Long time no post!

Hey, so what's been going on with you the past five months or so?

Here's what's been going on with me:

Big Mean Mike has been nominated for several children's choice awards, was a finalist for the Children's Book Council's Children's Choice Award, and won the 2013 Irma Black Award!

I finished a major revision of my next book, which is a dark and funny young adult novel that will be published by Candlewick Press in fall 2014. I'll share the title and other info when it's final ... stay tuned!

I have news about my next novel (the one that will come out next after the YA above) that I can't quite share yet, but I will post it as soon as I can!

I'm working on some new picture books too, but it's way too early to tell you anything about those yet. Sorry! :)

Also, I will be at a bunch of events over the next few months — please check out the list in the "book signings and events" sidebar at right. If you can come to any of those, it would be great to see you!

What else?

If you haven't yet liked my Facebook page, please do! 

And if you can't make any of my upcoming book signings but would still like a signed book, see my website for instructions for how to get one.

I hope you're having a good summer, and that 2013 has been nice to you so far. Looking forward to posting more often in the months to come and sharing more news as I can! 

M

Nebulas and Andre Norton Award

Now through February 15, members of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) can nominate books for the 2009 Nebulas, including The Andre Norton Award for Outstanding Young Adult Science Fiction or Fantasy Book. Fellow fantasy author Janni Lee Simner has a great post about this on her blog:

http://janni.livejournal.com/617575.html

I would love to encourage any SFWA members who might see this to nominate books for the Norton Award! I am behind in my 2009 reading, still catching up on books published in the last few years, but so far can definitely recommend Janni's Bones of Faerie, Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me, and Julie Berry's The Amaranth Enchantment, all of which are eligible this year. I am in the middle of Kristin Cashore's Graceling and loving it, and I think that one might also be eligible because of the transition rules in effect this year which allow some books to be included if they were published after July 1, 2008. I'm not 100% sure if that applies to the Norton books as well as the "regular" Nebulas, though. BUT: books for younger readers can be nominated for the Nebula award as well as for the YA-specific Norton.

The Dragon of Trelian is also eligible this year, just so you know. :)

Other books I'm hoping to read before nominations close:
The Dragon Heir by Cinda Williams Chima
Fire by Kristin Cashore (sequel to Graceling)
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
Sacred Scars by Kathleen Duey

I know there are lots more I'm not thinking of at this moment. Your suggestions and recommendations are welcome and encouraged!

July 2008 Update

So clearly this posting-at-least-once-a-week thing is not exactly happening. Maybe I should be shooting for once a month. Ah, well. It's not like blogging is the only thing I'm not doing as much of as I would like. (Hello, writing, reading, exercising, cleaning my apartment, spending quality time with friends...)

I'm a little over a week into re-entry after my first residency at The Vermont College of Fine Arts. It was everything everyone said it would be, and more. Met some wonderful people (you can visit some of them online - see the list of VCFA peeps in the right-hand column); attended excellent lectures by faculty, visiting writers, and graduating students; received wise and helpful guidance from my awesome workshop group on two picture book stories I have been struggling with; enjoyed the (mostly) lovely Vermont weather; and was introduced to the addictive anagram game Snatch, which promises to haunt me for years to come. I was also assigned my advisor for the semester: Uma Krishnaswami! I am so looking forward to working with her for the next several months. Now I just have to actually stay on top of all that work... I've got 20 to 40 pages of creative work and two critical essays due August 12, not to mention tons and tons of reading.

I'm starting a new middle-grade novel for my semester project, and will be working on some new picture books as well. I'm also hoping to continue work on two other novels in my, uh, spare time (hahahahahahahahahaha)—a sequel to The Dragon of Trelian and a new, unrelated fantasy novel. Wish me luck. Wish me lots and lots and lots and lots of luck. Please.

In other news...Library Lion has been nominated for another state book award! It's the 2009 Nevada Young Readers' Award in the picture book category. Hooray!

And...I sold another picture book to Candlewick! It feels too early to share details, but I am very excited. I will post more about this when it feels appropriate.

So, with everything I've got on my plate, I have no idea how often I'll be able to post, but I'll try to pop my head up whenever I can. Hope everyone out there is having a good summer and doing fun things and enjoying life in general. :)

There Can Be Only One

At least, that's what I'm trying to believe with regard to the super-creepy spider that was in my bathroom this morning. He looked like he'd escaped from a National Geographic special: big, black, jumpy, fast, and possibly furry, although I certainly didn't touch him to find out. He almost got away, too, which would have been terrible...knowing he was in there, somewhere, but not knowing exactly where or when he'd pop out at me again...ugh.

A friend recently suggested that maybe the universe is trying to tell me something with all the spider encounters. And I thought, well, yeah, the universe is trying to tell me that it is vast and full of spiders. But I've been trying to think of other, more positive, possible meanings. For example, each time I face down one of these eight-legged beasties, I can't help but think about how far I've come in the spider-managing department. There was a time when I would have been paralyzed with fear, unable to even imagine doing the Dixie Cup catch-and-release thing. And so each time I handle a spider in my current still-phobic-but-much-better-able-to-deal state, I try to feel good about it. It's useful to remember that you really can change and improve, and that things that are hard now will not always be hard, and that lots of obstacles that seem insurmountable are actually things you might be able to get past at some point. Okay, maybe I'm getting a little carried away with the extrapolating, but hey, ya gotta take inspiration where you can find it, right? And if I can find something inspirational about spiders, by golly, that's pretty amazing. Well, to me, anyway. :)

ANYWAY. I really never intended for this to become such a spider-centric blog. Sadly, there just happens to be more spider activity than writing activity going on right at this moment. I do have some nice book-related news, though: Library Lion was nominated for the 2009 Colorado Children's Book Award! I just received a nice certificate in the mail. You can see the full list of nominees here.

In other news, I'll be visiting students at P.S. 33 in Manhattan this Wednesday. Can't wait!

Hope you're all managing to stay cool somehow. This heat is awful. I'm not a big fan of the summer in general, but this is crazy. CRAZY! Why can't it just stay in the 70s? Would that be so much to ask?

Another Nomination!

Library Lion has been nominated for the 2009 Monarch Award, which is the Illinois K–3 Children's Choice Award! You can learn more about the award at the Illinois School Library Media Association website.

Children's choice awards are especially wonderful because children get to vote on the books THEY like best. :)

Winners will be announced in March 2009. I hope the students of Illinois have a wonderful year of reading!

SCASL

I just returned from a lovely time at the South Carolina Association of School Librarians conference. Despite the challenge of having to be awake and coherent and speaking to an audience at 8 a.m. (two days in a row!), it was a great experience and wonderful to be around such a passionate and dedicated and friendly group of library people. I also got to hear the announcement of the 2007–2008 South Carolina Children's Book Award winners and found out that Library Lion has been nominated for the 2008–2009 Book Award!

Oh, and the weather in SC was so beautiful - right in the 70s, just perfect!

And they make very good peach cobbler down there, just FYI.

Of course, one side effect of the conference preparation and traveling is that I have fallen totally behind in the March Madness writing project. It doesn't help that I'm not loving the way the writing has been going, either. This weekend will be about trying to get back on track and figure out how to catch up and start working toward fixing or changing or whatever else might be necessary to change how I feel about the MS in progress.