Boulevard Books & Cafe Event Postponed

Hi guys - just a quick note to say that my event today at Boulevard Books & Cafe has been postponed due to the snowy weather. It's now next Saturday, January 28. Would love to see you there!

Reading (Argus and Library Lion), book signing (both picture books plus The Dragon of Trelian), and fun activities (coloring! clay! eggs! dragons! yay!)

NEW DATE: Saturday, January 28, 2012

11:00am
Boulevard Books & Cafe LLC

7518 13th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11228-2410

WORD 3rd Annual Holiday Open House - This Weekend!

Come to WORD in Greenpoint, Brooklyn this weekend for their fabulous holiday open house! Authors will be on hand to make book recommendations (their own and their favorites written by other people) and to gift wrap your purchases for you. Oh and of course, signing books, too! :)


I'll be there tomorrow 12/11 at 3pm, but the fun starts today with Sarah MacLean (The Love By the Numbers series), Michael Showalter (Mr. Funny Pants), and Emma Straub (Other People We Married), Michael Buckley (NERDS, The Sisters Grimm), and Fiona Robinson. You can see the full schedule and author lineup here.

Argus review by Violet the Telekinetic Puppy

Violet the Telekinetic Puppy has posted a lovely review of Argus over at Bigfoot Reads. Please go on over and take a look!

Book signing at BookCourt this Sunday!

Come on over to BookCourt in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, this Sunday, April 3! I'll be reading and signing my new picture book ARGUS at 11am. I'd love to see you there!

Interview at Writer Friendly, Bookshelf Approved!

Author extraordinaire Bethany Hegedus interviewed me on her blog! Stop on over to see what I have to say about Argus, writing, M&Ms, and more:

http://bethanyhegedus.blogspot.com/2011/03/inside-writers-studio-with-michelle.html

Birthday / Argus Book Launch Party

Last night's party at WORD for Argus (and my birthday!) was fabulous fun! Thank you, so much, everyone who came in person and those who were there in spirit! I gave my first public reading of the book to the best audience I could ask for, and we had Q&A and cupcakes and champagne and sold out of Arguses before the night was through!

Here are a few pictures for those of you who couldn't be there:

WORD looking all cozy and inviting. Come on in!

Mmmm....delicious celebratory snacks and beverages!

Yay for Argus!

Beginning my first public reading of Argus for a wonderful group.

(I make a lot of faces when I read, apparently.)

Signing books, with some help from my lovely assistant.

I had so much fun. WORD was wonderful, and it was great to see so many friends from past and present! Thank you for giving Argus such a lovely warm welcome and for making my birthday a night to remember.

* * *

You can buy copies of Argus at your favorite real-life or online bookseller. Click here to see where you can get Argus at an independent bookseller near you.

Argus is here!

Hooray! Today is the release date of my new picture book, ARGUS!

It is also my birthday. And it is also the date of my birthday/book launch party at WORD in Brooklyn this evening!

Details:
Birthday/Book Launch Party for Michelle and Argus!
WORD in Greenpoint, Brooklyn
126 Franklin Street
TONIGHT! February 22, 2011
6:30–8:30pm
http://wordbrooklyn.com/event/birthdaylaunch-party-michelle-knudsen

I hope you can come! I will be reading and signing and there will be books and cupcakes and other good things. Children and adults are equally welcome!

More Argus reviews!

The pub date for ARGUS is fast approaching (are you coming to my birthday/book launch party on February 22?) and some more reviews have come in! Excerpts:

"With clean lines and muted colors, the ink-and-watercolor artwork illustrates the story in a most engaging way, magnifying the humor but keeping the absurdity in check. This pleasing picture book is fun for reading aloud." —Booklist

"Wesson’s lanky, gawky watercolor and ink caricatures capture the fragility of childhood, and the understated telling provides space to grapple with one’s own navigation through episodes of unenlightened authority. Children will relate to the drama while enjoying the humor found in both text and illustration." —School Library Journal

And Roxyanne Young just posted a truly lovely review on smartwriters.com.

I shared excerpts from the Publishers Weekly and Kirkus reviews in December; you can see them here.

I'm so happy that reviewers and early readers have been liking Argus so far! Can't wait until he's released into the wider world later this month. :)

Saturday Six

1. Update: 2011 has been keeping me pretty busy so far. I've been teaching my class at Gotham Writers' Workshop, working on final revisions of my Trelian sequel, writing new picture book drafts, thinking about my next big project, doing a little freelance editing, and trying to still find some time to see friends and my nice boyfriend and go for walks and other things. I also got to spend a lovely long weekend at Kindling Words, recharging my writerly energy and wearing a fancy dress to a masquerade ball.

