This week I got my author copies in the mail for I FOOLED YOU—a middle-grade anthology edited by Johanna Hurwitz and containing short stories by Johanna herself, David A. Adler, Eve B. Feldman, Douglas Florian, Matthew Holm, Ellen Klages, Carmela A. Martino, Megan McDonald, Barbara Ann Porte, and yours truly. Mine is called "The Bridge to Highlandsville," and is actually my first-ever published short story, which is very exciting to me.
Also very exciting: look what Kirkus had to say(!):
"...Hurwitz has asked a group of ten writers to create stories that include the line, 'I fooled you,' a concept that, she reminds readers, is a common feature of most folk and fairy tales. Matthew Holm provides a funny, nearly wordless graphic tale. The final two stories, a new take on the troll guarding a bridge by Michelle Knudsen and a story with a satisfying surprise ending by Ellen Klages, are the best. Douglas Florian contributes a bouncy poem, and stories by Johanna Hurwitz and Eve B. Feldman offer gentle messages about the sometimes-questionable behavior of middle-grade students."
The book releases in hardcover and paperback on March 9, 2010. Visit Indiebound.org to order a copy from your favorite independent bookstore.
Friday, February 26, 2010
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Library Lion in Hebrew!
This week I received a copy of the Hebrew edition of Library Lion—so cool!
Library Lion is becoming quite the world traveler—he's already been published in the following countries/languages:
• United Kingdom
• Australia
• Japan
• Korea
• Taiwan (Complex Chinese)
• Italian
• U.S. Spanish-language edition
• France
• Spain (Spanish)
• Spain (Catalan)
• Holland (Dutch)
• Finland
• Slovenia
• Turkish
Looking forward to seeing where he'll turn up next! :)
In other good news, I'm excited to share that The Dragon of Trelian was selected as one of 20 titles on VOYA's Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers booklist! You can see the full list here.
Library Lion is becoming quite the world traveler—he's already been published in the following countries/languages:
• United Kingdom
• Australia
• Japan
• Korea
• Taiwan (Complex Chinese)
• Italian
• U.S. Spanish-language edition
• France
• Spain (Spanish)
• Spain (Catalan)
• Holland (Dutch)
• Finland
• Slovenia
• Turkish
Looking forward to seeing where he'll turn up next! :)
In other good news, I'm excited to share that The Dragon of Trelian was selected as one of 20 titles on VOYA's Top Shelf Fiction for Middle School Readers booklist! You can see the full list here.
Monday, February 1, 2010
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!).
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!).
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Random Photo of the Month
This afternoon I happened across this very fun photo of me, Lev Grossman, and Maura Madden at a Word Bookstore event this past December. AMAZINGLY, we just happen to be standing in a row reading one another's books. What are the odds? ;)
It was a nice reminder of a lovely afternoon at the store, meeting great authors and enjoying the hospitality of the wonderful folks at Word. For more photos from this and other events, see Word Brooklyn's Photostream on Flickr.
It was a nice reminder of a lovely afternoon at the store, meeting great authors and enjoying the hospitality of the wonderful folks at Word. For more photos from this and other events, see Word Brooklyn's Photostream on Flickr.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Newbery Blueberry!
How cool is this? The students of Solomon Schechter Day School in New Milford picked The Dragon of Trelian as their "Newbery Blueberry" mock-Newbery award winner!
Students Pick Own Winning Books
Thank you, student voters! :)
Students Pick Own Winning Books
Thank you, student voters! :)
Friday, January 22, 2010
January 2010 Reentry
Got back Wednesday from the winter residency at VCFA, and it was as expected—awesome and inspiring and exhausting and happy and sad and wonderful. Ten days of lectures, workshops, readings, and events, with dear old friends and many new friends and brilliant writers and teachers. There was a moving memorial for Norma Fox Mazer, which I was honored to have the chance to attend. There were fabulous conversations over meals and hilarious late-night games of Exquisite Corpse (or Picture Telephone, as most of us called it) and also a kick-ass party thrown by my class (the Thunder Badgers) for the graduating class (the Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines) which involved a Wild West theme and much dancing and fun and cowboy hats.
My cowgirl attire (note the awesome belt, borrowed from Nice Boyfriend):
There were also fun cowboy-themed items:
And cowboy-themed foods:
Also there was dancing and game-playing and a piñata shaped like a boot. Much fun was had by all!
