Hey, That Was My Idea!
The only middle grade I've ever read has been Judy Blume's books, as far as I can remember. So last week I got Meg Cabot's Allie Finkle's Rules for Girls--Moving Day. It's really cute and written in the same funny way I'm planning on writing mine.
The thing that stinks is that a lot of the ideas in that book, are ones I had, too. I wanted my character to be obssessed with scary movies...I wanted her to be really into baseball...and I wanted her to have to deal with moving and going to a new school. That last one I'm still going to do. But I was just a little bummed.
Speaking of this book, something really freaky happened to me last Friday. A few weeks ago when I first had an idea of a character for my middle grade book, I went to Barnes and Noble and picked out this same book. I carried it around for quite a while then ended up putting it back. Last Friday I got the book in the mail. No invoice, no packing slip, no nothin'. It was sent from Scholastic Books and that's all the information I have.
I emailed the company to see if they can tell me who ordered it (because I sure didn't!). It's so strange. I haven't heard back yet.
Comments
When it comes to ideas appearing in other books, that happens to me all the time. I come up with a great idea and a week later I see elements of it in other books.
And yeah, isn't it scary how there are some coincidences that are really, really weird? A few years back, I was writing a vampire story about a girl who was from Washington state and had moved down to Phoenix, Arizona, but was just coming back up to live in Seattle. Then Twilight came out.
It was a little odd. Not unbelievable, but a little odd.
That is strange though.