2. Twitter tells me that today is International Save Libraries Day. (Personally, I think every day should be International Save Libraries Day.) You can participate in the library love by going to your local library, joining if you're not already a member, and checking out a book or three. You can also use the #savelibraries hashtag on Twitter to show your support, and write to your local legislators to let them know libraries matter! I've just added a widget to this page in the column at right (thanks, ALA website!) that will help you identify and contact your local legislators.

(Thanks, Phil Bradley, for the library word art!)

3. I'm teaching a free one-hour children's book writing workshop for Gotham Writers' Workshop tomorrow evening, 6–7pm, at McNally Jackson Books in Manhattan. If you don't have Super Bowl party plans, come learn about writing for children, instead!

4. WORD Bookstore in Greenpoint is hosting a birthday/book launch party for my new picture book, Argus! It's February 22 (my birthday!) from 6:30–8:30pm. There will be cupcakes and books and general merriment. Grown-ups and children of all ages are welcome. I hope to see you there! If you're on Facebook, you can RSVP here or here (or both), but no official RSVP required—just come on over!

5. My former teacher (and current all-around person of awesomeness) Cynthia Leitich Smith is on tour for her new novel, Blessed! Check out the full schedule and go get yourself a signed book. NYC events start tomorrow and continue through the week.

6. OK, I think I really only had five things today. So I will use #6 here to remind you that The Dragon of Trelian is out in paperback as of last month, and you should probably go get yourself a copy. Or give it as a Valentine's Day gift to a special young reader (or old reader) in your life. Yay!

Look, it's Argus!

I just realized I never posted the wonderful cover for Argus! Behold:

ARGUS received a lovely starred review from Publishers Weekly, which concluded: "Knudsen (Library Lion) never overplays her hand, but lets the story's laughs unfold naturally from the characters and circumstances. Her grasp of the life of the elementary school classroom is spot-on; this should become another favorite."

And here's an excerpt from the Kirkus review: "Kudos to unflappable Mrs. Henshaw, Knudsen and Wesson . . . naughty Argus will capture attention and hearts." (Mrs. Henshaw is a character in the story.)

ARGUS comes out in stores on February 22. Which is also my birthday. Yay!

In the meantime, you can get yourself a copy of the Dragon of Trelian paperback on January 11!  :)

The Dragon of Trelian paperback! And stuff.

The Dragon of Trelian comes out in paperback on January 11, 2011. It will have an awesome new cover, which looks like this:

In other news, here are some updates about various things:

1. This July I graduated from the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults. Yay! But also :( because I will miss it very much. But mostly :) because it was two years of hard work and it feels really good to have earned my degree. And I have a whole bunch of wonderful writing friends/classmates/kindred spirits who will continue to be very important to me, even if I won't get to see them quite as regularly now.

2. I am experimenting with new designs for the blog. You are looking at this experiment right now. Like it? Don't like it? Let me know what you think.

3. ARGUS comes out on February 22, 2011. February 22 happens to be my birthday. There will quite possibly be a birthday-book launch party in the works very soon. I can't wait to show you guys the cover—Andréa Wesson's artwork is perfect! But, um, I have to wait, at least a little while longer. But as soon as I'm allowed I will post the cover here.

4. Still working hard on Dragon of Trelian sequel revisions. I'm in the third draft now. Stuff is happening, there is danger and magic and intrigue and there are new characters and old characters and someone may die. That is all I am going to say at this time. The pub date will be sometime in Spring 2012.

5. I am in another Gilbert and Sullivan operetta with The Village Light Opera Group! The show is Iolanthe and we just started rehearsals and performances will be the weekend before Thanksgiving and you should all come to see it. Don't worry, I will remind you as it gets closer.

6. I have joined the crew of Through the Tollbooth, which is a fabulous group blog run by VCFA graduates. There are new posts several times a week on writing-related topics, and you should definitely stop in there and take a look!

I think that's all for now. The summer has been a little crazy, but I'm hoping the fall will prove a little less so, and will include a little more time for posting, among other things. Yeah, I know I say things like that a lot, about how I'm hoping to post more often. I know it doesn't always happen, but I remain ever optimistic about these things.  :)

Scott Magoon!

