Karen Sandler

Author: Karen Sandler

  • Unusual Hobbies

    If you’ve read the bio on my website, you know I wanted to be a writer from a pretty young age. But like everyone else, I dabbled in the occasional odd hobby–troll doll fashion shows in elementary school, community choir in my late teens, and in my 20s, cartooning.

    Cartooning has at least a connection to writing–you have to pen that witty caption. But you should also have at least a rudimentary talent for drawing. Which I had…with an emphasis on the rudimentary. The cartooning class I took through UCLA Extension improved my skills somewhat. And I did win the class contest–one of my cartoons earned me $100 and publication in a business magazine.

    But my drawing skills never advanced beyond the so-so. And my caption-writing left much to be desired. I went more for plays on words and sight gags, like in this example:

    In case you can’t make them out, those little marks on the steps are eyes, which are staring. Stairs…stares. Get it?

    Yeah, I know. If I have to work so hard to explain it, maybe I should have gone back to the drawing board.

    Here’s another one along the same lines:

    In this concept, there was the advantage of circles being dead easy to draw. The fact that it’s not particularly funny is besides the point.

    I’m actually rather proud of this next one:

    However, if you never took upper level probability & statistics and therefore never learned about the poisson distribution and you have no idea what the French word “poisson” means in English…you probably won’t get it. Not to mention your eyes have likely crossed and glazed over by now.

    Below are a few more from my illustrious collection. You’ll have to work out what they mean on your own. I apologize if that effort gives you a headache, or impacts your future enjoyment of cartoons.

    The last one needs a caption. It might have had one once and it jumped off the page out of embarrassment. So if you have any ideas for a really snappy caption, please send it along. I’ll include it in a future post.

    I’d also be interested in hearing about your unusual hobbies. Feel free to share in the comments.

  • The Glamorous Life of an Author…Heh

    I roll out of bed at 10am and eat a few bonbons. My special assistant dresses me in my Gucci (I’m old school) and arranges my coiffure, then brings me a few delicacies for breakfast. After I’ve finished my pot of Kopi Luwak coffee, I stroll into my office and wait for inspiration. If inspiration hasn’t arrived by, say, 2pm, I go back to bed.

    Well, I kind of wish I could do it that way (although, what the heck is a bonbon anyway?). In reality, I have to be up by 7:30am so I can feed my diabetic cat and give him his insulin injection. I drag on a pair of ratty jeans and a T-shirt, stuff my feet into slippers and toddle downstairs. I do often spend a little too much time reading the paper during breakfast (usually a bowl of bran flakes mixed with Honey Nut Cheerios), but I’m generally at my desk by 9am. I don’t wait around for inspiration because that brat sleeps later than I do. I have to gut it out through whatever scene I’m currently working on by sheer sweat and perseverance until that prissy Miss Inpira shows up.

    No glitzy coast-to-coast book tours (at least not yet), although I did attend an Society of Childrens Book Writers & Illustrators conference last month. Got a deluxe buffet breakfast at the Best Western (complete with stale scones), some kick-ass BBQ, and a killer Thai dinner with my editor:

    My editor, Stacy Whitman, and I pose in the Best Western lobby just before the triffid behind me drags me off. Barely escaped. Pretty harrowing.

    I’m sure there are authors living actually glamorous lives. In fact I know one of them personally. But although he lives in a pretty swanky house and does those book tours, he works his butt off when it comes to writing the books that his fans love. He’s not twiddling his thumbs in expectation that Mr. Inspiro will show up any minute and whisper into his ear every word of the scene he has to write.

    Alas. Would that it were so.

    But if anyone wants to send me a box of bonbons, my P.O. Box is on my website: www.karensandler.net.

  • Living with Critters

    I live in a semi-rural area, so close encounters of the wild animal kind are pretty common. There was the skunk hanging out under our back deck who got rousted by the neighbor’s dachshund. El stinko for several days in the yard and in the house. Then the deer in the front yard, looking like live lawn ornaments before they dashed off to safety. I’ve seen possum crossing our road late at night. Then there was the time a red-tailed hawk perched in one of our oak trees plucked its prey and sent a shower of feathers down on me.

