Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Only One More Day

You have only one more day to try to to win a copy of Club Earth.

Both Club Earth and the earlier My Life Among the Aliens are among my suburban books, as I might have said here earlier. (You can't possibly expect me to remember everything I've said here. We're talking over 1,300 posts.) All my work draws heavily on who I am, and these books draw on Gail the suburban mother.

Thus in Club Earth you'll find a chapter about an alien arriving on earth thinking he's going to summer camp, because my kids did summer camp. An alien gets hauled along to a father/child campout that is modeled on Indian Guides, as it was called when my family took part for around six years. (The pig roast in that chapter is pretty much what I was told happened.) There's a chapter on alien traveling salespeople helping kids out with school fundraisers because my kids once took part in five fundraisers in a two-month period. The kids in Club Earth have hamsters because the Gauthier boys, being allergic to cats and dogs, had a hamster and an Egyptian spiny mouse. In fact, most of this book was written on a computer set up next to their cages.

So, one more day, folks, to have a chance at winning stories of all that domestic bliss.

2 comments:

samriddleburger said...

What? You're the MOTHER from "Aliens?"

Somehow that never occured to me. You got Will's voice so perfectly, I assumed you were channeling kid the whole time.

But now I see it, especially the birthday party. Will's mother worked so hard on it! And the rope ladder! And the muffins!

Gail Gauthier said...

If being the mother from Aliens is a good thing, than yes.

Yes, that birthday party was for real. As were the rope ladders.

My editor said I needed another chapter at the end of the book. I thought, Where's that going to come from? I looked out the office window and saw the strange little treehouses my husband had built with the kids. So I said, "Hey, I'll do a chapter about treehouses." The treehouses had rope ladders.

"And the muffins!" Yeah, well, I kind of had a reputation when the kids were small. If I remember correctly, Club Earth begins with a zuccini bran pizza.