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Copyright © 2020 by James Rallison
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Ebook ISBN 9780593087640
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To all of my fans.
Without you, I would be a math teacher dealing with a bunch of apathetic junior high students.
(Sorry if any math teachers are reading this. I’m sure it’s a wonderful job.)
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Introduction: How to Pick the Right Font for Your Book
Chapter 1: The Problem with Having the Name TheOdd1sOut
Chapter 2: Squeaky the Lovelorn Toad
Chapter 3: Wandering in the Desert
Chapter 4: A Chapter for Everyone
Chapter 5: Dog Training
Chapter 6: Your Fears Aren’t That Weird After All
Chapter 7: Spider Pizza
Chapter 8: Why the Robot Uprising Wouldn’t Be That Bad
Chapter 9: Inventions That Should Exist
Chapter 10: Car Problems
Chapter 11: How We Got Our Second Dog, Poppy
Chapter 12: Proof the World Is Flat
Chapter 13: Debunking the Moon Landing
Chapter 14: The Missing Mattress
Chapter 15: Things I’m Supposed to Like but Don’t
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by James Rallison
Introduction
How to Pick the Right Font for Your Book
When I wrote my last book, I knew nothing. But now that I’m a published author, I know much more than nothing. So, I’m going to pass on something I’ve learned.
One day you’ll be sitting at home eating mac ’n’ cheese, when suddenly you’ll get a call from your agent and he’ll say that a publisher wants you to write a book. This will happen to everyone, eventually. It’s not a matter of if. It’s a matter of when. You might have to draw pictures in your book as well, so you should probably learn how to do that too. The book will be similar to all the essays you’ve ever had to write in school, except people will actually want to read it.
What’s the first major book-related decision you’ll have to make? Telling a compelling narrative? Creating an immersive world? Making well-thought-out characters with proper motivation? No, of course not. The very first thing authors have to decide when writing a book is what font they’re going to use. It was a difficult choice for me, but I decided to go with the classic Comic Sans font, as its cartoony style shows I have a fun side and that I never took a class on graphic design.
At first, all the different font choices may seem daunting, but with this easy-to-understand flowchart, you too can pick the right font for any book you need to write.
Whatever font you decide to use, the publishers are going to change it and choose their own. This will be an important lesson for you to learn about working together on projects. Leave hard decisions to the experts, because you don’t know what you’re doing. The important thing is that you made something. You’re creative. Not necessarily good, but creative. Now that you know what font you’re going to use, you can start the simple task of writing your book.
Good luck and happy writing!
Chapter 1
The Problem with Having the Name TheOdd1sOut
Bookstores are fun to visit. They’re sort of like more exclusive libraries, where all of the books are pristine and the librarian lets you talk above a whisper. After my first book had been out for a couple of months, I decided to take a trip to Barnes & Noble and see how my book was doing.
I know—it makes no sense to check on my book like it’s a child I dropped off in day care. I’m not even sure what I was expecting to see.
And really, it would have been sort of weird if I’d gone to the shelf and seen someone flipping through my book, because I don’t want my fans to think I lurk in bookstores, pressuring them into purchasing my merch.
One of the salesclerks saw me looking around and asked if she could help me.
You would think I would have some preplanned phrase ready that would let me discreetly slink off, like, “Nope. I’m just casing the joint.” But at that moment I couldn’t think of anything to say except the truth. “Uh, yeah, I was wondering if you carried the book How to Be Cool and Other Things I Definitely Learned from Growing Up, now available at your local bookstore.”
Until that moment, I’d never realized how asking for that title makes a person sound really insecure and like they’re looking for manuals on popularity. So let me officially apologize to all of you who had to ask salesclerks to help you find my first book.
Hopefully, the clerk looked at you and said, “You don’t need that sort of instruction, honey. I can tell just by looking at you that coolness runs in your veins.”
And you said, “Yeah, you’re completely right,” and then you left the store without purchasing my book.
Hopefully that’s how it went down for you, but I was stuck in the store, a twenty-two-year-old college dropout asking for help on my coolness, and I couldn’t even explain that I’d written the book because that would make me look even stranger.
The lady said, “I’ll check the computer.” (Which, by the way, clearly meant she had no idea where my book was. She was just letting it wander around the store without any supervision.)
She went to her desk, typed for a few seconds, and then said, “I have a book by”—she paused like you do when you come to a puzzling name—“The Odd Is Out.”
And I said, “Yep, that’s it.” Because we noncool people don’t correct salesclerks.
