The problem with telling a bunch of kids that your book characters have blogs…

…is then they actually go and post comments on those blogs (which is great!), but then they (probably rightly so) want your characters to respond to their comments right away! And that just hasn’t been happening. (I created blogs for my characters because their “websites” www.tanktalbottsguidetogirls.com and www.molliesguidetoboys.com are actually mentioned in the book Tank Talbott’s Guide to Girls, and I figured somebody would eventually check out those sites and see if anything was there…so I wanted to put something there.) Having been away for three days, I’m still playing catch-up around here…and today is Preteen’s birthday (tomorrow is his party — I’m taking 8 kids to go see Hoot!). So updating blogs just hasn’t been happening.

This one kid, Ryan, has been posting A LOT on those sites. And then last night he wrote, “Y aint tnk posting?? where is he??? i want some answers!” (Tank offers “advice” in his blog, too.) I knew I wasn’t going to have time to properly respond to all those posts for a couple of days, so I logged on as “Jason,” (another character from the book) and said Tank is grounded. He can’t use his computer. I figure that bought me a couple of days. (Of course, I also went to see Da Vinci Code this afternoon…maybe I should have stayed home and updated blogs and worked on my two proposals…but I really wanted to see the movie. And Teen was going this afternoon with me or without me…so I decided he was going WITH me. The reviews have been lukewarm at best, but we actually liked the movie. It stayed pretty true to the book. Teen says the suspense was more “intellectual suspense,” rather than typical Hollywood suspense, which is probably why the critics didn’t like it. He could be right…) I WILL update those blogs SOON!