During the rez we were also assigned our advisors for the next semester, and I am SO EXCITED to be working with the fabulous Margaret Bechard. This will be my final semester, which makes me more than a little sad, although at the end I will have an MFA, which will (I hope) help alleviate some of the pain of VCFA withdrawal. And of course, the VCFA community embraces alumni and keeps them involved, and so I know I won't really be saying good-bye to VCFA, just moving on to a new relationship with it. But still, I will miss being a student and going to residencies and all the rest. But it's too early for all that, really! Fourth semester is only just starting, and I have another six months before I have to think about graduating. So I will not think about that just now at all.
Another fun thing happened at rez, which is that I finished my first knitting project! It was a scarf. I am very proud. Many thanks to Madeleine, who got me started over New Year's and donated yarn and knitting needles and taught me how to knit and purl, and to the nice knitter/writers (like Sarah and Linden) at VCFA who helped me when I got stuck, and to knitter/writer/awesome VCFA faculty member Rita Williams-Garcia, who showed me how to cast off at the airport while we were waiting for our flight back to NYC. I am excited to start a new project, although I will have to figure out how to knit in the presence of my cat, who will no doubt want to involve herself with the yarn in highly disruptive ways.
And that is all for now. I have ridiculous amounts of things to do, writing and otherwise, and should get to work. Wednesday was all about getting home and seeing my boyfriend and my cat, and yesterday was all about cleaning up my apartment and trying to get oriented, and now I need to be all about the writing for a while. And then hopefully maybe soon I can think about some other things, like my apartment-fixing-up plans. I was briefly daydreaming today about hiring an interior designer to help me make the most of the space I've got and give me painting and decorating advice. This will probably not happen, as I imagine interior designers are expensive and so are new furnishings and as you may remember I was hoping to NOT spend money like a crazy person this year. But it's fun to think about anyway.
OH! Almost forgot to say I am SO HAPPY for my friend Rebecca Stead who WON THE NEWBERY!!!! Congratulations to her and to all the other award winners. YAY! :)
My cowgirl attire (note the awesome belt, borrowed from Nice Boyfriend):
There were also fun cowboy-themed items:
And cowboy-themed foods:
Also there was dancing and game-playing and a piñata shaped like a boot. Much fun was had by all!
During the rez we were also assigned our advisors for the next semester, and I am SO EXCITED to be working with the fabulous Margaret Bechard. This will be my final semester, which makes me more than a little sad, although at the end I will have an MFA, which will (I hope) help alleviate some of the pain of VCFA withdrawal. And of course, the VCFA community embraces alumni and keeps them involved, and so I know I won't really be saying good-bye to VCFA, just moving on to a new relationship with it. But still, I will miss being a student and going to residencies and all the rest. But it's too early for all that, really! Fourth semester is only just starting, and I have another six months before I have to think about graduating. So I will not think about that just now at all.
Another fun thing happened at rez, which is that I finished my first knitting project! It was a scarf. I am very proud. Many thanks to Madeleine, who got me started over New Year's and donated yarn and knitting needles and taught me how to knit and purl, and to the nice knitter/writers (like Sarah and Linden) at VCFA who helped me when I got stuck, and to knitter/writer/awesome VCFA faculty member Rita Williams-Garcia, who showed me how to cast off at the airport while we were waiting for our flight back to NYC. I am excited to start a new project, although I will have to figure out how to knit in the presence of my cat, who will no doubt want to involve herself with the yarn in highly disruptive ways.
And that is all for now. I have ridiculous amounts of things to do, writing and otherwise, and should get to work. Wednesday was all about getting home and seeing my boyfriend and my cat, and yesterday was all about cleaning up my apartment and trying to get oriented, and now I need to be all about the writing for a while. And then hopefully maybe soon I can think about some other things, like my apartment-fixing-up plans. I was briefly daydreaming today about hiring an interior designer to help me make the most of the space I've got and give me painting and decorating advice. This will probably not happen, as I imagine interior designers are expensive and so are new furnishings and as you may remember I was hoping to NOT spend money like a crazy person this year. But it's fun to think about anyway.
OH! Almost forgot to say I am SO HAPPY for my friend Rebecca Stead who WON THE NEWBERY!!!! Congratulations to her and to all the other award winners. YAY! :)
Saturday, January 9, 2010
2010 is going to be OK
Just finished my second cup of coffee, which means it is time to get up from the computer and go do things. Mostly today's things will be about packing and getting ready for rez and getting my cat ready to spend ten days at my boyfriend's apartment while I am gone. There are things I wanted to get done before I go that will not get done, and I am deciding to be ok about this.