She showed me where the book was and I stared at it until she left. That’s the end of the story.
But the point is, TheOdd1sOut is a name that’s part of who I am now. Really, it’s crazy to think that a title for a webcomic I made as a teenager with characters that I don’t draw anymore will probably follow me for the rest of my life. Although I guess there are worse things to be permanently stuck with when you’re sixteen.
When I chose the name for my channel, I thought the phrase “the odd ones out” was so common that everyone would still understand “TheOdd1sOut” even with the number. But people get it wrong all the time.
Okay, I know the number “1” sort of looks like an “I” and that’s confusing, but I feel like people should really be able to differentiate between the two symbols.
This is a number one: 1
Notice its slanting top, sort of like an unfinished arrow or a drunk “T.”
This is the letter “I.”
It’s a straight line. It’s not wearing anything on top of its head. When it’s a baby, it’s got a balloon hovering above it.
Besides, who would ever call themselves “The Odd Is Out”? What does that even mean? It sounds like someone made a list of numbers and then made every number that wasn’t divisible by two go outside.
I’ve also heard my channel pronounced “the odd one sout.” Which, in case you’re wondering, no, “
sout” is not a word. I’ve seen “the odd ones scout.” Nope. Even though I was in Boy Scouts when I was younger, that doesn’t mean I’d base my whole channel on it.
You know why I put a “1” in my name? It’s because the number would literally be “the odd one out” in a sea of letters. It was supposed to be a poetic and artistic critique on our society, and I’m just kidding. I chose that name because the name “the odd ones out” was already taken, so I improvised. But we can just tell everyone that the name is clever and layered with meaning. That should make me look good in front of salesclerks. And if you’re ever naming anything like comic strips or channels or children, maybe run that name by a few people first.
I may have just saved your child some very bad days at school. You’re welcome.
But whatever your name is (or whatever name your parents stuck you with), wear it with pride. You are the only one of you. Which makes you odd, in a good way!
Chapter 2
Squeaky the Lovelorn Toad
There are three seasons in Arizona: hot, really hot, and a short break called monsoon season.
Monsoon season is great because it comes at the end of July, when the sun has been baking everything for four months. So Arizonians welcome the rain, even if it does come with a lot of lightning and in an almost malevolent downpour that seems like it’s trying to drown you.
Every year the water floods roads, revives weeds, and unearths a bunch of toads who show up in search of toad partners. Yep, all of a sudden the desert turns into the happening singles spot for toads.
If you’re walking around outside in the evening, sometimes you’ll mistake a toad for a rock on the sidewalk until you almost step on it and it hops angrily away. One time I was out with my twin sister, Faith, and my older brother, Luke, and we found a toad that didn’t hop away fast enough to escape from us. Naturally, we decided to pick it up and bring it home.
We named the toad Squeaky and put him in a terrarium, or, more accurately, an oversize bucket with some leaves and twigs. We instantly loved Squeaky, even though he spent every second of his time trying to get away from us. In retrospect, I can’t blame him. He’d been outside, checking out the toad scene, a bachelor on the lookout for love, and he’d ended up with us—three gigantic elementary school kids who were hoping it was possible to train toads like you did dogs.
He was very bad at sitting and staying, by the way, and also refused to play with the Barbie accessories Faith so generously supplied him with.
One thing we learned about toads is that they don’t make the classic “ribbit” sound that every pre-K book says they make. Toads can make a wailing sound like a large annoyed balloon being deflated. If you don’t believe me, look up a video called “Funny Screaming Frog Compilation.” Squeaky was a toad, not a frog, but their species are so close, I bet even they get themselves confused.
Anyway, the noise that came out of Squeaky’s toad vocal cords sounded like all those frogs combined. If you don’t have access to a computer, I will try my best to visually describe what this thing sounded like:
Which is why the name Squeaky suited him.
Now before you go thinking that Squeaky was only making these sounds because he was in excruciating pain, I want to say that we took good care of him. We caught crickets for Squeaky to eat. (We were experienced at catching unsuspecting insects of all kinds.) And Squeaky happily gobbled up those bugs in between ramming his head into the side of the bucket in an attempt to flee from us.
After a couple of hours of hanging out with Squeaky, Luke brought the bucket/terrarium into the house because we were dumb kids and didn’t think that our actions had consequences. We got bored watching an anxiety-ridden toad, and we went off to do other educational things, like play RuneScape.
