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July 13, 2007
Dear friends,
Thanks for all of your emails these past months – we love to hear from you, and regret that we aren’t always able to respond personally. Also, apologies to those of you who sent time-sensitive queries that were overlooked. Fortunately, we’re up and running a little better now, and will work harder to keep everybody posted on the latest news. Also, we have a new email address: . If you have our old email address in your contacts, please update as the old address will be deactivated on July 31. Also, please notify us if your email address has changed since you signed up for the newsletter. Otherwise, you will not receive it and we will get a flood of delivery failure notices.
Many of you have been asking about the upcoming fifth book in the Monkeewrench series – we are writing furiously and should be finished by our September deadline! And we promise to post a teaser chapter on the website once it goes through the editing process. Our working title for the book is DISCONNECTED, but of course, that can, and probably will change. As for the publication date, there are two possibilities – Spring ’08 or August ’08, and as soon as that decision is made, we’ll let you all know.
As promised, we are finally posting some answers to a few of our most common FAQs on our website, plus a red-faced apology for a gaffe we made in SNOW BLIND -- many thanks to Debbie, who was the first to catch it, and who very delicately pointed out that we had unilaterally decided to change the human anatomy by mixing up arm bones with leg bones! I am ashamed to say that I took an advanced anatomy and physiology course in college, which clearly didn’t sink in very well…
Enjoy the rest of the summer, and thanks again for being such patient, faithful fans.
Cheers and best wishes,
PJ and Traci
July 26, 2006
From PJ:
I’m hearing crickets tonight instead of frogs – well, one cricket, anyway; obviously the scout, sent ahead of the troops to check the terrain, making sure all those sex-crazed, cricket-eating spring frogs are exhausted by the season’s froggy orgies, and ready to sink to the bottom of the pond.
You always hear background crickets in movie night-shots, as if these silly creatures heralded summer, when in fact, they’re screaming Armageddon. In Minnesota, when the first cricket starts chirping at night, you’re on the slippery slope down into a brief autumn, and then into the inevitable, terrifying winter.
All Minnesotans know this, and yet they mark these moments of coming weather misery as if they were joyful milestones. “Heard the first cricket last night. Couple months to the first snow.” You’ll hear those words from old-timers sitting on summer porches all over the state. Weather doom is a big business here, and it goes on all year. On the day of the summer solstice all the news anchors start counting down the days to the State Fair – the really big harbinger of winter, the survival of which is something like counting coup. You get points for surviving almost every Minnesota season, although no one knows what the points get you.
The crickets and the zucchini arrive at nearly the same time, which is how I figure out what month it is. I’ve always been particularly fond of zucchini fresh from the garden, especially when they approach bloated baseball-bat size and start to resemble a really firm version of my thighs.
So here I am on the little Midwestern farm plot, picking zucchini and listening to crickets, while Traci is on the ocean in California, getting manicures and having dinner with people who either designed the Mars Rover or appear regularly on Entertainment Tonight. I must have done something terrible in a former life. Stepped on a cricket, probably.
Our tour for Snow Blind starts next week. Every year we approach tour time with a mixture of gleeful anticipation and terror. Traci anticipates, I am terrified, mostly because I never understood why readers would want to meet me, and have always been dead certain that I would fall far short of anyone’s expectations. Small wonder that I should feel this way – every pair of nylons I have ever donned sprouts an amazingly large run before I take the podium, makeup slides from my face in a gooey sheet, outdone only by the Betty Boop mascara that drools down my cheeks. People seem to like this, which is scary. Surely I am the only person in the world who finally had her first manicure at the age of 59, only to have every scrap of nail polish fall off my fingernails half an hour later.
Traci, on the other hand, looks perfect every moment of her life, which compensates wonderfully for my sad attempts to appear presentable. We are a bizarre, very unlike pair, with some very important commonalities, like the deep joy we feel when we meet the people who read our books and connect with us on some level we can’t begin to understand. Thank you all for that! Hope to see you on the road!
From TRACI:
I have no idea what PJ is talking about – she is always ravishing, even with sliding makeup and runs in her hose! And for the record, I usually look like a bag lady – a poorly dressed one. My at-home writing attire is a family joke. I have a great fondness for combining primary colors, pastels, stripes, plaid, flannel, silk, fuzzy orange socks, and slippers that look like eggplants in a single outfit. I think it works. Nobody else does.
It just occurred to me that I have a fetish for purple footwear. Eggplant slippers are only the beginning. I’m counting…..I have at least five pairs of purple shoes (including the lavender high tops featured on the cover of Dead Run) – none of which I ever wear. I collect them. I suspect that says something about my psyche, but I’m not sure I want to know what it is.
So the Monkeewrench ladies finally have a website! What a great irony that the author of books about computer geniuses took 4 years to get a web presence. This is all very new to us, and we have a lot of work to do, but we’re having fun with it. Come back and visit us often – there will be lots of additions in the coming months.
Well, I could probably ramble on for hours – a blank page is dangerous in my hands – but I won’t. At least not today. I have dinner guests arriving in half an hour and I think they’re actually expecting food (that’s the annoying thing about dinner guests.)
PJ and I are very excited to start touring for Snow Blind, and look forward to seeing familiar faces, and some new ones, too. Thanks to all of you for enthusiasm and support, and we hope you enjoy reading Snow Blind as much as we enjoyed writing it.
