Deborah Halverson's Blog

July is National Hot Dog Month, today is the Fourth of July (arguably the most hot-dog-centric day of the year), and my novel BIG MOUTH is chock full of hot dogs. Sounds to me like a great time for a closer look at this fine American cuisine…

HOT DOGS, TUBE MEAT, WEINIES, FRANKS. Whatever you call ‘em, they’re as All-American as apple pie. But . . . ever wonder what’s actually in the things? Well, if your package of dogs says “with variety meats”, you’re getting something extra special, that’s for sure—like hearts, kidneys, or liver, for instance. Sound like more than you bargained for? Read More…

Writing a novel that celebrates the best and worst of food is pretty easy—just figure out the foods you love and hate the most, then go at it. Okay, maybe that simplifies things a bit, but not all that much, really. My novel BIG MOUTH is filled with my food likes and dislikes, with Shermie voicing my personal menu word-for-word. In the candy department, my list of lifelong favorite candies includes Haribo Gold-Bear gummi bears, just like Shermie. I’m telling you, when it comes to gummies, Haribo makes the yummiest, hands down. Read More…

It’s probably the hot dog that makes me hungry when I see the cover of BIG MOUTH. Then again, maybe it’s the tomatoes, or the bowl of mustard, or the onions, or the long squishy line of mustard, all items that turn a plain old frank into a full-fledged meal. Or maybe, quite simply, it’s the red and yellow title. Looks like a fast food joint logo, doesn’t it?

During my interview with the North County Times this summer, the reporter asked me if I’d used the colors red and yellow in BIG MOUTH strategically. “Absolutely,” I replied. “Sort of….” Read More…

There’s a Mustard Rebellion in my new novel BIG MOUTH: The students of Del Heiny Junior High #13 tag their school with mustard to rebel against the school’s tomato-obsessed sponsor, Del Heiny Ketchup Company. (Hey, if your mascot were changed from the Mighty Marauders to the Proud Plum Tomatoes, you’d have angst, too. At least Del Heiny Jr 13 didn’t get the Big Burpee tomato as a mascot. Life is hard enough without being a Big Burpee.) I invented the Mustard Revolution out of thin air; it was a natural outgrowth of a scenario in which a ketchup company sponsors a school district. But in one of those fantastic “Life Is Stranger Than Fiction” moments, I’ve since learned of a real town that conducts a condiment war of its own: Buñol, Spain, host of the annual La Tomatina, a festival in which tens of thousands of people hurl tomatoes at each other in what has to be the world’s biggest food fight. Read More…

With my novel BIG MOUTH debuting in stores, the time has come to launch the “Me and My Big Mouth” behind-the-book blog series. And I figured the most appropriate way to launch this sneak-peek series would be to interrupt it with a commercial break before it even gets started. After all, BIG MOUTH is full of commercial interruptions. Jingles, ads, TV commercials…they’re all in there.

There’s a logic for this commercialization of literature, I swear. Read More…