Meanwhile Squeaky kept trying his hardest to escape. I’m not sure how many times Squeaky head-butted the side of the bucket before it occurred to him that he ought to try jumping vertically instead of horizontally, but eventually he had that breakthrough moment.
He finally succeeded in escaping his bucket. I’m sure he thought he was just a hop, skip, and jump away from finding the toad of his dreams. Unfortunately, he now had to escape a much bigger cage called “Our House.”
As soon as we realized Squeaky was missing, we went into “small defenseless animal is loose in our house” mode. We siblings had dealt with this sort of thing before with our hamsters. We put the dog, Georgie, and the cats outside, and we made sure no one sat on the couch without checking under the cushions to make sure it was toad-less first.
We looked around for a while, but our house had lots of potential toad hiding places, and for some reason, Squeaky decided not to make a single squeak while we were searching for him. Finally, we had to break the news to Mom.
So then Mom went into Mom mode, which meant she made us pick up and straighten stuff in the hope that if the house was cleaner, we’d have an easier time spotting a rogue toad. Mom mode frequently involved making us clean.
How Moms Make Kids Solve Problems
Kids lose something:
make them clean
Kids say they’re bored:
make them clean
Kids are fighting:
make them clean
We spent the rest of the day straightening the house and searching for Squeaky, while Mom panicked that if we didn’t find him soon, the house would contain a huge rotting toad carcass somewhere. Thanks for caring, Mom.
Finally, Faith and I found Squeaky trying to eke out a living behind the computer desk. (We may have been playing RuneScape, instead of cleaning, when this happened.) There were enough bugs in that corner for the spiders to live on, so who knows, maybe Squeaky could have pulled it off and started a new life there. A lonely life, but a new one.
Then Mom told us that we had to set Squeaky free.
Before anyone points out that the last time we let a pet-that-we’d-kept-for-a-day go free, freedom didn’t turn out very well—we were pretty sure Squeaky was too big and too unappetizing for a bird to carry off. We put him down in the park by our house, and he hopped off into the sunset, screaming toad curses at us.
He probably found a toad girlfriend and had a really good story to tell her.
Plus, he lived out the rest of his toad life knowing that he would live on forever in our hearts.
All in all, having a pet toad was an educational experience, despite the fact that I still don’t know much about toads. I still have so many questions. What does a toad sound like when it’s not in distress? Why do they look so angry all the time? Do toads even have natural predators? I mean, besides eight-year-olds?
Anyway, what you should learn from this story is that finding love will often take you to places you hadn’t expected—although hopefully not into strangers’ houses, hiding behind their furniture. Whatever the case, don’t give up on your dreams. Eventually, you too will find your way to that metaphorical sunny park and the toad who is waiting to love you.
Chapter 3
Wandering in the Desert
Adults seem to love nature more than kids do. When I was a child, my parents would always tell me to go outside. Unfortunately, as we’ve already established, in Arizona it was always hot in the outside. And why should I go anywhere else when I could enjoy all the benefits of the outside world on my computer screen? I could see everything nature had to offer while mining virtual diamonds. But my parents kept insisting that I go outside and play with things that could actually hurt me, like soccer balls, bikes, and older brothers.
My parents also frequently made us all go on hikes. At best, a hike is like this: You get up early in the morning, drive far away to somewhere that isn’t inhabited by people—us
ually because it is all uphill—and then you walk around appreciating nature while trudging up an incline.
The first time my dad told us we were going hiking, I asked,
Climb.
You have to be careful with the words you use while talking to kids because they’re impressionable. I thought we were going rock-climbing, and I was very excited. In retrospect, climbing an entire mountain that way would have been problematic, but that’s not the sort of thing I thought of when I was six.
We drove to the Superstition Mountains and began wandering up a dirt trail. I thought we were heading to the place where we would start climbing, but we just kept walking and walking and walking.
After a long time, we reached the top of the mountain. The view was breathtaking and I could see farther than I ever had before. But I didn’t get to put on a harness and climb rocks. So that turned out to be a disappointing day.
One time when my family was hiking up South Mountain, we took Georgie with us. We figured, she’s a dog and usually likes walks, so she’ll have fun with us. But apparently padding along on a sidewalk is different from lumbering up a trail, and halfway through the hike, she decided she was done with nature. She sat down and refused to go on. We had to carry her the rest of the way like she was Cleopatra and we were her slaves.
We saw other hikers who brought their dogs, but we were the only ones carrying ours.
After that, we left her at home when we went on hikes. I thought about trying the same tactic myself but figured it wouldn’t work.
The Odd 1s Out--The First Sequel Page 1