    The most entertaining (and often annoying) characters sharing my neighborhood are the raccoons. They are bold, greedy and far bigger than you think they ought to be. They swagger across our property as if they own the place.

    We used to leave our cat door open all night and we’d end up with a ransacked garage–cat food bags and cereal boxes ripped open. One of them discovered the cat door that led from the garage to the house. It scarfed all the cat food in the downstairs bathroom and left muddy raccoon footprints all over the floor. When we switched to a door that was supposed to open only to my cats wearing their magnet collars, the raccoons figured out how to foil the lock. No more cat door.

    One of my three cats still spends his days outdoors, so started leaving dry food out for him when I was away. I figured out pretty quick that although it was safe enough during daylight hours, the moment it got dark it was fair game for the raccoons. They’d wipe it out and avail themselves of the water bowl for their toilette. I learned my lesson–no more leaving that fancy, very expensive dry food out. I didn’t need to feed the neighborhood.

    Then last night, I noticed Zak (the kitty who appears in my masthead) staring out the sliding glass door into the backyard. He has a skinny little striped tail and it was puffed up as big as a raccoon’s. I looked outside and there was a bandit, complete with mask, peering in at me. I could swear the nervy little bugger was saying to me, “Hey, lady, where’s the buffet?”

    The critter ran off when I got closer to the door, but he kept coming back to stare at me. Maybe he was willing me to put another bowl of crunchies outside. I guess hope springs eternal.

  • 7th Grade Memories

    Back when I first entered kindergarten, my mom did mild bit of forgery on my hospital birth certificate to get me into school a year early. So, I was 4 when I started kindergarten, 5 starting 1st grade, 6 at the beginning of 2nd, etc. I was a smarty-pants, so I did pretty well, spending all 7 years of K-6 in the same school.

    Karen Kindergarten

    If you’ve done the math with me, you’ll know I started 7th grade as an 11-year-old. Which wouldn’t be so bad if I’d gone on to the local junior high with my friends. But the summer between 6th and 7th, we moved from Los Angeles County to the San Bernardino Mountains. I would have to start those most agonizing school years, junior high, in a new school where I knew no one. Even worse, the school I would be attending was a diabolical experiment called a “junior-senior” high school (7th through 12th grade). Okay, it wasn’t diabolical. There weren’t enough students for two schools. But still, that was a lot for a nerdette like me to face.

    I was positively geekish as an 11-year-old. I wasn’t too great at personal hygiene, knew zilch about makeup, was awkward and a little pudgy. I remember taking a stab at shaving my legs one morning before school, except I only had time to shave one. So I went to school with one hairy and one not.

    Karen 1966_cr

    So, not any kind of popular. Rubbing elbows with a bunch of cruel, haughty 13- and 14-year-old 8th graders was enough of a challenge, let alone those lofty high schoolers.

    Luckily, the older ones ignored me as being beyond notice. The teachers adored me, since I was a Good Student. And there were a few students in my age group, the ones who walk with the angels, who were kind to me, even if they weren’t actually friends. A couple of the nicest were cheerleaders, so you can dump that stereotype.

    But there were the mean girls, as there always are. They took such delight in embarrassing and belittling me. They were definitely not cheerleaders. There was nothing cheerful about them.

    I sometimes wonder what happened to my tormentors. Maybe they married ugly guys and got fat. Maybe they had an epiphany and realized the error of their ways and were nice forevermore. Ah, I can dream.

    So, worst high school memory–looking forward for weeks to the field trip to Disneyland, then getting hit with a horrible flu the day we were supposed to go. I went anyway and was miserable the whole time.

    Best high school memory–dissecting a mink (long dead and preserved in formaldehyde–and no, today I would never buy/wear an animal fur of any kind). My lab partner and I decided to focus on the skeleton. When it took too long to cut the meat off the bones, I took the leg home to work on it there. Mom got the great idea to boil it on the stove in water. We boiled and boiled without effect until Mom got the idea to add bleach to the water. Extremely dangerous, but boy, did it work. Nothing but bones left after just a minute or so. Don’t try this at home!

    Long story short, I was able to reconstruct a beautiful mink leg skeleton model (okay, there were some teeny tiny bones I threw away cuz I didn’t know where they went). My biology teacher was so enamored with the skeletal leg, he confiscated it.