As I may have mentioned before, I am a fan of Maureen Johnson. She’s smart, funny, and just plain weird. But I was not always a fan!
The first time I heard of her was many years ago, on a musical theatre message board I frequent. If you did not know, Maureen Johnson is the name of a character in the musical Rent, and someone posted an article where Maureen Johnson (the author) mentioned that she was sick of people asking her if she was the “real” Maureen Johnson from Rent. I remember thinking, “God, she must talk to a lot of crazy people” and then forgetting about her.
This is Maureen Johnson from Rent, so I guess you can see where she'd fight the comparison.
Years later, I started using Twitter a lot. I noticed that many people I followed were frequently retweeting things from @maureenjohnson, so I checked her out. “Oh, it’s that author,” I thought. “She’s pretty funny, I guess I’ll follow her too.” I followed her for awhile and enjoyed her tweets so much that I thought I had better read one of her books.
I went to the library and picked one more or less randomly. I chose Devilish.
Devilish by Maureen Johnson
I chose poorly. Devilish was fine, or whatever, but it didn’t really grab me. I didn’t like it nearly as much as I liked her Twitter. So I moved on. I kept reading MJ’s tweets, but none of her books. Then this summer I went to the ALA conference and got a signed ARC of The Name of the Star, which I reviewed here, but in a nutshell: I adored it. Then I went back and read Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes: also great. I was on the library waiting list for The Last Little Blue Envelope all summer and just got it last week. I read it and thoroughly enjoyed it. I liked it even more than I liked Thirteen Little Blue Envelopes.
MJ has also been tweeting a lot to promote The Name of the Star, which comes out soon. Everyone who pre-orders it from Books of Wonder gets a signed copy, a personal thank-you tweet, and these custom refrigerator poetry magnets:
Click to view the larger version. So cool!
So she’s been tweeting about this a ton, and I’ve been hemming and hawing. I mean, I already own a signed copy of this book. But I really wanted those fridge magnets. So cool! And I can always give my second copy of Name of the Star to someone else, since it was a really great book. Yesterday I broke down and pre-ordered it.
You're welcome, Maureen
And Maureen Johnson thanked me on Twitter!
Anyway, I guess the point of this entry is: if you are good at Twitter, I will probably buy your book.
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