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Win A Signed Copy Of CJJ3 Galley!

Thanks Mackids, for hosting Charlie Joe Jackson week! And what a week it was! But what did we learn? I think there are two main takeaways: 1) having kids who hate to read is great for your writing career; and 2) Janice Ian’s lyrics are very complicated. But what’s next for Charlie Joe? Well, that would be book 3, CHARLIE JOE JACKSON’S GUIDE TO SUMMER VACATION, in which Charlie Joe joins the circus as a sword-swallower and gets eaten by sharks. Well not really. Actually, I can’t tell you what happens in CJJ3, because that would give away the ending of CJJ2. But I can tell you it comes out in May 2013, and will be followed by two more Charlie Joe epics: CHARLIE JOE JACKSON’S GUIDE TO MAKING MONEY, in 2014, and CHARLIE JOE JACKSON’S GUIDE TO GROWING UP, in 2015. I also hope you’ll check out my latest anti-hero, Jack Strong, as he makes his debut in JACK STRONG TAKES A STAND, due September 2014. If Charlie Joe is the most reluctant reader ever born, than Jack is the most overscheduled kid ever born… until he decides to do something about it.

To be semi-serious for just a second… I love writing for kids. It not something I ever imagined myself doing as recently as five years ago, and now here I am, getting emails from girls and boys telling me they think my books are funny. And when I go to schools to meet kids in person, I still can’t believe they want me to sign their books (or notebook covers, or random pieces of paper, or occasionally, hands).

It’s crazy. But it’s also an intense responsibility. Kids are hard to please, and I don’t want to disappoint them. I want each book to better than the last, if possible. I want Charlie Joe to grow as a character, and as a person. And then, in a couple of years, when some 10-year-old kid discover the series for the first time, he can feel that he that they got a sense of a boy who’s real, who’s funny, a bit of a wise-ass, but basically a good kid. Someone who learned a few things during his middle-school life that he can take with him to high school — where the real craziness begins.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to get back to my day job. (You didn’t think I was in it for the money, did you??)

Your pal,

Tommy

PS. Oh, right, the free signed galley. Enter HERE.

 

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