,” I said happily. “It feels good to be home.”

I walked the few feet to the luggage claim and took a spot. Our bags didn’t seem to be coming. The loudspeaker crackled to life.

“Virgin Atlantic flight 25,” the announcer said. “There is a problem getting your baggage. Right now, we have NO TIME ESTIMATE on when it will be coming.”

It was 11:15. I sat down on the edge of the conveyer belt. I looked around me to see how the other passengers were taking this news. To my surprise, I noticed that—standing maybe ten feet from me—was Sigourney Weaver. It was definitely her. I heard her speak, and I’ve seen Copycat about twenty-five times (don’t ask). Obviously, she had been on the flight.

I laughed to myself again as I thought of a dozen jokes about how it wasn’t a good sign to be on a long-haul flight with Sigourney Weaver.



The jokes write themselves, really.

By 12:30, I decided to stop sitting on the edge of the belt and to fulfill a minor lifelong dream of stretching out on the belt itself. The airport sent down a representative—a very flustered-looking man, who was immediately descended upon by my planemates. (But not, I should add, Sigourney Weaver.)

“I’m sorry,” he groveled. “I have no explanation for this. I’ve called them and they tell me the bags are on the belt. Why they aren’t coming down, I have no idea.”



This is a surprisingly accurate representation of how I spent Friday night.

Around 1:30 in the morning, as I was fully reclined on the conveyer belt, I called Daphne Unfeasible. I call Daphne whenever I have any decision to make that I’m on the fence about.

“Daphne,” I said. “Do I really care about my bag? Is there anything in there that I really need, except my FREE MONKEY? I think if we leave they’re either going to send our bags back to England or blow them up.”

“Your free monkey is in there?” she asked. “You have to stay.”

I knew she was right. I shut my phone and looked over at Sigourney Weaver. She was waiting. So would I. Those free monkeys were rare.

We all started making friends. I lent a Swiss girl my phone, and she offered me delicious Swiss chocolate. Another girl offered me a magazine after she heard my free monkey call to Daphne.

“You can’t give up,” she said, passing it over. “Here.”

I nodded and thanked her. I opened it and immediately noticed something in there that caught my eye—it was an ad for fitted sheet covers for airplane seats in loud “designer” patterns.

If ANYONE sits next to me on a plane and starts putting fitted sheets over their seat, I thought to myself, I might punch them in the face. Honestly. I’m not a violent person, but I think that might bring something out of me that is otherwise contained. You know how the Hulk pops out? I think it might be like that.



MAUREEN SMASH!

I shut the magazine and went back to my previous occupation, which was watching Sigourney Weaver out of the corner of my eye.

By 2, we were all getting a little tired of this. An angry hoard of us (me not included, I couldn’t be bothered to get off the belt for a while) surrounded the airport representative, who looked pretty close to suicide. In fact, when I did go over to hear what he was saying, he actually threatened as much.

“If I was responsible for this mess,” he said, “I would put a GUN to my HEAD. You deserve so much better.”

This seemed a bit much to me.

At 2:15, the belt started moving and about eight bags came out. (Including Sigourney’s. Either that or she just gave up.) We cheered. And then, nothing. We watched the belt go around. We started writing notes on pieces of paper and putting them on the belt for other people to read and respond to.

My bag came tumbling down at 3 AM.

“At last,” I said, pulling it along. “It’s over.”

But it wasn’t over. Because all two or three hundred of us stepped outside into a major winter storm, with icy rain. The sidewalks and road were covered in so much snow and slush that it was almost impossible to pull our bags along. Along the curbs, there were one foot deep and three or four feet wide slush lakes. I needed to cross these to get to the massive cab line I gave up trying to be clever about it and just waded through, dragging my bag and allowing my boots and jeans to get soaked. There was no other way. We all did it.

My bathroom friend stood behind me in line. He was a lot more awake and sober. We all were. It was freezing, with a strong wind. It was almost impossible to get into the cabs when they came. I got mine after maybe twenty minutes, and had to actually throw my suitcase over the gulch and into the back seat. Then we slipped and slid along the parkway at top speed, narrowly missing other cars. My cab driver did a strange thing—he stopped to get gas. And then we promptly stalled in the gas station.

I was beyond caring.

I stumbled in my door sometime after four, took a look at my now officially dead rubber plant, and dropped my things. I opened my suitcase, and took out my free monkey.

“You are home,” I said.

So that’s how I got here. I am now safely back with my writing friends. E. Lockhart is next to me, and Scott Westerfeld is across from me. John Green is snowbound in Detroit with pink eye.

Just to address one other point from my last post (and thank you for your many comments). Daphne got right in there and had to shout out her love for Face from the A-Team.

Like I said, I love all members of the team (not including, as previously stated, Frankie “Dishpan” Santana, who is not a true team member). But Murdock is clearly and obviously superior to Face. And I can tell you why in painstaking detail. Daphne knows this. She is consciously is playing with fire, because she is well aware that I could unleash my massive backload of A-Team knowledge AT ANY SECOND. It’s like a tsunami of information.

But I will resist.

However, she brings up an excellent point in mentioning her other love, Bo Duke. I never liked Bo Duke. I gave Luke a weak allegiance. But I do have something to tell you about Bo Duke that is very much related to this topic.

Since I became a fully-grown mj, my parents have done a lot of traveling. One year, they went on a cruise of northern Europe. When they returned, I went home to have dinner with them at our local favorite, the Olive Garden. (When you’re there, you’re family. The Olive Garden is the best of the local options around Chez Johnson. Take from that what you will.)

“Your father made a friend on the trip,” she said. "Tell her."

My dad looked up.

"I did," he said. "He was a great guy, named John. We played cards almost every night."

"That's nice," I said. To tell the truth, the story had already paralyzed me with boredom. It didn't seem like a good start.

"Funny thing, though," my dad went on. "People kept asking to have their pictures taken with him. This went on for a few days, so I finally asked him why. He said that he used to be on TV a long time ago. Maybe you’ve heard of him. He was on a . . . what was it. Something Dukes . . .”

“Not the Dukes of Hazzard,” I said, setting down my ice tea spoon carefully.

“That’s it,” he said. “He was one of the main guys.”

“You’re not talking about John Schneider, are you?” I asked.

“Right! That was his name.”

I leveled a look at my father. He is not, to be completely fair, Mr. Hollywood.

“You spent two weeks hanging out with BO DUKE?” I said.

“I guess so. He’s nice. We would go to the casino together. Good card player.”

“YOU HUNG OUT WITH BO DUKE FOR TWO WEEKS?”

“I just told you I did.”

To some of you, this won’t mean much. Let me explain. In the early 1980s, Bo Duke was THE major heartthrob of network television. Whether you liked him or not, you couldn’t avoid him. The thought of him hanging out with my dad—a man who still thinks the invisible dog leash is still a very funny thing and who reads Parking Today magazine—was not something my brain could handle. I felt it struggling to put these two ideas together, and the feeling was sort of like what it looks like when you make those fake volcanoes and mix baking soda and vinegar which DON’T MIX WELL and explode into foam.

Anyway, it just goes to show that you never know who you are going to meet. Until next time . . . when I promise to address even more of your comments.



That’s John Schneider. The blonde does not represent my father. Their relationship was strictly platonic and seemed to involve a lot of blackjack and manly walks on the Ledo deck talking about blackjack.