I think I want to make Deciding to Be Ok about Things my goal for 2010. I spend way too much time worrying about everything (and I mean seriously, EVERYTHING), and while there are some small number of things actually worth worrying about (e.g., health and well-being of friends and family), many of the things I worry about are just not worth it. Some things can just be ok. For example, it is ok that I didn't get all the reading done that I would have liked to do for the residency. It is ok that my apartment is a mess, and that my friend Kristin will see it this way when she comes over to water my plants next week. It is ok that I do not have my whole life figured out, and that I have big questions about lots of significant life things, and that I do not have a five-year plan or a fully updated checkbook register or a functional exercise regimen.
Which is not to say I'm not going to set goals for the coming year or anything like that. Actually the whole point is to direct my energy toward what matters, instead of wasting it on things that don't. I'm going to finish my Trelian sequel by March 1, which is my new deadline and which CANNOT be missed if I want the book to come out when it's supposed to. I'm going to finish the first draft of another novel that I'm working on, hopefully by July. I'm going to fix up my apartment, and paint and get curtains, and I'm going to cook more and try not to spend money like a crazy person. I'm going to exercise more, but it's going to be ok if that takes the form of long walks listening to audiobooks instead of my former ideal of going for runs and rejoining the gym.
I read David Small's Stitches last night (some of the reading for rez that I *did* finish) and by the end I was feeling pretty silly about some of the things in my life that upset me. Seriously, my life is pretty ok, more than ok, and some people have Real Problems and sometimes it helps to remember that and try to put things in perspective. Not that my life is all candy and roses by any means, and of course some things are going to get me down, but there are also many things in my life that I need to remember to be grateful for on a regular basis.
Anyway. I should get up and go do things now, for real. Need to pick up a package at the post office and stop at the bank for laundry and vending machine quarters for school, and pack and pack and transfer files to my laptop and update my iPod and everything else. I doubt I will post anything while I'm away, but if you're interested in getting a glimpse of the goings-on at the residency, VCFA alum Tami Brown will be posting at Through the Tollbooth, and Cynthia Leitich Smith will be tweeting VCFA faculty quotes on her Twitter page.
I think I want to make Deciding to Be Ok about Things my goal for 2010. I spend way too much time worrying about everything (and I mean seriously, EVERYTHING), and while there are some small number of things actually worth worrying about (e.g., health and well-being of friends and family), many of the things I worry about are just not worth it. Some things can just be ok. For example, it is ok that I didn't get all the reading done that I would have liked to do for the residency. It is ok that my apartment is a mess, and that my friend Kristin will see it this way when she comes over to water my plants next week. It is ok that I do not have my whole life figured out, and that I have big questions about lots of significant life things, and that I do not have a five-year plan or a fully updated checkbook register or a functional exercise regimen.
Which is not to say I'm not going to set goals for the coming year or anything like that. Actually the whole point is to direct my energy toward what matters, instead of wasting it on things that don't. I'm going to finish my Trelian sequel by March 1, which is my new deadline and which CANNOT be missed if I want the book to come out when it's supposed to. I'm going to finish the first draft of another novel that I'm working on, hopefully by July. I'm going to fix up my apartment, and paint and get curtains, and I'm going to cook more and try not to spend money like a crazy person. I'm going to exercise more, but it's going to be ok if that takes the form of long walks listening to audiobooks instead of my former ideal of going for runs and rejoining the gym.
I read David Small's Stitches last night (some of the reading for rez that I *did* finish) and by the end I was feeling pretty silly about some of the things in my life that upset me. Seriously, my life is pretty ok, more than ok, and some people have Real Problems and sometimes it helps to remember that and try to put things in perspective. Not that my life is all candy and roses by any means, and of course some things are going to get me down, but there are also many things in my life that I need to remember to be grateful for on a regular basis.
Anyway. I should get up and go do things now, for real. Need to pick up a package at the post office and stop at the bank for laundry and vending machine quarters for school, and pack and pack and transfer files to my laptop and update my iPod and everything else. I doubt I will post anything while I'm away, but if you're interested in getting a glimpse of the goings-on at the residency, VCFA alum Tami Brown will be posting at Through the Tollbooth, and Cynthia Leitich Smith will be tweeting VCFA faculty quotes on her Twitter page.
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