I am VERY EXCITED to announce that the wonderful Scott Magoon will be illustrating my upcoming picture book BIG MEAN MIKE!

That is all. I just wanted to share. :)

p.s. "Upcoming" in the publishing world is of course not meant to imply "soon to be appearing" in any kind of normal-world-time sense. MIKE is currently tentatively scheduled for Fall 2012. But that is okay, because in the meantime there will be THE DRAGON OF TRELIAN PAPERBACK (this fall!) and ARGUS (2011, illustrated by Andréa Wesson!) and THE DRAGON OF TRELIAN SEQUEL (which will one day have a real title!).

BIG MEAN MIKE!

I'm very excited to announce that Candlewick will be publishing another picture book written by ME! It's called BIG MEAN MIKE, and that is all I will tell you at this time. :) Pub date still to be determined.

Candlewick will also be publishing my picture book ARGUS in Spring 2011 and the sequel to THE DRAGON OF TRELIAN...at some point after I have finished writing it.

In other news, I have finally updated my website a bit. You can see it here: www.michelleknudsen.com. I like the new colors; the old version was starting to seem a little boring. I'm still planning to have a real redesign at some point by some talented web designer-type person who is not me, but for now I'm having fun playing around with it myself.

In other other news, I had a wonderful time traveling around upstate NY with S. I hiked mountains and caught my first trout and swam in lakes and floated down rivers in tubes and saw a lot of lovely lovely nature.

Here is a picture of me enjoying nature:


And here is a picture of me enjoying nature on my boyfriend's motorcycle (I don't drive it myself, I just ride on the back. So usually he is sitting there in front of me, but in this case he is not because he is taking the picture.) Yes, those are fishing poles lashed to the back. That is the cool way to travel to fishing spots in the Adirondacks, FYI.


And here is a picture of nature for you to enjoy, without me in it:


Now I am back in Brooklyn, trying not to miss the lovely cool lakes and mountains. I am spending a little too much time looking at the pictures...

Three Weekends of Reading and Signing

This Saturday, November 1, at 1 p.m., I'll be reading and signing Library Lion at Best Bargain Books in Centereach, NY (WalMart Shopping Center, 217 Middle Country Road). Please come by and say hello!

The following weekend, I'll be reading and signing at the Rochester Children's Book Festival on Saturday, November 8. If you're in the area, this is a GREAT event with lots of authors (more than 40!) and fun activities and wonderful people. I've been going to this festival for about five years now, and it's one of my favorite annual events, both because of the author friends I get to see while I am there and because of all the great kids, parents, teachers, librarians, and other folks who come out for it every year.

The weekend after that, I'll be presenting and signing at the Savannah Children's Book Festival on Saturday, November 15. This is another fabulous event with multiple authors, including Marc Brown, Katie Davis, Charles Ghigna, and Mo Willems! Plus, it's in Savannah, where you can get delicious Chick-fil-A and pralines (yum!).

Somehow, in between all of these events I will be keeping up with my reading and writing for school, going over the pages of The Dragon of Trelian ("pages" are when the publisher sends the text all laid out in pages for the first time, in the same typeface and everything that will be in the book, and it's my last chance to make any significant changes), and finally really getting to work on a sequel to TDoT, which so far is just some vague ideas and a page or two of notes.

And sometime soon I will need to work on editorial revisions to my upcoming picture book ARGUS (no pub date yet, but we're looking at 2011 at the earliest, sigh) and hopefully one of the other picture book manuscripts I'm working on will come together into something my editor will want to publish. There are three or four I'm actively working on right now; I will give them some code names for further discussion, because that's fun and will let me avoid having to talk about their actual prospective titles or what they are about:

Picture Books Currently in the Running:

1. Codename "Secret" (has been through multiple drafts, still trying to find the right approach)
   
2. Codename "Baker" (first draft completed; will be included in my next packet for school so I can get some feedback from my MFA advisor)
   
3. Codename "Two" (latest draft currently with my agent for her thoughts)
   
4. Codename "Mike" (revised version currently with my editor)
   
5. Codename "Frank" (first draft in progress)
   

Okay, the fifth one is currently only one sentence long and so obviously has quite a ways to go, but it's a good sentence, and I'm kind of excited about it, so I'm still going to consider it as being in the running.

But speaking of writing...I should get to work. Blogging doesn't really count, I guess.