Bye for now!
Dear friends,
Thanks for all of your emails these past months – we love to hear from you, and regret that we aren’t always able to respond personally. Also, apologies to those of you who sent time-sensitive queries that were overlooked. Fortunately, we’re up and running a little better now, and will work harder to keep everybody posted on the latest news. Also, we have a new email address: . If you have our old email address in your contacts, please update as the old address will be deactivated on July 31. Also, please notify us if your email address has changed since you signed up for the newsletter. Otherwise, you will not receive it and we will get a flood of delivery failure notices.
Many of you have been asking about the upcoming fifth book in the Monkeewrench series – we are writing furiously and should be finished by our September deadline! And we promise to post a teaser chapter on the website once it goes through the editing process. Our working title for the book is DISCONNECTED, but of course, that can, and probably will change. As for the publication date, there are two possibilities – Spring ’08 or August ’08, and as soon as that decision is made, we’ll let you all know.
As promised, we are finally posting some answers to a few of our most common FAQs on our website, plus a red-faced apology for a gaffe we made in SNOW BLIND -- many thanks to Debbie, who was the first to catch it, and who very delicately pointed out that we had unilaterally decided to change the human anatomy by mixing up arm bones with leg bones! I am ashamed to say that I took an advanced anatomy and physiology course in college, which clearly didn’t sink in very well…
Enjoy the rest of the summer, and thanks again for being such patient, faithful fans.
Cheers and best wishes,
PJ and Traci
July 26, 2006
From PJ:
I’m hearing crickets tonight instead of frogs – well, one cricket, anyway; obviously the scout, sent ahead of the troops to check the terrain, making sure all those sex-crazed, cricket-eating spring frogs are exhausted by the season’s froggy orgies, and ready to sink to the bottom of the pond.
You always hear background crickets in movie night-shots, as if these silly creatures heralded summer, when in fact, they’re screaming Armageddon. In Minnesota, when the first cricket starts chirping at night, you’re on the slippery slope down into a brief autumn, and then into the inevitable, terrifying winter.
All Minnesotans know this, and yet they mark these moments of coming weather misery as if they were joyful milestones. “Heard the first cricket last night. Couple months to the first snow.” You’ll hear those words from old-timers sitting on summer porches all over the state. Weather doom is a big business here, and it goes on all year. On the day of the summer solstice all the news anchors start counting down the days to the State Fair – the really big harbinger of winter, the survival of which is something like counting coup. You get points for surviving almost every Minnesota season, although no one knows what the points get you.
The crickets and the zucchini arrive at nearly the same time, which is how I figure out what month it is. I’ve always been particularly fond of zucchini fresh from the garden, especially when they approach bloated baseball-bat size and start to resemble a really firm version of my thighs.
So here I am on the little Midwestern farm plot, picking zucchini and listening to crickets, while Traci is on the ocean in California, getting manicures and having dinner with people who either designed the Mars Rover or appear regularly on Entertainment Tonight. I must have done something terrible in a former life. Stepped on a cricket, probably.
Our tour for Snow Blind starts next week. Every year we approach tour time with a mixture of gleeful anticipation and terror. Traci anticipates, I am terrified, mostly because I never understood why readers would want to meet me, and have always been dead certain that I would fall far short of anyone’s expectations. Small wonder that I should feel this way – every pair of nylons I have ever donned sprouts an amazingly large run before I take the podium, makeup slides from my face in a gooey sheet, outdone only by the Betty Boop mascara that drools down my cheeks. People seem to like this, which is scary. Surely I am the only person in the world who finally had her first manicure at the age of 59, only to have every scrap of nail polish fall off my fingernails half an hour later.
Traci, on the other hand, looks perfect every moment of her life, which compensates wonderfully for my sad attempts to appear presentable. We are a bizarre, very unlike pair, with some very important commonalities, like the deep joy we feel when we meet the people who read our books and connect with us on some level we can’t begin to understand. Thank you all for that! Hope to see you on the road!
From TRACI:
I have no idea what PJ is talking about – she is always ravishing, even with sliding makeup and runs in her hose! And for the record, I usually look like a bag lady – a poorly dressed one. My at-home writing attire is a family joke. I have a great fondness for combining primary colors, pastels, stripes, plaid, flannel, silk, fuzzy orange socks, and slippers that look like eggplants in a single outfit. I think it works. Nobody else does.
It just occurred to me that I have a fetish for purple footwear. Eggplant slippers are only the beginning. I’m counting…..I have at least five pairs of purple shoes (including the lavender high tops featured on the cover of Dead Run) – none of which I ever wear. I collect them. I suspect that says something about my psyche, but I’m not sure I want to know what it is.
So the Monkeewrench ladies finally have a website! What a great irony that the author of books about computer geniuses took 4 years to get a web presence. This is all very new to us, and we have a lot of work to do, but we’re having fun with it. Come back and visit us often – there will be lots of additions in the coming months.
Well, I could probably ramble on for hours – a blank page is dangerous in my hands – but I won’t. At least not today. I have dinner guests arriving in half an hour and I think they’re actually expecting food (that’s the annoying thing about dinner guests.)
PJ and I are very excited to start touring for Snow Blind, and look forward to seeing familiar faces, and some new ones, too. Thanks to all of you for enthusiasm and support, and we hope you enjoy reading Snow Blind as much as we enjoyed writing it.
Bye for now!
