WARNING: The questions and answers may contain spoilers. If you plan to read the book, do so before reading the FAQ.
Question: Why did you rerelease this book?
Answer: This can best be summed up by my Author's Note included in the new edition.
Question: What is different about the new version and the 2002 version?
Answer: The cover is new. My good friend Kris took the photo and edited it for me. She is a Photoshop genius! The real life quotes are gone. It's the same story, but the writing is tighter, crisper, and more professional. A few scenes are added, expanded, or cut down. But it's basically the same book, just edited better. In 2002, I was a rookie writer. I had been writing for years, but as far as editing and producing a "real" book, I was a rookie. Therefore, I made some rookie mistakes in both proofreading and storytelling. The 2011 author in me could read it and see that instead of a final draft, it was actually a very polished first or second draft. Now it's a real final draft.
Another new aspect to this version is that I formatted it myself. This means that I was not limited on the interior design the way I was before when someone else formatted it for me. I was able to use the same fonts for handwriting and graffiti that I used in Abby's Camp Days and section it off into four parts. Hopefully, readers will find these changes fun.
Question: Why are some of the chapters two pages long and other go for like sixty pages?
Answer: This is probably the number one question people ask me about Buddy Check. When I first wrote the book, there were no chapters; it just went on and on with page breaks. Then, when I started to block it off into sections for chapters, I had trouble remembering what day was what in the storyline. At first, I tried to make each day a chapter, but as I was reading, I suddenly got this nastalgia for camp and realized that I felt that way because at camp, whole weeks feel like one big continuous time block. At home, our lives are neatly sectioned off into twenty-four-hour periods, but at camp it feels as if time moves differently and more fluidly. That is why I decided to make the chapters when Kate is at home one per day while the ones that take place at camp are long chapters for the whole week. I thought this device would be a cool, artsy way to help readers get into the camp mindset. After many comments from readers, though, I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that I am the only fan of this and that people much preferred the consistent, standard chapters of Super Counselors better.
Question: What is up with the quotes between the sections? At first I thought they were quotations of the characters in the book, but the names don't match.
Answer: The quotes are things that my real camp friends said either at camp or about camp. Originally, I wrote the book just for fun (and therapy!), but after a couple of friends read it and said it gave them a "camp fix," I decided to publish it for real. I left the quotes in so that my camp buddies would be able to be part of the book. They are the people who gave me my camp experience, so without them, this book would not exist, so I figured they deserved some mention.
Question: Why are some of the chapters two pages long and other go for like sixty pages?
Answer: (In the 2002 version, now out of print)This is probably the number one question people ask me about Buddy Check. When I first wrote the book, there were no chapters; it just went on and on with page breaks. Then, when I started to block it off into sections for chapters, I had trouble remembering what day was what in the storyline. At first, I tried to make each day a chapter, but as I was reading, I suddenly got this nastalgia for camp and realized that I felt that way because at camp, whole weeks feel like one big continuous time block. At home, our lives are neatly sectioned off into twenty-four-hour periods, but at camp it feels as if time moves differently and more fluidly. That is why I decided to make the chapters when Kate is at home one per day while the ones that take place at camp are long chapters for the whole week. I thought this device would be a cool, artsy way to help readers get into the camp mindset. After many comments from readers, though, I have come to the unfortunate conclusion that I am the only fan of this and that people much preferred the consistent, standard chapters of Super Counselors better.
Question: Is Kate pretty or what? She says she's not happy with her looks and would rather look like Julie since all the guys like Julie, but it seems to me that all the guys actually like Kate and think she's pretty.
Answer: If you know any teenage girl, this wouldn't be the contradiction it seems to be. I would estimate from my own experience and all the time I've spent working with teenage girls that 80% have low self esteem as far as their looks go. Even if they like everything else about themselves, most teenage girls look in the mirror and go, "Yuck!" Another very healthy 10% can look in the mirror and be happy with whatever they see, and the final 10% think they are the most beautiful creatures in the universe, even if they aren't, kind of the opposite of the 80% who underestimate themselves. Kate does not think she is pretty because she is a teenage girl, and most teenage girls don't like their looks, even the most beautiful of them. That being said, she's not some perfect ten supermodel either. She's probably your all-American, girl-next-door, above average looking girl.
Question: When Kate was talking to Ben about how she's lonely and wants a boyfriend, why didn't he just smack her over the head and say, "Hey, duh, how about me?"
Answer: Ben knew that she had her gigundo crush on Cord, and since he loved her and is a noble person, he wanted her to be happy. He thought Cord would make her the most happy. Ben also wasn't sure if a relationship between the two of them would stand a chance of working out since they would be at different colleges and were so far apart in age and had such a history. He'd been a camp staff member for almost ten years, long enough to see the aftermath of several Camp Romances, and I'm sure he was a bit gunshy.
Question: How does Dane get his transcript from Warner back so quickly? It took me forever to get my grades back when I went home for vacation, but he arrives with his a couple of hours after his last final exam.
Answer: Dane answers this question himself in Super Counselors:
"Also, Kurt said that all the grades are posted on the internet somehow, so you can work really hard the first couple of weeks, log in to your grade postings, print the good grades you have so far, and then sluff off the rest of the semester because you already have a printed report card saying you did well to show to your parents."
So, I guess the real question would be, when is Dane's transcript from?
Question: Do Kate and Ben get married? Please say yes!
Answer: Unfortunately, that is a spoiler for the Abby's Camp Days series. Kate does get married in the seventh book, Camp Wedding, but I can't tell you to who because it would ruin the suspense.
Question: Do Julie and Steve break up after Buddy Check or do they somehow find a way to work things out?
Answer: I debated whether or not to answer this question, as it is sort of a spoiler for Abby's Camp Days but in the end, I decided that the ending to Buddy Check made it pretty clear that that relationship was doomed as soon as Julie started college and had a plethora of cute boys to be interested in. Kate knows it, Julie knows it, Ben's predicted it, it's just Steve who we don't know if he knows it yet or not.
Question: Why does Ben not live in the cabin by the lake with the rest of the staff guys? In all of the books, all the guys seem to live down there but not Ben.
Answer: Ben has worked there longer than any of the other staff members. Christian and Mark were counselors when Ben started lifeguarding there, but not staff members who would need a cabin. Cord and Tony were campers. He had his cabin BEFORE they all started working there and Christian and Mark decided to fix up the other cabin on the lake for a staff hangout. By the time they did this, Ben really liked his cabin and stayed there. Originally, in early drafts, Ben had a roommate, another staff member who lived in his cabin instead of the lakeside one, and they were more evenly spread out. But that character got combined with one of the less-rounded counselor characters to become the Steve character, so Ben ended up with his cabin to himself.
How are Steve and Ben cousins?
The family tree goes like this: James and Mable McAllery had four kids: Ed McAllery, Joe McAllery, Elizabeth McAllery, and Sara McAllery. Uncle Ed (who is referenced in the books) is a bachelor; Joe married Emily and had Will (who is married and has a daughter Danielle), Rebecca, Ben, and Luke; Elizabeth married Karl Koski and had Scott and Steve; Sara married somebody and had Allison and Clarissa (who are mentioned at the beginning of SC by Steve).