THE ORIGINS OF FRED & ANTHONY, by Elise Primavera

It was two years into the writing of my novel "The Secret Order of the Gumm Street Girls" that I finally figured out what I really wanted: granite counter-tops in my kitchen, and a three-bedroom vacation condo -- preferably with ski-on ski-off access.

There was only one thing. I had no cash flow.

It got me thinking back to when I used to do school visits and how I would give the kids a choice of what they wanted me to draw.

"A duck, a horse, a dog, or a snake?" I would ask.

"SNAKE!" they would shout.

"Outer space, under water, the desert, or a cemetery?"

"CEMETERY!!!"

"Eating pizza, reading a book, drawing a picture, or watching TV?"

"EATING PIZZA!!!"

I wish I had a nickel for how many times I drew a snake in a cemetery, eating pizza -- I would have at least been able to afford the frozen margarita machine from Williams-Sonoma by now.

Like some weird social experiment, I would change the elements from time to time to see if I would get a different result; kangaroo, manatee, gorilla, or snake? Or the sequence: cemetery, under water, outer space, desert? Or the elements and the sequence: driving a dump trunk, eating pizza, or dancing the polka? But it never made a difference, every single school was eerily the same: a snake, eating pizza, in a cemetery.

As I drew, the kids would continue to yell out instructions, "Draw a ghost! Draw a hangman's noose hanging off a dead tree with a dead guy crawling out of a grave with RIP on it! Draw a hand coming out of a grave dripping blood!"

Even touring the country promoting my heartfelt Christmas book, Auntie Claus, and its sequel, I was dogged by the ease with which I could entertain an auditorium full of kids simply by drawing a bunch of elves making jelly brain Christmas cookies dripping blood.

Suddenly the clouds parted and the angels sang as a veil was lifted from my eyes.

Ghosts! Monsters! Blood & guts! That's what kids REALLY want to read about -- throw in some junk food and BOOM! Bestseller, here I come -- I could almost smell the real leather interior of my new BMW!

In a jiffy I came up with Fred & Anthony Escape from the Netherworld, a story about two boys who want nothing more than to sit in their basement, watching horror movies and eating Pez and Chex-mix. They are constantly coming up with get-rich-quick schemes in order to pay others to do their work for them -- and inadvertently they end up in the Netherworld. Each book is loosely based on one or a combination of a few pop horror flicks -- a never-ending treasure trove of material to draw from, I might add.

But then something strange happened.

The longer I worked on the Fred & Anthony stories the less I felt like working as hard as I had all my life. It was just like in the movie "Night of the Maniac Geek Monsters" where after a near-fatal brush with a Maniac Geek Monster the wise-cracking carnival barker develops an overwhelming urge to buy pocket protectors and watch every single episode of Star Trek. I had spent the last half of my life laboring, one year on a single book, two years on a book, three years on a book?but now I was suddenly hoarding Snickers bars, hiring a personal assistant, and spending three months on an entire book!

What was happening to me? I wondered as I flipped through a Frontgate catalogue. Was I becoming lazy? Materialistic? A slacker?

Not in the least! In devising a way to make some quick dough I had created a series of books which possess magnetic supernatural powers even the most stubborn reluctant reader will be unable to resist -- and in so doing I have found a way to improve the minds of children the world over!

For information regarding school visits from Elise Primavera, please contact Scottie Bowditch at Scottie.bowditch@disney.com