Along the way, they'll have to deal with meddling babysitters, suspicious psychics, a YouTube disaster, and their furious father. To solve this mystery, Maddie, Max, and Theo must rethink what's possible — and make lots of peanut butter and banana sandwiches.
Mysterious Monsters is a humorous six-book early chapter book series full of mystery and adventure. When Marcus Mattigan, star of the popular show “Monstrous Lies with Marcus Mattigan” offers to let his kids, Maddie, Max, and Theo, travel around the country with him as he exposes frauds and fakes, the trio manages to find and capture the world’s most mysterious and elusive creatures – and then to hide them in their increasingly crowded basement. As you can imagine, with each book, the situation gets more and more hairy.
The Mattigan kids don't believe in things that go bump in the night. After all,
their dad is famous for proving such things are impossible. But, when
their long-lost Grandpa Joe shows up with his Mysterious Monsters journal,
begging for help, the siblings find themselves drawn into a search for Bigfoot.
Along the way, they'll have to deal with meddling babysitters, suspicious
psychics, a YouTube disaster, and their furious father. To solve this
mystery, Maddie, Max, and Theo must rethink what's possible — and
make lots of peanut butter and banana sandwiches.
GUEST POST
SUBMISSION DOES NOT MEAN SURRENDER
Dear Writer, thank you for your submission. We’re sorry to say…
Dear Writer, thank you for your submission. We’re sorry to say…
Dear Writer, thank you for your submission. We’re sorry to say…
When I first began submitting work to publishers, nearly twenty years ago now, I seriously considered changing my name to ‘Writer.’ After all, a personalized letter is so much more promising. And for a while I titled every work I wrote, “Your Submission,” if only to forestall the obvious for one more intern-produced, low-tonered, crookedly xeroxed line. Sleeping with my head in my mailbox for six months at a stretch demanded nothing less.
I guess I started collecting rejection letters because I couldn’t think of any better way to organize a record of those to whom I’d submitted. When they filled the first binder, I thought it was amusing in a Wow-this’ll-be-great-to-show-off as-a-lesson-in-perserverence-when-I’m-the-most-famous-author-in-the-world kind of way. When the second reached maximum capacity, I might have begun to doubt exactly when this lesson would be ready to roll out. Then the third binder threatened to explode rain forests-worth of phrases like, “Doesn’t meet our current needs”; “Only the opinion of one house”; “Others may feel differently;” and “Would encourage you to submit elsewhere.” And that inspiring, “Sorry, I want to publish books that matter,” one too.
At a school visit once a student asked me why I keep “all those restraining orders” — a sad, but perhaps uncannily intuitive slip-of-the-tongue. First I eyeballed him a while to make sure he didn’t know more about me than was legally comfortable. When I determined he was cool, I said I lugged them around hoping to induce a hernia so I could file for Workman’s Comp. Which got a snort out of the teacher grading a forty-foot stack of papers in the back. Which is worth something.
It’s funny how, for a while, one’s quaint little notions of “write and wrong” demand following the “rules,” or “Rule,” really:
ABSOLUTELY NO SIMULTANEOUS SUBMISSIONS!
And so one duly submits. But soon enough that seldom-heard mathematical voice muses from its long abandoned brainfold: Hmmm. Six months response time. So…hmm…we could submit this to…let’s see…two places a year. In ten years, we could have twenty readings!
As a good, decent and patriotic citizen, one tries not to hear this numbercrunching, statgeek voice, but it makes a compelling point in the end. And so I will admit to having started to slip the odd extra submission out, together-like. Just two or three per round. At first. You should know it wasn’t easy. The tension was nearly unbearable in the ensuing months. I had to make sure I never had my back to the door while typing at coffee shops. But when neither me nor my wife and child were whacked by publishing industry assassin interns, I maybe, possibly, increased the simultaneity. A bit. Or so.
Let’s just say my head no longer fit in the mailbox and leave it at that.
But fast forward.
One fine day, one fine year or so later, I get a call from a publisher who’d just read a picture book story of mine about life in the refrigerator called, Cheese Louise! And he tells me he loves the book. And that he wants to publish it. And that he’s “been dreaming his whole life of publishing a book with vegetables in it.”
I do not wish to disparage purveyors of sound career advice like, “Do your research,” or “Find out what each publisher is looking for,” or “Target your submissions.” But the fact is, I would not now have my eighteenth picture book on the way, nor the final book in an on-going seven book teen fantasy series that is in development for film, nor my first book of non-fiction. I would not have a novel for adults out and a collection of short stories on the way if my target wasn’t — What’s the word? Oh, yes: Everybody.
Thus, the lesson I have learned: An editor out there is dreaming of you. It’s up to you to find him. Then it’s up to you to find the next one.
My first reading of Cheese Louise! (my first reading of anything I’d ever written) was for one little girl, dragged over to me by an embarrassed Borders’ employee. She picked her nose the whole time I read (the girl not the employee).
It was beautiful.
About the author:
David Michael Slater is an acclaimed author of books for
children, teens, and adults. His work for children includes the picture
books Cheese Louise!, The Bored Book, and The Boy & the
Book, as well as the on-going teen fantasy series, Forbidden Books, which
is being developed for film by a former producer of The Lion
King. David's work for adults includes the hilarious comic-drama, Fun
& Games, which the New York Journal of Books writes "works
brilliantly." David teaches in Reno, Nevada, where he lives with his
wife and son. You can learn more about David and his work at:
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